Raspberry Pi 5 – 16 GB, $350(adafruit.com) |
Raspberry Pi 5 – 16 GB, $350(adafruit.com) |
https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100017489%204016%20601497625%2...
Dram prices and Flash prices are inflated right now, but the pi were never focused on Desktop users. As a platform it no longer makes sense for many use cases. =3
And am I correct to see that the USB-C only does power? How do you connect your pheripherals to this board?
I guess that the people who use $350 boards also mainly use USB-C. Unless you want to connect old hardware to it but I don’t see that use-case.
Not being able to connect my devices to this board is a blocker for me.
Usually, that gamble pays off, sometimes it does not (cough Apple Vision), and in some cases they get so many QC rejects that they can make an entire new product line on (financially) worthless scrap, that's how the MacBook Neo came to be - a bunch of iPhone SoC's that failed binning, I think in GPU cores.
You can still buy a Raspberry Pi on a budget if you don’t need that much memory. For example, the 2 GB model is $75.
What bothers me is that now you need cooling for some models, and obviously price is getting too high.
On the other hand... $50 for 1Gb version is excellent still. And you should be able to use it just fine.
I lucked out having bought a few N95 mini PCs a few years ago. They were even cheaper then with 16GB of RAM out of the box. To me they're vastly superior to the various RPis I replaced.
I sold off my Pi 4s and never bothered with the 5s. I kept my mix of older Pis for projects that need GPIO and of those my Pi Zeros are the ones that really get used.
Also you’re missing the point.
> From 28 December 2024, the rules apply to mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, videogame consoles, portable speakers, e-readers, keyboards, mice, portable navigation systems and earbuds sold in the EU. From 28 April 2026, they will also apply to laptops.
But I can’t understand what are the use cases to be selling 73M units.
Would anyone mind sharing what are the broadly applicable use cases, because selling 73M units is well beyond hobbyist fun.
25% Enthusiasts and education 75% Industrial and embedded
The memory used by the Pi 5 is up 700% [2]!
Raspberry Pi are working the issue by releasing new memory variants that are cheaper[2].
Edit: You can still walk into a Microcenter and get Pi 5 16GB for US $289!
1. https://au.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
2. https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/a-new-3gb-raspberry-pi-4-fo...
Raspberry Pi are working on the issue but letting you spend the same amount of money per GB, for fewer GB.
Pi 5 8GB is $200
MacBook Neo 8GB is $600 (probably some edu discount available) Sure 3x the price, but it comes with - 256GB SSD, battery, display, keyboard, trackpad..
So the Pi has slowly become too expensive for weird one-off projects and also price competitive with a cheap Mac by the time you add all the stuff you need to use it as a cheap computer.
If Apple ever got around to a headless "Mac Micro", below the Mini, which had the same specs as the Neo in desktop form it would be even more stark. They could easily ship that for $400 (mini is $300 cheaper than cheapest M-series MacBook with same ram/ssd). They might never do this as it's enough computer for most people they'd lose revenue from those otherwise spending far more at the Apple Store.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w/
I wish a Pi 5 (and RAM in general) was cheaper, but Raspberry Pi can't control that.
I can only assume they don't actually work with the pi because if you spend just a minute looking at any reseller's inventory or even just the official website you will see they still make and sell and support boards from a decade ago.
You don't even need to learn anything new, I'm sure you can ask Claude to vibe code something on RP2350 nowadays and there's an 80% chance it will work.
I agree that vibe coding microcontrollers will increase the use of embedded systems instead of RPi devices. Seems like a good move for them to have built the RPi Pico.
That leaves $100 for everything else on the Pi, including the hardware, building it, transporting it, and retailer margin.
That leaves $500 for everything else on the MacBook Neo.
That's why you can get so much more from the MacBook Neo. There's 5X as much budget for everything other than RAM.
So yeah, the RPi5 has gotten prohibitively expensive, at least to the point where a chinesium mini pc is cheaper, has better performance, and about the same power consumption.
Mac Nano, just like iPods!
My Raspberry Pi is definitely outclassed by a few of my old phones and laptops. But it's also super pleasant to host services on, so it's my go-to SBC.
I get what's happening, but it's strange to see it happening.
Actually, could I sell it for ~10% less than someone would buy it new? Is there a market for used Pis? Maybe 30%, I don't know. That I can sell it for what I got it for at all is wild.
On 2025-12-18 I bought a RPi 5 kit on Amazon from CanaKit that consisted of an 8 GB Pi 5 with the official RPi 5 256 GB SSD, case, fan, 45W power supply, and some cables which came fully assembled.
It was $209.99.
Today it is $339.97.
On 2025-09-02 I bought a Samsung 1 TB EVO Plus M.2 SSD along with along with a Sabrent USB-C M.2/SATA enclosure to use with my RPi 4.
It was $64.99 for the SSD and $22.75 for the enclosure.
Today the SSD is $255.00 (down a little from the $261.08 it reached last month) and the enclosure is $29.95.
BTW, if you are looking for an RPi it looks like you can't rely on the prices shown on rpilocator.com.
Right now for example it lists RPi 5 8 GB in stock in the US for $80 (Digi-Key), $175 (Pishop), and $200 (Adafruit). Similar for 4 GB ($60, $110, $130 at those three sellers, in the same order). Same pattern for RPi 4. 8 GB from the same three sellers in the same order: $75, $165, $190. 4 GB $55, $100, $120.
Clicking the links reveals all the Digi-Key entries are wrong. Their actual price is the same as Pishop (whose rpilocator.com entries seem to be correct).
It's not like RPi suddenly introduced a 16GB model at a ridiculous price due to having forgotten about low cost stuff. The 16GB model was originally $85 iirc. Then the memory shortage hit. They could either withdraw the 16GB model (maybe screwing over some people who absolutely had to have it) or raise the price for those with urgent enough requirements. They did the latter.
Me, I'd like to see some large MCU's (let's say a little above RP2350 / ESP32 level) with a few MB of memory, but with memory protection, like old fashioned Vaxes with that much memory. That would allow running multiprocessing OS's where the processes couldn't easily clobber each other like on the current stuff. Many programs don't require GB's of ram.
I first checked for Mac Minis and interestingly they are much closer to $650 for similar specs.
And obviously if Intel is fine for your use case, either the N100 type of mini PC or, my preference, an off-lease HP, Dell, or Lenovo USFF PC, would be like half that for a very capable machine.
[1] https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=m1%20macbook%20air%2016...
That "laptop" will also absolutely smoke the Pi on performance, too:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/24356484?baseli...
I later added a large machine that I used to use as a Linux desktop, with a GPU and 64GB RAM, which I use for generating OpenStreetMap tiles.
Before RAM went crazy, the Pi 4 was $75 for *8GB and $125 for 16GB.
Another consideration is heat and power consumption, I have an OptiPlex micro (also surplus) and power consumption is 8W-90W (standby versus peak), 5x-10x more than a Pi 4.
I used to do this as well and this is fine if you're able to source cheap power. But I'm in the UK, electricity prices are insane and I can't afford to run this kind of setup any more.
You're correct; they've jumped the shark.
1) Apple had long term contracts for memory which will run out. Afterwards it will be very interesting to see what they do.
2) RPi uses older memory that is much much more expensive to buy in the market as manufacturers have dedicated capacity to newer formats used by AI boxes for KV caches
What market is this trying to compete in?
As for the education market, that's a long forgotten pipedream.
I’m glad they’re making it available for the rare cases where it’s needed, but for PR purposes it would have been better if they just discontinued the 16GB model until RAM prices came down. I’m getting tired of hearing “Raspberry Pi 5 costs $300” now from people who have no reason to buy the 16GB version.
The 1GB version works well for simple Linux shell work and embedded projects. It’s $50.
The 4GB version works well for GUI work. Let’s be real: It’s a slow device and not a desktop/laptop alternative in 2026, so 4GB goes a long way for the use cases where you want to do basic GUI work. $110 for the 4GB model (if you shop not at Adafruit)
EDIT: Adafruit prices are higher for some reason. 16GB Pi 5 is $305 on other sites.
1. https://www.microcenter.com/product/702590/raspberry-pi-5
I could do very useful things with that machine. So it is not the end of the world if we have to go back to a world when you merely have thousands of times more memory for 4 times less money.
It could even be positive if it forces people to be more efficient writing code and wasting less resources.
I have 4 RPi servers in my house on 24/7 but yeah
Funny different purpose but I bought a 2017 Pixelbook put Ubuntu on it, great machine it was $80
Makes making your key network services (VPN, firewall, DNS, NTP, home assistant etc) on battery backup very easy, as just one plug to the primary switch to keep powered, and my wifi/internet stays on when the power cuts.
I could use other devices, but 5 pis with PoE hats rack mount very cleanly in a single 1U row and passively cooled with no fan noise etc.
I would not expect them to dump cheap ram. That is a false hope. The world needs volume, massively more volume, and it feels like everyone else is going to take a sizable fraction of a decade to even start responding. Maybe perhaps possibly CXMT can scale fast, but they have many multiples to grow before they are more than a drop in the bucket.
It's also unclear when if they too will want to start stacking 12 then 16 then 24 rams atop each other, to sell chips that cost what multiples of what GPUs used to.
I'd presume they're shipped from China like most tech goods.
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/how-raspberry-pis-are...
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-5/#:~:text...
The cheaper 4GB or even 1GB versions ($50 for the latter) are what most people should be looking at for their projects.
Then the hobby community got wind of it and proceeded to buy out all the stock on every release (myself included, I still have one of every first 3 versions sitting in my cabinet)
It's a supply chain problem, n
If you cannot negotiate a good deal with the big industrial silicon manufacturers but you want good up-to-date kernels, RPis are a perfect option.
There are SoMs or SBCs with other CPUs like NXP or MediaTek that has more or less mainline support. However, they ask more money. The kernel contributions are also a bit on the shakier side which requires spending expensive developer time to deal with kernel issues that the CPU and the board manufacturer missed.
Kicking myself for not buying the Q6A at the beginning of the year (I wanted three and arace would only sell one per customer, but one would've been better than none).
The Pi 1 model B+ was released in 2014. They still make and support it today and will keep doing it until at least 2030. You can just buy that instead. They are not apple.
It was tiny, and the assumption was correct - most families had an HDMI capable TV and could afford the device and a usb keyboard.
A used PC still needs a desk and a monitor. This was far more accessible.
Less power consumption than the Pi 5 (and no heatsink), and it was the first to offer the combination of USB booting, more than 1GB RAM, and Gigabit Ethernet. And reasonably priced in 2019.
This is just very expensive for what it is.
> The kernel contributions are also a bit on the shakier side which requires spending expensive developer time to deal with kernel
NXP/i.MX are way better at mainline kernel than Broadcom that RPi is based on, come on.. and they have cheaper options like i.MX 9 series. Other vendors, yes, mainline support could be pretty spotty.
Radxa does have a 16Gb board[1] on pre-order, coming in at $329. Though the Dragon Q8B appears to be quite a bit more capable.
I personally would probably choose one of those over a Rpi (but would probably still rather buy more off-lease Elitedesk G6 Minis, which is what I use for 'lil computer' projects)
I agree it's not too shocking, I think prices have increased everywhere including competitors.
> off-lease Elitedesk G6 Minis
Those are great if you can surface them!
I've also been enjoying the N100 mini-ITX boards from ASROCK[1] and ASUS. Great choice if you already have a power supply and some RAM stockpiled. The ASUS one uses SODIMM. They use very little power.
If you need a few i2c or SPI or uart buses or even just general purpose IO then AliExpress has a gazillion little USB based modules that will get you exactly that.
If you're still very new to electronics and not at all comfortable going outside of well-established curriculum that explicitly says use this raspberry pi with this sensor attached on these pins with this library configured in this way... Yes. But that can't be most of the people paying this price?
"an app that creates a programmable environment layered over and isolated from the suffocating mobile OS": Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) on newer Android versions provides a hypervisor and a hardware-accelerated graphics (VirGL) for AVF virtual machines, allowing users to run an isolated Linux GUI desktop with low overhead.
Dock can not handle an Ultrawide 1440x3440 display.
Right now it is a backup phone and my music player.
Probably nothing. That free info also comes with YouTube and TikTok and every TV show and movie and game on demand. You have to be very disciplined to focus on difficult topics in a sea of easier and more gratifying entertainment.