I don’t know what people would need a Pi 5 16gb for other than using it as a low-powered PC alternative. I’ve got a bunch of 4’s and 3’s doing utilitarian tasks, from running an older 3D printer to PiHole. One I’m using as a budget PC in the garage to listen to music and look up how-to videos if I get stumped on something.
A $200+ 5 seems outside the needs of the users who have viewed Pi’s as relatively inexpensive hobbyist devices, but below the needs of people needing to do the work of desktop PCs.
I’m sure there’s niche uses for them, but is there actual demand for them?
Y’all need a price chart. You are literally getting what you are paying for.
Raspberry Pi 5, 16 GB RAM
- Price: $205 (don’t trust the price on RPi website, no way you are buying it for $145).
- Generic desktop PC: runs Blender and video editors.
- AI agent: yes.
- Computer vision: yes, with face recognition and real-time AI filters.
- SDR signal processor: you can broadcast an HD TV station on it.
- Servers: whatever you want, can host Amazon and Netflix.
Raspberry PI 5, 1 GB RAM
- Price: $45.
- Generic desktop PC: you can edit office documents.
- AI agent: lol no.
- Computer vision: a movement sensor for your surveillance camera.
- SDR signal processor: you can broadcast FM radio.
- Servers: home file server and torrents.
Raspberry PI 4, 1 GB RAM
- Price: $35.
- Does everything that Raspberry Pi 5 does, but 0.6 GHz slower.
- Does not throw a tantrum when your power supply outputs 4.999 volts instead of 5 volts 5 amperes.
- The ultimate Raspberry Pi for all your hardware projects.
Raspberry PI Zero 2, 512 MB RAM
- Price: $15 on a website, $19 in shops.
- Generic desktop PC: probably runs Solitaire.
- AI agent: dream on.
- Computer vision: a movement sensor for your surveillance camera, and it won’t support HD cameras.
- SDR signal processor: you can record FM radio, not much else.
- Servers: online garage door opener.
- Ethernet adapter sold separately, if you don’t want your garage door opener to drop offline at random because of unstable WiFi.
Raspberry Pi Pico, 264 KB RAM
- Price: $4.
- Generic desktop PC: nope.
- AI agent: absolutely impossible.
- Computer vision: nope.
- SDR signal processor: nope.
- Servers: unsecure garage door opener.
- Ethernet adapter requires soldering skills.
- You don’t need 40 programmable pins to control one garage door.
- Just buy ESP32 instead.
ESP32-C6-Zero, 400 KB RAM.
- Price: $3.50.
- Does everything that Raspberry Pi Pico does, but better.
- Works for a year from three AAA batteries.
That’s not really bad pricing it’s actually cheaper than I paid for my 4 according to the chart and that was a bunch of years ago
Now I want to see a self-hosted LLM running solely on a Raspberry Pi Pico!!
After reading your comment on price I checked Microcenter, an authorized pi dealer, and you’re right. The pi 5 with 16gb is listed at $200.
It still as full support. That counts for a lot. Fly by night boards that quickly lose support are hardly ‘worth it’
Hasn’t been for years now. I appreciate the extra oomph and definitely the extra RAM, but so many projects need a Pi3 level of oomph and price point.
They don’t make those any more, and the new ones are too expensive, so just can’t do those projects any more.
Pi 4 has over twice the performance per watt (see https://the-diy-life.com/raspberry-pi-drag-race-pi-1-to-pi-5-performance-comparison/), so I think that may be the sweet spot for certain uses, but I agree that the 3 is still a perfectly capable device for so many projects.
Also the 3 is the last one to have a full HDMI port which is makes it really appealing for display related projects.
Plus software seems to be dropping 32bit support. While I usually appreciate the benefits of 64 bit architecture, that’s uncalled for on most of the things I’d use RPi for
They do still make Pi3, they guarantee availability for a decade for each model and there’s still over 3 years to go until Pi 3 hits that.
It looks to me like they have lost focus on their original purpose. Which was to provide cheap and open compute opportunity for education and tinkering.
Raspberry Pi Zero is still very much available, and costs less than the original Pi 1/2/3/4. It’s enough for most microcontroller tasks, if you want cozy Linux with Python and don’t want to dive into RTOS and C microcode.
That’s not the point, the point is that their new developments do not do for the community what the original products did.
Their original goal was to provide an affordable and customizable computing device with generic IO ports for a classroom, which they very much did.
14 years later, classrooms have a crapload of alternatives, ranging from $3 ESP32, which you can literally solder and throw away, to $500 Jetson, and all Raspberry Pi clones, like NanoPi or OrangePi, all with GPIO, UART, SPI and I2C ports, for all your microcontroller needs.As for the embedded developers community (or ‘makers’ as kids call themselves nowadays) - these are the kind of people who dump two thousand bucks for a 3D printer and then use it twice a year. I think they will survive raising Raspberry Pi 5 price to $45.
And Raspberry Pi foundation pivoting towards business is a predictable move - those kids who used Raspberry Pi 14 years ago in a classroom are now business owners or technical leads in many businesses.
I think it’s strange that they haven’t extended the 40 pin IO capabilities. For instance analogue IO would be very welcome for many purposes.
Yup, it would be super convenient to have one or two pins for ADC. Technically you have a DAC on Pi 4, if you repurpose the analog audio output, but on Pi 5 all you have is digital HDMI audio.
Oh well, an AD7705 voltmeter board costs only $2, and uses only six wires for SPI connection, including one of two precious precious 3V3 pins. And you’ll also need around three days to dig Github to find a working Python driver for it. But at least you don’t have to worry about burning your 3.3V Raspberry pins with 5V input voltage.
And at this point you are asking yourself - why not pay $3 for an ESP32 or a STM32? you can program it to use just three wires - power, ground, and UART TX, and you don’t need to read it 500 times per second like AD7705 and use 25% CPU of your Raspberry Pi Zero, you can program it to calculate an average RMS voltage once per second, and you can read a total of six ADC channels on ESP32, and on STM32 half of all the pins can be configured as ADC, and it’s also quite precise and low-noise, while on ESP32 ADC is more … consumer-grade.
I made a digital drum reader using Piezos on an Arduino with my wife some years ago, For that you need way more than 2 analogue pins.
I don’t see why newer Raspberry Pies couldn’t have something like 12 analogue pins, it would be amazing for many things, and it’s dirt cheap to make today. The ESP32 has 18 AFAIK.
In some ways ESP 32 has way better features than Raspberry Pi, but it is not nearly as user-friendly and it lacks audio. It’s also not a general purpose computer with the things that entail, but “just” an embedded system, although a very good one for sure.
There’s always the BeagleBone Black if you need a lot of IO. It has a 12 bit ADC too.
But, but, eighty bucks! TI boards are seriously overpriced.
It’s USD $53 on DigiKey and Mouser. That’s still rather expensive for an old single board computer, but it has a lot more IO than most other computers as well as a pair of real time co-processors for handling high speed IO.
Dont they still dothis? And subsidise it with higher spec items?
lol no
The Pi Foundation died when it was reborn as a for-profit organization.
Demonstrated clearly during the pandemic when they prioritized sales to businesses over anything else.
I used to purchase several Pi’s each time they released a new model and probably have a dozen in total.
But I haven’t purchased any since they told all of their hobbyist and retail user base to go fuck themselves during the chip shortages.
Same! I have a veritable stack of 3b’s still, some pi 4s - all stopped by the time the 4’s compute module came out in octoberish? of 2020.
Haven’t bought anything of theirs since.
At this point I see the value proposition of the RPi being for the developer more than the user (who gets indirect benefits from the devs).
RPi provide a platform for testing code optimizations that is somewhat standardized. Memory leaks, inefficient code, etc. stick out like a sore thumb.
If you can get something to run well on a pi, good odds it’ll run well everywhere else.
Ever since they hired a cop to develop copware and their social media genius told us to go fuck ourselves (and their non-apology) they’ve been dead.
16gb raspberry pi was always weird, even 8gb. It’s more just a desktop pc or something at that level - the used pc market has usually been similar vfm when you factor in storage and peripherals.
The pizero2(W) is still very cheap for real raspberry pi stuff - where you just want an OS for some reason instead of esp32.
We’ve got phones with that amount of RAM now so it definitely isn’t something just reserved for desktops. I tend to like getting something with plenty resources even if it’s unnecessary at the time because it often means a longer lifespan for the hardware…
I was really intimidated by ESP32. Liked RPi, back in the 3b days, because I could comfortably sit in the python interpreter, play with sensor interfaces, and get immediate feedback of what & where I screwed up. Familiarity led me to RPi4 for libreelec and 0w for more sensors.
Recently took the plunge on some ESP32s, though, and, just…wow. I mean, I’m going through esphome, but every sensor and control I’ve checked is just a couple of lines of YAML away. And low enough power that I’m starting to think about batteries. ESP32 is still pretty intimidating for noobs, but the ecosystem that’s grown up around it is fantastic once you get over that hump.
Wasn’t there some kind of exploit found in ESP32s recently? Did that turn out to be nothing?
I’ve often wanted to get into them and that kind of intimidated me out of it at the time; haven’t had an opportunity to dive back in
I only one I know about https://socprime.com/blog/cve-2025-27840-vulnerability-in-esp32-bluetooth-chips/ which is a bluetooth thing, presumably meaning that you’d have to be in bluetooth range to exploit it.
My paranoid concern is that I’m going to buy these $2 ESP32 boards from some unknowable Chinese company, and how could I know if there’s an extra, malicious supervisor element added. So, my ESP32 devices live in the ‘untrusted’ VLAN. They could, theoretically, discover each other and send their sensor data to some nefarious broker, but they don’t have microphones or cameras. I don’t even see how they could get enough information to discover my physical address, without cooperation from my ISP.
Yes it was a overblown nothing.
Just curious, what is your use case for ESPhome/ESP32? I am still not sure what people do with it.
They are excellent in the hobby world. It’s generally when you need to do a bit of quick logic, an ESP32 can be dropped in to do it. E.g. change the colour of an led depending on a sensor.
They also form the core of a lot of IoT devices. Simple sensors and relays that can connect to WiFi and throw up a simple web interface. ESPhome, tasmota and WLED exist to make this extremely easy.
They are basically the hobbiest electronic multi tool. Powerful enough to do most jobs without bothering with code optimisation. Cheap enough to throw in and leave there.
I have a n ESP32 with a thermocouple stuffed down my (gas) oven chimney, so I can tell what temperature it actually is (about 40°F/20°C cooler than the dial).
I have one plugged into an addressable LED matrix, which has yet to get mounted, but will eventually be a closet/dressing light. There’s a few places where I’d like a ‘normal’ warm white light, with the option to switch to a blinding daylight for chores, and maybe a low-light, colorful animated nightlight.
I have a Pi-0w reading temp/humidity/CO2 in a grow tent that’s a good candidate for ESP32-ification. I have an air quality sensor plugged directly into a Home Assistant server that could go on ESP32 if I wanted it in a different location. Humidity in the bathroom, with a controller for the bathroom fan is another good candidate.
If I can come up with a good way to put them on battery, with a 6-12 month lifetime, then temperature in the attic, and on the input/output sides of the HVAC would be useful.
The pizero2(W) is still very cheap for real raspberry pi stuff - where you just want an OS for some reason instead of esp32.
Pi-Hole baby!
Did the Pi Pico ever make any headway in the microcontroller space? It looked interesting when it was first announced but I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere since.
I think esp32 is more commonly used. i think they’re pretty similar capabilities and both dirt cheap. I just see more projects with esp32.
There are a fair number of third party boards based on the RP2040/RP2050 silicon. Even esphome can target it even though it originally targeted the esp32.
The silicon itself is pretty nice although the original had done problems with deep sleep.
I always thought the 16gb ram ver was not worth it in my opinion
What are some alternatives?
Price? Tiny/mini/micro PC
Simple sensor use? ESP32
Complex GPIO? Arduino is still a cheap option if you dont need it too standalone.
Straight up pi-alikes? OrangePi is my preferred
Most of what I personally use is esp32s and tiny/mini/micro. TMM for servers and services, esp32s for sensors, interfaces, prototyping, etc. If I need something fully standalone thats going to go in a rack or whatever, needs to be small and have all the GPIO, thats where I’ll use an orangpi, clockwork, whatever. Ive even used a tinkerboard or a Jetson (client paying obviously, because screw those prices and nvidia).
At that price point, a mini PC. Look at Dell or Lenovo, they make super small form factor computers that will blow a Pi out of the water.
It really depends though, if you want to do analog in or out, relay control, or use existing hats, you are bought/forced into the ecosystem. If you are just using it as a small computer, yeah roll with whatever. To me, it’s always occupied the void between an arduino and a sffpc or when I wanted to do compute and analog/digital control on something.
Or want a computer that can be powered via PoE.
Thanks!
Orange pi 5?
Orangepi and other “clones” often use rockchip on their boards which isn’t as well supported as Raspberry equivalent so it’s not direct replacement. Also their supported lifespan is often much less than rpi.
your right but doesnt Armbian exist for OSES? and i never knew their lifespans are short
Armbian works on most, if not all, raspberry pi compatible boards. I meant that support from vendor is often a lot shorter than from raspberry and it can cause problems/bugs with bootloaders and drivers unless vendor is actively working with armbian/kernel development for their chipset.
Yeah I see
That looks like a similar price point.
Yeah but iirc its faster then the rpi 5
Good deal.
125 usd for a Rpi 5 ain’t worth it anymore ngl
Are they as well supported? There are lots of SBCs out there but if they are only supported by vendor kernels and have no documentation then i’d rather pay the Pi premium.
but armbian exists which is a Linux distro that tries to support alot of SBCS IIRC
I guess I have been in enterprise for too long, I thought they meant Session Border Controller. And I was thinking “wow, a Pi can be an SBC?!”
Been that way since last couple of years.
