REVIEWS Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi 5
The first new flagship in four years has Les Pounder and Avram Piltch fighting over who gets first dibs on the latest SBC.
IN BRIEF
The Pi 4 remains a solid choice; it doesn’t need active cooling and has rocksolid support. If you don’t need Linux, just the GPIO, then the £6 Pi Pico W has proven itself to be a versatile microcontroller. However, if you want the best single-board computer around, the Raspberry Pi 5 is your new leader.
After the longest wait between flagship Pi models ever (the Pi 4 was released A in June 2019), the Raspberry Pi 5 is finally here and it’s early! Eben Upton had said no new Pis in 2023, but here we are…
The Raspberry Pi 5 claims to have two to three times the processing power of the Raspberry Pi 4, already a powerful single-board computer. Available in 4GB and 8GB RAM capacities (with 1GB and 2GB to come), the Raspberry Pi 5 is the same basic size and shape as the Model 4 B, but adds a number of longrequested features, such as a built-in real-time clock, a PCIe 2.0 connector and a power button.
Perhaps more importantly, the Pi features a new quad-core 2.4GHz Cortex-A76 Arm CPU, a new Southbridge that promises to improve USB 3 throughput, and a new VideoCore VII GPU that operates at 800MHz. There’s also a slew of little improvements, including a built-in fan header with mounting holes, faster and dual camera connectors, and a microSD card reader that works with higher-speed cards. All for just £4 more than the same RAM-spec Pi 4.