this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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Is the Raspberry Pi Still an Affordable SBC? I Don't Think So (linuxiac.com)
submitted 20 hours ago by throws_lemy@reddthat.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 22 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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?

[–] Professorozone@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

I find that if you don't need it to be small but just cheap you can often find used boards or even cheap new boards in the ATX, micro ATX or mini ITX form factors that have more ports and such. I think sometimes people get hung up on using a Pi "because they are cheap" not realizing that if they AREN'T cheap they can switch to a "normal" computer.

[–] pelya@lemmy.world 43 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (4 children)

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.
[–] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

A few years ago I installed Linux on a $40 used Chromebook with 4gb RAM. It runs Blender, Freecad, Minecraft, Celeste, Portal, Kdenlive, etc perfectly acceptably. It has CPU performance a tiny bit worse than the Pi 5, but is x86 and comes with a mouse, keyboard, battery, etc.

I don't think comparing performance over used PCs is ever going to be favorable for a pi, I think the reasons to get one are reliability, gpio, and the small form factor.

[–] ouRKaoS@lemmy.today 1 points 46 seconds ago

I linuxed a $50 Chromebook & I use it to do sketchy shit that I don't want to try on my main rig. "Hey, I found a flashdrive at the park! Let's plug it into the ChromeBurner"!

[–] thatonecoder@lemmy.ca 8 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Now I want to see a self-hosted LLM running solely on a Raspberry Pi Pico!!

[–] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

Not an LLM or a Pi Pico but I think this project is pretty cool regardless

https://github.com/traviszech/RPI-ZERO-2-OnnxStream

[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 10 hours ago

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

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 10 points 14 hours ago

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.

https://www.microcenter.com/product/702590/raspberry-pi-5

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 92 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago

I heavily dislike them locking down their cameras. Idk if that was a particularly recent move or not, but I would never consider the hardware as open if it has built in vendor locking functions.

[–] pelya@lemmy.world 16 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 10 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

That's not the point, the point is that their new developments do not do for the community what the original products did.

[–] pelya@lemmy.world 6 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 5 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

For instance analogue IO would be very welcome for many purposes.

I have a handful of the original Raspberry Pi A and B models that have analog audio built in (with 3.5mm jack) and they're still in use today because of that built in analog audio out. Also honorable mention to the original Pi Zero which had the logic (but not the header pins) for NTSC out. I have a couple of those in use too because of their NTSC out capabilities.

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

There's always the BeagleBone Black if you need a lot of IO. It has a 12 bit ADC too.

[–] pelya@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

But, but, eighty bucks! TI boards are seriously overpriced.

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 11 hours ago

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.

[–] pelya@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

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.

[–] ohulancutash@feddit.uk 8 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Dont they still dothis? And subsidise it with higher spec items?

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 52 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

lol no

The Pi Foundation's mission died when it was reborn as a for-profit organization, and that was years ago.

[–] curbstickle@anarchist.nexus 25 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Demonstrated clearly during the pandemic when they prioritized sales to businesses over anything else.

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 12 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

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, and have no intention of purchasing any of their products ever again.

[–] curbstickle@anarchist.nexus 7 points 17 hours ago

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.

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 8 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

It still has full support. That counts for a lot. Fly by night boards that quickly lose support are hardly 'Affordable'

[–] bryndos@fedia.io 37 points 20 hours ago (7 children)

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.

[–] tburkhol@lemmy.world 25 points 19 hours ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] 73ms@sopuli.xyz 7 points 15 hours ago

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...

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[–] obinice@lemmy.world 9 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 13 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

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 makes it really appealing for display related projects.

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[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 8 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 hours ago

Don't forget about COVID-times when they stopped selling to consumers in favor of corporations. Or when they spun the commercial sector of the Raspberry Pi Foundation out into its own for-profit business.

[–] BenderRodriguez@lemmy.world 13 points 19 hours ago (10 children)

What are some alternatives?

[–] curbstickle@anarchist.nexus 10 points 18 hours ago

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).

[–] justinthegeek@lemmy.zip 9 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Know_not_Scotty_does@lemmy.world 13 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 14 hours ago

Or want a computer that can be powered via PoE.

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[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club 8 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (2 children)

125 usd for a Rpi 5 ain't worth it anymore ngl.
I think there are better sbcs for that price.

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[–] Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip 2 points 14 hours ago

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.

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