Raspberry Pi 5 is the new version of the series that sells the most units in the single board minicomputer or SBC group. Announced last month, it should be available this October. In case you’re wondering if it’s worth buying over the (cheaper) Raspberry 4, we’ll let you know about key differences between them.

The Raspberry Pi has long since ceased to be a product solely intended to promote computer science education in British schools (as was its original aim) and is now used in a very large number use cases, home or professional: programming, as a multimedia center, as a basis for building basic computers, as an anonymous router for TOR, for gaming machines, as tablets, for robotics, for creating surveillance cameras, as a universal translator, as a recreational device in a minimal sizes and very long, etc., in which a number of people passionate about this development work, including us.

Of course, there are many good alternatives, as its success has encouraged other manufacturers to develop their own solutions. Most of them are very similar, others are virtually identical, and some have superior features or different hardware architecture, but essentially retain their form factor and usage goals.

Raspberry Pi 5 VS Pi 4 Which one to choose?

The British foundation behind this development decided level up over previous models, but slightly increases the price of the two versions in which it will be launched: $60 with 4GB of RAM and $80 for the 8GB version. Is it worth the upgrade? Maybe not if you already have a Pi 4 with at least 4GB, but if you’re looking for something with more capacity and don’t need to compromise on what the Pi Zero offers, there’s no doubt that the Pi 5 should be a great reference for new features like are as follows.

1.- A much more capable SoC. The installed Broadcom BCM2712 is based on a 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A76 running at 2.4 GHz and includes 4 MB of cache. Much more CPU capacity.

2.- Faster RAM. The Pi 5 uses LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM, significantly faster than the Pi 4’s LPDDR4-3200.

3.- Better graphics. The Pi 5 has a much faster VideoCore VII GPU clocked at 800 MHz and supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and Vulkan 1.2. It also has a new image signal processor that processes the data from the cameras.

4.- Dedicated I/O chip. A new I/O chip called RP1. The first of its kind designed by Raspberry Pi engineers, it acts as a Southbridge and handles most data input/output, including GPIO and USB pins. It reduces the load on the main processor, which increases the overall performance.

5.- USB 3.0 ports with dedicated width. The two USB 3.0 ports on the Pi 4 share an available bandwidth of 5 Gbps. The Pi 5 has a dedicated 5Gbps available for both ports thanks to the RP1 chip.

6.- PCIe connector. A welcome novelty, although it is not a standard M.2 connector (obviously for dimensional reasons) and an intermediate cable must be used. It doesn’t reach the speed of a PCIe 4.o SSD as it’s limited to 500 Mbytes per second, but it’s a good improvement.

7.- dedicated UART. On the Pi 4, you need to use the GPIO pins for UART debugging. The Pi 5 has a dedicated UART connector. It is located between the micro HDMI video ports.

8.- Power button. After 12 years since the launch of this product line and at the insistence of users, the Foundation has included a power switch for the first time. It is a button type and works with the official Pi 5 case.

9.- Real time clock. The Pi 5 has a built-in RTC (Real Time Clock) and a RS2025/2032 button battery port to power it when the Pi 5 is off. Another requested an improvement over previous versions that had to connect to global NTP servers shortly after startup to update the time.

10.- Multiple MIPI lanes. There are two MIPI camera/display ports side by side on the Pi 5. Both have four bars each and act as a camera or display transceiver. Doubling the lines helps support higher bandwidth devices, although older devices can be connected using a flat cable.

And the cons?

The increase in performance of this version leads to greater needs in other sections. The first is higher energy capacity and specifically the Raspberry Pi 5 requires a 5V 5A (25W) power supply with Power Delivery (PD) support and a USB Type-C port connection.

It also requires additional cooling. The foundation announced the facility Active cooler which combines an aluminum heatsink and a fan. Includes pre-installed thermal pads and 4-pin connector for installation. It seems well designed and is reasonably priced at $10.

Among the shortcomings, it is worth noting that the Pi 5 does not have the 3.5 mm audio port of previous versions. You can output sound via the HDMI or Bluetooth ports, or add an audio HAT.

We end the review with the price. The Pi 5 has increased in price over the Pi 4, but only for $5. We believe it will be worthwhile for a large portion of users, considering the $60 price of the base model. Another thing will be available supplies. The foundation says they hope to produce one million units by Christmas, while maintaining production of the remaining solutions they sell. And it’s necessary because selling prices to the end customer go up (quite a bit) when inventory goes down. We will tell you when there is availability; We hope this month. Finish by saying that the foundation promises to support the Raspberry Pi 5 until 2035.