The SSD for the Raspberry Pi 5, which the British foundation responsible for this development has just introduced, will feature significant performance jump compared to microSD cards, which are standardly used for operating system installation and data storage in general.

The Raspberry Pi 5 is the latest version of the single-board computer that leads the SBC segment. It arrived in late 2023 with significant performance improvements thanks to the new Broadcom BCM2712 chipset, but also featured new features in interface connectivity PCI Express 2.0 x1 add the fastest peripherals. This port allows you to connect additional hardware such as ethernet adapters, graphics cards or these official Raspberry Pi 5 SSDs.

SSDs are significantly faster than microSD cards commonly used with Raspberry Pi devices. For those looking for maximum performance, booting and running the operating system from an SSD is optimal. The new Raspberry Pi brand SSDs are designed specifically for this use case. According to the foundation, they offer minimum read and write speeds of 40,000 and 70,000 IOPS, depending on capacity.

“If uncompromising performance is your goal, you’ll want to run Raspberry Pi OS from an SSD, and Raspberry Pi SSDs are the perfect choice.”they say from the foundation. Note that the Raspberry Pi originally stated that the drives were PCIe Gen 2 compatible, but some users have pointed out that they can be activated as Gen 3 drives (and improve their speed) via raspi-config. The latest specs indicate that they are compatible with PCIe Gen 3 by default, although this is not yet officially confirmed.

Raspberry Pi 5 SSD versions and prices

These new SSDs for Raspberry Pi are available in M.2 2230 NVMe formats and storage capacities 256 GB and 512 GB. They are sold both individually and together with the official M.2 HAT+ adapter. They are now available at retailers in select regions for pre-order and will ship in late November or early December at the following prices:

• 256GB SSD: $35.
• 510GB SSD: $45.
• Kit with 256GB SSD: $40.
• Kit with 512GB SSD: $55.

Although there was already a third-party offering, the official SSD is an excellent addition to the Raspberry Pi considering the advantages of these SSDs when running the system, applications or moving data and files.