The Raspberry Pi Pico W is a new board from the British foundation behind this microcomputer group that leads the SBC segment. It costs only $6 and adds Wi-Fi support as a major innovation.

If you recall, the Raspberry Pi Pico was a variant of a single board computer for IoT systems. When it first launched a year and a half ago, it offered a micro USB port and GPIO pins, but no wireless capability.

Now, while maintaining the low power consumption, size and price of the original, the Raspberry Pi Pico W adds built-in support for wireless Wi-Fi networks. Wireless capabilities are limited to 2.4GHz single-band 802.11/b/g/n connections, but still a big step before the original, which needed additional hardware to connect to the Internet.

The remaining properties are preserved, starting with RP2040 chip, dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ clocked at 133 MHz, 264 KB of SRAM and support for up to 16 MB of off-chip Flash memory via a dedicated QSPI bus.

Its power consumption is minimal, and the microcontroller has its own power supply that allows voltages between 1.8 and 5.5 watts, so two or three AA batteries or a small rechargeable battery are enough to run it. The board also includes 2 MB of built-in flash memory, a micro USB 1.1 port and a 40-pin GPIO header.

The Raspberry Pi Pico W costs just 6 dollars, accessible to anyone, although it must be said that it has gone up 50% from the $4 of the original version, which will also continue to be sold. In addition to this version, the foundation will be launching an “H” version that, for $7, will add a header mounted and 3-pin debug connector.

The new versions will be available during the month of July and can already be pre-ordered from retailers such as Canakit or PiShop.