Raspberry Pi 5 16GB now costs $385, more than triple its launch price
When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sells for $385
Raspberry Pi has raised prices again, pushing the 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 to $385 — an $80 jump since April and more than triple the $120 it launched at less than two years ago. The 16GB Compute Module 5 now starts at $375, while the Raspberry Pi 500+ holds steady at $410. The culprit is a global RAM shortage that Micron expects to last until at least 2028 and SK Hynix until 2030, hitting NVIDIA Jetson, Arduino, and every other SBC vendor too.
I still remember people complaining about the $120 launch price of the Raspberry Pi 5 16GB. That was less than two years ago, and that price would feel like a bargain today.
- Aurornis
Unless you have a true, irreplaceable need for a 16GB model, everyone should just pretend they don't exist.
Most hobby use cases would be fine with the 1GB, 4GB, or even 8GB versions.
I thought we all established long ago that trying to use a Raspberry Pi like a computer or laptop replacement was not a good idea, because every past Rapsberry Pi thread has been inundated with comments encouraging everyone to get a NUC or a used computer instead.
The Raspberry Pi is great if you need what it offers, but at some point the mainstream Raspberry Pi community lost the plot and started treating them like laptop, desktop, or server replacements, which they were never great at. Now that the people who need a desktop or server have re-discovered that they're better off using an actual desktop or an actual server for their purposes, we should get back to treating these like embedded systems boards.
- kstrauser
I cannot emphasize this enough: if you actually care about performance, forget about 16GB vs 8GB and switch from using the internal SD card and to an external SSD. I wrote up my experience at https://honeypot.net/2023/03/20/upgrade-your-raspberry.html
Once you've done that, and your max latency has dropped to 0.7% of what it use to be (yes, really, the SD card had 140x higher latency than the SSD on my system), carve out 32GB for swap and call it done. This will give you vastly better throughput on any likely use case that's not purely dependent on RAM size alone.
If I were using this as a portable desktop system, like I am with my uConsole, I'd rather have 4GB of RAM and fast storage than 16GB and the SD card. One of them is fine, just a little sluggish sometimes. The other is pretty nice, until it grinds to a halt for minutes at a time. If `apt upgrade` is your benchmark, SSD >> RAM by a wide margin.
- haunter
I'm buying up broken screen old Android smartphone instead.
For example I got several broken screen Huawei P20s from 2018, they were 10€ each. 128GB storage with 4GB RAM https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_p20-9107.php
They boot up, you can install termux and then whatever is your choice of Linux software. I run several copyparty instances for friends and family
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.termux/
https://github.com/9001/copyparty
The only thing I'm not a big fan of is the charging. Non-removable battery, already 8 or so years old, obviously the phone needs power to work. So I'm a bit worried about the fire hazard.
- _imnothere
Haven't the Raspberry Pi became a meme since years ago?
More expensive hardware for no significant advantages other than the brand, way before the AI hype started.
- OhMeadhbh
Sure... but... the original $35 RasPi is closer to a modern RasPi Zero 1, which looks like it's selling for $45 - $50 on Amazon.
Modern top-of-the-line RasPis seem more like ARM PCs with fast, efficient multi-core CPUs and GigE. I bought a RasPi 500 at the beginning of the year just to see what it was like and it's my new "email and light web browsing" daily-driver. Though yeah, I probably wouldn't have paid $410 for it.
I bought my original RasPi mostly for the I/O. I wanted to blink some lights, drive some servos. And if I wanted to do that again, I would probably buy a Pico or Zero.
- hn_submit
And remember that the original Raspberry Pi sold for just $25!!
Yeah, this one is much more capable (almost a mini desktop PC) but it's not a hobby product anymore or targeted at education.
- reeredfdfdf
If you need GPIO pins, ESP32 is good enough for lots of use cases. If you just need a small low-power PC, used enterprise thin clients and mini-pc's (google project tinyminimicro) offer more while still idling around 10W or less. Those can be still bought for like 40-100 USD with SSD and 8GB or more RAM included.
I think Raspberry Pi is worth it only for some niche use-cases with current prices.
- DrNosferatu
Use Raspberry Pico!