The new Raspberry Pi Zero, via Raspberrypi.org
Raspberry Pi’s latest attempt to drive down costs of computer boards looks like the final time we’ll see prices plummet – the Raspberry Pi Zero costs just $5.
Three-times smaller than the standard Pi, and far cheaper, the $5 computer board is more powerful than the original Pi and, according to the makers, the prices won’t come down any further.
“This is about as cheap as we can get it,” said Eben Upton, the company’s CEO.
The original Raspberry Pi Model B, and its subsequent iterations, brought programmable computing into the €30 range, resulting in millions of people learning how to programme of a Pi device.
“But we still meet people for whom cost remains a barrier to entry,” said Upton, of a product that comes with The MagPi, the company’s magazine. This is surely the first time a computer came with a magazine – I used to get football stickers with magazines. Or lollipops. It depended on whether I got Shoot or The Dandy.
You need a mini-HDMI adapter to use the Raspberry Pi Zero with a normal HDMI display, and a micro-B USB to female USB A cable to use normal USB devices. Naturally, these additions can also be bought.
The Zero is hardly the most powerful computing board, but the price point and basics opens it up to even more of an audience. It runs Raspbian, and popular apps like Scratch, Minecraft and Sonic Pi.
Raspberry Pi Zero specs:
- A Broadcom BCM2835 application processor
- 1GHz ARM11 core (40pc faster than Raspberry Pi 1)
- 512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM
- A micro-SD card slot
- A mini-HDMI socket for 1080p60 video output
- Micro-USB sockets for data and power
- An unpopulated 40-pin GPIO header
- Identical pinout to Model A+/B+/2B
- An unpopulated composite video header
- Pi’s smallest ever form factor, at 65mm x 30mm x 5mm
