A budget version of the Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer with 1GB RAM and costing $45 has been announced.
The new Raspberry Pi 5 1GB is an affordable option, but it’s not as low-cost as it could’ve been owing to the rocketing cost of memory across the tech industry driven, largely, by demand and competition from the increase in AI data centres.
But its lower price comparative to other models in the range is, arguably, never more important.
Why? Because the cost of most other Pi models has risen due to the volatile (heh) memory market with price increase increasing as the amount of memory, er increases – as this table shows:
| RAM | Old Price | New Price | Increase | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 1GB | – | $45 | – |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 2GB | $50 | $55 | +$5 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 4GB | $60 | $70 | +$10 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 8GB | $80 | $95 | +$15 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 16GB | $120 | $145 | +$20 |
Yowch. I think $145 for a Raspberry Pi 5 with 16GB tastes pretty sour, but I do think keeping a sub-$50 version of its best-performing model on the table is a welcome move.
But as annoying as price increases increasingly are, Raspberry Pi say does say will “help us to secure memory supplies” amidst fierce competition for chips from other companies and industries.
Who’d use a 1GB Pi though?
Not everyone intends to use their Raspberry Pi as a desktop computer. While the “more RAM = better” mindset is not without merit, the lower price of the 1GB model lowers the barrier of entry to doing cool things with robotics, coding, etc using a Pi 5.
Smaller boards (Zero, CM5 etc) may be more versatile (and cheaper) but they often lack full-size USB ports, GPIO headers and the CSI/DSI and PCIe connectors.
The 1GB Pi 5 caters to those who need the Pi 5 performance — its quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 processor is 2-3x faster than the Raspberry Pi 4 — in a SBC form factor and at an affordable price.
Older models haven’t gone up
Not all Pi models see their price rise (owing, I’d imagine, to plenty of existing stock).
The Raspberry Pi 4 1GB is still sold at $35, and the Raspberry Pi 4 2GB costs $45 – the same price as this entry-level Pi 5.
Older models, like the Raspberry Pi 3+ and many smallest-board offerings (like the Pi Zero) are similarly unaffected – choice, ahoy!
What goes up most come down
The upside to the downside of most Raspberry Pi’s costing more than they did yesterday is that the company making them anticipate that the underlying reason (memory demands) is “temporary”.
“We remain committed to driving down the cost of computing and look forward to unwinding these price increases once it abates,” they add.
You can buy the Raspberry Pi 5 1GB from approved resellers from today, though depending on your location there may be some some minor stock shortages as inventory filters out.