Pi 5 8GB is $200
MacBook Neo 8GB is $600 (probably some edu discount available) Sure 3x the price, but it comes with - 256GB SSD, battery, display, keyboard, trackpad..
So the Pi has slowly become too expensive for weird one-off projects and also price competitive with a cheap Mac by the time you add all the stuff you need to use it as a cheap computer.
If Apple ever got around to a headless "Mac Micro", below the Mini, which had the same specs as the Neo in desktop form it would be even more stark. They could easily ship that for $400 (mini is $300 cheaper than cheapest M-series MacBook with same ram/ssd). They might never do this as it's enough computer for most people they'd lose revenue from those otherwise spending far more at the Apple Store.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w/
I wish a Pi 5 (and RAM in general) was cheaper, but Raspberry Pi can't control that.
I can only assume they don't actually work with the pi because if you spend just a minute looking at any reseller's inventory or even just the official website you will see they still make and sell and support boards from a decade ago.
Except... You can't. They're sold out almost entirely and none of the distributors can tell when the new batch gets in. At least in EU.
What about launching a browser and playing a 1080p video from a streaming site?
I am looking for a computer to connect to my internet-disconnected TV.
That leaves $100 for everything else on the Pi, including the hardware, building it, transporting it, and retailer margin.
That leaves $500 for everything else on the MacBook Neo.
That's why you can get so much more from the MacBook Neo. There's 5X as much budget for everything other than RAM.
So yeah, the RPi5 has gotten prohibitively expensive, at least to the point where a chinesium mini pc is cheaper, has better performance, and about the same power consumption.
Asking as someone who is considering purchasing one (just to run HA on it, obviously).
My Raspberry Pi is definitely outclassed by a few of my old phones and laptops. But it's also super pleasant to host services on, so it's my go-to SBC.
You don't even need to learn anything new, I'm sure you can ask Claude to vibe code something on RP2350 nowadays and there's an 80% chance it will work.
I agree that vibe coding microcontrollers will increase the use of embedded systems instead of RPi devices. Seems like a good move for them to have built the RPi Pico.
But for now, Intel N150 mini PCs are probably a better choice than RPi for those types of tasks.
Came down to, wide software support with x86, higher performance, UEFI, secure boot and storage standards like NVME slots. It was a fair argument but doesn't apply to everyone.
Mac Nano, just like iPods!
The cheaper 4GB or even 1GB versions ($50 for the latter) are what most people should be looking at for their projects.
Then the hobby community got wind of it and proceeded to buy out all the stock on every release (myself included, I still have one of every first 3 versions sitting in my cabinet)
It's a supply chain problem, n
If you cannot negotiate a good deal with the big industrial silicon manufacturers but you want good up-to-date kernels, RPis are a perfect option.
There are SoMs or SBCs with other CPUs like NXP or MediaTek that has more or less mainline support. However, they ask more money. The kernel contributions are also a bit on the shakier side which requires spending expensive developer time to deal with kernel issues that the CPU and the board manufacturer missed.
> Bluetooth 4.2, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), onboard antenna
Oof ... BLE 5 has some huge improvements over 4.2. BLE 5 stuff has been on sale for almost 10 years now ...
Hopefully this gets a refresh soon.
You're correct; they've jumped the shark.
1) Apple had long term contracts for memory which will run out. Afterwards it will be very interesting to see what they do.
2) RPi uses older memory that is much much more expensive to buy in the market as manufacturers have dedicated capacity to newer formats used by AI boxes for KV caches
Same thing happening for servers, gaming PC's, cell phones, so on.
What market is this trying to compete in?
As for the education market, that's a long forgotten pipedream.
The memory used by the Pi 5 is up 700% [2]!
Raspberry Pi are working the issue by releasing new memory variants that are cheaper[2].
Edit: You can still walk into a Microcenter and get Pi 5 16GB for US $289!
1. https://au.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
2. https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/a-new-3gb-raspberry-pi-4-fo...
An 8 GiB DIMM for a desktop or server is using 8x 1 GiB chips or 16x 512 MiB chips (9/18 for ECC). An 8 GiB Pi uses a single 8 GiB chip. That's the same density as you would use for 128 GiB or larger sticks.
Thank you for the explanation.
I wish PIs used SODIMMs. I'm sure there's a reason they don't involving address and data lines, but I wish they used cheap, commodity RAM.
> unsurprisingly
You can't use other speed standards of RAM in a computer designed for a faster (or slower) standard.
If it needs DDR5 it can't use DDR, DDR2, DDR3, or DDR4. I don't think I've ever seen any x86 machine that could use older slower standards.
You could use EDO in some FPRAM machines, and FPDRAM in EDO machines at a 15% speed penalty. You can use slightly faster DRAM in a machine that wants slower: later in their lives, I maxed out the RAM in some PowerMac G3 machines that wanted 66MHz DRAM using cheaper, already obsolete, 100MHz DRAM, or 133MHz DRAM in ones that only wanted 100MHz. But only within that standard.
It's an idea that has some merit. I still use old Thinkpads that need DDR3 as what would have been prohibitively expensive when they were new is now cheap -- I have maxed-out 16GB X220 and T420 machines, and a near-full W520 with 24GB.
But not DDR4, and you can't max out old DDR2 machines as big DDR2 DIMMs always were expensive and still are.
Raspberry Pi are working on the issue but letting you spend the same amount of money per GB, for fewer GB.
I get what's happening, but it's strange to see it happening.
Actually, could I sell it for ~10% less than someone would buy it new? Is there a market for used Pis? Maybe 30%, I don't know. That I can sell it for what I got it for at all is wild.
We just aren't making enough stuff to keep up with demand.
This kind of thing has happened before.
Some computer-oriented highlights from the memory hole: An epoxy plant burned in 1993 that had supplied ~60% of that stuff for semiconductor packaging which caused widespread issues, there were aspects of RAM shortages in middle 90s (mostly because Windows adoption increased demand), we had Thailand floods that screwed up hard drive production, we had the crypto boom affecting GPUs in a big way from ~2016 to ~2022. There were covid-era chip shortages (which had been rationally predicted years before the covid scramble) while the Chia crypto bubble also ate up storage devices around that time.
It sucks for consumers (read: buyers) when this stuff happens, but it's been pretty normal for a really long time.
The current shortage is due to hugely-increased demand in the datacenter space and that's a new problem, but it's just one in a long list of problems that had been new when they surfaced. :)
---
Anyway, yeah: When prices are high, it becomes time to go through the pile of hardware and sell some stuff.
I later added a large machine that I used to use as a Linux desktop, with a GPU and 64GB RAM, which I use for generating OpenStreetMap tiles.
I used to do this as well and this is fine if you're able to source cheap power. But I'm in the UK, electricity prices are insane and I can't afford to run this kind of setup any more.
a big ask in most of the UK, though.
Before RAM went crazy, the Pi 4 was $75 for *8GB and $125 for 16GB.
Another consideration is heat and power consumption, I have an OptiPlex micro (also surplus) and power consumption is 8W-90W (standby versus peak), 5x-10x more than a Pi 4.
I picked up 4, at £50 each, and when they arrived they were still sealed, and included a power supply, keyboard, mouse and windows 11 license (which never got used).
Makes the pi look like a terrible deal given you've also gotta buy power supply, a hdmi adapter for their moronic decision to use mini hdmi, etc
I would not expect them to dump cheap ram. That is a false hope. The world needs volume, massively more volume, and it feels like everyone else is going to take a sizable fraction of a decade to even start responding. Maybe perhaps possibly CXMT can scale fast, but they have many multiples to grow before they are more than a drop in the bucket.
It's also unclear when if they too will want to start stacking 12 then 16 then 24 rams atop each other, to sell chips that cost what multiples of what GPUs used to.
But I can’t understand what are the use cases to be selling 73M units.
Would anyone mind sharing what are the broadly applicable use cases, because selling 73M units is well beyond hobbyist fun.
6 months ago, I also started experimenting with Raspberry Pi, and now I am working on a Chromecast alternative for businesses called Soljacast using RPi. My device can work as digital signage, or a casting device for co-workings and event companies that use computers at events for presentations.
I am also using it to build a personal companion AI device with a screen, sort of like an Amazon Echo Show but with Microsoft's Clippy in there. So I am sure people are building even more complex stuff than me.
Here is a video of how my device is being used at a local exhibition venue: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FF3I9EOs4AA
There are smart parking garage lights, smart inspection cameras, smart golf ball dispensers... all these things have enough margin they can absorb a 100-300% component increase, though I'm sure they don't like it.
25% Enthusiasts and education 75% Industrial and embedded
I still buy them. And a lot of them. Because with a Raspberry Pi 5 I'm able to make amazing wildlife camera sysetems that use thermal imaging and local AI to make an extremely effective solar powered wolf detector. I have a system in the field that's been running continuously since September 29 2025, over 8 months autonomously. It also records full frame thermal video in h264 24/7 and I can remotely retrieve images and video. That's a lot of functionality on a Pi 5.
I've collected over 60 videos of wolves from just one site with a Raspberry Pi 5 in this manner. In Belgium... Which is not exactly the biggest hot spot for wolves.
Videos here
https://www.youtube.com/@hcftube1
and here
https://wildlifesecurityinnovations.com/
Plus the run the pi in secure boot mode with encrypted drives, precisely so we can sell them as a product without loosing all our IP that goes into this. Another nice things about the Pi 5 as a platform as it's possible to do this.
The modules originally come from the company behind guideIR. Personally I think they are the best thermal sensors available. They have amazing onboard image processing so that the living things really popout in the image, you can see this in the videos.
We have photos in the banner for the website. The modules are tiny but we 3D print rain shielding enclosures for them.
We have photos of the wolf project in here
https://wildlifesecurityinnovations.com/projects/wolves-belg...
The modules draw just 1W of power, so they are great for our wildlife camera systems. And of course, they get images day and night. And we use thermal image motion detection to trigger the local AI inference. Normal PIR triggered wildlife systems can only triggrer on largish animals quite close by (Check out the wild boar video from this morning, you could never detect this with a traditional wildlife camera that uses PIR sensors https://youtu.be/rmav8IjWxeo). We can detect animals easy in the 50-100m range and with 24/7 thermal recording we can go back in time, invaluable for behavioral research.
I'm pretty sure we have the only wildlife camera system with thermal modules in high resolutions. All thanks to the Pi 5.
(Actually, we also run this with an ultra low light visible camera, also recording 24/7. With audio in both thermal and visible stream. Running on the same platform). Videos also online with the other videos.
The 1280x1024 modules are out of this world, but very expensive. Here is a video from one of those.
https://youtu.be/-QSkPBqTZh8?si=kEc18Ji2cxOpIEsJ
Later when scalability is in place then also 256x192.
I know RAM prices are crazy right now, but I just bought a 16gb Ryzen 7 motherboard to repair an IdeaPad for €70
It's comparing two completely different usecases.
They have to be cheap enough that tinkers leave them in their projects.
I first checked for Mac Minis and interestingly they are much closer to $650 for similar specs.
And obviously if Intel is fine for your use case, either the N100 type of mini PC or, my preference, an off-lease HP, Dell, or Lenovo USFF PC, would be like half that for a very capable machine.
[1] https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=m1%20macbook%20air%2016...
That "laptop" will also absolutely smoke the Pi on performance, too:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/24356484?baseli...
Even if you're an Apple fan, surely you don't believe that the Neo obsoletes the Air. The $500-$1,000 price segment has been alive and kicking since well before the Neo.
It's not like RPi suddenly introduced a 16GB model at a ridiculous price due to having forgotten about low cost stuff. The 16GB model was originally $85 iirc. Then the memory shortage hit. They could either withdraw the 16GB model (maybe screwing over some people who absolutely had to have it) or raise the price for those with urgent enough requirements. They did the latter.
Me, I'd like to see some large MCU's (let's say a little above RP2350 / ESP32 level) with a few MB of memory, but with memory protection, like old fashioned Vaxes with that much memory. That would allow running multiprocessing OS's where the processes couldn't easily clobber each other like on the current stuff. Many programs don't require GB's of ram.
I still think there are good applications for the <4 GB Pi 5s, but for a lot of projects I just stick with a Pi 4 or CM4 now.
It looks like a pi 5 is $10 more than a pi 4 in most (all?) sizes. Seems worth it for the NVMe slot by itself. SD cards are awful. I'm not buying until the ram situation settles though. I have a 400 (4gb pi 4 in a keyboard) that I use for some things.
I have 4 RPi servers in my house on 24/7 but yeah
Funny different purpose but I bought a 2017 Pixelbook put Ubuntu on it, great machine it was $80
Makes making your key network services (VPN, firewall, DNS, NTP, home assistant etc) on battery backup very easy, as just one plug to the primary switch to keep powered, and my wifi/internet stays on when the power cuts.
I could use other devices, but 5 pis with PoE hats rack mount very cleanly in a single 1U row and passively cooled with no fan noise etc.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-memory-upgrade-32-gb-2r...
I'd presume they're shipped from China like most tech goods.
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/how-raspberry-pis-are...
And am I correct to see that the USB-C only does power? How do you connect your pheripherals to this board?
If anything, it's probably like an order of magnitude more common, even for new designs
On 2025-12-18 I bought a RPi 5 kit on Amazon from CanaKit that consisted of an 8 GB Pi 5 with the official RPi 5 256 GB SSD, case, fan, 45W power supply, and some cables which came fully assembled.
It was $209.99.
Today it is $339.97.
On 2025-09-02 I bought a Samsung 1 TB EVO Plus M.2 SSD along with along with a Sabrent USB-C M.2/SATA enclosure to use with my RPi 4.
It was $64.99 for the SSD and $22.75 for the enclosure.
Today the SSD is $255.00 (down a little from the $261.08 it reached last month) and the enclosure is $29.95.
BTW, if you are looking for an RPi it looks like you can't rely on the prices shown on rpilocator.com.
Right now for example it lists RPi 5 8 GB in stock in the US for $80 (Digi-Key), $175 (Pishop), and $200 (Adafruit). Similar for 4 GB ($60, $110, $130 at those three sellers, in the same order). Same pattern for RPi 4. 8 GB from the same three sellers in the same order: $75, $165, $190. 4 GB $55, $100, $120.
Clicking the links reveals all the Digi-Key entries are wrong. Their actual price is the same as Pishop (whose rpilocator.com entries seem to be correct).
1. https://www.microcenter.com/product/702590/raspberry-pi-5
In my country there is virtually no possibility to buy the newest PI, and even if it is possible, it won't cost the main price, but always more...
Frequently used argument against mini PCs is lack of GPIO. There are adapters based on FT2232H. The drivers are lame or non-existent, though, so I wrote one by myself, so the chip appears in system as native GPIO port which makes it easier to use with various programs. "itachilab/ftdi-gpio" if someone is interested.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-5/#:~:text...
Usually, that gamble pays off, sometimes it does not (cough Apple Vision), and in some cases they get so many QC rejects that they can make an entire new product line on (financially) worthless scrap, that's how the MacBook Neo came to be - a bunch of iPhone SoC's that failed binning, I think in GPU cores.
I lucked out having bought a few N95 mini PCs a few years ago. They were even cheaper then with 16GB of RAM out of the box. To me they're vastly superior to the various RPis I replaced.
I sold off my Pi 4s and never bothered with the 5s. I kept my mix of older Pis for projects that need GPIO and of those my Pi Zeros are the ones that really get used.
Also you’re missing the point.
The Pi was supposed to be cheap. What happened.
Ram prices.
What bothers me is that now you need cooling for some models, and obviously price is getting too high.
On the other hand... $50 for 1Gb version is excellent still. And you should be able to use it just fine.
I’m glad they’re making it available for the rare cases where it’s needed, but for PR purposes it would have been better if they just discontinued the 16GB model until RAM prices came down. I’m getting tired of hearing “Raspberry Pi 5 costs $300” now from people who have no reason to buy the 16GB version.
The 1GB version works well for simple Linux shell work and embedded projects. It’s $50.
The 4GB version works well for GUI work. Let’s be real: It’s a slow device and not a desktop/laptop alternative in 2026, so 4GB goes a long way for the use cases where you want to do basic GUI work. $110 for the 4GB model (if you shop not at Adafruit)
EDIT: Adafruit prices are higher for some reason. 16GB Pi 5 is $305 on other sites.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250529094904/https://www.adafr...
There are plenty of Pi clone boards at lower prices, but they have smaller communities and less documentation. When you hit an unexpected problem, it can be hard to find solutions or get support.
https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100017489%204016%20601497625%2...
Dram prices and Flash prices are inflated right now, but the pi were never focused on Desktop users. As a platform it no longer makes sense for many use cases. =3
I could do very useful things with that machine. So it is not the end of the world if we have to go back to a world when you merely have thousands of times more memory for 4 times less money.
It could even be positive if it forces people to be more efficient writing code and wasting less resources.
Truly tragic we are going through this again but here we are.
I need the 16GB RAM, but I do not have these money anymore. Medical bills.....
You can still buy a Raspberry Pi on a budget if you don’t need that much memory. For example, the 2 GB model is $75.