Raspberry Pi 5 arrived in 2023, almost three years ago, and brought some interesting changes. The founders recently hinted at the release date of the upcoming version in a Reddit interaction. The company has no plans to release the Raspberry Pi 6 until early 2028. This continues the tradition of longer waiting periods and is the first good thing heard after an unexpected price increase. Raspberry Pi plates.
However, such a long delay is actually a good thing for die-hard Raspberry Pi enthusiasts. It ensures that the board comes with pre-planned, refined changes rather than a hasty launch.
Raspberry Pi 5 is not very old
He still has time to grow
Raspberry Pi 5 introduced NVMe support, which was not part of previous versions. Add a PCIe SSD entering the mix meant that your little SBC could finally experience modern storage. Your apps can run faster and you won’t have to worry about catastrophic failures with SD cards. In addition, it offered direct NVMe storage access, providing native PCIe Gen 2.0 (3.0 with configuration) read and write speeds, unlike NVMe USB adapters.
However, the board didn’t have an NVMe slot by default and needed one Additional HAT modules to connect the NVMe drive and then connect it to the Pi. There were very few options at launch, but that’s changing now, and that’s good news for current and future Pi 5 users. Stable software support and readily available accessories help build more complex projects and serve use cases that weren’t possible before.
The Pi 5 has enough computing power to handle most demanding standalone tools. But the software experience was difficult at launch. Slowly OS images and applications have adapted to the board and can now get maximum performance from it.
Rising memory prices are bad news
The Pi 5 is no longer a budget device
Current AI market trends have created a huge demand for memory and storage components. The manufacturing cost of single-board PCs has skyrocketed as brands look to build more data centers with a large portion of these components.
The Pi 5 2GB version was launched for $50, but is currently on sale for $65. Similarly, the most expensive Pi was $120 at launch and now sells for over $200. This is just the price of the board itself. You still need a new NVMe memory drive, a HAT to connect the memory, a fan to keep things cool, and a power supply. All of this pushes the Pi 5 to a price of $250, and that’s what the modest mini PC retails for.
Rushing to a 2027 release would not be an ideal move, as market factors will push the Pi 6 price beyond satisfactory levels.
I buy Raspberry Pis because they are economical, and so do other hobbyists. They may be the most expensive in the SBC segment, but they still offer an inexpensive entry into the embedded computing and mini-server space. Price is a key aspect of choosing a Pi over other devices, and if it launches in 2027, it’s unlikely to be affordable.
Even current prices rival some of the larger Mini PCs and older thin client models, and I doubt the Pi 6 could break the tradition if launched early. There’s no guarantee that prices will drop dramatically in 2028, but it could be cheaper than when it goes on sale in 2027.
The Pi 6 will focus on the basics
No AI implementation
Raspberry Pi has always been a hobbyist board for creating incredible solutions with it. You can create a simple use case device to run several self-hosted tools, use it to automate other gadgets, or build ML and AI projects with it. Raspberry Pi 5 has an official AI HAT to add computing power for ML and AI tasks. So there were expectations for that, including NPU in the next version.
Radha and several other SBC brands already offer NPUs with some models. But Raspberry Pi 6 is not planning to equip with NPU. It basically tries to be an incremental upgrade with better performance thanks to the improved SoC and nothing else. Raspberry Pi CEO and co-founder Eben Upton clarified this issue Reddit AMA Increasing CPUs will be a major contributor to the development of artificial intelligence as algorithms mature. This means you can use optional AI HATS that can speed up the board’s power instead of waiting for an integrated one.
“As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m a big believer in the CPU as a space for AI computing. Our users (hobbyists and OEMs) today run workloads on the Raspberry Pi 5 that were entirely the province of GPUs a decade ago. So I think the best way to democratize AI is to give people fast CPUs.”
Since the Pi 6 will be an incremental improvement, I expect it to address some of the boards’ glaring shortcomings. The focus is on overhauling the board rather than adding any drastic changes. Surprisingly, the next Pi will use HAT like the Pi 5, which is sad news. Having faster I/O is great, but not including an SSD port just forces an unnecessary HAT purchase to use the fast memory with the board.
The Pi Zero 3W is a distant dream
Zero and Zero 2W will remain relevant
A Raspberry Pi Zero 3W is also unlikely in the near future until LPDDR4/4X memory prices come down. Design changes will be necessary for the Zero 3W, as it will need separate space for faster memory. I use a lot of Zero 2W in my house. One of them Authorizes the Vaultwarden instance the other acts as a remote boot device for fresh distros and Windows Insider builds.
I would like to buy the next small but powerful mini SBC with faster and larger memory size than the 512MB LPDDR2 module on the Pi Zero 2W. Raspberry Pi Zero and Zero 2W will continue to be produced because they have enough memory to build these models. But until DRAM prices return to normal, there is little hope for Zero 3W.
Raspberry Pi 6 is in no rush
Raspberry Pi makers are in no rush to ship the next iteration of the Pi just for the sake of it. Rather than releasing a somewhat innovative and unreasonably priced board, market forces are prompting them to plan strategically. I want the Pi 6 to have a better price-performance ratio and I don’t mind waiting a few years for that. The Orange Pi and Radha boards already offer better hardware, which may prompt Pi manufacturers to further improve the board.
- CPU
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Arm Cortex-A76 (quad-core, 2.4 GHz)
- Memory
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Up to 8 GB LPDDR4X SDRAM
The Raspberry Pi is back, and the fifth iteration of the SBC is far more capable than the older models. From the new quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 CPU, support for dual monitor setups at 4K 60Hz, and a dedicated power button, there’s a lot to love about this palm-sized computer.
