Today Raspberry Pi announced more price increases for all Pis with LPDDR4 RAM, alongside a 'right-sized' 3GB RAM Pi 4 for $83.75.
The price increases bring the 16GB Pi 5 up to $299.99.
Despite today's date, this is not a joke.
I published a video going over the state of the hobbyist 'high end SBC' market (4/8/16 GB models in the current generation), which I'll embed below:
But if you'd like the tl;dr:
In the embedded video he talks about it from 4:40-5, then talks about microcontrollers and mentions used hardware (though says it’s also affected by price hike).
Well, normally I’d agree but in this case I’d guess that more people have watched the video than read the blog. That’s the order in which I stumbled on it too.
Edit: Also:
I’m working more with older SBCs and microcontrollers now, and I think that’s the direction many in the hobbyist space are going.
I didn’t watch the video, and I only found out about the blog post through Lemmy.
IMO the blog and video seem a little click-baity. Yes, he technically does acknowledge (in the video, not the blog) that older Pi models are still being produced, but saying the SBC market is dying is crazy. How many projects really need the specs of a Pi 5 in that form factor? If you need that performance, you probably have space for something a little bigger.
Here’s the author’s own tl;dr:
But if you’d like the tl;dr:
Unless the DRAM pricing situation changes radically, I think the hobbyist SBC market is dying—or at least on life support. And I don’t just mean Raspberry Pis, but all SBC vendors. LPDDR chips now account for the majority of board cost from the vendors I’ve checked with.
Raspberry Pi would have been fine if they stopped at the Pi 3. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have made the 4, or even 5… but the Pi 3 and Zero 2 are (IMO) their best products in terms of price-to-value. The SBC market is fine.
In the embedded video he talks about it from 4:40-5, then talks about microcontrollers and mentions used hardware (though says it’s also affected by price hike).
“Buried in the video” isn’t the same as “talked about in the blog.”
Well, normally I’d agree but in this case I’d guess that more people have watched the video than read the blog. That’s the order in which I stumbled on it too.
Edit: Also:
I didn’t watch the video, and I only found out about the blog post through Lemmy.
IMO the blog and video seem a little click-baity. Yes, he technically does acknowledge (in the video, not the blog) that older Pi models are still being produced, but saying the SBC market is dying is crazy. How many projects really need the specs of a Pi 5 in that form factor? If you need that performance, you probably have space for something a little bigger.
Here’s the author’s own tl;dr:
Raspberry Pi would have been fine if they stopped at the Pi 3. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have made the 4, or even 5… but the Pi 3 and Zero 2 are (IMO) their best products in terms of price-to-value. The SBC market is fine.