I'm glad I picked up a Raspberry Pi 5 16gb a few months before the "RAM shortage". It's funny I was in the Microcenter in Michigan a few weeks ago and they have cabinets full of RAM and GPU's. I mean multiple aisles of cabinets slap full. The store was packed and no one was buying RAM or GPUs. I did buy a Raspberry Pi 5 nes case. I think Raspberry Pi has lost their way. The mission was to make an affordable pc that anyone could buy and very portable. Some could argue that they still have those boards with their pi zero boards but they are a lot more expensive now as well. I'm just rambling now. lol

TheLostSwedeThe 16 GB Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard computer comes in at a whopping US$410

that thing launched at $200 didn't it? At that price it wasnt exactly a steal but $410 is wild. Another $200 and you can get a macbook neo. I know thats apples to oranges so to speak with use cases, but one soc is built on the cutting edge 3nm node with 20 billion transistors while the other is a 16nm node with 2(ish) billion. Apples got the newer architecture, more cores, better cores, better gpu, more cache, and almost twice the clock speed and you get a screen and battery with it. One can play retro games up to N64/PS1 pretty well...the other can play cyberpunk 2077 pretty well...

how did it get this weird?

The good old days, as i got my Raspberry Pi5 8GB for 65€...
Now Raspberry Pi6 16G is expected to be more that 300 USD...maybe even 400?
I am sure the purpose of Raspberry Pi was to produce a cheap solution for people that could not effort to buy a 400 USD mini-PC...

MindweaverI think Raspberry Pi has lost their way. The mission was to make an affordable pc that anyone could buy and very portable. Some could argue that they still have those boards with their pi zero boards but they are a lot more expensive now as well. I'm just rambling now. lol

That wasn't the mission though, the mission was to make an affordable computer so more people could learn how to program, especially when it came to schools and the like. That's clearly no longer their business scope.

They sell an SBC, with outdated hardware, for the price of a smartphone. Wow.

DenverThey sell an SBC, with outdated hardware, for the price of a smartphone. Wow.

Those are going up in price too though, so let's wait and see how that market develops.

TheLostSwedeThat wasn't the mission though, the mission was to make an affordable computer so more people could learn how to program, especially when it came to schools and the like. That's clearly no longer their business scope.

Guess another case of money and market share corrupts.

Just really sad to see, since the community ecosystem around the Pi5 is pretty substantial (Pi-hole, Pi 5 OpenWRT Travel Router, low power use home entertainment system, Retro gaming, Pi NAS, etc.)
All that stuff was build around a very affordable, efficient little SoC. Bought a Pi5 16GB (4k HDR video and Retro emulation) for 85€ on sale, current pricing 224,99€.
With further hikes, there are WAY BETTER options available, how is it supposed to successfully compete there?

It's awful to see a good products downfall like that. :(

TheLostSwedeThat wasn't the mission though, the mission was to make an affordable computer so more people could learn how to program, especially when it came to schools and the like. That's clearly no longer their business scope.

I meant to add that part about learning how to program.. Sorry, it's been a busy morning. Thank you for catching that part. I think we are on the same page. hehe

As a comic timing, this Upton guy could announce the long-demanded 1 GB Zero2 as well... Then laugh his ass off, as he climbs down from his throne...

Testsubject01Guess another case of money and market share corrupts.

Just really sad to see, since the community ecosystem around the Pi5 is pretty substantial (Pi-hole, Pi 5 OpenWRT Travel Router, low power use home entertainment system, Retro gaming, Pi NAS, etc.)
All that stuff was build around a very affordable, efficient little SoC. Bought a Pi5 16GB (4k HDR video and Retro emulation) for 85€ on sale, current pricing 224,99€.
With further hikes, there are WAY BETTER options available, how is it supposed to successfully compete there?

It's awful to see a good products downfall like that. :(

The thing is, the RPi foundation that started it all, received a lot of goodwill from the community, as they offered something that had never existed prior to them making the RPi. This lead to a lot of software being ported to the platform, despite the hardware being what it was and still is, i.e. cobbled together with whatever bits Broadcom allowed them to have for very little money. That was fine up to a point, but the community kept pushing for moar features and the people behind the RPi obliged. This is in part why things are where they are today, as the current SoC is unlikely to be as cheap as it was up until the RPi 3 and the entire form factor (imho) is no longer fit for purpose. It runs too hot, they're shoehorning in unsuitable connectors and they've run into a fair few problems with things like their PoE modules.

They started doing the compute modules to appease those that want to make commercial products (not sure if the boot loader license issue is still a thing), which seems to have been fairly successful as well. Then they started doing a bunch off odd form factors, they made an MCU and so on. It's almost as if they forgot what they were doing and are just now trying to please every want from both the community and their actually paying customers.

Yet, they're only a tiny player in the market, which means they couldn't sign long term supply contracts, unlike someone like Dell, HP or Lenovo to mention some giants that are unlikely to be as badly affected by the memory price hikes, as they have much longer term contracts and buy huge volumes of, well everything computer related.

The software side of things is what has been appealing with the RPi, but by now, there are as you say, a lot better hardware out there, but unless you go x86, you're in for a rough ride, I know from experience how bad the software is when it comes to both AllWinner and Rockchip. Sadly it seems like most chip makers aren't interested in investing in their own software and provide a full set of drivers, which is really strange to me. I guess it might be because many of them are Asian companies that see themselves as hardware manufacturers and software is just a necessary evil that they have to provide.

I wouldn't call this a downfall, but the RPi company, since it's a commercial entity these days, clearly wasn't paying attention to what was going on around them and now they have ended up having to price themselves out of the market.

depressing

DenverThey sell an SBC, with outdated hardware, for the price of a smartphone. Wow.

it's not a matter of outdated or not, those boards are designed with parts that that make sense economically provided no significant events such as a worldwide DRAM/NAND shortage happen
the RPi sells well not because it's a workhorse that churns through data but a malleable platform with broad use features that can either be bought in bulk for large scale deployment at an inexpensive cost OR be used as the perfect tinker platform that it is
I genuinely doubt RPi executive are pleased to have to sell their hardware for that kinda price because the reason why they're so successful is their general affordability

Testsubject01With further hikes, there are WAY BETTER options available, how is it supposed to successfully compete there?

the thing is, it's not competition getting better, it's RPi's rising costs that puts them in the same comparison floor as other more pricey options

Testsubject01It's awful to see a good products downfall like that. :(

the *market* is fucked, not just RPi because of something out of their control

I was looking at microSD cards earlier, I wanted to get another unit of one I previously bought, problem is, its price doubled... so I looked around and other more performant options were now available as a marginal price difference, but before the shitshow that is the ongoing market, those "more performance options" were most certainly NOT on the same competition floor as the one I wanted to get, it's the price of everything that got busted upwards and low end options are suffering just as we are...

Ans just like that in a new round of stupidity, RPI prices themselves out of the market, AGAIN.

In all fairness they've been doing just hat for years already, the pricing of their latest boards is ridiculous, when they stopped being the "25 to 35usd SBC", i'm not going to pay more than 50usd for an underpowered silly SBC

I still think a 3GB SKU is an April 1 joke. The fact that the news came in such a serious tone from Eben Upton makes me more hopeful it's all meant to be funny.

Is it time to start developing Pi6 with variants up to 64GB DDR6?

MindweaverI'm glad I picked up a Raspberry Pi 5 16gb a few months before the "RAM shortage". It's funny I was in the Microcenter in Michigan a few weeks ago and they have cabinets full of RAM and GPU's. I mean multiple aisles of cabinets slap full. The store was packed and no one was buying RAM or GPUs. I did buy a Raspberry Pi 5 nes case. I think Raspberry Pi has lost their way. The mission was to make an affordable pc that anyone could buy and very portable. Some could argue that they still have those boards with their pi zero boards but they are a lot more expensive now as well. I'm just rambling now. lol

That would be because this “shortage” is entirely artificial, built on hypothetical future orders for data centers that don’t exist to go on GPU boards that have not been made.

TheGeekn°72it's not a matter of outdated or not, those boards are designed with parts that that make sense economically provided no significant events such as a worldwide DRAM/NAND shortage happen
the RPi sells well not because it's a workhorse that churns through data but a malleable platform with broad use features that can either be bought in bulk for large scale deployment at an inexpensive cost OR be used as the perfect tinker platform that it is
I genuinely doubt RPi executive are pleased to have to sell their hardware for that kinda price because the reason why they're so successful is their general affordability


the thing is, it's not competition getting better, it's RPi's rising costs that puts them in the same comparison floor as other more pricey options

the *market* is fucked, not just RPi because of something out of their control

I was looking at microSD cards earlier, I wanted to get another unit of one I previously bought, problem is, its price doubled... so I looked around and other more performant options were now available as a marginal price difference, but before the shitshow that is the ongoing market, those "more performance options" were most certainly NOT on the same competition floor as the one I wanted to get, it's the price of everything that got busted upwards and low end options are suffering just as we are...

Actually no the RPi lost the people at 4. With 4 they wanted to move in the tiny NAS market or something. RPi 3 was great for what it was. Cheap, powerful enough and actually filled a gap. 4 was too expensive from the start. From the CPU side for what it wanted to achieve to underwelming which 5 in part fixed but that simple already was too expensive because for the tiny NAS market even N100's walked circles around a Pi not even going to start on the cheapest Intel i3's.

On the other end the ESPhome and ESP32 market invaded a lot of old RPi market being dirt cheap and fast enough for a lot of tasks.
Really the RPi 2 and 3 were great. and you can still do some good stuff with the Pi Zero 2w but the others have really limited usages anymore. Arduino can fill the gap between N100's and ESP stuff.

Even after the AI bubble pops and DRAM prices cool down this will likely being a new price standard.

The Register has a different take on what's going on over at Raspberry Pi.
It seems like chip sales have become their new cash cow.

www.theregister.com/2026/03/31/raspberry_pi_fy_2025/

Here’s the cumulative change from November 2025 MSRP to current MSRP:

• Raspberry Pi 4 4GB: $55 → $60 → $75 → $100 = +$45 total (+81.8%)
• Raspberry Pi 4 8GB: $75 → $85 → $115 → $165 = +$90 total (+120%)
• Raspberry Pi 5 1GB: still for $45
• Raspberry Pi 5 2GB: $50 → $55 → $65 → $65 = +$15 total (+30%)
• Raspberry Pi 5 4GB: $60 → $70 → $85 → $110 = +$50 total (+83.3%)
• Raspberry Pi 5 8GB: $80 → $95 → $125 → $175 = +$95 total (+118.8%)
• Raspberry Pi 5 16GB: $120 → $145 → $205 → $305 = +$185 total (+154.2%)

and separately: the new 3GB Raspberry Pi 4 variant launched on April 1st for $83.75

jackintosh157Even after the AI bubble pops and DRAM prices cool down this will likely being a new price standard.

Historically, prices tend to go down, not up. So I wouldn't be so sure about that.