Cory Gunther
It’s time for a new Pi. This week, Raspberry Pi announced the tiny new Zero 2 W board, and it costs $5 more than the original that debuted nearly six years ago. However, this tiny little wireless board delivers up to 5x more performance and extra features for only $15.
We recently saw the first-ever Pi price increase on select models thanks to supply chain issues and chip shortages from the pandemic, but that’s not why the Zero 2 W costs more. No, it costs more because it packs a bigger punch.
According to Raspberry, multithreaded chores are up to five times faster, which is a significant boost. That’s due to the Zero 2 W using the same Broadcom BCM2710A1 chipset as the Raspberry Pi 3, albeit a downclocked variant. Users will also benefit from 512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM. Here’s a quick look.
The new Zero 2 W is the same size as the original, too, so “almost all cases and accessories designed for Zero should work perfectly with the new board, including our own case and selection of cables,” according to Raspberry’s blog post.
Those wondering about the spec sheet will be happy to see It comes with 2.4Ghz IEEE 802.11 b/g/n wireless LAN, a MicroSD card slot, Mini HDMI port, Bluetooth 4.2, USB 2.0, a CSI-2 camera connector, a HAT-compatible 40 pin I/O header, video and reset pin solder points, OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0 graphics and H.264 1080p 30 support for encoding and decoding capabilities. So there are plenty of use cases with this device.
If you are a subscriber to The MagPi, you’ll be receiving a free Zero 2 W in the next few days, and any newcomers will get one as well. Otherwise, the little device is available on the website or from authorized sellers starting, October 28th, 2021. So grab yours from the link below.
Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
This little guy packs more power in the same size package for only $15.
