Review Raspberry Pi 5 Review: A New Standard for Makers

[Admin]

The new Raspberry Pi 5 features a faster CPU, built-in real-time clock, better video and a power on / off button.

Raspberry Pi 5 Review: A New Standard for Makers : Read more

 

[bit_user]

An an early adopter and proponent of the original Raspberry Pi, and subsequently someone rather disgruntled by the Pi's slow pace of system-level upgrades, I should be excited by this new arrival. Instead, my first reaction is one of annoyance.

I'm annoyed because, instead of simply keeping mum on the subject, the message just a hair over 9 months ago seemed loud and clear that there'd be no Raspberry Pi 5 until at least sometime in 2024.

Raspberry Pi 5 Not Launching Until After 2023

Raspberry Pi Taking a "recovery year" in 2023

www.tomshardware.com

I don't like to be jerked around, even if the expectation is set low and then surpassed. He had to know that they were on track for a possible 2023 delivery. I can certainly understand not wanting to set an expectation they couldn't deliver, but if there was a realistic possibility, then maybe also don't tell us it's not going to happen, when it actually might?

 

[Giroro]

Its worth noting that the cheap stick-on heat sinks will have that same problem they've always had: they don't use thermally conductive tape.

 

[bit_user]

As for the specs:

Spec	MFW	Reason
4x Arm Cortex-A76	: )	I was betting on 4x A75, since the Pi SoC tend to be made on older nodes than their competition and the A75 is smaller.
RAM	: /	It's great to see the additional speed, but I hope there will eventually be a 16 GiB option. It might be less necessary with only 4 cores, but having a few browser windows/tabs open can quickly chew through a mere 8 GiB.
Power consumption	: (	This continues a troubling trend, although it's better than I'd have guessed, given how much faster it is.
Storage	: (	While it's good that they're up to 104 MB/s, that's still lagging behind eMMC.
PCIe	: (	PCIe 2.0 x1 is only 500 MB/s. That's almost fast enough to max a SATA 3 SSD, but x1 is narrower than competitors' and means you have to decide between fast storage (thanks to no eMMC) or anything else you'd want it for.
RTC	: )	I once got bit by this, after taking the Pi's miniSD card out and mounting it from another machine. When I later tried to boot the Pi, it complained the timestamps were out-of-sync, so I had to look up how to patch their little hacked up solution.
2 × 4-lane MIPI transceivers	: )	I haven't connected any cameras to mine, but this sounds like a nice improvement.
VideoCore VII GPU	: (	With nothing actually written about this, it's hard for me to say anything specific. However the VideoCore GPUs have been a sore spot of the Pi's for a while, as they've fallen far behind the competition.
NPU	: (	Where is it? However, my preference would be if they used the GPU for double-duty, so we'd get both a half-decent NPU and more GPU power. I guess I'll have to wait and see if that's the case.
Price	: )	Assuming you can actually get one at these prices, essentially holding the line on pricing is a very nice achievement.

Regarding other aspects of the review:

​

"Buying cheap heat sinks is a waste of money."​

​

Yes, although it helps if you buy copper ones, thoroughly remove the adhesive TIM and apply a good PC heatsink compound, like Arctic MX-4. If you're not going to mount it upside down or sideways, you don't need adhesive or mechanical restraints.

​

"Video Playback and Streaming"​

​

Sounds like it's doing software decoding. Even so, that still sounds pretty bad, but let's wait & hope for proper GPU acceleration.

​

"Emulation Performance"​

​

I'd be surprised if the Pi's GPU didn't become an issue, for some of the more recent platforms mentioned.

​

"We don’t reach the lofty heights of the Khadas VIM4, Edge2 Pro or the LattePanda Sigma, but then again we’re not spending that amount of money."​

​

The Orange Pi 5 (no relation) demands to be acknowledged. Yes, it doesn't have the same degree of community support, but it's got better specs in some key areas, competitive pricing, and up to 32 GiB of RAM. Not to mention the new "plus" model, for those willing to spend a bit more.

• http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/details/Orange-Pi-5.html
• http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/details/Orange-Pi-5-plus.html

 

[bit_user]

Its worth noting that the cheap stick-on heat sinks will have that same problem they've always had: they don't use thermally conductive tape.

Thermally-conductive tape exists, but you're right that one must look for assurance and evidence that it's been used, rather than to simply assume it was.

Even so, it's not as good as a decent heatsink paste, so I always thoroughly clean off any tape and use a known-good TIM.

 

[evdjj3j]

50% more money for only 4 gigs more ram. Yikes.

And it still can't play Youtube videos well.

 

[Jay Emm]

"The first new flagship Pi in four years was worth the wait."

Well, not for me: still limited to 8GB RAM, still only 4 CPU cores, still no hardware video encoding; on just these 3 aspects, the Pi 5 didn't catch up to where the competition was years ago.

The PCI interface is nice, but even the CM4 module had it already (to say nothing of the competition), so that's not earth-shaking by any means.

Ditto RTC, power button and better cooling, as both have been available from many 3rd parties for a long time now.

And the performance claim to "2 to 3 times" also seem greatly exaggerated: TH's own testing shows less than 2x and that's on *synthetic* benchmarks, real world tests are showing about 50%... so nothing revolutionary here either.

And power usage is, for me, a major no-no: almost 3x the power at idle (which is where my telemetry systems, and I bet most IoT use cases, spend most of their time) is really disappointing, and will surely limit it's useful for battery-based applications like mine.

I think Raspberry is relying too much on brand recognition and community support instead of good hardware, and that's not good.

So, definitely not worth the wait for me, and I will probably head to the competition when the time comes to upgrade my Pi4 systems.

 

[peachpuff]

Wish they would fix their supply issues first then release a new one.

 

[bit_user]

And the performance claim to "2 to 3 times" also seem greatly exaggerated: TH's own testing shows less than 2x and that's on *synthetic* benchmarks, real world tests are showing about 50%... so nothing revolutionary here either.

Yes, it was exaggerated, but the TensorFlow Lite benchmark showed a 3.18x improvement, and that's not synthetic.

In Phoronix' testing, they found the geomean was 2.76 times that of the Pi 4, although their testsuite is a mix of synthetic and real applications.

power usage is, for me, a major no-no: almost 3x the power at idle (which is where my telemetry systems, and I bet most IoT use cases, spend most of their time) is really disappointing, and will surely limit it's useful for battery-based applications like mine.

Indeed, the high idle power is somewhat unexpected. I wonder if that's from the fast memory, in which case maybe a solution would be to reduce the memory clock, for those who can afford to?

I think Raspberry is relying too much on brand recognition and community support instead of good hardware, and that's not good.

I think it's their Broadcom affiliation that's both a blessing and a curse.

 

[bit_user]

Wish they would fix their supply issues first then release a new one.

That's what they said was going to be their approach, in the article I linked (above).

I wonder what changed. Was it their partnership with Sony? Fears about RK3588-based boards stealing attention and marketshare?

 

[Findecanor]

The power consumption at idle is disappointing.
The Raspberry Pis are getting less and less usable as embedded machines for hobbyists projects, and more like ARM -based "NUC"s.
But then again, the point of the Raspberry Pi from Broadcom's perspective is to be able to use the them to off-load their older SoCs, and the usual story is that using a brand-new SoC would have increased costs. (This is an older SoC, right?)

While the PCIe connector is something people have requested for years, the way it would be used with a hat isn't optimal. You'd have to either place it on high risers, go without a cooling fan or place it below the main board — and get the cable blocking the SD-card slot.

The most significant improvement IMHO is that it finally comes with a power switch as standard, so that you won't need a third-party solution to avoid corrupting the SD-card.

I may be in the minority, but I've used the headphone jack.

 

[Giroro]

I want to see Pi 5 put up against intel N95 mini PCs . They cost a little more, but they include the power supply, storage, case, cooling, and usually Windows for around $130 for 8GB/256GB. Plus you can usually upgrade the memory and storage.

Pi targets a different market with its GPIO, but a lot of people still buy them to use as a cheap computer.

 

[Amdlova]

How much power on the wall? These new pie

 

[Giroro]

Thermally-conductive tape exists, but you're right that one must look for assurance and evidence that it's been used, rather than to simply assume it was.

Even so, it's not as good as a decent heatsink paste, so I always thoroughly clean off any tape and use a known-good TIM.

The last time I bought heat sinks, everything on the market was using the same "high temperature" 3M product that was great at staying stuck-on at high temps, but bad at conducting heat. I would remove it and add a doughnut of thermal tape around the edges with a small amount of paste in the middle.
Although I just pulled up the amazon page to check which 3M tape it was, and to my surprise the top results are all using thermally conductive tape now, so that's a good improvement!

I'm not happy the Pi 5 has higher power consumption/worse thermals than Pi 4. That is trending in the wrong direction for the way a lot of people use a raspberry Pi. It looks like they've at least added a better way to mount a big passive heat sink to the board. So that's something.

 

[bit_user]

But then again, the point of the Raspberry Pi from Broadcom's perspective is to be able to use the them to off-load their older SoCs, and the usual story is that using a brand-new SoC would have increased costs. (This is an older SoC, right?)

I don't know since exactly when, but I'm pretty sure these have been designed specifically for the Pi. It could be only the original generation of Pi that reused an existing chip, completely off the shelf.

The main thing I wonder is how Rockchip and Amlogic can afford to license newer cores (and often a couple more of them), Mali GPUs, and fab theirs on a better production node! Is their volume really so much greater than Broadcom's? I don't think it's been disclosed, but I doubt the Pi 5's SoC is made on a node better than 14 nm (probably worse). Meanwhile, the Rockchip RK3588 (which was late by over a year, but has now been shipping for nearly that long) uses (Samsung?) 8 nm and it even has a NPU!

It's not clear to me whether Broadcom would even bother to continue developing their VideoCore IP, if not for the Pi. I'm not sure if it features in any of their other products. From what I can tell, it seems like the linux driver for it is being completely developed by the Raspberry Pi folks.

I may be in the minority, but I've used the headphone jack.

How did you find the quality? I think you can get a USB DAC for cheap enough. Probably even cheaper than this one:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L9C7233/
​

I'm pretty sure there should be cheaper modules that you can connect via GPIO.

 

[bit_user]

I want to see Pi 5 put up against intel N95 mini PCs . They cost a little more, but they include the power supply, storage, case, cooling, and usually Windows for around $130 for 8GB/256GB. Plus you can usually upgrade the memory and storage.

I think that's an artificially low price for those mini-PCs. China's economy is currently in a deflationary spiral, which means manufacturers might have overproduced and are now exporting them potentially at a loss. It also might've given them good negotiating power vs. Intel and other parts suppliers.

Anyway, although I'm a fan of getting actual data on this, I can tell you the N95 would easily beat the Pi 5. Considering its A76 cores, a good point of comparison for the Pi 5 would probably be a Sandbridge i5. Meanwhile, the N95 is more like a Skylake equivalent.

Pi targets a different market with its GPIO, but a lot of people still buy them to use as a cheap computer.

True, and it's not inconsistent with the Pi's core mission of providing an inexpensive platform for computer science education. Since the very first Pi, they ran basically a standard Debian distro - not an embedded one or some kind of funky RTOS.

 

[pug_s]

As for the specs:

​

​

Spec	MFW	Reason
4x Arm Cortex-A76	: )	I was betting on 4x A75, since the Pi SoC tend to be made on older nodes than their competition and the A75 is smaller.
RAM	: /	It's great to see the additional speed, but I hope there will eventually be a 16 GiB option. It might be less necessary with only 4 cores, but having a few browser windows/tabs open can quickly chew through a mere 8 GiB.
Power consumption	: (	This continues a troubling trend, although it's better than I'd have guessed, given how much faster it is.
Storage	: (	While it's good that they're up to 104 MB/s, that's still lagging behind eMMC.
PCIe	: (	PCIe 2.0 x1 is only 500 MB/s. That's almost fast enough to max a SATA 3 SSD, but x1 is narrower than competitors' and means you have to decide between fast storage (thanks to no eMMC) or anything else you'd want it for.
RTC	: )	I once got bit by this, after taking the Pi's miniSD card out and mounting it from another machine. When I later tried to boot the Pi, it complained the timestamps were out-of-sync, so I had to look up how to patch their little hacked up solution.
2 × 4-lane MIPI transceivers	: )	I haven't connected any cameras to mine, but this sounds like a nice improvement.
VideoCore VII GPU	: (	With nothing actually written about this, it's hard for me to say anything specific. However the VideoCore GPUs have been a sore spot of the Pi's for a while, as they've fallen far behind the competition.
NPU	: (	Where is it? However, my preference would be if they used the GPU for double-duty, so we'd get both a half-decent NPU and more GPU power. I guess I'll have to wait and see if that's the case.
Price	: )	Assuming you can actually get one at these prices, essentially holding the line on pricing is a very nice achievement.

Regarding other aspects of the review:

​

"Buying cheap heat sinks is a waste of money."​

​

Yes, although it helps if you buy copper ones, thoroughly remove the adhesive TIM and apply a good PC heatsink compound, like Arctic MX-4. If you're not going to mount it upside down or sideways, you don't need adhesive or mechanical restraints.

​

"Video Playback and Streaming"​

​

Sounds like it's doing software decoding. Even so, that still sounds pretty bad, but let's wait & hope for proper GPU acceleration.

​

"Emulation Performance"​

​

I'd be surprised if the Pi's GPU didn't become an issue, for some of the more recent platforms mentioned.

​

"We don’t reach the lofty heights of the Khadas VIM4, Edge2 Pro or the LattePanda Sigma, but then again we’re not spending that amount of money."​

​

The Orange Pi 5 (no relation) demands to be acknowledged. Yes, it doesn't have the same degree of community support, but it's got better specs in some key areas, competitive pricing, and up to 32 GiB of RAM. Not to mention the new "plus" model, for those willing to spend a bit more.

• http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/details/Orange-Pi-5.html
• http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/details/Orange-Pi-5-plus.html

Raspberry Pi 5 is a disappointment for me because compared to the Orange Pi 5, it has nvme ssd support and lower power consumption. I'm kind of glad that I sold my Raspberry Pi 4 in the middle of the shortage. Seriously considering to use this money to buy the Orange Pi 5 instead.

 

[kjfatl]

An an early adopter and proponent of the original Raspberry Pi, and subsequently someone rather disgruntled by the Pi's slow pace of system-level upgrades, I should be excited by this new arrival. Instead, my first reaction is one of annoyance.

I'm annoyed because, instead of simply keeping mum on the subject, the message just a hair over 9 months ago seemed loud and clear that there'd be no Raspberry Pi 5 until at least sometime in 2024.

​

Raspberry Pi 5 Not Launching Until After 2023

Raspberry Pi Taking a "recovery year" in 2023

www.tomshardware.com

​

I don't like to be jerked around, even if the expectation is set low and then surpassed. He had to know that they were on track for a possible 2023 delivery. I can certainly understand not wanting to set an expectation they couldn't deliver, but if there was a realistic possibility, then maybe also don't tell us it's not going to happen, when it actually might?

I suspect that the developers were conservative in their plans, expecting one more hardware spin and difficulty obtaining components. Then the unexpected happened. The design worked, and passed it's testing with flying colors. The hardware re-spin planned for October 2023 has become the first production run.

I've worked on a few designs like this where nearly everything worked. I have also received assembled boards where every via on the power plane was shorted to the ground plane and we had a bunch of expensive bricks and no parts to build the next set of prototypes.

 

[bit_user]

I suspect that the developers were conservative in their plans, expecting one more hardware spin and difficulty obtaining components. Then the unexpected happened. The design worked, and passed it's testing with flying colors. The hardware re-spin planned for October 2023 has become the first production run.

That's not what was conveyed in the interview I linked. Read it, yourself. It was almost entirely focused on supply-chain. I don't know if I entirely picked up on that, when I read it last December. However, to @peachpuff 's point, the supply chain for Pi 4 still hasn't entirely normalized, when I checked a couple weeks ago.

Visiting pishop.us now, the 2 GB and 8 GB models are out of stock, but they have the 4 GB and 400 (which also has 4 GB). That seems not so bad, depending on how long the wait is on the out-of-stock models. Since the Pi 5 isn't actually set to launch for almost another month, perhaps by which point they think they'll finally have enough Pi 4 units in the channel? We'll see.

 

[SonoraTechnical]

I use my Raspberry Pis very differently than most of you. I have used active cooling on mine for a while (hi heat humidity environments)

I connect a variety of sensors and devices over the i2c bus. (so I need some of those i2c pins as I run more than 1 channel of i2c) I run Node-RED directly on the PI for both data acquistion, measure, and control and will access the dashboards remotely from another PC, so the Pi is running the HMI as well. I use the official Raspberry Pi touch lcd for local hmi too. I even attach a keyboard and mouse... I do local data logging to a influxdb and use graphana too. So, I use up some memory and cpu cycles.

I was hoping for an nvm-e m.2 solution that mounted underneath (instead of on top via a Hat), but we will see. My use case would require the aforementioned active cooling, the m.2 hat for storage, 3 or so hats that I use from several vendors for i2c connected devices, and then aforementioned touch lcd for local control and and a camera.

I'm curious to see if we will get a Compute Module 5 soon as well, with an enhanced carrier board? If so, I hope that that it will support a NVM-e m.2 (even if a short one) right on the module or carrier board. I'm also in the camp that was hoping to see 16GB of ram mainly becuase of the multiple apps I'm running at once (Node-RED, graphana, InfluxDB). Maybe 16GB will be an option on a new Compute Module 5?

Regardles, I am very pleased with what they've produced. Glad to see they increased the connectivity options (more DSI/Camera and the PCI without loosing USB3). I'm keen to get one.. I suspect I might have issues with the highly specialized HATs that I use... but we'll see..

 

[bit_user]

I didn't want to upstage Toms, but since nearly a day has gone by and nothing has been published about this, I wanted to share Phoronix' findings that the Pi 5's VideoCore VII GPU appears to be about 3-5x as fast as the Pi 4's VideoCore VI.

​

Raspberry Pi 5 Graphics Continue With Open-Source Driver & Crazy Fast Compared To RPi 4 - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

​

It should be underscored that this is preliminary data, from a relatively limited set of benchmarks, though it looks very promising. This was a sorely-needed and long-overdue boost! I'm still not sure it even catches them up to the Mali GPUs, in comparable SoCs. If I hear anything about that, I'll try to share it.

Of particular note are the numerous deep learning benchmarks, which suggest that they've indeed gone all-in on the GPU as their compute accelerator block, as I hoped. Let's not get our hopes up about it holding court with Intel's VPU or Ryzen AI, much less comparing to the dGPUs in @JarredWaltonGPU 's shootouts, but it might be enough to free up the CPU cores, when running computer vision in robotics applications and the like.

 

[jcyr]

The new Raspberry Pi 5 features a faster CPU, built-in real-time clock, better video and a power on / off button.

Raspberry Pi 5 Review: A New Standard for Makers : Read more

RP's betrayal of hobbyists during the supply chain collapse would be reason enough to avoid this product. In more pragmatic terms, compared to the current RK3855 and RK3855S offerings the RP5 seems an inferior value in every way.

 

[bit_user]

RP's betrayal of hobbyists during the supply chain collapse would be reason enough to avoid this product.

Betrayal? That seems harsh. By the same standard, nobody would be buying any more graphics cards, either.

The covid-fueled supply crunch took everyone off-guard, and there really wasn't much that could be done about it.

In more pragmatic terms, compared to the current RK3855 and RK3855S offerings the RP5 seems an inferior value in every way.

No, take a closer look at the specs. Compared to Orange Pi 5, the Raspberry Pi 5:

• Is cheaper
• Has built-in wifi
• Has a second HDMI port

There might be more. As often noted, software support is generally far better.

Raspberry Pi also has an open source driver for its GPU. In practical terms, the Mali GPU of the RK3588 would need to use the proprietary driver for decent performance and compatibility.

 

[jcyr]

Betrayal? That seems harsh. By the same standard, nobody would be buying any more graphics cards, either.

The covid-fueled supply crunch took everyone off-guard, and there really wasn't much that could be done about it.


No, take a closer look at the specs. Compared to Orange Pi 5, the Raspberry Pi 5:

• Is cheaper
• Has built-in wifi
• Has a second HDMI port

There might be more. As often noted, software support is generally far better.

Raspberry Pi also has an open source driver for its GPU. In practical terms, the Mali GPU of the RK3588 would need to use the proprietary driver for decent performance and compatibility.

Upton's decision to prioritize commercial customers over lobbyists and makers, thus starving them, is a complete betrayal of the folks who made RP possible in the 1st place.

Here's what the Pi5 doesn't have.

- dual memory bus.
- 4 extra A55 cores.
- PCIe v3 x4 to builtin NVMe socket.
- 2.5 GB/sec Ethernet
- up to 16 GB memory
- 6 TOPS NPU
- 8nm process instead of silly offloading to outdated 40nm hack (RP1) for IO.
- Extensive hardware encode/decode.

Yes, more expense but far better bang for the buck.

As for support, who needs it? All run Debian derived distributions for which Google will answer just about any question.

 

[bit_user]

Upton's decision to prioritize commercial customers over lobbyists and makers, thus starving them, is a complete betrayal of the folks who made RP possible in the 1st place.

According to whom was this the policy?

BTW, anyone who had a pre-existing supply contract doesn't count. You can't realistically expect them to break contracts they already had in place. Unless you don't care if they go bankrupt from having to litigate numerous lawsuits.

Here's what the Pi5 doesn't have.

You said it's "inferior value in every way". I never said it didn't have deficiencies. My point was just that there are some notable advantages it has, which make it not inferior in every way.

- PCIe v3 x4 to builtin NVMe socket.
- 2.5 GB/sec Ethernet

If we're talking about the Orange Pi 5 Plus, that costs well over $100. Talk about comparing Raspberries to Oranges...

- up to 16 GB memory

Actually, Orange Pi 5 is now offering up to 32 GB.

- 8nm process instead of silly offloading to outdated 40nm hack (RP1) for IO.

Raspberry Pi didn't use 40 nm since 3. Version 5 reportedly uses 16 nm.

- Extensive hardware encode/decode.

I think we don't yet know what the Raspberry Pi 5's capabilities are, in this area. They haven't said anything about it, as far as I've seen.

And if you want to use the HW encode/decode from the RK3588, you'll have to use proprietary drivers. Not necessarily a big deal, but important for some.

Yes, more expense but far better bang for the buck.

Not everyone needs a NPU or the extra A55 cores. Not everybody can afford the additional expense of a higher-spec machine like Orange Pi 5 - especially if you need add-on features like wi fi, or if you're buying thousands of them for a school district. The fact is that the Raspberry Pi has some advantages, and you really can't make value-judgements for other people.

The Raspberry Pi prioritizes price and functionality over performance. That's the deal. It's not trying to be the perfect product for everyone, but rather prioritizing the masses who can't necessary afford something better.

As for support, who needs it? All run Debian derived distributions for which Google will answer just about any question.

You might get lucky, but a lot of people have been burned by poorly-supported Raspberry Pi wannabees. You don't have to look very hard to find some horror stories. And no, Google will not always bail you out.