The Raspberry Pi foundation has announced a more powerful version of its dinky Zero board with the Wi-Fi enabled Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W now available for tinkerers.
However, that much improved performance comes at a price. It’s now $15 compared to it’s predecessor, the $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W.
What does that extra fiver get you? Well, the same Broadcom BCM2710A1 SoC that currently sits within the Raspberry Pi 3 for starters. It’s slightly down-clocked to 1GHz, In order to save a little space there’s 512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM.
The overall performance boost varies, but Raspberry Pi says that for multi-threaded sysbench, the Pi Zero 2 W is “almost exactly” five-times faster. The tiny microcomputer “should” work perfectly with all existing cables, accessories and cases. There’s a new power adapter, which still uses a micro USB connector.
Here’s the full spec sheet for the almost-impossibly small micro-computer:
- Broadcom BCM2710A1, quad-core 64-bit SoC (Arm Cortex-A53 @ 1GHz)
- 512MB LPDDR2 SDRAM
- 2.4GHz IEEE 802.11b/g/n wireless LAN, Bluetooth 4.2, BLE
- 1 × USB 2.0 interface with OTG
- HAT-compatible 40 pin I/O header footprint
- MicroSD card slot
- Mini HDMI port
- Composite video and reset pin solder points
- CSI-2 camera connector
- H.264, MPEG-4 decode (1080p30); H.264 encode (1080p30)
- OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0 graphics
MagPi subscribers get one free and it’s available to buy in the UK from today. You’ll still be able to buy the $5 Zero and the $10 Zero W, which is handy as the foundation is expecting there to be some shortages in the short term.
You might like…
“Note that Zero and Zero W are currently experiencing supply constraints in the context of the global semiconductor shortage. We hope that this will be resolved in 2022.
“We expect to ship roughly 200k units this calendar year, with a further 250k to follow in the first half of 2022.”
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
