Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi

Today, Raspberry Pi is introducing a new version of its popular line of single-board computer. The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B is the fastest Raspberry Pi ever, with the company promising "desktop performance comparable to entry-level x86 PC systems."

The new model is built around a Broadcom BCM2711 SoC, which, with four 1.5GHz Cortex A72 CPU cores, should be a big upgrade over the quad-core Cortex A53 CPU in the Raspberry Pi 3. The RAM options are the even bigger upgrade, though, with options for 1GB, 2GB, and even 4GB of DDR4. The Pi 3 was limited to 1GB of RAM, which really stung for desktop-class use cases.

There have been some upgrades and tweaks to the Pi 4 I/O, too. The Gigabit Ethernet returns, as do the four USB ports, but two of them get an upgrade to USB 3.0. Power is now supplied via a USB-C port, instead of the aging Micro USB of the Pi 3. The headphone jack returns, too, and it's still a four-pole solution providing audio and composite video.

One interesting choice is the removal of the single, full-size HDMI port of the Pi 3 in favor of two micro HDMI ports. The Pi 4 will now support two 4K monitors, but you'll have to deal with the less-ubiquitous cable selection. To push those displays, Raspberry Pi is promising lots of multimedia support: H.265 decode for 4K60p, H.264 1080p60 decode and 1080p30 encode, and OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics.

The 40-Pin GPIO header is fully backward-compatible with previous boards, so all your old hats should work. Ditto for the flex two cable connectors, which are still a two-lane MIPI DSI (Display Serial Interface) and a two-lane MIPI CSI (Camera Serial Interface). The device still features 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, while Bluetooth has been upgraded to 5.0. As always, the Pi has 0GB of storage. You'll need to pop a MicroSD card in to load an OS and run programs.

Just like the Raspberry Pi 3, the Pi 4 starts at $35 for the version with 1GB of RAM. There are now higher tiers with more RAM: 2GB for $45 and 4GB for $55. Raspberry Pi says the Pi 4 will remain in production until at least January 2026.