June 10, 2026
Pi in the sky pricing
Raspberry Pi 5 – 16 GB, $350
Tiny hobby computer, giant price tag — and fans are absolutely losing it
TLDR: The Raspberry Pi 5 gets faster and more powerful, with this version packing 16GB of memory for $350. But the community is fixated on the price, with many saying the once-budget hobby computer now costs enough to make used desktops and cheap mini PCs look smarter.
The new Raspberry Pi 5 is supposed to be the cute little computer that punches above its weight: faster brain, better graphics, sharper video output, quicker ports, and a beefier 16GB memory option. On paper, it sounds like the glow-up fans asked for. In the comments, though? Absolute sticker-shock theater.
The loudest reaction is simple: $350 for a Raspberry Pi? That number hit the community like a jump scare. One commenter groaned, “I hate this timeline,” wondering how this tiny DIY board is now only a little cheaper than a Mac Mini — aka Apple’s full desktop computer. Another basically said, for that money, just buy a used office PC and call it a day. That became the core drama: is the Pi still a fun, affordable tinkering gadget, or has it wandered into “why not buy a real computer?” territory?
Then came the economic doomposting. One user pointed out the price is already up around 50% from a couple months ago, while another warned that memory shortages and inflation could make today’s painful price look like a bargain later. Nothing spices up gadget talk like financial dread.
And the funniest burn of the thread? A commenter laughing that cheaper mini PCs are “vastly more capable” unless you specifically need the little pins for hardware projects. Translation for normal humans: if you’re not building weird electronics in your garage, the crowd thinks this thing may have drifted from scrappy hero to overpriced mascot.
Key Points
- •The article features a 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 model priced at $350, while also noting 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB variants.
- •Raspberry Pi 5 uses a 2.4GHz 64-bit quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 CPU and is described as delivering 2–3× the CPU performance of Raspberry Pi 4.
- •The board includes an 800MHz VideoCore VII GPU, dual 4Kp60 HDMI output, dual-band wireless LAN, faster Gigabit Ethernet, and optional PoE via a separate PoE HAT.
- •Raspberry Pi 5 is the first full-size Raspberry Pi to use in-house silicon, with the RP1 southbridge providing most I/O functions and improving USB, MIPI, and SD card performance.
- •The redesign adds a single-lane PCI Express 2.0 interface and makes Raspberry Pi 4 cases incompatible with Raspberry Pi 5.