Raspberry Pi is back with its micro computing magic. The company has launched an all new version of its popular single-board computer series – Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. The company says that this is their fastest Raspberry Pi ever and that too — as it always is — at an affordable price.
The new model has four 1.5GHz Cortex A72 CPU cores which is a big upgrade over the quad core Cortex A53 CPU in the Raspberry Pi 3. This provides 3 times better performance than its predecessors. It is built around a Broadcom BCM2711 SoC. While Raspberry Pi 3 was limited to 1GB RAM, Pi 4 has more than two RAM options: 1GB, 2GB and 4GB. Power is now supplied via a USB-C port, instead of the aging Micro USB of the Pi 3.
Pi 4 comes with two micro HDMI ports instead of one full-size HDMI port as in Pi 3. Because of this you can now connect two 4k monitors simultaneously. Raspberry Pi 4 is promising lots of multimedia support: H.265 decode for 4K60p, H.264 1080p60 decode and 1080p30 encode, and OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics.
Along with two USB 2 ports Pi 4 has two USB 3 ports, which can transfer data up to ten times faster.
The device still features 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi. But its Bluetooth has been upgraded to 5.0. Pi 4, like its predecessors, doesn’t provide an internal storage. You’ll need a MicroSD card in to load an OS and run programs.
As of yet, a new upgrade to the Raspbian OS, the OS which runs on Raspberry Pi devices, hasn’t been released for Pi 4 architecture. Till then users will have to wait for microSD card with pre-installed NOOBS(New Out-Of-Box Software) program which installs this OS.
Raspberry Pi has come a long way since its beginning as a small-scale computer designed to teach kids how to code. It is now being used in various IoT devices, system administration tools as well as networking devices. With their new model, Raspberry Pi is all set to replace its previous flagship Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ with more powerful features.
The Raspberry Pi 4 starts at $35 for the version with 1GB of RAM. While the 2GB version starts at $45 and 4GB at $55. The company said that Pi 4 will remain in production until January 2026.
