| ▲ | steveBK123 5 hours ago |
| It's crazy how Raspberry Pi & Apple prices have moved in converging direction. Pi 5 8GB is $200 MacBook Neo 8GB is $600 (probably some edu discount available)
Sure 3x the price, but it comes with - 256GB SSD, battery, display, keyboard, trackpad.. So the Pi has slowly become too expensive for weird one-off projects and also price competitive with a cheap Mac by the time you add all the stuff you need to use it as a cheap computer. If Apple ever got around to a headless "Mac Micro", below the Mini, which had the same specs as the Neo in desktop form it would be even more stark. They could easily ship that for $400 (mini is $300 cheaper than cheapest M-series MacBook with same ram/ssd). They might never do this as it's enough computer for most people they'd lose revenue from those otherwise spending far more at the Apple Store. |
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| ▲ | pseudosavant 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Not a completely invalid or uncommon take, but also not completely correct. People lament that it isn't the $25 like it used to be with the Pi 2/3, but ignore that you can get a Pi Zero 2 W (quad A53 cores like 3B, 512MB RAM) for <$20. I've used them for a bunch of projects: moonlight game streaming client, on-stage video player controlled by a foot pedal, Bluetooth controlled recorder for USB audio interfaces, Tailscale exit node, etc. They are tiny and great! https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w/ I wish a Pi 5 (and RAM in general) was cheaper, but Raspberry Pi can't control that. |
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| ▲ | pibaker 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Some people seem to think raspberry pi is a consumer tech company and whenever a new model is released, the old one will be discontinued. They will complain about the product being changed and the company robbing them of a cheap SBC. I can only assume they don't actually work with the pi because if you spend just a minute looking at any reseller's inventory or even just the official website you will see they still make and sell and support boards from a decade ago. | | |
| ▲ | zarzavat 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to understand. If you're using the Pi as a microcontroller that you can run Python on, then just get the cheapest Pi that meets your needs. If you're using the Pi for computationally expensive tasks then pay more money and get the fast one. Personally I have a Pi 5 and it's perfect for me because I want small size but high performance. People say "just buy a real computer" but that would be higher energy and larger footprint. The whole point of these things is that you use them for whatever you can imagine. Since different people have different imaginations it only makes sense that there's a range of different devices to suit everyone. | |
| ▲ | nubinetwork 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | While you can still buy a pi 3, you'd be kicking yourself for not using something faster. | |
| ▲ | javchz 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Agree. It's clear since COVID that Pi it's barely a company for makers or DIYers anymore, but it's a supply company for small to medium industries to integrate cheap PCs in their manufacturing process and they are good at that role. | | |
| ▲ | hatthew 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Huh. I had a work project a decade ago where we were evaluating SBCs as drivers for kiosks. At that time, the prevailing wisdom was that the Pi was specifically not for industry, as its main advantage was the strong community to provide support for DIYers. Competitors like PINE64 and Orange Pi were the same/better specs at half the price. | | |
| ▲ | wtallis 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | When people talk about whether something like a Pi is aimed at industrial customers, that is largely not a statement about the cost vs specs, nor about the level of engagement with the DIY community. It's usually about having a suitable supply chain and long-term support and stable BOM and a mature software platform for customers to start building on. | | |
| ▲ | hatthew 4 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Our logic at the time was that the relatively fixed cost of figuring out the hardware and developing device-specific software was less than the variable cost-per-board delta of like $20. |
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| ▲ | mathis 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Try getting your hands on a Pi Zero 2 W. Here in Germany you cannot get them at all any more and the quoted price has gone up 3x. | | |
| ▲ | NavinF 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's $37 new incl shipping on US eBay. Initial retail price was $23 incl shipping, see launch thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025579 So a 61% price hike over 5 years, of which 24% was just inflation. If the total price really went up 200% in your country, that's exceptional and probably caused by policies unique to your country. btw you can't compare prices without shipping because there was never an option to buy 100 at $15 each and amortize shipping. Retailers treated it as a loss leader with a limit of one per purchase, often forcing you to buy some extra junk to meet the order minimum. | | |
| ▲ | justin66 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Weird. I can get one at the local Microcenter - with headers, the only one they're selling right now - for $18. They have a bunch in stock. |
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| ▲ | vr46 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yeah, more stock arriving on 1st of October, so I'm told. |
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| ▲ | humanperhaps 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The Pi Zero 2W is great, but data I/O (WiFi, USB, and micro SD) do limit use cases slightly. For most use cases, I doubt this is an issue, but it is something to keep in mind if you want to run bandwidth-constrained services on it. For $15, I don't think that's an issue, but it is unfortunate. | |
| ▲ | abdullahkhalids an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Is it at all possible to run 1080p video using Pi Zero 2 W smoothly with no jittering? What about launching a browser and playing a 1080p video from a streaming site? I am looking for a computer to connect to my internet-disconnected TV. | | |
| ▲ | nine_k an hour ago | parent [-] | | An old thin client machine, like a Thinkcentre M73, would do the job, and would cost less than an RPi. Look at EBay. | | |
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| ▲ | theowaway 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | except you can't. They have been out of stock for weeks | | |
| ▲ | HankB99 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I just checked my closest Microcenters (in Illinois.) 12 in Westmont and 25+ in Chicago (for $18) Zero W were 13 and 25+ respectively at $15. Long gone are the days when they would sell a Pi Zero for $3.14 on Pi day. |
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| ▲ | Aurornis 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 8GB of LPDDR memory is around $100 in volume. That leaves $100 for everything else on the Pi, including the hardware, building it, transporting it, and retailer margin. That leaves $500 for everything else on the MacBook Neo. That's why you can get so much more from the MacBook Neo. There's 5X as much budget for everything other than RAM. |
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| ▲ | zerobees 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Having had a subscription to Hack-a-Day for a long time, I firmly believe that the vast majority of "weird one-off" Raspberry Pi projects don't actually need anything as capable as a Raspberry Pi SBC. It's just a matter of brand recognition and familiarity. If it gets too expensive, I suspect that more users will migrate to microcontrollers than to gutted notebooks. You don't even need to learn anything new, I'm sure you can ask Claude to vibe code something on RP2350 nowadays and there's an 80% chance it will work. |
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| ▲ | HerbManic 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | A lot of things wouldn't even need a RP2350. The original Arduino alone was pretty slick for a lot of cool small scale projects. | |
| ▲ | barnas2 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I built a portable meshtastic terminal using Claude and a Pico 2. It's written 100% of the code in MicroPython and it works great. It even wrote the driver for the E-ink screen I'm using. I built a jig to hold a webcam and the e-ink screen, then had Claude write a script/MCP that takes a photo and crops just the screen out. Then I asked it to figure out a driver, and after a 20 minute loop of taking photos and updating it's driver, it was done. | |
| ▲ | peterburkimsher 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Another Hackaday reader here. I think that the RPi shines in projects where GPIO are needed, yet the developer needs a full Linux OS (usually to run Python). I agree that vibe coding microcontrollers will increase the use of embedded systems instead of RPi devices. Seems like a good move for them to have built the RPi Pico. | | |
| ▲ | dannyw 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | There’s something really fun about writing your own microcontroller code as a software engineer that hasn’t worked with embedded before. At least for me. Before you just vibe code, consider if it piques your interest. You might just enjoy learning, playing, and building with something new. When you get stuck, hand it over to AI. |
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| ▲ | 8fingerlouie 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I was recently looking for an upgrade for my aging HA Green, and I had an 8GB RPi5 with a m.2 hat, case and PSU selected, but when I checked prices I could get an 8GB Zimaboard 2 that includes 32GB eMMC for $10 more than the RPi, and that gets me a n150 processor, 2x2.5Gbit networking, 2 SATA ports and a PCIe expansion port. It idles at 5-7W. So yeah, the RPi5 has gotten prohibitively expensive, at least to the point where a chinesium mini pc is cheaper, has better performance, and about the same power consumption. |
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| ▲ | rjrjrjrj an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| A Mac Neo would be great. But for now, Intel N150 mini PCs are probably a better choice than RPi for those types of tasks. |
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| ▲ | roody15 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Education price for schools is 499$ for the Neo. Have to agree no longer sure the pi makes much sense at this price point. |
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| ▲ | elorant 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Raspberries are basically for DIY projects. I have one on my router handling call blocking for my landline. If it was costing $300 I would rather get a mini PC or use one of my defunct phones with UserLand on it. I can't see any world where a comparison to an entry level laptop makes sense. |
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| ▲ | pibaker 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | You don't need a $300 pi for call blocking. They still make and sell $30 models that will be an overkill for your use case. | | |
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| ▲ | jrm4 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The war on general purpose computing is real. |
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| ▲ | bigyabai 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I dunno, it's not unexpected. Smartphone hardware has been cheaper, more proliferate and faster than Raspberry Pis for a while. The Pi Foundation finds a market by supporting Linux, documenting GPIO and Arduino/hat ecosystems, and advocating for a hackier, server-like approach with the cheap hardware. Game consoles, smartphones and consumer laptops are often powerful, but priced taking the customer's service revenue into account. My Raspberry Pi is definitely outclassed by a few of my old phones and laptops. But it's also super pleasant to host services on, so it's my go-to SBC. |
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| ▲ | flobosg 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Mac Micro Mac Nano, just like iPods! |
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| ▲ | sleepybrett 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| ... there is no mac micro, but there is an appletv |
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