A 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 now costs 50% more than it did at launch
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/10/raspberry-pi-2gb-costs-how-much-nowOpen linkView original on lemmy.caSyndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on lemmy.cahttps://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/10/raspberry-pi-2gb-costs-how-much-nowOpen linkView original on lemmy.ca
47 replies
Yeah, don’t buy an overpriced Raspberry Pi; instead, you should buy a more reasonably priced…oh.
$78 for a 2gb pi is insane, you can get a massively more powerful used nuc/mini-pc on eBay for like $5 more.
Yeah, the best way to go is to have purchased a few of them 3+ years ago!
It costs 50% more than it did at launch... if you can get one at MSRP, which you can't, because they are immediately hoarded by scalpers and resold at exorbitant prices the moment an authorized reseller gets any stock.
Meanwhile their business customers can buy direct in bulk at a discount.
Raspberry Pi hasn't been for consumers since before COVID.
Yeah, I haven't been able to find a Pi Zero W anyfuckingwhere and it's really annoying because I have a dedicated task I want to set one up for but I don't want to use my Pi4 for it because I have other plans for that.
I'd also like to get a Pi5 for the PCIe connectivity but fuck they're expensive these days...
I’ve bought two Pis post 2020 at MSRP, before the recent increase! They’re definitely not the way to go now though. I am happy I have a few for projects!
But hey lets celebrate the fact that RPi Holdings managed to secure a large stock of memory chips at pre-inflation prices before the AI craze quadrupled those prices, and that they're TOTALLY not ripping off their buyers right now!
Yeah, their earning report was really something. Raising prices due to "shortages" while reporting a record margin on their products.
(and let's be honest here: The recent price increases do kind of kill the product line. Most people are better off with a cheap, maybe used thinclient for their homeserver needs. They are not those cheap thingies you can tinker around with anymore)
I knew them going public was a mistake.
The Foundation did great work, because it was by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts.
The private company, I can understand - after all money has to come from somewhere and for proper salaries etc., you need a company.
But going public was just inviting shareholder control, and we all know shareholders only care about short term profit extraction. This is perfectly visible - earnings good so stock goes up, shareholders enjoy dividends and sell high, company crashes and goodbye RasPi.
IIRC Arduino did the same and the only reason the brand is still alive is because Qualcomm decided to buy them up and enshittify the brand even further.
This is it. 100% Shareholders = enshittification.
I've hit a goldmine with my work upgrading all of the PCs.
I now have two Dell Optiplex 7050 and a 3020 micro pcs, all with 8gb of replaceable RAM. Two of them came with 130gb M.2 SSDs, one with a 130gb SATA SSD. All told they cost me nothing, because the company can't use them (they don't support Win11), and there's another 50 machines that can be sold if the boss can be arsed.
None of them will set the world alight, but they're perfect for little things I want to do at home.
I spent yesterday setting up one of the 7050s with an M.2 NIC, then slapped Proxmox and OpenWRT on it and am now free of the shitty Linksys my ISP gave me.
Next up, I need to whip the two drives out of my 2014 Mac mini Debian server so I can replace it with something that can accept more RAM than the soldered 8gb I'm currently stuck with.
It's fun!
The Pi 4 & 5 are no good for tinkering anymore, but the Pi Pico microcontrollers still are. I just hope they don't screw that up too.
Turns out, 80s cyberpunk movies were spot on. Soon all affordable consumer electronics will be based on vacuum tubes again.
Thermionic Valves or Pneumatic transport pipes?
microfluidics is so hot right now
Just get a used low power computer off ebay
If you know polish then this guy made 1hr analysis of thin clients (2023) (with Raspberry PI included) https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?__goaway_challenge=js-refresh&__goaway_id=0773559efdc662b7620719400299f367&__goaway_referer=https%3A%2F%2Finv.nadeko.net%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dtata%2Bgeek&v=DLRplLPdd3Q
So...any good alternative? Specifically for hosting. Rpi has been very expensive in my country since the start as here we don't have any dealer, so price will always be 60% to 100% more expensive than MSRP. I don't mind chinese brand, there should be a shit tons of chinese brand.
Keep an eye out for any thin clients that can't support Win11 that businesses are getting rid of. You might have some luck with them.
I was going to say this. Used thin clients is the cheapest route these days. I am happy I got a cheap used Intel N150 mini pc for my Jellyfin server a while ago.
I'm looking at old optiplex, it's significantly cheaper than rpi5, bigger in size though. I wonder how much power it will consume while hosting cloud storage, jellyfin, and home assistant.
Yeah, I need to get a meter so I can see what the power draw is on mine.
Decommissioned USFF business PCs if you want something that can handle a lot and a bit larger is OK.
In that size I'd say OrangePi or Radxa, but depends in your use case for which.
For a little bit more than a fully fledged Orange/Radxa (and considerably under the price of a 16GB RasPi) you can buy e.g. the Morefine M6 - the size of an iPhone, works off of 12V USB-PD, 3-4W idle, 8-10W under heavy load, and with the newer N200 CPU you even get video codec goodies (perfect for e.g. running 3-4 fully local CCTV cameras with local face/object detection, which the Pi would struggle with).
I was going to complain that the orangepi wasn't $350+, but didn't realize the fully maxed 6 is that much. That's crazy how much single board computers have gotten.
350+? I'm seeing the M6 listed for £160-200!
There are a few popular options, but i haven tried them personally yet:
OrangePi support is terrible. Maybe it's better with the 5, but the 4 I've struggled with getting a library to work with the GPIO pins, documentation on the NPU is limited, and I can't get it to recognize a standard serial camera.
It's possible I'm just trying to do weird things, but it's a much worse experience than I've ever had with a raspberry pi and I regret not spending more to just get the pi. I've lost probably 10+ hours just trying to deal with some things I'd consider basic, and had to create weird workarounds that hurt performance in other areas.
I just checked and at least the Orange Pi ones are maybe 50% up in price.
Just shared my experience on the post you replied to, but basically the support/documentation for the orangepi isn't great and has cost me a lot of time and forced me to use workarounds to get some things working (GPIO, NPU, cameras, etc.)
Yeah, I had a similar experience getting my Orange Pi 5 Pro to just allow me access to I2C (though once you figure it out, it's a lot easier to also get stuff like GPIO, SPI and so on to work).
In fact that's the general problem with the chinese SBCs compared to the Raspberry Pi devices - their support software, documentation and general support out there on the Internet from other users is a much weaker, at least in English - to get that stuff to work I actually on my Orange Pi I actually had to get an Ubuntu for Rockchip and then figure out how to manually add a device tree overlay with the required devices enabled whilst I believe the Raspberry Pi just has a utility that does it for you.
HOWEVER, the user who had asked for advice higher in this thread only seems to care about hosting, for which you just need "normal" Linux functionality not the embedded side of things, in which case those things work just fine even with just ARMbian - as far as I can tell all those manufactures do make available a Linux distro for their devices which supports the built-in peripherals (most relevant for hosting, wi-fi and when present ethernet) and does the normal things a desktop Linux does. That said, they quickly stop pushing out updates to it, which might be a problem.
This is why I mentioned Orange Pi and in another response suggested general Chinese SBCs - if all you need if run-of-the-mill Linux server functionality in a cheap platform, those probably suffice.
Glad to hear I'm not the only person who has had some difficulties. And yeah, you are right that it should be fine for hosting services, which is why I mentioned my specific use cases.
However, I think calling out lack of support is always a good thing as you never know what support you may need down the road. I definitely have run into some issues due to their supported OS I'm running and its surprisingly out of date for a board that only released a couple years ago.
https://github.com/Mr-Bossman/pi-pico2-linux (Yes, I'm kidding)
WYSE 5070
A couple years ago Le Potato was a good value prop. No idea if that’s true anymore.
A Teensy is like 50 dollars now.
The
AristocratsCapitalists!And that is…?
Edit: apparently, the cost had jumped from $55-$78. Still, at least $100 less than what it cost in 2016 when I was in school for an RPi 2. I’m having a huge amount of trouble finding scaler comparisons between RPi and standard server set up.
Genuinely asking: for the Rpi fans out there, what’s it actually capable of nowadays? Can I run a Plex server off of a single RPi?
I am looking to replace a 2011 iMac (i7-2600) as my Plex server,, I’d like to know if a modern RPi could handle the load.
Advice, please?
Get a usff thinkcentre, like the m910 tiny. Insanely simple, upgradeable (nvme + 2.5", 2 sodimm slots), lots of usb and other connectics, supports 3 screens if you need that, low power, super small and can be found for cheap.
Yeah, I saw an eighth generation i5 OptiPlex SFF that I thought was kind of tasty. Refurbished for under $500. I was just wondering if a modern RPi could actually handle the load. I used a few in school about 10 years ago, but I’ve heard they’ve become really far in that time.
BTW, I put in a request for quote on a refurbished ThinkCentre. I’ll let you know what they tell me. Here’s the link to the machine.
https://www.pcliquidations.com/p27443-lenovo-thinkcentre-m91-usff
The ones I use are like this even my daily driver is a 6500T like that (m910q) where I do programming and stuff.
Good luck!
Is this denominated in strips of gold-pressed latinum? Because I don’t understand these numbers
https://www.ebay.fr/itm/236981434615?itmprp=cksum%3A236981434615775ff53654e045978632d22b9f6129b8%7Cenc%3AAQALAAABEHgGRw9n%252BWZ%252FIF6wkBA9slFMI%252FzMPv6aV3OidAYwF5pv55oyNNPDqKWyGPZjeQkKPmkveydDVNwGyco6yTZYzLRgvINC6ynQN%252F6XUKDVsqOimRZJ3flldIMgcQuPFBgs8lfoxSB4MscGngzy32W%252BXPavqNdussQ6pNc2BwYOv1fI42yfiOhfaRVCUQFUs6TTff1pnccdWY6%252FaJf0cHPhV0AhG9v7TPEsDSQCyMIBSc%252BpJ74C7BtMpHCODVHECyc728kH8jhlsfV2QQSzQYoi149%252F1K3SBMboi1%252BKLM4u1Go03S8uxc%252Fcfzl1nlJmO5xA5d75YBBx9hPh57s35QJ0F1NcALRcVy%252BjF%252FvHxbyBrBMP%7Campid%3APL_CLK%7Cclp%3A2332490&itmmeta=01M43NRY7NCQT2G24D10W5CZ3T
I don't understand your post 😅 it's an ebay link (works for me).
You said "advice please", advice was given. No need to become aggressive, touch grass man.
I've got a Borg Backup server running on a Pi 2. I'm starting to play with Home Assistant on a Pi 4.
That Pi 4 has had a few lives so far. It served as a rather mediocre desktop running Ubuntu MATE for awhile. At the time I found RPi's "Pixel" desktop to be pretty unlivable, almost everything they'd done to LXDE to make Pixel was an exercise in breaking LXDE. MATE was reasonably functional. Building a Ryzen 3600 machine was of course a vast improvement.
I then transitioned that Pi 4 to an HTPC running OSMC (basically Debian Kodi). I had a couple of problems with it: 1. to put audio out the built-in audio jack, you had to edit some config file to enable the option in the menu. Because this is Linux, a Linux developer can't make his microdick hard enough to penetrate the layer of crust sealing the anus of his pinhole punctured blow-up doll if he ships a GUI that's good enough. 2. That entry in that config file kept either undoing itself, or what the system was looking for changed. I swear I'd put that line in, it would work for awhile, something would happen, and then I'd have to go in and change the line that's still in there to some other syntax to get it working again. 3. Driving a 4k60 display was another problem that kept unsolving itself. Sometimes it could do it through one HDMI port but not the other, oh no wait it's max 4k30, oh wait it can do 1080p60 though, oh but it's still driving the monitor at 4k30 in such a way that trying to play back 1080p60 gets out of sync with the audio, pauses for several seconds, then resumes. If you've got a 720p television and you intend to use its internal speakers maybe it'll work.
Seems to run Home Assistant okay though the SD card is probably doomed.
If you don't need an rpi specifically (i.e. for the built in CEC) you're better off with something else.
the device is now fully worthless ignore it and tell them to fuk off.