Raspberry Pi is celebrating its eighth birthday, and they just announced a unique offer on the website. People can now buy the latest Pi 4 with the 2GB of RAM for only $35, which is the same as what the 1GB version costs. The single-board computer maker has gone a long way since its first model back in 2011, so they have every reason to be celebrating now, as they pioneered the field together with early adopters and low-spec developers from around the world. Today’s Pi 4 is 40 more powerful, has eight times larger memory, and 10 times more I/O bandwidth compared to the original model.
The Pi 4 is also available in 1GB and 4GB of RAM versions, but their cost stays at $35 and $55 respectively. In our view, the firm could have taken advantage of the RAM price drop that began in Q4 2018 and continued throughout 2019, and drop the price of all three models. However, we really can’t complain, as the 2GB RAM edition remains an extremely useful tool, powered by a Broadcom BCM2711 SoC (4 x 1.5GHz Cortex A72 cores), Gigabit Ethernet, 2 x USB 3 ports, 2 x USB 2 ports, a headphone/composite video jack, and 2 x micro-HDMI ports capable of delivering 4K quality on two monitors. Raspberry Pi calls its fourth edition a “no-compromises PC for the majority of users”, and “the Raspberry Pi I’d buy for my parents”.
So, what can you do with it? Except for video processing, hard-core gaming, photo editing, scientific modeling, financial analysis, data mining, 3D rendering, encoding, and code compiling, it can do literally anything. From sending malicious packets to companies, installing the latest Kodi and turning the little berry into a fully-fledged media streaming station, there’s a wide range of things you can do with it. Raspberry Pi is also an amazing tool for those who make their first humble beginnings in programming, and there’s a rich database of projects to help you get started.
If for some reason the Raspberry Pi 4 is not your cup of tea, you may check out our list with the six best alternatives to it. Thankfully, there is a selection of choices for consumers and developers today, each focusing on a specific area of expertise. Some are more developer-friendly, a few are super cost-effective, while others are geared towards the streaming of content.