Cutting corners: Raspberry Pi has introduced a new variant of its popular Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer with 1GB of memory. The board comes at a premium price of $45, and you can blame the ongoing global memory shortage for the uncharacteristically high cost.
In announcing the new variant, founder Eben Upton also revealed price increases for select Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 models. He said the hikes are intended to offset the unprecedented rise in the cost of LPDDR4 memory, and largely mirror adjustments made to their Compute Module products earlier in the year.
Updated pricing is as follows:
| Product | Density | Old Price | New Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raspberry Pi 4 | 4GB | $55 | $60 |
| Raspberry Pi 4 | 8GB | $75 | $85 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 1GB | - | $45 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 2GB | $50 | $55 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 4GB | $60 | $70 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 8GB | $80 | $95 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 16GB | $120 | $145 |
The price hikes directly correlate to memory capacity. Boards with smaller amounts of memory now run $5-10 more expensive than before, but you will pay $25 more for the 16GB Raspberry Pi 5. Upton said the cost of lower-capacity Raspberry Pi 4 variants, as well as Pi 3+ and earlier models, remains unchanged, but they did increase the cost of the 16GB Compute Module 5.
Worth noting is the fact Upton labeled the price increases as "ultimately temporary," leaving open the possibility that prices could come back down once the global memory mess works itself out. As for when that could happen, the answer is not exactly clear.
Memory makers have been struggling to keep pace with high demand from the AI industry, and it doesn't appear as if the situation is going to resolve itself anytime soon. As a result, prices have been driven up across the industry and consumers are now starting to feel it. The situation is so volatile that many stores have removed fixed pricing on memory kits, and are instead pricing products daily based on the market.
Image credit: Praveen Thirumurugan