This is what not giving a shit about your product looks like
It’s no secret that there’s a massive Raspberry Pi shortage right now for consumers due to the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s strategy of allocating boards to business and IoT projects first and then official resellers get whatever is left. Since I own one of every Raspberry Pi that has ever been made I ended up buying one of these scalped from eBay for about $57 (all the way from Europe) which is much better than the street price of $80-$90+ I can get it in the United States.
In other words I payed the scalpers to get my hands on this board so you don’t have to and let me tell you folks, it is honestly garbage and literally the dumbest purchase I’ve ever made. Today I will show and explain why the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 is the lamest and most disappointing product release that the Raspberry Pi Foundation has ever done. Let’s get started!
Hardware Used
Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is the successor to the Raspberry Pi Zero. It has a quad-core CPU which is substantially faster than the Pi Zero but is otherwise almost identical.
This won’t take long at all. The CPU was upgraded from a single-core BCM2835 (the CPU of the Raspberry Pi 1) in the Pi Zero W to a quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 processor.
This is a nice CPU upgrade at least if you can get this board from an authorized reseller at non-scalped prices (you won’t any time soon). Credit where credit is due. The CPU definitely needed an upgrade / refresh.
Missing Expected New Features
Let’s talk about the obvious things that they did not fix in this board from the Pi Zero / Pi Zero W.
One limitation of the Pi Zero W is that it cannot do 5 GHz wireless. It can only do 2.4 GHz wireless. Given how many people use the Pi Zero W in projects that need wireless capabilities this is the #1 fix I was expecting. Did they fix it?
The answer to that question is no they did not. The Pi Zero 2 W *still* cannot do 5 GHz wireless. Ugh.
Okay, well surely they got rid of microUSB given that is 2022 and microUSB is complete garbage. Finally we can have a USB-C Pi Zero 2!
Nope. It’s still microUSB 100%. There’s no USB-C. Ugh.
How about eMMC storage then? An eMMC option is dead obvious to add to this board and makes sense for such a small board like this. They added them in the Compute Module 4 lineup and I’m fully expecting the Raspberry Pi 5 to have available eMMC options as well.
Wrong. There are no eMMC options available for the Pi Zero 2. Ugh.
But…. surely they at least upgraded the RAM past 512 MB. It had 512 MB of RAM 5 years ago in the Pi Zero, there’s no way they didn’t upgrade it!
Wrong again, of course they didn’t! The Pi Zero 2 has 512 MB of RAM AGAIN and there will be no larger options available (according to Raspberry Pi). Don’t believe me? Here it is from their own release information about the board:
Will there be a version of Zero 2 W with 1GB of SDRAM?
No. 1GB LPDDR2 monodie are not available, and producing a SiP with two stacked SDRAM dice would be very challenging.
Wow. They are saying that producing a board with 1 GB of RAM would be “very challenging”. Is this a joke?
How did the Raspberry Pi Foundation even get this far? You know what is more challenging than that? Creating a credit card sized computer or even smaller in the case of the Raspberry Pi Zero when nobody has ever done it before.
The fact that these things are “very challenging” did not used to stop them. Why is it now? Keep reading and we’ll see if we can figure it out by the end of the article.
Quality Control
There is a visible decline in quality control on the board. It’s very obvious that corners are being cut. I own every Raspberry Pi going back to the very beginning and to be honest you can kind of see the process of this happening over the years. The Pi Zero 2 W though takes this to a whole new level and is a sharp, sharp decline in quality though over some of the other corner cutting.
For an obvious example (that you will be able to find on your board as well from what I’ve seen should you get one of these) take a look at the edges of the board:
Pi Zero vs. Pi Zero 2 – Edge Quality Control
I wanted to show the Zero W (top) vs. the Zero 2 W (bottom).
Notice that the Pi Zero W has a much less pronounced and cleaner edge. That is because they actually cared when they made that board and got rid of most of the perforation in the board with a grinder or some tool meant to take off the rough edges.
On the Pi Zero 2 they did not bother to do this. It’s so bad there are hairs fraying off on the board (you can see these hairs hanging down in the above picture not far from the Zero 2 W label). Orange Pi wouldn’t be caught dead shipping even a $6 board that looked like this. I’ve never seen anyone ship a board that looks like this. Ever.
Here’s another look:
Pi Zero 2 Quality Control
Look at all of those “hairs” fraying off the board and how rough and uneven that edge is. Unbelievable. This is the definition of not even trying.
Remember that I paid $57 for this board and you will pay even more if you want one today off eBay.
Pros / Cons
Pros
Quad-core CPU is a nice upgrade from the original (but the only one)
Cons
Extremely expensive to actually get your hands on
Identical to previous Pi Zero other than the CPU
Drop in build quality from previous generation
Conclusion
I hate it. I hate that it’s so obvious that the quality continues to decline on these boards and that they no longer take any pride in making them or put forth any effort to make sure it’s clear it’s a higher quality product than their competitors. It really isn’t anymore.
I hate that a company that started out with the goal of providing low cost computers to people now only sells them to industry insiders meaning the street prices are $80-$90. It’s even worse that they have stuck to this even seeing what it has done to the consumer market for Pis.
I hate that they passed over the most obvious upgrades for the board such as 1 GB of RAM, 5 GHz WiFi and USB-C. It annoys me even more that they said it was because it would “very challenging”. Again, there is no Raspberry Pi Foundation if they can’t take on “very challenging” problems anymore. It’s just another company milking us dry with a name brand.
I honestly see the terrible new NVIDIA 4000 series GPUs as a really similar problem to what is happening to Raspberry Pi. They’ve had people willing to buy their stuff at any price for so long no matter how many they produce that they don’t really have to try. And they aren’t.
If you are going to try to defend this board to me (and Raspberry Pi’s current practices) I’d really challenge you to ask yourself if you are looking at this board objectively or if you are a fanboy. I didn’t write this because I hate Raspberry Pi and I’ve done tons of Pi work over the years. It’s just objectively a lazy and bad product with some rookie quality control issues going on. I wrote this because I want them to do better and it makes me sick to see releases like this.
Price-Dependent Experience
The main problem with this board is that unless you pre-ordered it you are not going to get it for $15 unless you are using the tools that let you know which authorized resellers have them in stock (and by using I mean constantly throughout the day because when they come in stock they’re gone in minutes often times).
If you got this board for $15 you will probably be pretty happy. spinspin on reddit pointed out to me (after giving me a proper reddit trolling, which I forgive him for after our discussion) in a fair criticism of my review that “separating disappointment from the process of judging what the product actually is makes more sense.”.
Well, it’s hard to deny I didn’t separate my disappointment from what the product actually is. He’s right. I’d like to add this section to explain what the product actually is, dispassionately. It’s essentially a Pi Zero W with a quad-core processor. It doesn’t really have any additional capabilities. I don’t recommend getting it unless you are running very heavy loads and absolutely require the quad-core to make your project/use case work.
The reason I don’t recommend it is that the Pi Zero 2 is roughly twice as expensive as the Pi Zero and is not an upgrade that justifies the cost outside of the specific quad-core CPU benefiting a heavy-load project. If you are able to get it for $15 through an authorized reseller (now or in the future) then this is a nicely refreshed Pi Zero W (but with no additional capabilities) albeit with some build quality corner cutting (perhaps justified for whatever reasons). I covered all the things that they did not add in the Pi Zero 2 but I suspect we will see these in the Pi Zero 3 (or at least some of them).
The quality control issues are concerning but shouldn’t impact the functionality of the board. Let’s just hope they don’t continue in that direction as part of the reason I love Raspberry Pi’s was their build quality (especially historically, all my old ones still work 100%).
Exploring Alternatives
It’s pretty clear to me that Raspberry Pi has become like Apple and NVIDIA. Most people seem to be willing to defend this. I’m not. I think this board is my breakup with Raspberry Pi. I’ll likely not be doing a lot of Raspberry Pi content going forward as it’s just no longer a community I recognize or respect. They apparently *love* what Raspberry Pi is doing no matter what it is. I’m the first one off the train when things get cultish and are no longer about the hardware or technology.
This site is about technology and hardware though. I’ll be doing my best to bring attention to alternative products and ecosystems here as well as supporting projects to provide an affordable and quality alternative to the Raspberry Pi. See the “Other Resources” section for work already done on this.
Unfortunately Raspberry Pi is not where interesting developments are happening anymore in the SBC world for now. If the Raspberry Pi 5 looks a lot better then I’ll definitely cover that but I’m definitely a “wait and see” at this point for Raspberry Pi. I’ve made my voice heard on this board and the direction of Raspberry Pi. I don’t intend to keep talking about it though (that was just to try to help them correct course).
Now it’s time to move past them just like any other bad breakup. You just have to leave them and their people that are too far gone behind. I have to do it all the time in technology when people won’t adapt and change. The internet and reddit was just as angry about my warning about the GPU market and mining. Most people totally lost their minds and ignored the warning and now anyone who didn’t listen got left behind (or worse). Those people are now bankrupt or (it’s dark, but true especially in the case of crypto) are no longer with us. It did not help them to downvote me and lose their minds for telling them the reality of the situation and it won’t here either.
I’m totally used to this unfortunately. It’s really hard to give people bad news / tell them what they don’t want to hear and the internet/algorithms generally punish you for this (if not outright suppress/censor you especially in the case of reddit). I’ll always try though for the people who are truly open to new information and don’t just need their existing ideas/biases stroked. So far over the years there are enough of you out there to make the site work without me trying to appeal to crowds/cults like this and to just try to give you my honest review/perspective. That’s all I really know how to do and it has generally worked out for me so far.
If you want a dirt cheap board (about $6-$7 + shipping and yes you can actually buy it for MSRP) I recently revamped the image for the Orange Pi i96. It’s not as powerful as the Pi Zero or Pi Zero 2 but it is actually cheaper and more important available for the cheap price to actually buy.
If you do attempt to buy one of these see my Raspberry Pi shortage guide for some tips on how to potentially get this cheaper or from an authorized reseller
Unfortunately Raspberry Pi didn’t update to USB-C for the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W. I think you might be seeing the Radxa Zero. I’d definitely make sure that what you are seeing isn’t for the Radxa Zero which is purely USB-C. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2W is indeed purely micro USB still.
If they are using these with the proper Raspberry Pi Zero 2W they would have to be using adapters or potentially hats that support USB-C. I think there’s a good chance a lot of what you’re seeing is the Radxa Zero though which honestly is a better choice (as far as hardware goes). As far as image support goes Raspberry Pi definitely has the edge there.
Anyone who would be fine using Armbian or Debian/Ubuntu instead of Raspberry Pi OS / Raspbian would probably do better with a Radxa Zero. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2W is much, much harder to get than a Radxa Zero as well. That’s definitely the hotter board at the moment and availability is the other part of why besides the more modern hardware (as even for Raspberry Pi fans if they didn’t pre-order one of these they aren’t getting one any time soon unless they want to be scalped for approximately $100+). Neither of them are super easy to get but it’s at least possible to get the Radxa Zero for a reasonable price off AliExpress or allnetchina.
Hopefully that helps!
Jim
1 year ago
The price is boosted at 150 by now,i recommend only odroid xu4 in half the price.with performance higher than raspberry pi 4
Holy smokes! That one isn’t going to get any better either. Last we heard from the supposed giant Raspberry Pi supply dump the CEO said they were going to do was *not* going to include the Zero 2W. They said it would only be the older Pi Zeros (and Pi 4s) that would get dumped.
They’re really going to regret paying $150 for this. I paid something like $58 ordering it on eBay from Europe although I doubt that’s even possible anymore. I should probably sell mine on eBay or at least those prices make me want to.
Since we know that the Pi Zero 2W is not going to be a part of the announced Raspberry Pi supply dump though I believe everyone should take your advice or skip this model altogether. The reason it’s not a part of the Pi dump is that undoubtedly it’s not very profitable to make these with the upgraded quad-core CPU for $15. It’s much more profitable to make the old single core version even if they’re selling for a few bucks less (which they did raise the price on them, there was a slight price raise even for the older Pi Zero).
Even if one wants to stick with Raspberry Pi I’m sure there will be a Pi Zero 3 at some point that fixes all the mistakes that were made with this board. Definitely don’t be silly and buy this thing for $150 or even $100+. It just doesn’t make sense no matter how much of a Raspberry Pi fan one is. Even if you’re the most die-hard fan you should wait for the Pi 3W or buy one of the older ones from the Pi dump. This board is not going to make sense for anyone to buy any time soon.
Agree 100% for it at $15! That’s why so many people’s eyes were on whether the 2W would be in the Raspberry Pi dump for sure but from what we’ve heard publicly the answer to that question is no.
If they were able to deliver this for $15 reliably you’re right. The board itself is just fine and it’s only the pricing/availability that makes it so painful. If this was reliably available for most people for $15 it would make a whole lot of my recent board reviews totally unnecessary (especially the Pi Zero form factor ones).
I would have also gave this one a totally different review even if it had all of the same flaws. I reviewed it as a premium board because people are for the most part (myself included) paying a premium price to get their hands on it due to poor availability.
Nobody who got their hands on it for $15 should feel like they didn’t get a good board. That is definitely a win if you are one of the people that got it for $15. It really is a good board if you can get it for that price. I definitely just wanted to make it clear that it’s absolutely not worth spending $100+ to get this board. It’s not a premium board experience and if anything they’re cutting some corners on the newer ones that they weren’t on previous ones. It would all be understandable/acceptable for $15. No question.
I could have got about 4 of them for what I paid for 1 if I could have bought them for $15 each. If people are seriously buying it for $100-$150+ (and they must be, because the prices are going up) you could buy 10 of them for that at retail. Absolutely bonkers.
In reality can you imagine getting 10 of these for $150? All I see when I look at that is insane profits. You’d literally make a minimum of $1000 profit just selling them on eBay. That’s how out of line the street price is with the retail price and it seems to be getting worse. I also believe it’s why this keeps going on even though the chip/silicon shortage has ended for basically everything else except Raspberry Pis. If you are a IoT manufacturer and are first in line for these I still to this day don’t understand why anyone would ship a product containing one of these (and I’ve never seen anyone ship a product with a 2W ever in it). The IoT manufacturers are lining up to buy whatever limited supply of these they have and I honestly think they just get resold to us at insane prices by a lot of them.
If anyone knows of someone actually shipping a product that has a Zero 2W in it and it costs less than $100 let me know. I need money and that’s basically free money to just buy whatever product dared to ship a Pi with a street value that high in it, take the Pi out, sell it on eBay then I’ll have all the money I could ever want. I’d imagine that’s why nobody actually ships products with these. They’re worth too much even if it’s a perfect fit for the product and it just doesn’t make sense. They’re too rare/valuable.
I’m not joking about this either honestly. If I found an arbitrage opportunity like this I would just buy a bunch on my credit card and disassemble/sell them. It would be easier than the articles and work that I normally do to make a living. This is also why I can’t believe that whoever has access to be first in line for Raspberry Pis (such as the IoT manufacturers) aren’t doing this exact same thing.
I’m telling you all that if I knew of one I would do it and it would work. I’d only be limited by how many they have to sell of their IoT product as to how much money I could make flipping these. Sure I’d only be able to start the first batch with the limits of my credit/funds but it would be so much gravy afterward that you could basically scale it to as large as you want / as many products as they dare to sell with one of these in it for <$100. That is a real life money hack right there if it exists which is why it probably doesn't.
Nobody's IoT idea could ever be good or profitable enough vs. just selling these. They're selling for 10x their "suggested retail price". 10x is crypto bubble numbers. It's printing money. Normal businesses do not typically have 10x profit margins on their products. 10x is almost unheard of in any type of investment which is why it's so sought after and so many people got burned chasing in in crypto when it was too late this market cycle (and they needed to wait for the next crypto bubble for their shot). These IoT manufacturers have had access to a money printing machine like this for years and I can't believe Raspberry Pi hasn't taken it away yet. The moment they do the shortages will end and the prices will crash.
It's just as easy for the IoT manufacturers to do this as it would be for me to do my theoretical buy any IoT product shipping with a 2W for less than $100. They just buy as many Pis as they will be sold by the Pi Foundation through their special access and then they sell them to you. It's so obvious this is what is happening. It's easier for them because they don't even have to disassemble someone else's product first to get the Pi and they're getting it for that coveted $15.
I really should place a IoT manufacturer order for Pis under jamesachambers.com and see how much I could get. If you can't beat them join them right? I have a business license for the site. I should qualify. In reality there's probably a minimum of 1,000 or 10,000 or something and they probably want proof you've shipped products before. I don't know how hard it is to get through the special process but I'm saying it's the special process that is actually the problem. The people going through that process are not using these to ship in products. They just qualify for whatever reason so they've had a license to print money for several years now (and counting).
If they just sold these to everyone and stopped gatekeeping the Raspberry Pi the prices would crash or at the very least return to something much more reasonable. What is happening is these are being held in warehouses and slowly sold off instead just like the PS5 scalpers and the Xbox Series X scalpers did. It's nothing new and these are *huge* scalping industries that are very sophisticated (unlike Raspberry Pi's strategy).
Microsoft and Sony were no match for the scalping industries even and it took AGES for them to break it. Sony just barely broke it around Christmas / the beginning of this year. It will go on for as long as Raspberry Pi has a multi-tiered system like this and as a user/customer you are the least important / last in line as far as the Raspberry Pi Foundation is concerned. The Raspberry Pi foundation is not smarter than Microsoft or Sony and they aren't smarter than these scalpers either. Indeed, the Raspberry Pi's system is making this *easy* for them. It's actually protecting them once they figure out how to get in and get "qualified" to be allowed to buy them.
With the Raspberry Pi we don't even have a shot against them. You always did with the Xbox and PS5 even though it was *really* hard. They are now in a special line ahead of us. You won't even get the 1-2 second chance to click the button when they go in stock. In reality those will never even be sent to an authorized reseller. You won't even get your 1 second chance.
It's just a matter of incentives vs. disincentives. If you are a manufacturer trying to make money and you have access to the Raspberry Pi in bulk at retail prices then the absolute worst thing you can do is ship a product with a Raspberry Pi in it. For 95+% of IoT/manufacturers their original plan will be the least profitable thing they could possibly do in this market. It may even cause you problems to do so if your product is below a certain price threshold as I've pointed out. The smartest and most profitable thing you can do is to sell however many Raspberry Pis you got for as much money as you can. That's the truth. That's the profitable choice and since it is that's exactly what people are doing.
Broken down like this hopefully people can see why the only question in my mind is does Raspberry Pi understand that their system is creating the perfect atmosphere for predatory scalping and artificial scarcity to happen or not? Are they complicit in this? Do they have friends/family somehow profiting from this system? Do the employeees take a couple home every day after their shift and sell them on eBay or something? Or are they just morons who don't understand basic business and financial incentives / maximizing profit? I can assure them the scammers / scalpers do understand these things while they keep scratching their heads wondering why they can't break this shortage (while somehow not asking why aren't all these Pis we're shipping to IoT manufacturers showing up in devices?).
I think if the Raspberry Pi Foundation started investigating these issues (assuming it's not coming from the top) they'd find things are very dirty. Pis are disappearing. People are probably getting approved as an IoT manufacturer that shouldn't be / never have shipped devices / never went through the right checks. Someone is profiting. It's the only explanation for how they could be the last silicon company in the world to figure out their supply chain issues. Someone inside (and probably a lot of people) are making a lot of money off this and so things are not changing. When people are making 10x crypto-style profits off something you're going to have 10x crypto-style bad behavior going on in those companies. The Pi Foundation needs to clean house.
You take care as well!
FlyingCow
1 year ago
I think the Radxa Zero is a good alternative. It retails for 19.90 USD on AllNetChina’s website with the 512mb RAM configuration. It also destroys the performance of the Raspberry Pi Zero Two and uses USB-C.
Welcome! I couldn’t agree more. I actually have one of these ordered from Ameridroid (an official redistributor) that I plan on reviewing as soon as I get my hands on it. It has been waiting for a while (it’s one with the integrated eMMC) and I’m hoping it comes any time now.
Even though I don’t have my hands on one yet though everyone who has says it’s great (and that’s why they can be hard to get a hold of). Depending on where you are in the world though you may have better availability. It’s quite bad in North America and Ameridroid is doing their best. You won’t find them on Amazon US right now either unfortunately.
It does absolutely destroy the Raspberry Pi Zero and Raspberry Pi Zero 2 though. There’s no doubt about that. People have taken a few Radxa Zero benchmarks on Pi Benchmarks and you can see the crushing performance on them.
Thanks for sharing!
butre
1 year ago
there’s plenty that I wish was different. micro USB is inexcusable (I get that type c is more expensive, but at least give me mini), 512MB of ram is unfortunate and leaves that nice quad core CPU wanting more, and no 5ghz is a real pain. I have to ask though, how much of your review comes from the price you paid? I got mine without the help of a scalper by preordering it, so I’m reasonably happy with it. the form factor is what draws me to it, not the specs, and an extra $5 for those extra cores ain’t bad.
I feel like availability is the only real drawback. at $15 I can forgive everything except micro USB, but with scalpers in the mix I’d certainly go for something else.
Welcome, that’s a great question and I think your take is completely reasonable. The price and availability are a huge, huge part of the review. You’re right to suggest it’s even the key part.
To explain I’d like to draw a parallel to the NVIDIA 4080 launch which I’m guessing most people interested in tech are familiar with how it’s going. That launch is absolutely hated. Nobody is buying them.
Is this because it’s a bad card? No. I have a 3090 and the 4080 is superior to my card. It’s a better graphics card. So why would I say nobody should buy such a great graphics card? The price. In that case it’s literally directly NVIDIA’s fault for pricing it that high.
With the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W maybe it was the opposite problem. They can’t seem to actually have any availability pricing it at $15. They never have. Not once since launch/pre-orders. That’s not a product they can realistically deliver to the market in a form that you can, you know, just go and buy one to use for your project.
I understand some of these trickle into resellers and that some people constantly checking rpilocator get some of these at MSRP. It’s so hard and so much work though (with so much competition with bots) that it’s not even worth it to me. I don’t want to spend my life on rpilocator for weeks trying to snag one for $15 and I’m guessing most people have better things to do as well. I wasn’t willing to do it to get a PS5 or a Xbox Series X either. I just waited until things weren’t so absurd. I advise people to do the exact same thing for the Pi Zero 2W (if it isn’t replaced outright by a successor by the time they realistically solve these supply chain issues) if you aren’t willing to even consider alternatives which I’ve done a bunch of reviews on.
I definitely understand that if you got this for $15 by preordering it you would not have this sour taste in your mouth. That’s a totally different experience and I wish they could have delivered that experience for everyone. They never could though. If you didn’t preorder it then you will have to get it the way I did or wait apparently another year according to the Raspberry Pi CEO who says he is expecting the supply issues to clear up by then.
Now let me ask you a question: if you didn’t pre-order it and absolutely needed one for a project, could you wait a year? Some people have already been waiting almost a year and there’s another year to go. If the answer is no then this is going to be a $80-$100 product.
This is not a $80-$100 product and I’m sure you would agree with that with your hands on it (and I appreciate that you actually have one since a lot of push back I got was from people who don’t and I can almost guarantee will not buy one and will buy whatever generation comes next with better availability to replace it). Raspberry Pi doesn’t think it’s a $80-$100 product and they themselves would tell you NO, do not buy it for that. There’s no defending it at that price and it’s not going away any time soon.
I absolutely agree though that this review, just like everyone’s review of the NVIDIA 4080, is 100% based on the price and availability we have to work. It is what it is and the fact that the 4080 and the Pi Zero 2 might themselves be great hardware they are not great product offerings due to missing the mark on pricing/availability!
Giancarlo Bregante
1 year ago
Hello James:
I 100% agree with your article.
More over, I was obligated to change a Ionizer control board I designed with the RPZ, and replace and redesing the board around the OPZ H3, because RPZ shortage.
This happened before to start the first production lot.
Same happened with the RP CM3 and CM4 modules.
Thanks for leaving this, that is fascinating! I’m actually familiar with the Orange Pi Zero and the H3 processors. I’m a huge fan of the Orange Pi Zero 2 as well even for regular consumers. These boards have come a long way and enjoy really good Armbian support and the third party image support is getting better and better as well. The H3 boards seem to be cheap and widely available and I’ve had good experiences with them personally.
I read a news article yesterday where the Raspberry Pi CEO was saying the supply situation should be resolved within about a year. A year?!?!?!?! This has been already going on for at least a year. I honestly think they will be really surprised when they finally come back to market and they realize how many of us have moved on. It’s not really because we chose to either. Waiting 2 years for Raspberry Pis to become purchasable again is not an acceptable solution for any company or consumer.
I honestly think very few of the people buying alternative boards were actively looking to “switch”. I wasn’t. It doesn’t sound like you were. They simply cannot provide the parts anymore at the prices they are claiming so I was forced to explore alternatives and to be honest once I did I immediately realized that the Raspberry Pi is no longer magical or the de-facto best (or even particularly high quality anymore). It was 5 years ago. It’s not now. You can actually buy better boards with better hardware for less money now and that is only going to become more true going forward I’m sure.
I won’t ever go back after experiencing some of these competitor boards now. They’ve finally caught up with and are in the process of passing the Raspberry Pi (I believe the Orange Pi 5 which I have preordered will obliterate the Pi 4 and be available for less money). My eyes have also been opened to how closed-source the Raspberry Pi hardware and accessories are and this is hostile to my personal beliefs as I do a lot of open-source project development.
There are some really great boards out there now at incredible prices. Orange Pi’s prices are pretty incredible. They aren’t as low as the Raspberry Pi’s theoretical MSRP prices but that means nothing as everyone should have learned by now if there’s no availability. The Orange Pi boards are a slightly higher MSRP on paper but in reality / on the street they are much, much cheaper.
It’s not just Orange Pi that the Raspberry Pi has to worry about. I believe the new RISC-V boards (which I’ve covered some on the site and have more content upcoming related to RISC-V) may actually start to threaten the Pi’s closed-source proprietary hardware as the RISC architecture is open-sourced hardware. That means they can’t lock out their competitors like the Pi does from running the special proprietary Broadcom code in their chips for example. RISC-V boards are extremely exciting and clearly a better choice than the Pi for fans of open source.
Thanks again for sharing, take care!
Stuart Naylor
1 year ago
The PiZ2W is an amazing board for $15, in fact absolutely epic for $15 and who cares if the edges of a pcb are rough, its a pcb.
The big problem is Raspberry has turned its back on makers and its a lotto if you will get one of these for $15.
Raspberry keep waffling about scalpers but that is not true as there is no stock and its them who are letting a whole range of OEMs rot without product as they concentrate on commercial interest.
There are scalper products at just ridiculous prices, but the qty avail is tiny absolutely miniscule and its the manner of raspberries stock release that these things are so rare scalpers have been created.
The PiZ2W is prob the best product do other than there great low price psu’s as both are amazing product for $, but you if you want one its likely 2023 and if you don’t get orders in on the 1st couple of days likely you can forget about it.
Raspberry are operating in a model that means its suicide to be hardware dependent on raspberry and they will lose the maker space that contributed to raspberries success.
Great thoughts. I honestly agree with you. The rough edges could be forgivable for sure if it was actually available for $15. It just really isn’t and never has been unless you had a pre-order (which were limited) or are a IoT industry insider.
This is a remarkably uninteresting product to be honest considering it just has a quad-core CPU and literally no other changes. It’s twice as expensive (even at MSRP which we all know the situation there) as it’s predecessor I was using 5+ years ago and quality went noticeably down.
All of that being said realistically in the crazy global economic situation that we’re in if they could deliver the rough-edged Pi Zero 2 at $15 I would never have written this article. That just isn’t reality though. Their supply chain has been completely overwhelmed and if you can buy these for $15 it will be years from now most likely if it just isn’t a new model already entirely by then (like the real Pi Zero 2 we were expecting which would now be the Pi Zero 3 theoretically).
We can have a debate about how much this product really costs to buy if you want it today (a lot of the people who hated the article do not have one or they would understand better why I hated it so much after what you have to go through to get one) but suffice it to say it’s multiple times the MSRP no matter what market we’re talking.
You’re absolutely right about what the real problems are too. This marketplace is a nightmare for consumers. It’s no longer easy or cheap to get one and we have an ecosystem that is very dependent on them. I honestly see it so clearly now looking back over the past few years how they trapped an entire industry / the whole world into this hardware using closed-source proprietary hardware that they completely control. Drop-in replacements aren’t easy because of how closed-source the Raspberry Pi actually is but they are getting better and better. Lots of previous limitations such as using hardware overlays (dtoverlay) and limitations like that are finally being / have been overcome.
I think you are absolutely right about where this is going. I’ve written a *ton* of new reviews since I wrote this review for other boards (some good, some bad). The Libre Computers competitors are available for roughly $40-$50 (like for real on Amazon right now, the Potato is even overnight delivery at least for me) and remind me a lot of the old Raspberry Pi maker days. They’re much more open-sourced than Raspberry Pi ever was though (which is largely closed-source when it comes to the Broadcom hardware in particular). Libre even has a tool that can make any Raspbian image boot with a Libre Computers board so you can transfer an existing install or use a preexisting Raspbian image with them.
Lots of cool stuff is happening and I think this process has already begun. People have been receiving my new work well and it’s refreshing to compete in fresher spaces as the Raspberry Pi ecosystem is not that fun/exciting anymore and is actually really frustrating with the ongoing availability issues. I believe we will see more drop-in replacements for Raspberry Pi and Compute Module 4 (like, TONS of them, and there are a lot more already than I previously realized). I have a few coming for review very soon that I know aren’t perfect but I think this is where the future is going. You’re right that it’s because of their behavior as well.
I was one of many people that helped them build / document / promote that space. I’m now focusing my efforts on building other ecosystems because Raspberry Pi has essentially become a threat to the space unfortunately. I honestly should have seen it sooner with all of the closed-source Broadcom parts (one issue on alternative boards is that if you use closed-source Raspberry Pi hardware bits in your actual software it won’t work on competitors). I’ve been on the wrong team building essentially the Apple/NVIDIA of the single board computer world where snooty influencers will shill them to you but you will pay extraordinary prices for mediocre hardware if you want to be one of the “cool kids” that actually has one of these in-hand.
Things cannot continue like this and unless they have big secret plans in motion as we speak it’s not likely to improve for the “Raspberry Pi”-specific side any time soon. I’ve already had some people from my Raspberry Pi Minecraft server project jump ship and ask me how to switch to the Docker container versions (which run on anything). There is a real live breathing example of someone switching away from the Pi because of the supply/pricing situation like you were alluding to. Anyone that thinks this can’t/won’t happen is completely wrong. It has already begun.
Bought for at the moment they it the market for 16.5€ each, with shipping.
It’s a lot of fun. Found OS in 64bit is better than 32 bits. I use Docker on it and run few containers. Tried to deactivate some cores and reduce the speed. It is working with 2 cores and a 400MHz speed with Docker and portainer agent. I use it as an audio player, squeezelite as a container, use a stack for monitoring etc… Really lot of fun and so few watts in consumption! Anyway, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to buy it. I use a Pi400 for the code I produce and also very happy with it. Got a Pi800 from Xunlong one month ago to test and use Orange Pi Zéro 2 as an audio server and with portainer to manage all the dockers and the containers from the other computers, with grafana, Postgres, prometheus etc.
There is a lot of choice today and even the weaker SBC is able to propose something at the moment a Linux is bootable.
I only regret 5years ago when an Orange Pi Zéro was 8€ with shipping, with a quad core Allwiner.
Great thoughts, that honestly is mind blowing to think about getting the Orange Pi Zero for 8€ (even with shipping)! Recently I caused a run on the remaining supplies of the Orange Pi i96 by releasing an upgraded image for it. Unfortunately that board is nowhere near the power of the quad-core H3 but for $8 in 2022 we still completely exhausted their supplies within about a month or so of releasing an updated/fixed image. The world is definitely hungry for sub 10 $/€ boards. They don’t have to be perfect by any means as long as they are “good enough”!
I agree with your thoughts about Raspberry Pi as well. I have really mixed feelings about this issue and it’s why I was so hard on them in the article. I have every Raspberry Pi including my original Raspberry Pi 1 Model B’s (I have one made in the UK, the true OG, and one made in Singapore). I also love the Pi 400 and have 2 of them. In fact one of my use cases I use these for a lot is testing 32-bit and 64-bit ARM applications for my Docker Minecraft containers so some of the applications I’m working with are quite similar to yours.
The more and more I play with other hardware though like Orange Pi, Libre Computers boards as well as RISC-V boards the less mixed my feelings are becoming. I’m getting over them pretty quick to be honest. In fact I’m actually starting to get more angry at them because when you use the alternative boards you start to become more aware of Raspberry Pi’s “evil” practices such as closed-sourcing their hardware entirely while pretending to be this giant advocate for open source. They aren’t. Their own hardware is all closed-source and it causes problems when you try to switch away from them. Their practices are more like Apple than an open-source company.
In the early days you could have forgiven them for using closed-source Broadcom parts. They were doing something that had never been done before and they were tiny. They didn’t have the power to do that then. If you wanted chips you had to sign the closed-source agreements to get them. That hasn’t been true for many years though but Raspberry Pi kept the practices.
Not only that, they also made accessories like the official Pi camera completely proprietary. Does that sound like a company that was strong-armed into closed-sourcing their hardware? They couldn’t make an open-sourced camera? Nonsense. They are closed source now because they want to be (even if they had their reasons for agreeing to it on early Pi models, those days are long gone and they are one of the biggest hardware manufacturers in the world now). If tiny companies with virtually no resources can produce these RISC-V boards with completely open source hardware then the Pi Foundation only has the resources to do it better than they are (if they wanted to but they don’t).
I keep hearing more and more about the Orange Pi 800, I’m so glad that it’s gaining some traction! That is actually a board I still need to get and test/review. Thank you for telling me about your experience as you just bumped up getting the Orange Pi 800 on my priority list a notch. YouTube thinks I want to get one too as I’m getting recommended videos about the Orange Pi 800 so the algorithm definitely knows I’ve been keeping an eye out for them.
Jim
1 year ago
I agree is a scrap work in mine the usb ports are unbalanced one is more up than the other,, definitely it does not worth 50 something but its ok in 17 something,i took it when it was first out at 16.8 usd to replace my Rpi3 (smaller size, less power requirements etc)
They could at least put an extra 512 ram under the cpu if it was not fitting in the soc as they saying.
Now for the 5ghz wifi i think is more an Rpi3B
miniature than an Rpi3B+
But still i dont think it will cost so much to put 5ghz
The onboard wifi anyway has a less range coverage than the Zero1 (lower quality? / Scrap work?)
The pcb cut hairs issue looks definitely they were in a hurry or something
Thank you, I’m glad you were able to look at this board objectively! When I wrote this I discovered that most people are not ready to face reality here. It was suppressed by reddit but I’m beyond their power to silence at this point (and that was intentional, I knew with the rise of censorship/suppression worldwide that the only way I’d keep a voice is with my own platform). More people will find this through Google and elsewhere than ever would have seen it on reddit anyway (even without the fanboy downvote brigade).
It brought me absolutely no pleasure to write this article but my site is highly geared on helping people get into and use SBCs. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is not a smart choice for people getting into SBCs now. It’s not of particularly high quality and it’s not cheap. They’re almost $100 to realistically get one today.
The Orange Pi i96 has sold out since I wrote this. That article has over 250 comments so there are definitely people that can look at this situation objectively and say yeah, Raspberry Pi not only didn’t knock it out of the park with this release but they were also ready to explore alternatives. Thanks again for being someone able to look at it objectively with me!
I have a bunch of alternative boards coming that more directly target the Raspberry Pi (by being truly open source and not having closed source Broadcom firmware) and I’m very excited about it. I have a Banana Pi M2 Zero coming in a couple of days that is a fully open source board. No closed source Broadcom bits. It’s also electrically compatible with the Raspberry Pi Zero. All of the pin outs are the same and you can use the hats and even install Raspberry Pi OS/Raspbian on it. The cost of Banana Pi M2s has doubled from roughly $20 to $40 or so on Amazon. That is because some really smart and well-connected people know it’s a drop in replacement for the Raspberry Pi Zero (as in you can use it completely in place of a Raspberry Pi Zero, it’s fully compatible supposedly) and $40 is still a lot less than you will find any Raspberry Pi Zeros for. You can get them for more like $27-30ish from AliExpress.
I just barely today received a Libre Computers “Le Potato” that is also 100% electrically compatible with the Raspberry Pi and is modeled after the Raspberry Pi 3. I’ll be reviewing those over the next week or two and explaining why these REAL open source boards (including the drivers/firmware apparently) are a superior and cheaper choice to the Raspberry Pi! It was only $45 which is something like 1/3rd of the cost of a Raspberry Pi 4 on Amazon right now. 2GB of RAM as well!
Orange pi i96 its nice i would take it if it had hdmi or at least vga out,i cannot really work headless (without a native screen connection)
Why they did not put at least a micro hdmi input ??
I knew most negatives about zero2 almost from the moment i took it,but with 17usd it did not really bother me so much.
Im with you the reality the facts not the marketing or the fake echoes
I’ve discard zero1 as a hotspot too much interference with internal antenna and just too slow to handle connections as the cpu with one client connected was going over 50%
I made Orange pi one the hotspot very stable and bigger network output/coverage with enough horsepower to handle connections
I took it at 2017 only 15 usd now its over 40
Cant imagine what issues Rpi5 will have when its out,i will wait at least one or two Revisions to fix the bugs/issues it might have before i take it, and if i take it!!
I definitely have a bunch of complaints about the Orange Pi i96 as well. I really wish they would have added a second USB host controller for example. If they would have done that we would have been able to use gadget mode USB (the power port) and the regular USB port at the same time!
The amazing thing about the Orange Pi i96 though was the price (while it lasted) at $7-15. When it’s that cheap I suddenly become able to tolerate/forgive some imperfections and boneheaded design choices like this. I’d be more tolerant of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W if it was actually available for MSRP (with a reasonable chance of getting them, I know some people did with preorders and ones that use the rpilocator tool religiously) but realistically it’s a $100 computer and for a $100 computer it’s not very good. We will not be getting more i96s unfortunately though as those are discontinued. They’ve only had a revival because of the incredibly high Pi prices / low availability as well as the fixed image we did that actually lets you use the board.
I’m also very nervous about the Raspberry Pi 5. The cost cutting measures like not bothering to clean up the perforations where they break the boards apart (which are very clearly printed in one big long piece and then they break them apart on the perforations) on this board were dramatic. Not even their Chinese competitors like Orange Pi would resort to this drastic of cost cutting. Only Raspberry Pi themselves could get away with shipping out boards with rough fraying perforations (and not just one fluke, they’re pretty much all like this).
I really feel like the parallels between them and NVIDIA are too strong here. They aren’t operating in reality and I’m sure to them it feels like they can do no wrong and people will buy whatever they put out and whatever price. It won’t last though and there are a lot of gears in motion now (including myself and other developers/creators/whatever and even hardware manufacturers) that are working to build alternative ecosystems because they’ve lost touch with reality and become a threat to the space frankly. This is hurting the builder / IoT ecosystem at this point especially the small builders / consumers.
I’m extremely excited about the Banana Pi M2 model for example. They are making 100% electrically compatible boards with Raspberry Pi that can even run their own OS. I think this is the future. The IoT/builder community has been kind of held hostage by the fact that all of the libraries/support/documentation/articles out there are for the Raspberry Pi. Once you have drop-in hardware though that is compatible we can start to replace this company/hardware with other choices.
They are even creating an electrically compatible Compute Module 4 which is probably the most exciting SBC development I’ve read in years. I love the Compute Module 4 and did a lot of early coverage on this site for it. Nobody was ever able to get them though so even though these are top ranking articles they don’t get a lot of traffic. They’re 5x at least the price they were ever supposed to be as well. I will be covering this CM4 compatible replacement as soon as it’s available.
That’s why it makes me upset because I knew people would defend it but objectively we’re literally in worse quality control territory than the cheap Chinese knockoffs! Those same people would rake the other brands over the coals if they did anything like this. Without question. It’s not just about the fraying threads and rough perforations though. If they aren’t even doing that what do they think the rest of their quality control looks like? They won’t file the edges off the board but they’re meticulously checking everything else on it? Of course not. The perforations/fraying are just a really ugly and visible sign of how far the quality control of these boards has been compromised over the years. They are literally just breaking these off in pieces and throwing them in a bag!
It definitely looks like it from the results at pibenchmarks.com for the XU4. There’s a few people hitting similar numbers to me including a score of 1400 with a SanDisk at 70MB/s+.
I’ve used arctic silver for years as a paste but I don’t think a paste will hold it in place. You probably need an adhesive.
The 3 thermal glue options at first look possible to use I guess but the first one I trust would be something like the thermal adhesive double sided tape. This is basically a roll of what all of them use anyway (in fact this is probably higher quality tape because a lot of the cheap heatsinks don’t actually have thermally conductive tape).
I’ve never owned one of these before, but why do zero kits have USB-C on them? Are they just using adapters?
Hey Tommy,
Unfortunately Raspberry Pi didn’t update to USB-C for the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W. I think you might be seeing the Radxa Zero. I’d definitely make sure that what you are seeing isn’t for the Radxa Zero which is purely USB-C. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2W is indeed purely micro USB still.
If they are using these with the proper Raspberry Pi Zero 2W they would have to be using adapters or potentially hats that support USB-C. I think there’s a good chance a lot of what you’re seeing is the Radxa Zero though which honestly is a better choice (as far as hardware goes). As far as image support goes Raspberry Pi definitely has the edge there.
Anyone who would be fine using Armbian or Debian/Ubuntu instead of Raspberry Pi OS / Raspbian would probably do better with a Radxa Zero. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2W is much, much harder to get than a Radxa Zero as well. That’s definitely the hotter board at the moment and availability is the other part of why besides the more modern hardware (as even for Raspberry Pi fans if they didn’t pre-order one of these they aren’t getting one any time soon unless they want to be scalped for approximately $100+). Neither of them are super easy to get but it’s at least possible to get the Radxa Zero for a reasonable price off AliExpress or allnetchina.
Hopefully that helps!
The price is boosted at 150 by now,i recommend only odroid xu4 in half the price.with performance higher than raspberry pi 4
Hey Jim,
Holy smokes! That one isn’t going to get any better either. Last we heard from the supposed giant Raspberry Pi supply dump the CEO said they were going to do was *not* going to include the Zero 2W. They said it would only be the older Pi Zeros (and Pi 4s) that would get dumped.
They’re really going to regret paying $150 for this. I paid something like $58 ordering it on eBay from Europe although I doubt that’s even possible anymore. I should probably sell mine on eBay or at least those prices make me want to.
Since we know that the Pi Zero 2W is not going to be a part of the announced Raspberry Pi supply dump though I believe everyone should take your advice or skip this model altogether. The reason it’s not a part of the Pi dump is that undoubtedly it’s not very profitable to make these with the upgraded quad-core CPU for $15. It’s much more profitable to make the old single core version even if they’re selling for a few bucks less (which they did raise the price on them, there was a slight price raise even for the older Pi Zero).
Even if one wants to stick with Raspberry Pi I’m sure there will be a Pi Zero 3 at some point that fixes all the mistakes that were made with this board. Definitely don’t be silly and buy this thing for $150 or even $100+. It just doesn’t make sense no matter how much of a Raspberry Pi fan one is. Even if you’re the most die-hard fan you should wait for the Pi 3W or buy one of the older ones from the Pi dump. This board is not going to make sense for anyone to buy any time soon.
Thanks and take care!
I was from the lucky ones that got it at 15usd,its not a bad board (at that price) take care
Hey Jim,
Agree 100% for it at $15! That’s why so many people’s eyes were on whether the 2W would be in the Raspberry Pi dump for sure but from what we’ve heard publicly the answer to that question is no.
If they were able to deliver this for $15 reliably you’re right. The board itself is just fine and it’s only the pricing/availability that makes it so painful. If this was reliably available for most people for $15 it would make a whole lot of my recent board reviews totally unnecessary (especially the Pi Zero form factor ones).
I would have also gave this one a totally different review even if it had all of the same flaws. I reviewed it as a premium board because people are for the most part (myself included) paying a premium price to get their hands on it due to poor availability.
Nobody who got their hands on it for $15 should feel like they didn’t get a good board. That is definitely a win if you are one of the people that got it for $15. It really is a good board if you can get it for that price. I definitely just wanted to make it clear that it’s absolutely not worth spending $100+ to get this board. It’s not a premium board experience and if anything they’re cutting some corners on the newer ones that they weren’t on previous ones. It would all be understandable/acceptable for $15. No question.
I could have got about 4 of them for what I paid for 1 if I could have bought them for $15 each. If people are seriously buying it for $100-$150+ (and they must be, because the prices are going up) you could buy 10 of them for that at retail. Absolutely bonkers.
In reality can you imagine getting 10 of these for $150? All I see when I look at that is insane profits. You’d literally make a minimum of $1000 profit just selling them on eBay. That’s how out of line the street price is with the retail price and it seems to be getting worse. I also believe it’s why this keeps going on even though the chip/silicon shortage has ended for basically everything else except Raspberry Pis. If you are a IoT manufacturer and are first in line for these I still to this day don’t understand why anyone would ship a product containing one of these (and I’ve never seen anyone ship a product with a 2W ever in it). The IoT manufacturers are lining up to buy whatever limited supply of these they have and I honestly think they just get resold to us at insane prices by a lot of them.
If anyone knows of someone actually shipping a product that has a Zero 2W in it and it costs less than $100 let me know. I need money and that’s basically free money to just buy whatever product dared to ship a Pi with a street value that high in it, take the Pi out, sell it on eBay then I’ll have all the money I could ever want. I’d imagine that’s why nobody actually ships products with these. They’re worth too much even if it’s a perfect fit for the product and it just doesn’t make sense. They’re too rare/valuable.
I’m not joking about this either honestly. If I found an arbitrage opportunity like this I would just buy a bunch on my credit card and disassemble/sell them. It would be easier than the articles and work that I normally do to make a living. This is also why I can’t believe that whoever has access to be first in line for Raspberry Pis (such as the IoT manufacturers) aren’t doing this exact same thing.
I’m telling you all that if I knew of one I would do it and it would work. I’d only be limited by how many they have to sell of their IoT product as to how much money I could make flipping these. Sure I’d only be able to start the first batch with the limits of my credit/funds but it would be so much gravy afterward that you could basically scale it to as large as you want / as many products as they dare to sell with one of these in it for <$100. That is a real life money hack right there if it exists which is why it probably doesn't. Nobody's IoT idea could ever be good or profitable enough vs. just selling these. They're selling for 10x their "suggested retail price". 10x is crypto bubble numbers. It's printing money. Normal businesses do not typically have 10x profit margins on their products. 10x is almost unheard of in any type of investment which is why it's so sought after and so many people got burned chasing in in crypto when it was too late this market cycle (and they needed to wait for the next crypto bubble for their shot). These IoT manufacturers have had access to a money printing machine like this for years and I can't believe Raspberry Pi hasn't taken it away yet. The moment they do the shortages will end and the prices will crash. It's just as easy for the IoT manufacturers to do this as it would be for me to do my theoretical buy any IoT product shipping with a 2W for less than $100. They just buy as many Pis as they will be sold by the Pi Foundation through their special access and then they sell them to you. It's so obvious this is what is happening. It's easier for them because they don't even have to disassemble someone else's product first to get the Pi and they're getting it for that coveted $15. I really should place a IoT manufacturer order for Pis under jamesachambers.com and see how much I could get. If you can't beat them join them right? I have a business license for the site. I should qualify. In reality there's probably a minimum of 1,000 or 10,000 or something and they probably want proof you've shipped products before. I don't know how hard it is to get through the special process but I'm saying it's the special process that is actually the problem. The people going through that process are not using these to ship in products. They just qualify for whatever reason so they've had a license to print money for several years now (and counting). If they just sold these to everyone and stopped gatekeeping the Raspberry Pi the prices would crash or at the very least return to something much more reasonable. What is happening is these are being held in warehouses and slowly sold off instead just like the PS5 scalpers and the Xbox Series X scalpers did. It's nothing new and these are *huge* scalping industries that are very sophisticated (unlike Raspberry Pi's strategy). Microsoft and Sony were no match for the scalping industries even and it took AGES for them to break it. Sony just barely broke it around Christmas / the beginning of this year. It will go on for as long as Raspberry Pi has a multi-tiered system like this and as a user/customer you are the least important / last in line as far as the Raspberry Pi Foundation is concerned. The Raspberry Pi foundation is not smarter than Microsoft or Sony and they aren't smarter than these scalpers either. Indeed, the Raspberry Pi's system is making this *easy* for them. It's actually protecting them once they figure out how to get in and get "qualified" to be allowed to buy them. With the Raspberry Pi we don't even have a shot against them. You always did with the Xbox and PS5 even though it was *really* hard. They are now in a special line ahead of us. You won't even get the 1-2 second chance to click the button when they go in stock. In reality those will never even be sent to an authorized reseller. You won't even get your 1 second chance. It's just a matter of incentives vs. disincentives. If you are a manufacturer trying to make money and you have access to the Raspberry Pi in bulk at retail prices then the absolute worst thing you can do is ship a product with a Raspberry Pi in it. For 95+% of IoT/manufacturers their original plan will be the least profitable thing they could possibly do in this market. It may even cause you problems to do so if your product is below a certain price threshold as I've pointed out. The smartest and most profitable thing you can do is to sell however many Raspberry Pis you got for as much money as you can. That's the truth. That's the profitable choice and since it is that's exactly what people are doing. Broken down like this hopefully people can see why the only question in my mind is does Raspberry Pi understand that their system is creating the perfect atmosphere for predatory scalping and artificial scarcity to happen or not? Are they complicit in this? Do they have friends/family somehow profiting from this system? Do the employeees take a couple home every day after their shift and sell them on eBay or something? Or are they just morons who don't understand basic business and financial incentives / maximizing profit? I can assure them the scammers / scalpers do understand these things while they keep scratching their heads wondering why they can't break this shortage (while somehow not asking why aren't all these Pis we're shipping to IoT manufacturers showing up in devices?). I think if the Raspberry Pi Foundation started investigating these issues (assuming it's not coming from the top) they'd find things are very dirty. Pis are disappearing. People are probably getting approved as an IoT manufacturer that shouldn't be / never have shipped devices / never went through the right checks. Someone is profiting. It's the only explanation for how they could be the last silicon company in the world to figure out their supply chain issues. Someone inside (and probably a lot of people) are making a lot of money off this and so things are not changing. When people are making 10x crypto-style profits off something you're going to have 10x crypto-style bad behavior going on in those companies. The Pi Foundation needs to clean house. You take care as well!
I think the Radxa Zero is a good alternative. It retails for 19.90 USD on AllNetChina’s website with the 512mb RAM configuration. It also destroys the performance of the Raspberry Pi Zero Two and uses USB-C.
Hey FlyingCow,
Welcome! I couldn’t agree more. I actually have one of these ordered from Ameridroid (an official redistributor) that I plan on reviewing as soon as I get my hands on it. It has been waiting for a while (it’s one with the integrated eMMC) and I’m hoping it comes any time now.
Even though I don’t have my hands on one yet though everyone who has says it’s great (and that’s why they can be hard to get a hold of). Depending on where you are in the world though you may have better availability. It’s quite bad in North America and Ameridroid is doing their best. You won’t find them on Amazon US right now either unfortunately.
It does absolutely destroy the Raspberry Pi Zero and Raspberry Pi Zero 2 though. There’s no doubt about that. People have taken a few Radxa Zero benchmarks on Pi Benchmarks and you can see the crushing performance on them.
Thanks for sharing!
there’s plenty that I wish was different. micro USB is inexcusable (I get that type c is more expensive, but at least give me mini), 512MB of ram is unfortunate and leaves that nice quad core CPU wanting more, and no 5ghz is a real pain. I have to ask though, how much of your review comes from the price you paid? I got mine without the help of a scalper by preordering it, so I’m reasonably happy with it. the form factor is what draws me to it, not the specs, and an extra $5 for those extra cores ain’t bad.
I feel like availability is the only real drawback. at $15 I can forgive everything except micro USB, but with scalpers in the mix I’d certainly go for something else.
Hey butre,
Welcome, that’s a great question and I think your take is completely reasonable. The price and availability are a huge, huge part of the review. You’re right to suggest it’s even the key part.
To explain I’d like to draw a parallel to the NVIDIA 4080 launch which I’m guessing most people interested in tech are familiar with how it’s going. That launch is absolutely hated. Nobody is buying them.
Is this because it’s a bad card? No. I have a 3090 and the 4080 is superior to my card. It’s a better graphics card. So why would I say nobody should buy such a great graphics card? The price. In that case it’s literally directly NVIDIA’s fault for pricing it that high.
With the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W maybe it was the opposite problem. They can’t seem to actually have any availability pricing it at $15. They never have. Not once since launch/pre-orders. That’s not a product they can realistically deliver to the market in a form that you can, you know, just go and buy one to use for your project.
I understand some of these trickle into resellers and that some people constantly checking rpilocator get some of these at MSRP. It’s so hard and so much work though (with so much competition with bots) that it’s not even worth it to me. I don’t want to spend my life on rpilocator for weeks trying to snag one for $15 and I’m guessing most people have better things to do as well. I wasn’t willing to do it to get a PS5 or a Xbox Series X either. I just waited until things weren’t so absurd. I advise people to do the exact same thing for the Pi Zero 2W (if it isn’t replaced outright by a successor by the time they realistically solve these supply chain issues) if you aren’t willing to even consider alternatives which I’ve done a bunch of reviews on.
I definitely understand that if you got this for $15 by preordering it you would not have this sour taste in your mouth. That’s a totally different experience and I wish they could have delivered that experience for everyone. They never could though. If you didn’t preorder it then you will have to get it the way I did or wait apparently another year according to the Raspberry Pi CEO who says he is expecting the supply issues to clear up by then.
By all means if you can get it for $15 it’s going to be fine. Raspberry Pi themselves says though that may be about another year.
Now let me ask you a question: if you didn’t pre-order it and absolutely needed one for a project, could you wait a year? Some people have already been waiting almost a year and there’s another year to go. If the answer is no then this is going to be a $80-$100 product.
This is not a $80-$100 product and I’m sure you would agree with that with your hands on it (and I appreciate that you actually have one since a lot of push back I got was from people who don’t and I can almost guarantee will not buy one and will buy whatever generation comes next with better availability to replace it). Raspberry Pi doesn’t think it’s a $80-$100 product and they themselves would tell you NO, do not buy it for that. There’s no defending it at that price and it’s not going away any time soon.
I absolutely agree though that this review, just like everyone’s review of the NVIDIA 4080, is 100% based on the price and availability we have to work. It is what it is and the fact that the 4080 and the Pi Zero 2 might themselves be great hardware they are not great product offerings due to missing the mark on pricing/availability!
Hello James:
I 100% agree with your article.
More over, I was obligated to change a Ionizer control board I designed with the RPZ, and replace and redesing the board around the OPZ H3, because RPZ shortage.
This happened before to start the first production lot.
Same happened with the RP CM3 and CM4 modules.
Hey Giancarlo,
Thanks for leaving this, that is fascinating! I’m actually familiar with the Orange Pi Zero and the H3 processors. I’m a huge fan of the Orange Pi Zero 2 as well even for regular consumers. These boards have come a long way and enjoy really good Armbian support and the third party image support is getting better and better as well. The H3 boards seem to be cheap and widely available and I’ve had good experiences with them personally.
I read a news article yesterday where the Raspberry Pi CEO was saying the supply situation should be resolved within about a year. A year?!?!?!?! This has been already going on for at least a year. I honestly think they will be really surprised when they finally come back to market and they realize how many of us have moved on. It’s not really because we chose to either. Waiting 2 years for Raspberry Pis to become purchasable again is not an acceptable solution for any company or consumer.
I honestly think very few of the people buying alternative boards were actively looking to “switch”. I wasn’t. It doesn’t sound like you were. They simply cannot provide the parts anymore at the prices they are claiming so I was forced to explore alternatives and to be honest once I did I immediately realized that the Raspberry Pi is no longer magical or the de-facto best (or even particularly high quality anymore). It was 5 years ago. It’s not now. You can actually buy better boards with better hardware for less money now and that is only going to become more true going forward I’m sure.
I won’t ever go back after experiencing some of these competitor boards now. They’ve finally caught up with and are in the process of passing the Raspberry Pi (I believe the Orange Pi 5 which I have preordered will obliterate the Pi 4 and be available for less money). My eyes have also been opened to how closed-source the Raspberry Pi hardware and accessories are and this is hostile to my personal beliefs as I do a lot of open-source project development.
There are some really great boards out there now at incredible prices. Orange Pi’s prices are pretty incredible. They aren’t as low as the Raspberry Pi’s theoretical MSRP prices but that means nothing as everyone should have learned by now if there’s no availability. The Orange Pi boards are a slightly higher MSRP on paper but in reality / on the street they are much, much cheaper.
It’s not just Orange Pi that the Raspberry Pi has to worry about. I believe the new RISC-V boards (which I’ve covered some on the site and have more content upcoming related to RISC-V) may actually start to threaten the Pi’s closed-source proprietary hardware as the RISC architecture is open-sourced hardware. That means they can’t lock out their competitors like the Pi does from running the special proprietary Broadcom code in their chips for example. RISC-V boards are extremely exciting and clearly a better choice than the Pi for fans of open source.
Thanks again for sharing, take care!
The PiZ2W is an amazing board for $15, in fact absolutely epic for $15 and who cares if the edges of a pcb are rough, its a pcb.
The big problem is Raspberry has turned its back on makers and its a lotto if you will get one of these for $15.
Raspberry keep waffling about scalpers but that is not true as there is no stock and its them who are letting a whole range of OEMs rot without product as they concentrate on commercial interest.
There are scalper products at just ridiculous prices, but the qty avail is tiny absolutely miniscule and its the manner of raspberries stock release that these things are so rare scalpers have been created.
The PiZ2W is prob the best product do other than there great low price psu’s as both are amazing product for $, but you if you want one its likely 2023 and if you don’t get orders in on the 1st couple of days likely you can forget about it.
Raspberry are operating in a model that means its suicide to be hardware dependent on raspberry and they will lose the maker space that contributed to raspberries success.
Hey Stuart,
Great thoughts. I honestly agree with you. The rough edges could be forgivable for sure if it was actually available for $15. It just really isn’t and never has been unless you had a pre-order (which were limited) or are a IoT industry insider.
This is a remarkably uninteresting product to be honest considering it just has a quad-core CPU and literally no other changes. It’s twice as expensive (even at MSRP which we all know the situation there) as it’s predecessor I was using 5+ years ago and quality went noticeably down.
All of that being said realistically in the crazy global economic situation that we’re in if they could deliver the rough-edged Pi Zero 2 at $15 I would never have written this article. That just isn’t reality though. Their supply chain has been completely overwhelmed and if you can buy these for $15 it will be years from now most likely if it just isn’t a new model already entirely by then (like the real Pi Zero 2 we were expecting which would now be the Pi Zero 3 theoretically).
We can have a debate about how much this product really costs to buy if you want it today (a lot of the people who hated the article do not have one or they would understand better why I hated it so much after what you have to go through to get one) but suffice it to say it’s multiple times the MSRP no matter what market we’re talking.
You’re absolutely right about what the real problems are too. This marketplace is a nightmare for consumers. It’s no longer easy or cheap to get one and we have an ecosystem that is very dependent on them. I honestly see it so clearly now looking back over the past few years how they trapped an entire industry / the whole world into this hardware using closed-source proprietary hardware that they completely control. Drop-in replacements aren’t easy because of how closed-source the Raspberry Pi actually is but they are getting better and better. Lots of previous limitations such as using hardware overlays (dtoverlay) and limitations like that are finally being / have been overcome.
I think you are absolutely right about where this is going. I’ve written a *ton* of new reviews since I wrote this review for other boards (some good, some bad). The Libre Computers competitors are available for roughly $40-$50 (like for real on Amazon right now, the Potato is even overnight delivery at least for me) and remind me a lot of the old Raspberry Pi maker days. They’re much more open-sourced than Raspberry Pi ever was though (which is largely closed-source when it comes to the Broadcom hardware in particular). Libre even has a tool that can make any Raspbian image boot with a Libre Computers board so you can transfer an existing install or use a preexisting Raspbian image with them.
Lots of cool stuff is happening and I think this process has already begun. People have been receiving my new work well and it’s refreshing to compete in fresher spaces as the Raspberry Pi ecosystem is not that fun/exciting anymore and is actually really frustrating with the ongoing availability issues. I believe we will see more drop-in replacements for Raspberry Pi and Compute Module 4 (like, TONS of them, and there are a lot more already than I previously realized). I have a few coming for review very soon that I know aren’t perfect but I think this is where the future is going. You’re right that it’s because of their behavior as well.
I was one of many people that helped them build / document / promote that space. I’m now focusing my efforts on building other ecosystems because Raspberry Pi has essentially become a threat to the space unfortunately. I honestly should have seen it sooner with all of the closed-source Broadcom parts (one issue on alternative boards is that if you use closed-source Raspberry Pi hardware bits in your actual software it won’t work on competitors). I’ve been on the wrong team building essentially the Apple/NVIDIA of the single board computer world where snooty influencers will shill them to you but you will pay extraordinary prices for mediocre hardware if you want to be one of the “cool kids” that actually has one of these in-hand.
Things cannot continue like this and unless they have big secret plans in motion as we speak it’s not likely to improve for the “Raspberry Pi”-specific side any time soon. I’ve already had some people from my Raspberry Pi Minecraft server project jump ship and ask me how to switch to the Docker container versions (which run on anything). There is a real live breathing example of someone switching away from the Pi because of the supply/pricing situation like you were alluding to. Anyone that thinks this can’t/won’t happen is completely wrong. It has already begun.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Bought for at the moment they it the market for 16.5€ each, with shipping.
It’s a lot of fun. Found OS in 64bit is better than 32 bits. I use Docker on it and run few containers. Tried to deactivate some cores and reduce the speed. It is working with 2 cores and a 400MHz speed with Docker and portainer agent. I use it as an audio player, squeezelite as a container, use a stack for monitoring etc… Really lot of fun and so few watts in consumption! Anyway, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to buy it. I use a Pi400 for the code I produce and also very happy with it. Got a Pi800 from Xunlong one month ago to test and use Orange Pi Zéro 2 as an audio server and with portainer to manage all the dockers and the containers from the other computers, with grafana, Postgres, prometheus etc.
There is a lot of choice today and even the weaker SBC is able to propose something at the moment a Linux is bootable.
I only regret 5years ago when an Orange Pi Zéro was 8€ with shipping, with a quad core Allwiner.
Hey renaudrenaud,
Great thoughts, that honestly is mind blowing to think about getting the Orange Pi Zero for 8€ (even with shipping)! Recently I caused a run on the remaining supplies of the Orange Pi i96 by releasing an upgraded image for it. Unfortunately that board is nowhere near the power of the quad-core H3 but for $8 in 2022 we still completely exhausted their supplies within about a month or so of releasing an updated/fixed image. The world is definitely hungry for sub 10 $/€ boards. They don’t have to be perfect by any means as long as they are “good enough”!
I agree with your thoughts about Raspberry Pi as well. I have really mixed feelings about this issue and it’s why I was so hard on them in the article. I have every Raspberry Pi including my original Raspberry Pi 1 Model B’s (I have one made in the UK, the true OG, and one made in Singapore). I also love the Pi 400 and have 2 of them. In fact one of my use cases I use these for a lot is testing 32-bit and 64-bit ARM applications for my Docker Minecraft containers so some of the applications I’m working with are quite similar to yours.
The more and more I play with other hardware though like Orange Pi, Libre Computers boards as well as RISC-V boards the less mixed my feelings are becoming. I’m getting over them pretty quick to be honest. In fact I’m actually starting to get more angry at them because when you use the alternative boards you start to become more aware of Raspberry Pi’s “evil” practices such as closed-sourcing their hardware entirely while pretending to be this giant advocate for open source. They aren’t. Their own hardware is all closed-source and it causes problems when you try to switch away from them. Their practices are more like Apple than an open-source company.
In the early days you could have forgiven them for using closed-source Broadcom parts. They were doing something that had never been done before and they were tiny. They didn’t have the power to do that then. If you wanted chips you had to sign the closed-source agreements to get them. That hasn’t been true for many years though but Raspberry Pi kept the practices.
Not only that, they also made accessories like the official Pi camera completely proprietary. Does that sound like a company that was strong-armed into closed-sourcing their hardware? They couldn’t make an open-sourced camera? Nonsense. They are closed source now because they want to be (even if they had their reasons for agreeing to it on early Pi models, those days are long gone and they are one of the biggest hardware manufacturers in the world now). If tiny companies with virtually no resources can produce these RISC-V boards with completely open source hardware then the Pi Foundation only has the resources to do it better than they are (if they wanted to but they don’t).
I keep hearing more and more about the Orange Pi 800, I’m so glad that it’s gaining some traction! That is actually a board I still need to get and test/review. Thank you for telling me about your experience as you just bumped up getting the Orange Pi 800 on my priority list a notch. YouTube thinks I want to get one too as I’m getting recommended videos about the Orange Pi 800 so the algorithm definitely knows I’ve been keeping an eye out for them.
I agree is a scrap work in mine the usb ports are unbalanced one is more up than the other,, definitely it does not worth 50 something but its ok in 17 something,i took it when it was first out at 16.8 usd to replace my Rpi3 (smaller size, less power requirements etc)
They could at least put an extra 512 ram under the cpu if it was not fitting in the soc as they saying.
Now for the 5ghz wifi i think is more an Rpi3B
miniature than an Rpi3B+
But still i dont think it will cost so much to put 5ghz
The onboard wifi anyway has a less range coverage than the Zero1 (lower quality? / Scrap work?)
The pcb cut hairs issue looks definitely they were in a hurry or something
USB C should be present too
Hey Jim,
Thank you, I’m glad you were able to look at this board objectively! When I wrote this I discovered that most people are not ready to face reality here. It was suppressed by reddit but I’m beyond their power to silence at this point (and that was intentional, I knew with the rise of censorship/suppression worldwide that the only way I’d keep a voice is with my own platform). More people will find this through Google and elsewhere than ever would have seen it on reddit anyway (even without the fanboy downvote brigade).
It brought me absolutely no pleasure to write this article but my site is highly geared on helping people get into and use SBCs. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is not a smart choice for people getting into SBCs now. It’s not of particularly high quality and it’s not cheap. They’re almost $100 to realistically get one today.
The Orange Pi i96 has sold out since I wrote this. That article has over 250 comments so there are definitely people that can look at this situation objectively and say yeah, Raspberry Pi not only didn’t knock it out of the park with this release but they were also ready to explore alternatives. Thanks again for being someone able to look at it objectively with me!
I have a bunch of alternative boards coming that more directly target the Raspberry Pi (by being truly open source and not having closed source Broadcom firmware) and I’m very excited about it. I have a Banana Pi M2 Zero coming in a couple of days that is a fully open source board. No closed source Broadcom bits. It’s also electrically compatible with the Raspberry Pi Zero. All of the pin outs are the same and you can use the hats and even install Raspberry Pi OS/Raspbian on it. The cost of Banana Pi M2s has doubled from roughly $20 to $40 or so on Amazon. That is because some really smart and well-connected people know it’s a drop in replacement for the Raspberry Pi Zero (as in you can use it completely in place of a Raspberry Pi Zero, it’s fully compatible supposedly) and $40 is still a lot less than you will find any Raspberry Pi Zeros for. You can get them for more like $27-30ish from AliExpress.
I just barely today received a Libre Computers “Le Potato” that is also 100% electrically compatible with the Raspberry Pi and is modeled after the Raspberry Pi 3. I’ll be reviewing those over the next week or two and explaining why these REAL open source boards (including the drivers/firmware apparently) are a superior and cheaper choice to the Raspberry Pi! It was only $45 which is something like 1/3rd of the cost of a Raspberry Pi 4 on Amazon right now. 2GB of RAM as well!
Orange pi i96 its nice i would take it if it had hdmi or at least vga out,i cannot really work headless (without a native screen connection)
Why they did not put at least a micro hdmi input ??
I knew most negatives about zero2 almost from the moment i took it,but with 17usd it did not really bother me so much.
Im with you the reality the facts not the marketing or the fake echoes
I’ve discard zero1 as a hotspot too much interference with internal antenna and just too slow to handle connections as the cpu with one client connected was going over 50%
I made Orange pi one the hotspot very stable and bigger network output/coverage with enough horsepower to handle connections
I took it at 2017 only 15 usd now its over 40
Cant imagine what issues Rpi5 will have when its out,i will wait at least one or two Revisions to fix the bugs/issues it might have before i take it, and if i take it!!
Hey Jim,
I definitely have a bunch of complaints about the Orange Pi i96 as well. I really wish they would have added a second USB host controller for example. If they would have done that we would have been able to use gadget mode USB (the power port) and the regular USB port at the same time!
The amazing thing about the Orange Pi i96 though was the price (while it lasted) at $7-15. When it’s that cheap I suddenly become able to tolerate/forgive some imperfections and boneheaded design choices like this. I’d be more tolerant of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W if it was actually available for MSRP (with a reasonable chance of getting them, I know some people did with preorders and ones that use the rpilocator tool religiously) but realistically it’s a $100 computer and for a $100 computer it’s not very good. We will not be getting more i96s unfortunately though as those are discontinued. They’ve only had a revival because of the incredibly high Pi prices / low availability as well as the fixed image we did that actually lets you use the board.
I’m also very nervous about the Raspberry Pi 5. The cost cutting measures like not bothering to clean up the perforations where they break the boards apart (which are very clearly printed in one big long piece and then they break them apart on the perforations) on this board were dramatic. Not even their Chinese competitors like Orange Pi would resort to this drastic of cost cutting. Only Raspberry Pi themselves could get away with shipping out boards with rough fraying perforations (and not just one fluke, they’re pretty much all like this).
I really feel like the parallels between them and NVIDIA are too strong here. They aren’t operating in reality and I’m sure to them it feels like they can do no wrong and people will buy whatever they put out and whatever price. It won’t last though and there are a lot of gears in motion now (including myself and other developers/creators/whatever and even hardware manufacturers) that are working to build alternative ecosystems because they’ve lost touch with reality and become a threat to the space frankly. This is hurting the builder / IoT ecosystem at this point especially the small builders / consumers.
I’m extremely excited about the Banana Pi M2 model for example. They are making 100% electrically compatible boards with Raspberry Pi that can even run their own OS. I think this is the future. The IoT/builder community has been kind of held hostage by the fact that all of the libraries/support/documentation/articles out there are for the Raspberry Pi. Once you have drop-in hardware though that is compatible we can start to replace this company/hardware with other choices.
They are even creating an electrically compatible Compute Module 4 which is probably the most exciting SBC development I’ve read in years. I love the Compute Module 4 and did a lot of early coverage on this site for it. Nobody was ever able to get them though so even though these are top ranking articles they don’t get a lot of traffic. They’re 5x at least the price they were ever supposed to be as well. I will be covering this CM4 compatible replacement as soon as it’s available.
That’s why it makes me upset because I knew people would defend it but objectively we’re literally in worse quality control territory than the cheap Chinese knockoffs! Those same people would rake the other brands over the coals if they did anything like this. Without question. It’s not just about the fraying threads and rough perforations though. If they aren’t even doing that what do they think the rest of their quality control looks like? They won’t file the edges off the board but they’re meticulously checking everything else on it? Of course not. The perforations/fraying are just a really ugly and visible sign of how far the quality control of these boards has been compromised over the years. They are literally just breaking these off in pieces and throwing them in a bag!
Very interesting all this nice to he compatible the board with other modules,send an email to the raspi factory to put a sata port :p
no more usb cases that dont work correct
You are right raspi is becoming like apple or sony,their psu also is very weak they whould put a 5a at least
Hey james do you know if also the normal xu4 with the fan has also the sdr104 memory card controller??
Hey Jim,
It definitely looks like it from the results at pibenchmarks.com for the XU4. There’s a few people hitting similar numbers to me including a score of 1400 with a SanDisk at 70MB/s+.
Hi,i want to use thermal paste instead of tape
Do you know any brand/brands that will do the job and not dripping/running and stay in place?
there are so many i don’t know what to take
Thanks
Hey Jim,
I’ve used arctic silver for years as a paste but I don’t think a paste will hold it in place. You probably need an adhesive.
The 3 thermal glue options at first look possible to use I guess but the first one I trust would be something like the thermal adhesive double sided tape. This is basically a roll of what all of them use anyway (in fact this is probably higher quality tape because a lot of the cheap heatsinks don’t actually have thermally conductive tape).
Hopefully that helps!