4 ms·

The Raspberry Pi has been a bad deal for a long time now. Persistent shortages drove the real-world price up (no one was selling them for MSRP) and for some rea

by jml7c5 2y ago

The Raspberry Pi has been a bad deal for a long time now. Persistent shortages drove the real-world price up (no one was selling them for MSRP) and for some reason they never came back down. Cheap tiny PCs are better at the high end, and increasingly-capable microcontrollers are better for tinkering. The Pi sits in a weird niche, and its popularity these days is largely based on inertia and network effects. It's been a slow, strange shift away from a $25 computer meant for kids to learn programming and electronics.

throwaway48476 2y ago
All of this is true but many of the competitors don't support their products after launch. If you want a product that will be supported by software into the future there aren't so many alternatives.
schappim 2y ago
I own a company that sells BeagleBones, Jestsons, LattePandas, in the past Bananna Pi and other cheap and cheerful Chinese embedded boards. What sets the Raspberry Pi apart from its peers is the software stability. None of the others come close to it (okay, maybe the latte panda does)… > for some reason they never came back down That simply is not true if you buy from an authorised distributor. Authorised distributors are required to sell at MSRP.
- xmodem 2y ago
  The MSRP has gone up, though - the 1GB Pi 4 was introduced at $35. The cheapest Pi 5 is $50 (albeit with 2x the RAM). Secondarily, mini-PCs are much more readily available at better prices now, which makes the Pi look more expensive in comparison.
  - schappim 2y ago
    > albeit with 2x the RAM - multiple cores - all sorts of IP on the silicon - usb 3 - gigabit Ethernet - wifi - Bluetooth - camera connector - dsi - hell, even a power button … etc etc. They’re not comparable.
    - xmodem 2y ago
      Come on man, The Pi 4 has almost all of those. Besides, GP was pointing out that it feels like the price has gone up. I was pointing out that one reason it feels that way is because it has. No-one is arguing you don't get something for that money.
      - schappim 2y ago
        You’re looking at it wrong. The 5 doesn’t simply replace the 4. Raspberry Pi has committed to keeping the Pi 4 in production until 2034. Even the Pi1B+ will be available until 2030 at pretty much the same price as launch day!
oakesm9 2y ago
The popularity is now mainly based around the software support and the product lifecycle. With a lot of other SBC (single board computers) you're lucky to get a very of the Linux Kernal which works in the first place. The likelyhood it will get upstreamed or kept up-to-date with upstream is basically zero in most cases. Raspberry Pi has great software support and the original Pi 1 has only just become end-of-life and unsupported by Raspberry Pi OS at the end of last year. There is also clarity on when the hardware will be produced until. For the Pi 5 for example they've commited to it still being produced until at least 2036. Those together mean that if you're using it in industrial, educational, or embeded settings then you can depend on the board lasting a good while longer than other options which might become insecure and useless before the hardware itself fails. This is slightly less of an issue for hobbyist who are running Homelabs or personal projects on SBCs.
daveoc64 2y ago
>Persistent shortages drove the real-world price up (no one was selling them for MSRP) I see a lot of people say this, but I never saw this happen in the UK. All of the official sellers sell it at MSRP.
- matt-p 2y ago
  Ditto
- dspillett 2y ago
  > >Persistent shortages drove the real-world price up (no one was selling them for MSRP) > I see a lot of people say this, but I never saw this happen in the UK. Also UK. There was definitely a time (late 2021, early 2022) lasting some months when most RPi products were only easily available from resellers (I'm using that word charitably) at vastly marked up prices (at least as a home user just wanting a single unit or small number of units, it may have been different as a bigger buyer). I have a Pi400 where a Pi4 (or 3 or older) would do just as well, because at the time I needed it for some reason the Pi400 hadn't yet been affected by the shortages (and resulting scalping) and was far cheaper to buy new (even with the full starter kit which included PSU & mouse) than any Pi4 despite nominally being more expensive. I think the 400 was even on offer below RRP at the time. The Pi400 became hard to find at RRP soon after I bought mine, I have a friend who was looking a short time later. The shortage may have lasted longer than I'm remembering, as I only paid particular attention for a bit longer than the time of my own & my friend's needs.
  - zos_kia 2y ago
    I think that's because during the shortage, they still reserved production lines for companies building products out of Pis.
  - rjsw 2y ago
    I agreed to mentor a Google Summer of Code project using a RPi before I realized that I couldn't easily get one myself, spent the whole summer checking the UK official reseller's websites and eBay, lost interest after that and still haven't got one.
matt-p 2y ago
You can buy a Pi5 2GB today for $50 (or sometimes slightly less) and that is really their premium product line. Model As, picos, Zero Ws etc are all cheaper than that original PI price after adjusting for inflation and are typically more flexible in form factor and better CPU too.

by jml7c5 2y ago

throwaway48476 2y ago

All of this is true but many of the competitors don't support their products after launch. If you want a product that will be supported by software into the future there aren't so many alternatives.

schappim 2y ago

I own a company that sells BeagleBones, Jestsons, LattePandas, in the past Bananna Pi and other cheap and cheerful Chinese embedded boards. What sets the Raspberry Pi apart from its peers is the software stability. None of the others come close to it (okay, maybe the latte panda does)… > for some reason they never came back down That simply is not true if you buy from an authorised distributor. Authorised distributors are required to sell at MSRP.

xmodem 2y ago
The MSRP has gone up, though - the 1GB Pi 4 was introduced at $35. The cheapest Pi 5 is $50 (albeit with 2x the RAM). Secondarily, mini-PCs are much more readily available at better prices now, which makes the Pi look more expensive in comparison.
- schappim 2y ago
  > albeit with 2x the RAM - multiple cores - all sorts of IP on the silicon - usb 3 - gigabit Ethernet - wifi - Bluetooth - camera connector - dsi - hell, even a power button … etc etc. They’re not comparable.
  - xmodem 2y ago
    Come on man, The Pi 4 has almost all of those. Besides, GP was pointing out that it feels like the price has gone up. I was pointing out that one reason it feels that way is because it has. No-one is arguing you don't get something for that money.
    - schappim 2y ago
      You’re looking at it wrong. The 5 doesn’t simply replace the 4. Raspberry Pi has committed to keeping the Pi 4 in production until 2034. Even the Pi1B+ will be available until 2030 at pretty much the same price as launch day!

oakesm9 2y ago

The popularity is now mainly based around the software support and the product lifecycle. With a lot of other SBC (single board computers) you're lucky to get a very of the Linux Kernal which works in the first place. The likelyhood it will get upstreamed or kept up-to-date with upstream is basically zero in most cases. Raspberry Pi has great software support and the original Pi 1 has only just become end-of-life and unsupported by Raspberry Pi OS at the end of last year. There is also clarity on when the hardware will be produced until. For the Pi 5 for example they've commited to it still being produced until at least 2036. Those together mean that if you're using it in industrial, educational, or embeded settings then you can depend on the board lasting a good while longer than other options which might become insecure and useless before the hardware itself fails. This is slightly less of an issue for hobbyist who are running Homelabs or personal projects on SBCs.

daveoc64 2y ago

>Persistent shortages drove the real-world price up (no one was selling them for MSRP) I see a lot of people say this, but I never saw this happen in the UK. All of the official sellers sell it at MSRP.

matt-p 2y ago
Ditto
dspillett 2y ago
> >Persistent shortages drove the real-world price up (no one was selling them for MSRP) > I see a lot of people say this, but I never saw this happen in the UK. Also UK. There was definitely a time (late 2021, early 2022) lasting some months when most RPi products were only easily available from resellers (I'm using that word charitably) at vastly marked up prices (at least as a home user just wanting a single unit or small number of units, it may have been different as a bigger buyer). I have a Pi400 where a Pi4 (or 3 or older) would do just as well, because at the time I needed it for some reason the Pi400 hadn't yet been affected by the shortages (and resulting scalping) and was far cheaper to buy new (even with the full starter kit which included PSU & mouse) than any Pi4 despite nominally being more expensive. I think the 400 was even on offer below RRP at the time. The Pi400 became hard to find at RRP soon after I bought mine, I have a friend who was looking a short time later. The shortage may have lasted longer than I'm remembering, as I only paid particular attention for a bit longer than the time of my own & my friend's needs.
- zos_kia 2y ago
  I think that's because during the shortage, they still reserved production lines for companies building products out of Pis.
- rjsw 2y ago
  I agreed to mentor a Google Summer of Code project using a RPi before I realized that I couldn't easily get one myself, spent the whole summer checking the UK official reseller's websites and eBay, lost interest after that and still haven't got one.

matt-p 2y ago

You can buy a Pi5 2GB today for $50 (or sometimes slightly less) and that is really their premium product line. Model As, picos, Zero Ws etc are all cheaper than that original PI price after adjusting for inflation and are typically more flexible in form factor and better CPU too.