16GB Raspberry Pi 5 Hiked to $385, More Than Triple its Launch Price
Anonymous Coward writes:
The 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 launched at a price of $120 in January 2025:
Raspberry Pi boss Eben Upton has officially announced price rises for some 16GB products. Specifically, the price of the 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 is being raised by $80 to $385, and the 16GB Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 will go up by $40. In a glimmer of better news, the price of the Raspberry Pi 500+ all-in-one desktop, which also features a 16GB model, is being held, but it was already rather pricey.
Upton framed the decision to raise prices as being due to "the steep rises in the cost of memory over the past two years." He explained that other computer makers have had to make similar decisions recently. That sounds fair, and he added that Raspberry Pi had been doing what they could to minimize costs passed on to customers.
The price rise of the headline 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 to $385 is effective immediately. As is the $40 increase to the CM5 16GB variant. Of course, both these 16GB devices have seen prior increases in price since being launched at $120 and $135, respectively.
[...] The price rises, and comparison in prices between high-and-low memory density models makes it all the more important "to make sure you're not paying for more memory than you need," indicates the Raspberry Pi blog about the latest price increases. Sadly for the Pi business, hobbyists and makers already seem to be moving away from the full-sized Pi and CM products for many DIY projects.
[...] Now the core Raspberry Pi business is being squeezed by simpler microcontrollers at the low end, where the use of Picos and ESP32 boards have become increasingly popular for small projects. At the other end of the market, with some Pis approaching $400 or $500, makers start to eye entry-level x86 SBCs and mini PCs. Even a cheap mini PC can be powerful with a stronger CPU, GPU, NPU, and more. Mini PCs can win on flexibility and expandability too, and there's a wide variety to choose from capable of running the most popular and capable OSes and applications.
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