Raspberry Pi Zero Flies Under Radar With $5 Price Tag
Out of all the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, one of the niftiest might not even be a discounted product. Instead, a strong contender is the Raspberry Pi Zero, another tiny programmable PC like the Raspberry Pi Model A and Model B, but at a fraction of the already low price -- it's just $5!
That's 80 percent less than the original Raspberry Pi, which makes it even more accessible to budding programmers on a low budget than ever before. Heck, it's tough to walk out of Starbucks without spending more than $5, and while the Raspberry Pi isn't edible, the price is certainly delectable.
"Of all the things we do at Raspberry Pi, driving down the cost of computer hardware remains one of the most important. Even in the developed world, a programmable computer is a luxury item for a lot of people, and every extra dollar that we ask someone to spend decreases the chance that they’ll choose to get involved," Raspberry Pi stated in a blog post.
So, what does $5 translate to in the programmable PC market? Perhaps more than you think. The Raspberry Pi Zero sports a Broadcom BCM2835 application processor (1GHz ARM11 core) -- it's the same chip found on the original Raspberry Pi, only clocked a little bit faster -- paired with 512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM.
It also features a microSD card slot, mini HDMI socket for Full HD 1080p video output at 60 frames per second, micro USB sockets, an unpopulated 40-pin GPIO header that's identical to the ones on the Model A+/B+/2B, and an unpopulated composite video header.
An Ethernet port and built-in Wi-Fi are noticeably missing, but whatever, this thing costs $5. Not only is it cheap, the tiny stick is Raspberry Pi's smallest ever at 65mm by 30mm by 5mm.
The Raspberry Pi Zero runs Raspbian (based on Linux). It can run programs and games like Minecraft, Scratch, and Sonic Pi.
Here in the U.S., the Raspberry Pi Zero is available at Adafruit and in-store at Micro Center locations. Raspberry Pi also bundled 10,000 of them with the December issue of The MagPi, so if you live in the U.K., you can snag one that way.
That's 80 percent less than the original Raspberry Pi, which makes it even more accessible to budding programmers on a low budget than ever before. Heck, it's tough to walk out of Starbucks without spending more than $5, and while the Raspberry Pi isn't edible, the price is certainly delectable.
"Of all the things we do at Raspberry Pi, driving down the cost of computer hardware remains one of the most important. Even in the developed world, a programmable computer is a luxury item for a lot of people, and every extra dollar that we ask someone to spend decreases the chance that they’ll choose to get involved," Raspberry Pi stated in a blog post.
So, what does $5 translate to in the programmable PC market? Perhaps more than you think. The Raspberry Pi Zero sports a Broadcom BCM2835 application processor (1GHz ARM11 core) -- it's the same chip found on the original Raspberry Pi, only clocked a little bit faster -- paired with 512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM.
It also features a microSD card slot, mini HDMI socket for Full HD 1080p video output at 60 frames per second, micro USB sockets, an unpopulated 40-pin GPIO header that's identical to the ones on the Model A+/B+/2B, and an unpopulated composite video header.
An Ethernet port and built-in Wi-Fi are noticeably missing, but whatever, this thing costs $5. Not only is it cheap, the tiny stick is Raspberry Pi's smallest ever at 65mm by 30mm by 5mm.
The Raspberry Pi Zero runs Raspbian (based on Linux). It can run programs and games like Minecraft, Scratch, and Sonic Pi.
Here in the U.S., the Raspberry Pi Zero is available at Adafruit and in-store at Micro Center locations. Raspberry Pi also bundled 10,000 of them with the December issue of The MagPi, so if you live in the U.K., you can snag one that way.
