Yeeeeee eah, I priced one out a couple weeks ago from my preferred, local supplier and immediately left the site. It’s a shame because I have some Pi3b and a 4 that I’d love to retire. Still functional, but pokey.
I’m betting tied of being priced-out of everything
Jesus! I bought mine for $29.95 about 15 years ago.
So much for being cheap and for educational purposes.
I don’t understand the hate towards the makers of the Pi. Obviously they didn’t raise the price because they’re greedy.
Fuck Apple, but one thing you need to give them credit for is that over years they didn’t raise their prices once, they even lowered them for the iPhone at one point. And even they needed to raise the prices.
Blame the memory manufacturers for creating a fake shortage because they don’t want to ramp up their production capabilities because they like the high demand.
Apple already sells overpriced devices and other manufacturers are doing the same, this time, in the name of inflation and memory shortages.
I get how parts prices and everything else got more expensive… but that’s just insane. Most I’ve ever paid for a Pi was 40 euros for a model 3. They’ve gotten way too expensive since then. The WHOLE IDEA behind them was cheap and cheerful computing. Did a lot of cool projects with them that just aren’t worth it with expensive hardware.
Whoa that’s crazy. Happy that my pi 1 and 2 are still happily chugging along
The only reason I’ve ever used Raspberry Pis is because they’re cheap as hell. I think $45 is the most I’ve ever paid for one. Fuck this.
Yeah, I bought the original Pi 1 (B, o think?) and every version up to a 4, and one zero. I now use them for things like driving my 3d printer, pi hole etc.
I gifted my son a Pi5, and soon regretted it, as I later found out that the fuckers were not using standard USB C power, but a proprietary version of USB C. Fuck their enshitified souls.
Unfortunate how bad the last 7 or so years have been market wise for the raspberry pi project. It feels like every time the hardware on one end gets cheaper, some other tech fad squeezes another component price up.
May as well just buy a used laptop or desktop.
Used Mini PCs, brand name, like Lenovo tinys, are now my go to. Slightly larger, but orders of magnitude more capable, and often power sippy.
Or a mini pc. 16GB RAM, 500GB NVME ~$300.
Good luck when that market gets squeezed too.
Good thing there is so much old crap out there
For a while there, second hand mini desktops like the Lenovo/Optiplex’s could be picked up for about half the price of a new Pi5. Typically had equal RAM, loads of SSD storage and desktop class(ish) CPU perfomance, plus all the other benefits (Secureboot, x86 compatibility so you could run Windows if you wished). Only major thing missing was the GPIO connection.
But looking now the prices are increasing rapidly as they have been discovered. The cheap ones are typically striped of RAM and storage.
Power consumption.
Electricity is green.
A Lenovo tiny use something like 4 w idle to 40w peak.
Who’s the complete fucking idiot buying them at that price? Surely no one is that desperate.
The base model of Pi5 is $45 USD.
The 16 gig Pi 5 us $385 USD.
If you are using 16 gigs, you should probably using different hardware.
Definitely. A used mini PC is way faster than a Pi.
Seriously what the fuck. I thought these things were $25. I haven’t followed tech since last the last time I built a PC in 2022; I can’t believe the chip shortage has gotten this bad. (Fucking AI)
They basically still are, it’s just the advanced models with extra RAM. A Pi 5 with 16GB of RAM is a perfectly decent PC, and for the price, in the current market, is good. If you want a Pi to use the way you used to… That’s still in the region you were thinking. I bought a bunch of Pi 3s for a project recently, cost about £30 each.
I hadn’t been keeping a close eye on pricing but was blown away the other day. The Nvidia RTX 5090 launched at $4090 here in Australia, that was already obscene. Nowadays almost 2 years later, you are lucky if you find one under $12,000!
And here I thought I was being stupid paying $1600 for a 4090 back then. Jesus Fucking Christ, $12K for a GPU!? That’s 1980s prices! Guess I won’t be upgrading for a long time… (edit: not that I need to anytime soon, lol. This card is a beast)
To be fair to the 1980’s, a Hercules video card in 1982 adjusted for inflation would only be about $1700. We are way beyond that point.
An original Macintosh 128K would set you back $8100 in today’s money, so I guess in that regard Apple hasn’t changed. ;)
I suspect if anyone is buying these is because of them needing to meet an existing strict spec. Not sure what that would be but it is a possibility.
Man I remember getting pissed I couldnt get a Pi4 for less than $50, paid $30 for my Pi3
At this point we can probably take an efficient full-blown PC in a mini format, and get something sensibly similar for less. It might even be possible to throw some GPIO USB in there if that’s what you need.
You could use and esp32 and connect over serial for gpio
It’s been like that since the Pi was around $150 tbh, at least when looking at used hardware as a comparison.
It is now, just a shitty computer. It used to be a learning platform, but that price tag is not a learning price.
It became somewhat inevitable once companies started buying mass amounts of Pis for every purpose because they were so cost-efficient.
It used to be an education nonprofit, but it effectively became an industrial SBC supplier.
By now we’ve learned not to buy RPi again
Near peak bubble.
It is starting to feel like it. Might not see price decline for a while yet, but the upswing on pricing is nearing breaking point.
What the fuck.
Manufacturing for AI has increased demand for material and lithography. The price has followed accordingly.
And as Sam Altman says, “your RAM is wasted and idle anyways, gotta feed my silicon god” (“you’ll own nothing and be a serf”).
Hardware hoarding by corporations who were allowed to accrue so much money they can afford to buy up hardware just to keep it out of the hands of their competitors.*
Nah the Raspberry Pi Foundation has been going down this route since covid, long before AI was being crammed into and consuming everything.
Oh, I know. I’m just flabbergasted that a pi costs nearly $400 bucks. Last one I bought was 29.99 and that felt expensive.
