A Raspberry Pi 5 Review

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 12:05:16 +0000

Picked up a Raspberry Pi 5. Ordered it the day it went on sale and after some shipping delays with Fedex, it arrived. A pi, red and white case, and the power supply. So far, I’m impressed. Got it running Raspbien on a 1TB Samsung SSD attached to a sata to usb enclosure with both 1080p monitors and kb and mouse. Basic setup, really. + the 2nd monitor, where I’d assume most would just use one. Anyway.

I’m adding software as I go. VS-Code and ckb-next (for the keyboard). Syncthing and Nextcloud clients.

Streaming video from youtube causes it to stutter here and there. I suspect it’s the lack of gpu decoding I heard about. Not sure why it was removed but I wonder if the chip devs couldn’t fit it in the package. There’s a lot of stuff in it’s tiny cpu. So much they moved the gpio and peripherals to a chip from the original pi as I understand it. I think this Pi 5 might be a contender for your average desktop if you don’t need Windows or a powerful linux desktop.

6 months later

I don’t use it much anymore. It more or less became a novalty. It doesn’t like booting up with a usb switch attached unless I power that switch from another source. Kinda ruins my goal of hitting the smart switch that powers it while my desktop is off. tapping the usb switch’s remote button, and getting to work. Extra steps vs just powering up the desktop. I don’t know where the problem is on that front. I’d thought the 5 amp psu that’s recommended for it would handle a usb switch in addition to the kb/mouse and usb ssd. I’ve no way to measure the power for it though. The Pi would just hard reboot if I booted it without powering the usb switch seperately and tapping the switch button. I don’t want the leds on the switch to always be on. (minor concern but w/e)

I’m not sure what the Pi5 is good for since it costs about as much, if not more, than a simple mini pc off amazon and ebay.

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A Raspberry Pi 5 Review

6 months later