Looking for a Raspberry Pi 5? The shortages could be over for good if the company nearly doubles production
The popular one Raspberry Pi 5 A single-board microcomputer should be ready in 2024, with an estimated 70,000 boards being produced per week at the time of writing – a figure that, with any luck, should rise to 90,000 over the course of the year.
That’s the promise of Raspberry Pi CEO and birth mother Eben Upton, who shared the secrets of the Pharaohs with Tom’s hardware.
Upton attributed the increase in production figures in part to Sony – yes, that one – operating the ‘bakery’ (grin!), in Pencoed, Wales, where all the mum and dad Raspberry Pis live happily ever after.
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To make us jealous, Upton told Tom’s Hardware: “(Achieving 90,000 units produced per week)” is mainly due to bringing more test heads online in the automated test pods.” Someone reading this needs to know what that means, but we like it.
Although he claimed that production of Raspberry Pi 4s also saw similar production increases, he did not have the exact figures. Poor Raspberry Pi 4, all they need is to ask for their half of the inheritance and that’s essentially Biblical.
Tom’s Hardware asked Upton why more Pis are made. To this, he claimed that the aggressive pace of production would continue until morale improves “backlogs are being cleared and the channel (Authorized Resellers and others) is in a good inventory position.”
Unfortunately, the slippery character managed to back up into a refrigerator while muttering about those meddling tech journalists before we could discover the true, darker, more interesting motive behind this.
Analysis: Hello approved resellers and others
Can you actually get a Raspberry Pi now, in January 2024? Yes. I’m pleased to tell you that the shortage of this niche hobbyist project, which was in full swing during the bubonic plague of the Covid-19 pandemic, has decreased significantly in recent months.
In fact, opening Pandora’s Cash Register was the biggest catalyst for both of me get one and be anointed, for my struggle through the Nine Circles of Linuxlike the Raspberry Pi correspondent of this esteemed publication (even if you want to argue this, we can at least check the spelling of a slogan).
And since I can now claim some authority on the matter, I will say that, yes, the Raspberry Pi is popular, so the exact Pi with the exact RAM configuration you’re looking for might not be immediately available from your Friendly, neighborhood approved reseller. I, for my part, had to sign up for stock alerts to get my Pi 4 model Bbut I didn’t have to wait that long, and only had to wait because I’m a bourgeois trash and wanted to add 8 gigabytes of RAM.
Fast forward to now, at the same reseller where I bought my Model B last year, it’s much the same situation: there’s now a Pi 5 available, if you’re willing to opt for ‘just’ 4GB of RAM. Honestly, if you want a Raspberry Pi that badly, just pluck out the ‘numbers go brrr’ mind worm that lives in your own eyeball and settle for a machine that fits in the palm of your hand and will probably be manned anyway space mission in whichever configuration you buy it. (Note from Legal: DO NOT try this at home.)
Or just do what the rest of us “enthusiasts” do when we can’t get the shiny thing we want right away: go crawl to the PR machine for a freebie turn off the router for a moment and stare at a butterfly.