Raspberry Pi packs more power into its $15 Zero 2 W board
Raspberry Pi has introduced a new version of its tiny wireless Zero W board, the Zero 2 W, with much improved performance, added features and a slightly higher $15 price tag. It uses a mildly downclocked version of the same Broadcom BCM2710A1 SoC die used in the $35 Raspberry Pi 3, along with 512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM. With that, it delivers a significant performance boost over the original Zero, up to five times faster for multithreaded chores.
While just as tiny as the original Zero (about a quarter the size of a US bank note), it’s highly capable. It comes with 2.4Ghz IEEE 802.11 b/g/n wireless LAN, Bluetooth 4.2, a USB 2.0 interface, a MicroSD card slot, Mini HDMI port, CSI-2 camera connector, a HAT-compatible 40 pin I/O header, OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0 graphics and H.264 1080p 30 encode and decode capabilities.
Since it’s the same size as the original Zero and the Zero W, “almost all cases and accessories designed for Zero should work perfectly with the new board, including our own case and selection of cables,” the foundation said in a blog post. Additionally, it introduced a new official Raspberry Pi Zero 2 USB power supply unit ($8) that can also power the Raspberry Pi 3B or 3B+. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is now available to buy in the UK, EU, US, Canada and Hong Kong for $15 / £13.50.
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