Raspberry Pi has raised prices on many Pi 4, Pi 5, and Compute Module models as memory costs surge in 2026, undermining its once-low-cost SBC positioning.
There is a whole lot of demand from industrial equipment manufacturers. When you attach a computer to your twenty thousand bucks robot arm or CNC drill, you need it small, reliable, readily-available, and brand-new, so you slightly overpay for Pi 5 for $200 and an SSD drive for another $200 to not rely on faulty SD cards, and if it breaks you can buy and replace it in 15 minutes, and future Raspberry Pi 6 will most probably boot from the same SSD and work with zero modifications, even contacts placement will be the same. Does it need 16 GB? Probably not.
Also, drone manifacturers. 16 GB RAM is just enough to run a computer vision AI model, and you won’t haul a used HP laptop on a drone.
Do you have any evidence that industrial manufacturers are sourcing Pi 5’s as controllers of choice? I think most manufacturers would use proprietary or purpose built controllers meeting required durability needs.
There is a whole lot of demand from industrial equipment manufacturers. When you attach a computer to your twenty thousand bucks robot arm or CNC drill, you need it small, reliable, readily-available, and brand-new, so you slightly overpay for Pi 5 for $200 and an SSD drive for another $200 to not rely on faulty SD cards, and if it breaks you can buy and replace it in 15 minutes, and future Raspberry Pi 6 will most probably boot from the same SSD and work with zero modifications, even contacts placement will be the same. Does it need 16 GB? Probably not.
Also, drone manifacturers. 16 GB RAM is just enough to run a computer vision AI model, and you won’t haul a used HP laptop on a drone.
Do you have any evidence that industrial manufacturers are sourcing Pi 5’s as controllers of choice? I think most manufacturers would use proprietary or purpose built controllers meeting required durability needs.