Overall the device is a great upgrade from any of the prior Pi models.

However, be aware that using a micro HDMI to HDMI adapter will put enough stress on the port to cause damage. HDMI port 2 on mine failed after four days of using an adapter, so I would highly recommend using a cable like the official one, as it takes a lot of the stress off the port due to how it's designed.

I have been doing some audio recording experiments with the Raspberry Pi 5 8GB for linux audio recording. My setup tested using Ardour, with both a Pisound ($99) audio hat, and the MOTU M2 ($199). I also added an 256GB NVME SSD via the PCI bus found on the Pi5. It was super easy to install the OS to the SSD and I am very happy to say that both the Pisound/M2 work out of the box. All while booting to the NVME with a 64bit version of Debian 12 Bookworm. The reason behind this feat is that, by default, the Pi5 now uses Wayland and the Pipewire audio backend.

Disclosure: I believe the lead developer for for Pipewire and Ardour are the same person.

Lastly, get an active heatsink/fan and tweak your fan configuration settings. It's not that loud and your pi will thank you.

Again I think the Pi5 is going to work great for embedded audio/video applications and after basic testing I think this will work great for my project.

Ah, the Raspberry Pi 5 – a mythical artifact of modern technology that I've had the unique pleasure of not experiencing firsthand. You see, my journey began on a crisp October morning, when, fueled by the excitement of pre-order announcements and a loyal customer's trust, I eagerly secured my place in line for this elusive treasure. Little did I know, I was embarking on a voyage of epic proportions, a test of patience and fortitude, set against the backdrop of vague updates and unmet promises.

Five months into this saga, the Raspberry Pi 5 remains an enigma, shrouded in the mystery of 'exception' status. While the company's last update, a thrilling tale of 6000 8GB models arriving in the first week of January and the promise of cleared back orders by month's end, gave us hope, it turned out to be nothing more than a mirage in the desert of our discontent.

As I sit here, Raspberry Pi-less, I can't help but marvel at the irony of friends who ordered from the realm of 'other websites' already basking in the glow of their new gadgets. It's a stark reminder that, in the race for technology, not all participants are awarded the spoils of victory.

So, to those who tread the path of ordering a Raspberry Pi 5, be warned: you may find yourself a character in a tale of anticipation, where updates are as rare as the product itself, and the promise of technology feels more like a legend passed down through generations than a reality.

In closing, I eagerly await the day when I can transform this review from a sarcastic soliloquy into a testament of technological triumph. Until then, I'll be here, sharpening my wit on the whetstone of unfulfilled expectations.

Raspberry Pi had announced that they had begun shipping the RPi5 by September of last year.

I pre-ordered a Raspberry Pi 5 from SparkFun on October 4 of last year. They immediately charged me the full amount ($126.74) for the device.

Failing to receive my order or any other notification by January of this year, I sent them a message to which they replied that they were backordered and couldn't tell me when I might receive my order.

So I went on Amazon, ordered the exact same device (albeit a bit more expensive) and received it 2 days later.

Nearly 4 months later I FINALLY received my RPi5 from SparkFun today (March 29) - nearly 7 months after they charged me for the device.

1. Don't charge me until you're ready to ship me the device.
2. If it's going to take you more than 6 months to ship me the product, tell me before I place the order.
3. Once you've charged me, give me some way of tracking the shipping progress - with some updated estimate of how long it'll be before I receive it.

I swapped my RPi 4 out for the 5. This one isn't even breaking a sweat. My last one had trouble with a few processes. Very happy with my purchase!

Great board, no question about it.

But Raspberry announced as early as possible with a pre-order strategy while they had absolutely nothing in their hands. Result: everybody had to wait like 6 months to get the board. And Sparkfun had no idea when they would be able to deliver. They always replied "as soon as we get stock, we deliver" The wait was way too long.

Produce, get stock and announce instead of doing the opposite.

The first package sent was mangled and the pi was missing from the package. 13 days later, spark fund customer service finally responded to multiple emails and messages I had left. After offering to charge me shipping for a replacement, a different customer service rep sent one in another flimsy box. This one arrived smashed, with components knocked off and rattling in the box. This time it took 5 days for customer service to respond, at which they opened an order for replacement, but it appears they have none set aside for replacements, so I am stuck waiting. This company’s customer service is slow and they do not reach out within two days as stated. I had also reached out for help on the forums, which got an initial response, stating that it would be looking into, followed up by radio silence. Sparkfun bit off more than they can chew allowing unlimited preorders above their raspberry pi allotments. Good luck getting customer service when needed

I have no clue how good this product is since you sent it by FedEx and it will take over a month before it is delivered. If at all.

This is the fastest Raspberry Pi that i own. It will replace all the old PC's that i'm using in my workshop for 3D printing and hobby use. I will use also for machine learning development.

Kind of bummed with only one PCI Lane, but it's better than nothing. At this point the board needs more than one USBC port

Finally got the rpi5 after months of backorder.

Really fast compared to rpi4. Runs cool even with heatsink/fan. Only issue is that after doing a shutdown, if you are still connected to power. The fan will run on high speed. No way to turn it off unless you unplug it. From what I read online this appears to be a hardware issue. I wonder how many others have this defect?

The PMIC failed before the first boot finished, and Sparkfun Support will do no more than tell me to post on the forum asking for guides on micro-soldering and where to buy a replacement chip.

I have ten Raspberry Pis that run 24x7 around the Palatial Overclock Estate, ranging from a Pi2 to a Pi4. So I was eager to try out the Pi5. The latest Raspberry Pi OS I used, based on Debian "bookworm" and Linux 6.1, had one issue that I'm still dealing with: the old GPIO ABI that was based on the sysfs-based interface didn't work. I knew it was deprecated, so apparently now was the time to transition to the new GPIO ABI based on ioctl. I got it to work, but it was a lot of effort; it's woefully under-documented. Fortunately I found some example code in the Linux kernel source repo under tools/gpio, and I used those to learn to write my own code. (I chose not to use libgpiod, for "reasons", so I can't speak to that.) One thing that surprised me: I don't see a way to write GPIO code that will work on either the Pi5 and earlier Pis using the ioctl interface: the gpiochip configuration for the header is different (e.g. gpiochip4 on the Pi5, gpiochip0 on the Pi4, for the header) - no surprise - and the "names" assigned to the lines are also different (e.g. "GPIO16" on the Pi4, "PIN36" on the Pi5, for the same physical pin on the header). So you can't identify the pin by name to work around the gpiochip difference. Otherwise it's a great device, and I'll be using the ioctl GPIO ABI exclusively going forward.

Had a little trouble at first; nothing show up on the display after creating the micro sd. Finally figured out the cable I was using was the problem. Also had a slight issue with the "onboard" keyboard. This was also solved with two settings in the onboard settings. Now learning more about RPi5 and Bookworm. Next step is to start using it for projects.

I have had an aging set of Pi 2s and Pi 3s in my classroom. Sparkfun helped me replace the full set and the difference is amazingly noticable.

I hooked up M2, boots fast and runs really fast. I think it will be a good desktop device if you want to use it for that. Also Sparkfun was very responsive on my order. The first device was DOA. They replaced it in a very short time. Thank you.

They keep getting more useful each generation. Currently running it along side my other boxes with a kvm switch and it is almost indistinguishable from any other Linux box I have used. Bluetooth hookups work great using regular build.

The Raspberry Pi 5 is a beautifully designed developer board, offering you the option of 4GB or 8GB of RAM. I chose to buy the 8GB option, because I am now running a Minecraft Server and an Ad Blocker at the same time. The Raspberry Pi lets you connect seamlessly to the server, even when you are off the network (as long as you port forward). Overall, I believe the Raspberry Pi is a great investment. You can use it in all sorts of ways, such as an emulator, a NAS, or even a Minecraft Server.

They really are faster than a Pi 4, and no, you don't absolutely need a major power upgrade to run one, as you can disable the extra USB power features. However, it is recommended to use an official Pi 5 supply, which boosts maximum power consumption from ~ 45 watts to ~75 watts. 100% use a heat sink with this board. The newer Broadcom chip requires extra cooling, whereas one could get away without it on a Pi 4. Perhaps the best thing about these is that they're actually available.

I have not received this order, FedEx is literally trying to defraud me by inflating import duty. They classified the Raspberry pi as electric fans and charged me nearly 50% in duty and other fees, instead of 5%. I wrote a protest letter, pointing out the misclassification and wrong calculations in their duty assessment, they stopped responding to my emails and have held the order till date.

The speed increase from the PI4 it replaced is quite apparent. Was running book worm on the pi4 so all I did was use the SD card from the 4 and it plugged it in the 5 and was up and running.

I think this version has definitely moved into usable as a desktop computer territory. Boots really fast from USB. All I had to do was write the image file of raspberry pi OS to a USB drive and stick the drive in one of the USB3 slots and power it up. No need to mess with setting anything up or using the SD card first etc.

I also bought the heatsink with fan and it easily snapped on with no issues. Only issue I had was that I seemed to have chosen the secondary HDMI output at first and had to switch to the other one with my single monitor. My bad.

I still have lots of things to try but all is going great so far.

It works. It's clearly more powerful than the 4. It's easy to set up, and it works in my little shop as a nice WordPress server with lots of plugins, with an NVMe drive.

Very happy with the hardware and software.

Wish the shipping were faster.

Well packaged, and everything I have come to expect from a Raspberry Pi. I certainly trust Sparkfun more than certain other online retailers, and they are an official reseller. Plus they don't require you to bundle with accessories!

I use it as my main electronics lab computer.. It connects to my LAN so I can log into it from my main computer in my office.

I have no complaints about it at all

Got two of these and they worked great!

After using it for a few days, I'm impressed. I have mine running on a SSD but so far, it's doing well for a tiny PC. Can stream video while browsing social media on two monitors.

I won't need the big desktop as much anymore. :)

I have several other RPi units, but the workload I had on my RPi4 was just getting too much for it. I swapped in a new RPi5 (8GB, official power adapter, and active cooler), and all my problems went away. Everything is smooth and responsive, with plenty of performance to spare.

I quite like the Pi5. Especially the power button, and dedicated fan plug. I'm excited for HATs that take advantage of the PCI connector. That said, the RPI OS image for it is lacking. It barely plays YouTube, you can't set resolution scaling, and some of the setup is a little clunky. This is pretty common when new SBcs come out, and I know it will get fixed as drivers mature, which is why I still gave it a 5 star rating.

For the average user, or people expecting a decent desktop experience I'd recommend waiting a while before grabbing one. For anyone experienced with Linux/SBCs it's no more annoying than when the RPI4 first launched.

I've been playing with the Pi 5 running Ubuntu for a while as a desktop PC. I have several times forgotten I wasn't running on an actual computer. The main issues have just been many packages not being available for ARM. It has handled 50+ Firefox tabs no problem, and the only place I have lagged it so far was when using KiCad with a large schematic. Most of my usage was before I put on a passive heat sink (an old one from a 486 I think), and I haven't noticed a difference (other than the temperature numbers being more comfortable) since, so I'd recommend something even for light usage. I haven't gotten my official Pi heat sink so I can't comment on that.

This Pi 5 is very fast especially if you add a NVMe card via the PCIe bus. This is getting up there with speeds of many low end PC's with a lot less power. However, two draw backs. First is you will need either the active cooler or a good heatsink. The Pi Active Cooler is a good choice here. The other problem is it requires the new Linux release of Bookworm (Linux Kernel 6 with Wayland) The Linux community did a good job getting many of the standard programs set up in Bookworm, but you might find some applications do not work with this release.

I cannot get the Raspberry Pi 5 to boot off of USB 3 and use Logitech unifying dongle for keyboard and mouse. The results are the USB 3 boot Drive is super slow in the keyboard is glitching. If I boot off the SD card and use the unifying keyboard it works fine or if I don't use the unifying keyboard and boot off the USB 3 it works fine or if I boot off the USB to and use the unifying dongle I think it works I can't remember I'm not sure. Other than that it seems super awesome. And this may just be a user for all I know!

Took a long time to get it after preorder within 24 hours of announcement, but this SBC is worth it, very good execution and improvements across the board, be sure to get the official power supply to avoid under volt issues with regular USB-C psi. Also the active cooler works well to keep the unit from throttling with auto fan ramp based on usage.