Date: August 18, 2019
When they announce Raspberry Pi 4, I felt very excited and bought a few of it.
It all arrives on the same day. Let’s unbox it.
I figure that buying the 4GB version will be good for Desktop uses. Or even installing the Ubuntu on it.
But it does not come cheap. The entry level Raspberry Pi 4 (1GB) cost about US$55, and the 4GB version cost slightly lesser than $100.
I bought the starter kit that includes the micro HDMI cable.
Here are all the contents.
The packaging.
Here is the card.
Looks similar to the old version 3 card.
Added 2x USB-3 slot.
2x Micro HDMI port and the USB-C port for charging.
The USB-C charger also comes with a on/off switch. Cool.
Being lazy, bought the starter kit that comes with the SD card with NOOB 3.1 install and the latest Rasbian OS.
Even have the casing.
The boot up is roughly 40-42 seconds. It is I think similar to Raspberry Pi 3. Not sure why the boot up of Raspbian is similar.
The feel of running all these applications especially running a few applications are much much faster.
Here are some of the stats I found from Google.
OK. I think it is much faster. With 4GB of RAM, it also can run more applications at the same time. But it is a very small computer. It is convenient.
It is very hot. The CPU generates lots of heat.
Most of the OS aren’t ready for it yet. Even RetroPie (Retro game console are not ready).
So, there is no rush to buy yet. hahahaha
Just wait until all the applications and OS are compatible to it, then, buy.
One thing for sure, the price is no longer cheap. It is moving up the price curve. So, if you want to develop only simple stuff, stick with Raspberry Pi 3. If you want to run Retro games, RetroPie for Raspberry Pi 3 is enough. unless RetroPie also upgrade its code to run 3DS games, or DS games, then, there is an incentives.
But soon, one by one, all the application will update itself. For example, such as Scratch 3, is the new Blocky programming interface which will fit perfectly into the Raspberry Pi 4.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/scratch-3-desktop-for-raspbian-on-raspberry-pi/
It is good for kids from all ages to learn about it. My kids Jay and Kay is learning Robotics on Raspberries Pi + Python at the moment at The Lab @ Katong V. Of course, you can learn Robotics also from the usual LEGO Mindstorm. But for me, I choose to let them learn the more relevant one if they decided to go into the Science stream. 🙂
