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The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W features a Broadcom BCM2837B0 system-on-chip with four Arm Cortex-A53 processor cores – the same as the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ and Model B+, but clocked at a slower 1GHz to reduce operating temperature. There’s a VideoCore IV GPU and 512MB of LPDDR2 memory – added as a companion die inside a custom package, the second design to come from Raspberry Pi’s in-house application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) team after the RP2040 microcontroller.

Elsewhere the board is near-identical to the Raspberry Pi Zero W: There’s a Camera Serial Interface (CSI) connector, a micro-USB 2.0 On-The-Go (OTG) port, another micro-USB for power, a mini-HDMI connector, and a microSD slot for storage. The onboard Synaptics BCM43436/8 radio, packaged as a shielded and pre-certified module, offers 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2, and the 40-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header is present and correct.

Not all features of the Raspberry Pi Zero and Zero W have made it to the new model. The RUN and TV headers, offering hardware-based processor control and composite video output, respectively, have gone. The signals are still present on the rear of the board as test pads, though, for those who need them.

Benchmarking of the new board shows a considerable performance boost over the single-core Raspberry Pi Zero range, with some workloads running nearly ten times faster. The 512MB of RAM, however, could prove limiting – particularly for desktop use, where more than a couple of browser tabs is enough to exhaust available memory.

The physical layout of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is largely unchanged, bar a shift to a slightly larger mini-HDMI connector, making it fully compatible with cases and other accessories designed for the Raspberry Pi Zero and Zero W – except any which rely on the positioning of the test pads at the rear, which has been shifted. Those looking to encase the board will also need to manage the heat, with the hottest part of the board reaching over 72°C in free air during stress testing.

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W custom Broadcom SoC — The custom-packaged Broadcom BCM2837B0 offers dramatic performance gains (Source: Gareth Halfacree)

The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is available now from the usual resellers (look them up via raspberrypi.com) at $15. Given ongoing component shortages, demand is likely to exceed supply for a while after launch.

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License: The text of "Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Launch: Specs, Price, Availability" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.