“So, the Raspberry Pi 4 is finally upon us, and what an upgrade it is. Finally the Raspberry Pi Foundation has bought a very compelling upgrade to the table, adding features like:
- USB 3.0 ports
- True Gigabit LAN (the Ethernet controller sits on a much faster bus to facilitate this)
- Bluetooth 5.0
- RAM options up to 4GB at extra cost
- USB Type-C support for power
- Dual display outputs, capable of 4K @ 30Hz for two displays and 4K @ 60Hz for a single display
These upgrades alone are enough to make it worth the upgrade from a general purpose computing standpoint, and the Pi 4 has performed admirably with everything I have thrown its way so far. The Pi 4 can now easily compete with rivals such as Asus' Tinkerboard and other SBCs from smaller Chinese companies.
However, there are a few chinks in the Pi 4's armour that are worth mentioning:
- The Type-C power port won't work with fancier e-marked Type-C cables, due to a flaw in the design of the power delivery circuitry. The Raspberry Pi Foundation have said they plan to fix this in a future revision of the board, but as it stands this is a hardware issue that consequently cannot be resolved with a firmware update. The official power supply works fine of course, and that's what I use with my Pi 4.
- There are some early teething problems with software compatibility, particularly around Retropie. If you're looking to buy a Pi 4 to use with Retropie, you might be wise to wait for a bit as the software catches up.
- The Pi 4 has serious thermal issues out of the box - under full load, the CPU will reach temperatures in excess of 75-80 degrees C and begin throttling to keep itself cool. A proper cooling solution, like a heatsink or Pimoroni's own Fan SHIM is absolutely essential to ensuring you can harness all of the performance of the SoC.
However, these are relatively minor details and unless this matters to you, I can recommend the Pi 4 to anyone looking for a solid single board computer to sink their teeth into the world of programming, Linux and hardware hacking.”
