“This, the latest version of the Pi is an especially luxurious example. By including a builtin wireless chip you may avoid the eternal faff of USB wireless compatibility.
The inbuilt bluetooth chip may take slightly more setup but again leaves another valuable USB slot.
Performance-wise no difficulties have yet been found. Overall a device that it would be difficult not to recommend.”
“I had issues with camera module at the beginning as the camera LED and camera enable signals were swapped on hardware side, however this was easy to fix it updating firmware and now it should be enough to perform standard update/upgrade procedure with apt-get.
You can definitely draw more current from USB ports now but I found it not very reliable - I had some intermittent power failures on my Toshiba E.Store USB drive, but I'm blaming the micro USB cable connecting power supply and Pi3B board - the drive can consume up to ~750mA in peaks, the Pi itself around 500-600 mA (according to my measurements) so in total in worst scenario this will give more than 1.3 A, and usually USB cables are rated for 500mA so this was not a great surprise.
Wi-Fi works great out of the box - I took microSD card from my A+ that had Wi-Fi configured with Broadcom USB HUB/WiFi adaptor and it just worked (after apt-get up*ing while still in A+).
Apparently 3B consumes similar amount of energy that A+ do with Broadcom's Wi-Fi dongle plugged in - when idling. Expect higher power consumption on heavy load.
If you want to connect 3B to 2.5 A power supply and use some power hungry USB devices connected directly to Pi USB ports then you will need some proper micro USB cable to power the Pi. OR you will have serious voltage drops and will have to use powered HUB!”
“The product itself is versatile and simple, the ordering process was easy, and the delivery was prompt. The only issues I have with the Pi itself is that it seems prone to overheat a lot more than the Pi 2, and I was kind of hoping for Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3 by this generation. Still a decent bit of kit, and a godsend to anyone wanting to experiment with Linux. I get why Microsoft wanted to get a version of Windows on it - it's like a perfect gateway drug that Linux pushers can use to hook kids early.”
