WIRED
Surprising power at very little cost; ideal for emulation and automation projects; it’s less than £15
TIRED
Solder your own header pins if you need GPIO
The smallest Raspberry Pi computer is going 64-bit.
The new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W costs just $15/£13, but is equipped with a Broadcom BCM2710A1 SOC which gives you a 1GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 CPU and 512MB RAM. The W indicates that it has Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth 4.2 with BLE support.
The Zero 2 W has the same form factor as the original Raspberry Pi Zero, but is equipped with three more cores and twice as much RAM, for what the Raspberry Pi Foundation estimates to be a 40 per cent performance improvement. Our benchmark results indicate this to be a very conservative estimate of the remarkable performance increase. The Pi Zero 2’s form factor is also fully backwards compatible with the old hardware, so you can use it as a drop-in replacement.
Performance
We loved the Raspberry Pi 4 (£34 – £54 depending on spec) and the home micro-computer throwback Raspberry Pi 400 (£70), both of which punch well above their price when it comes to processor power.
The same applies here, but the Pi Zero 2’s obviously not intended to be as capable as its bigger, more expensive and more power-hungry siblings. By comparison, the Raspberry Pi 400 has a quad-core Cortex-A72 running at 1.8GB and 4GB RAM, while version 1.2 of the Raspberry Pi Zero had a 1GHz single-core CPU with 512GB RAM.
The Zero 2 is blisteringly fast compared to the original Zero and the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, but still doesn’t hold a candle to the prowess of the – significantly more expensive – Pi 400.
View our benchmark table here
On the desktop and in your projects
The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 works surprisingly well as a desktop PC. Review units shipped with a 32-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS, a Linux distribution descended from Debian, which we used to run our benchmarks. As with all Pis, your hard disk is a microSD slot.
Desktop performance gets a little sluggish if you run multiple demanding processes at once, such as installing software, copying files and opening a browser. The cursor lags and windows judder as you move them.
We also tried out a few games. Don’t get too ambitious here – for a start, modern games are mostly designed for an x86 architecture, rather than the Pi’s ARM processor – but there’s plenty of older content to catch up with. Retro adventure game classics, including the relatively demanding Quest for Glory IV, run well via ScummVM. You can play Doom (1993) on it smoothly via Chocolate Doom. We similarly had no trouble with DVD-quality videos, although some formats may require the installation of additional codecs.
Raspberry Pi OS now has official Widevine streaming video DRM support – just install the widevinecdm0 package. This meant we were able to immediately stream content from Netflix without having to install any adapted browser from unusual sources, although we lost audio sync in fullscreen mode.
Website responsiveness in general can be a problem for the Pi Zero 2 – hardly surprising given how demanding many sites are. While we were surprised by how capable the Zero 2 actually is a desktop computer, that’s clearly not the primary purpose of this little PC. But that also means you should probably look to a more powerful single-board computer if you want to build a micro media centre PC, even though specialist distributions such as Kodi are a bit more efficient than vanilla Raspberry Pi OS.
A range of other operating systems are available for Raspberry Pi’s ARM CPU architecture, including Ubuntu Server, in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, but also specialist options for digital billboards and smart home control. There are both commercial and DIY options for using Raspberry Pi as a thin client to connect remotely to another, more powerful PC.
With extra CPU power, we also anticipate a boom in Pi Zero-based emulation, especially as the Pi Zero 2 has exactly the same form factor. With its predecessor already a popular choice for emulating 8-bit and 16-bit consoles, small and inexpensive emulation systems are going to become more capable.
We’re looking forward to upgrading our Raspberry Pi Zero-powered Retroflag GPi handheld console, but note that we may have to wait for operating system builders to roll out support for the new hardware in projects such as Lakka and RetroFlag’s fork of the RecalBox emulation OS.
Peripherals
The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 has a 40-pin GPIO (General Purpose Input-Output) header, solder points for analogue composite video and a CSI-2 camera connector. The USB peripheral port doubles as a USB OTG (On The Go) port, allowing it to – with some configuration – be turned into a USB serial or Ethernet device when connected to another computer via USB, and pass through commands to other hardware devices connected to its GPIO. This means you can use it to make your own USB devices.
As with the previous version of the Pi Zero, you’ll have to solder your own GPIO header pins into place if you buy the standard launch model. You’ll need these for a wide range of projects, like connecting arcade joysticks and adding HATs – ‘Hardware Attached on Top’ add-on boards for everything from hi-fi audio to to motor drivers for robotics builds.
However, we’d be surprised if we don’t see a further version of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2, equipped with header pins like the original Raspberry Pi Zero WH.
Our review kit came with a £5 case that’s already available. This includes three lids for different configurations: one which fully encloses the computer, one with a slot to expose the GPIO header, and a third with a mount and lens hole for a camera – a ribbon cable to connect a Raspberry Pi camera module is also supplied
Although it only costs $15 to buy, as with any computer, you’ll need a few more things to actually use Raspberry Pi Zero 2: a mini-HDMI cable or adaptor to connect it to a monitor or TV; a micro-USB to USB A adaptor so you can actually plug in USB devices, and a power supply, although you can power the Pi Zero 2 via a micro-USB cable connected to one of your PC’s USB3 ports, or any 5V DC 2.5A charger.
If you’re already a Raspberry Pi user, you may have a lot of this gear already; if not, the initial sub-£15 price grows to around £40. You’ll probably also want a keyboard and mouse – the £7 official set is cheap and very decent for the money if you plan on setting your tiny computer up as a desktop device. It also supports Bluetooth input devices, and if you enable SSH, you can just connect via the terminal on another device on your network, which is the best solution if you’re going to build it into an embedded hardware project.
Verdict
If you’re looking to buy your first Raspberry Pi for general or desktop PC use, the Pi Zero 2 W probably isn’t the best choice. A 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 or 400 will cost more, but they use a more typical set of standard PC ports and peripherals, making it less likely that you’ll have to buy anything special to go with them beyond a power supply.
If you already have all the cables and peripherals a Pi Zero requires, then this is a surprisingly capable emergency PC for £15. And if you’re already using a Raspberry Pi Zero for anything where performance matters, this is an upgrade you’ll definitely be getting sooner or later, and you’ll really appreciate it when you do. You should probably wait a couple of months for the software support to catch up, though. The same applies to users of operating systems other than Raspberry Pi OS..
Finally, if you like making your own embedded device projects with a bit of oomph, this is the tiny Pi for you. From doorbell cameras to DIY music players, there’s loads of potential for compact builds with this surprisingly powerful spec.
