Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
A great drop-in upgrade for the original Zero W, but don’t expect a Raspberry Pi for the desktop
PRICE £12 (£14 inc VAT) from thepihut.com
Iremember falling for the first Raspberry Pi Zero back in 2015. It was the smallest and cheapest Raspberry Pi ever, with a single-core 1GHz
CPU and 512MB of RAM that were ample for basic projects. Subsequently came the Zero W model, adding Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; and now, after six long years, the Zero 2 W finally brings a CPU update.
It’s a significant one, too, moving from a single-core processor to a quad-core one. In fact, it uses the same ARM Cortex A53 processor as the Raspberry Pi 3, although the speed remains at 1GHz.
Other than that, almost nothing has changed. The form factor is identical to all previou previous Zero models, which means you can drop the Raspberr Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W into your existing projects and cases: the official Raspberry Pi Zero enclosure fits like a glove, though some third-party cases might clash with a few components of the power circuitry th that have been moved.
It also means connectivity is still limited compared to a full-sized Raspberry Pi. You get a single mini-HDMI port and two micro-USB 2 ports for power and peripherals, while on the right edge of the board there’s a small camera connector, supporting any official Raspberry Pi camera with an adapter cable.
With half the RAM of a Pi 3 and a slower processor, the Zero 2 W isn’t really a desktop computer. I could do a little coding, browse the web at usable speeds and even play a few games of
Minecraft Pi Edition, but couldn’t stream a YouTube clip at 720p resolution without stuttering. Network performance is limited, too, not only by the 2.4GHz-only radio but by the tiny PCB antenna.
Overclocking didn’t make much difference. The Zero 2 W was stable at 1.4GHz, but with 512MB of RAM this board is never going to match the responsiveness of a Raspberry Pi 3.
With that caveat, it can still be quite a versatile board. I had no problem getting DietPi working, making this a great platform for quick and simple embedded appliances.
And while the powerful Twister OS is designed primarily for the Raspberry Pi 4, I found the Lite version, which is a basic terminal/server OS, runs remarkably k bly well on the Zero 2 W. Even ven the Retropie gaming ming distribution worked smoothly: after configuring the joypad and loading up Crash Bandicoot for the PlayStation, I spent a happy time smashing boxes and jumping umping on crabs with th no slowdown or sync issues.
It works with almost all standard accessories too. Once you’ve fitted the requisite pins to the Zero’s bare contacts you can use the full range of HATs: both Pimoroni’s Explorer HAT Pro and Raspberry Pi’s own Sense HAT worked perfectly, as did the official Pi camera. The PoE and PoE+ HATs won’t work, though, as these require the PoE header pins that are only present on the 3B+ and 4.
The extra cores in the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W do cause it to draw a little
more power, which is something to factor into your projects. The original Raspberry Pi Zero W draws around 260mA at idle and 370mA when taxed using the Stressberry tool; the same test on the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W saw draws of 280mA idle and 580mA under stress.
For the same reasons, the Zero 2 W runs hotter than previous Zero models. I measured an idle temperature of 36.5C, while the Raspberry Pi Zero W idled at 32.6 C, and when I used Stressberry to drive up load to 100%, the Pi Zero 2 W’s temperature rose to a high of 63.4C, far above the Pi Zero W’s peak of 44.4C.
Overclocking pushes things even further. With the Zero 2 W overclocked to 1.4GHz and inside the official Raspberry Pi Zero case, the temperature rose to 75.2C – and then the system locked up hard. I persuaded it to run stably using active cooling courtesy of Pimoroni’s Fan Shim, but the placement of the fan isn’t elegant, as it overhangs the footprint of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W board.
All this goodness doesn’t come for free. The original Raspberry Pi Zero was a £5 computer; the Zero W pushed this up to around £10; and now the Zero 2 W costs almost £15. It’s a small premium, but it’s worth weighing up whether you really need it.
If you have an embedded or robotics project that could use a little more horsepower, the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is the ideal solution. It’s compatible with almost all HATs/ pHATs on the market, your existing code should work without modification, and it maintains the physical form factor that we’ve all come to depend on over the past six years. Perhaps most importantly, there’s no doubt that it will instantly find a place in the community – which has always been the heart of the Pi.
SPECIFICATIONS
1GHz quad-core Broadcom BCM2710A1 processor (overclockable) 512MB LPDDR2 RAM 802.11n Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4.2 USB-A 2 with OTG 40 GPIO pins mini-HDMI camera interface (CSI-2) microSD slot 65 x 30mm (WD) limited warranty
“If you have an embedded or robotics project that could use a little more horsepower, the Zero 2 W is the ideal solution”