After getting a lot of success on its previous predecessor, the Raspberry Pi foundation has again released its newest and flagship Raspberry Pi 4 Model B on the market. As promised they released their brand new Raspberry Pi 4 Model B on June 24, 2019, which is much faster and more advanced as compared to its previous predecessor (Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+).
Being arguably the most powerful, small credit-card sized and single-boarded computer on the market, it has undoubtedly become an important companion for the majority of developers as well as an average people who are interested in the development of different apps and software and the regular computing. Packed with Python and Scratch as a default programming, it can also support most of the programming languages out there including Java, C#, C++, PHP and many more. Programming with Raspberry Pi 4 Model B is much faster and convenient as it comes with a super-portable size which makes us easier to carry it around to the different places. Either it’s for hacking, programming or regular computing, it has never been so much portable carrying any computer where you have to just plug in your peripherals such as keyboard, mouse, microSD card, and monitor to run your computer.
Specifications
1. The brand new Raspberry Pi 4 Model B comes with Broadcom BCM2711 SoC which is based on 28nm technology and Cortex-A27 architecture. They have given 4 cores in Raspberry Pi 4 Model B which is clocked at 1.5GHz to provide slightly more powerful performance and consumes a little more energy as compared to its predecessor (Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+).
2. Raspberry Pi 4 Model B comes with an option of RAM variant all the way from 1GB to 4GB of LPDDR4 to 3200 SDRAM depending upon the specific model whereas you had to stuck with the same 1GB RAM on Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. The RAM has been significantly upgraded to provide faster execution on Raspberry Pi 4 Model B where you can get the writing speed of up to 4427 Mbps and the reading speed of up to 4130 Mbps and surprisingly it is 54 percent faster in writing speed and 51 percent faster in reading speed as compared to the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+.
3. Raspberry Pi 4 Model B has 2x faster microSD card reader as compared to the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. An upgraded microSD card reader has been implemented on Raspberry Pi 4 Model B which consist a transfer speed from your microSD card to Raspberry Pi 4 Model B at the whopping speed of 50 MBps to boost the storing speed as well as the overall speed of Operating System though you have unlimited storage capacity on it.
4. The same 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz IEEE 802.11ac WIFI as on Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ has been pushed out to the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B but an upgraded Bluetooth 5 and Ethernet port is there which can provide you up to full throttle Gigabit of throughput as compared to 330 megabits on Raspberry 3 Model B+ which is almost 5x faster than Raspberry 3 Model B+.
5. Having a powerful processor is definitely gonna consume more energy, Here in Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, it needs an adapter of 5 volts and 3 amperes to provide power to it. And talking about heat production, it can emit the extensive heat up to 74.5 degrees Celcius at the top part of its processor, which can even burn or damage the board easily in some condition, but the proper cooling system can be provided for an extensive and long term use.
6. Now its a good news for the people who like to do a lot of wiring to the different input and output devices with Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, Raspberry Pi 4 Model B now comes with the standard 40 pin GPOI header with a support of 4 additional 12C, UART and SCI connections. In the same way, the responsiveness and the speed of GPOI pins have also been tweaked and boosted with an improvement of up to 215% as compared to the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ for the optimum performance.
7. Here comes the most interesting part, Raspberry Pi 4 Model B comes with the powerful two micro-HDMI ports which can support up to two 4k monitors at the same time, which is arguably the biggest upgrade to it as compared to it predecessor (Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+).
8. Raspberry Pi 4 Model B comes with 2 USB ports which support both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 from which you can seamlessly transfer your data between the computer and USB drive with a 10x faster speed as compared to the regular USB 2.0.
9. Moving on to the GPU side, Raspberry Pi 4 Model B comes with VideoCore VI with OpenGLES 3.0 support which is clocked at 500 MHz and also the new architecture used in VideoCore IV can throw the output to a connected display up to 4k resolution at a rate of 60 fps (frames per second) but you have to stick with the 4k resolution at 60Hz at single and 30Hz when using the dual monitors at the same time. Due to this reason, most of the user goes with 720p resolution at 41 fps for a smoother and faster experience on both monitors.
10. Raspberry Pi 4 Model B features 2-lane CSI (Camera Serial Interface) and DSI (Display Surface Interface) for establishing the connections to its camera and display from where we can connect our camera via USB port and output to the screen via the micro HDMI port.
11. As compared to an older micro USB port on Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, Raspberry Pi 4 Model B comes with two USB type C ports from where you can supply the power of 5V/3A to it, though good quality 2.5A power supply can be used if downstream USB peripherals consume less than 500mA in total.
12. Raspberry Pi 4 Model B supports PoE (Power Over Ethernet) though it will require extra PoE HAT.
13. Now the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B comes with an improved 4-pole stereo and composite video port to provide better audio quality with a smoother video playback experience.
14. H.265 used in Raspberry Pi 4 Model B can decode the video of max resolution of 4k up to 60 fps whereas H264 can decode the video of max resolution of 1080p video at 60 fps and can encode 1080p video at 30 fps.
15. Raspberry Pi 4 Model B can be operated at the favorable surrounding up to 50 degrees Celcius.
Final Verdict:
Lastly, the biggest question arises here (Can it replace the desktop?). Still, the answer to this question is “No”. Though the Raspberry foundation has been making their Raspberry computer more and more powerful, they are still not in a league for competing with desktop or laptop yet. There are many flaws that need to be improved in the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B or its higher version to compete with desktop or laptop. Here, though it can support the 4k video, it struggles a lot harder even to play the video of 480p resolution at full screen on YouTube though you can do some retro gaming on it. When talking about the normal photo editing you must GIMP on it because it hardly runs the Adobe Photoshop. And it also comes with a Raspbian OS which is a Linux based operating system due to this reason it lacks many features and software that are available on Windows and macOS.
Despite these issues, I think that Raspberry Pi 4 Model B is a good bang for your money. The price of this computer is extremely unbeatable, where you can get the 1GB RAM model at just $35, 2GB RAM model at $45 and the 4GB RAM model at $55. If we also compare it to the price of the regular low-end laptop, it is undoubtedly 65 times cheaper or more than a regular laptop but out there but still provides comparable performance. Apart from its minor flaws, it can pretty much provide you the ability to perform the same task that can be done in a various regular laptop or desktop. Either it’s for writing, reading or editing your different type of blogs, news, articles, etc or surfing the web with the multiple tabs opened on your Chromium, it can deliver you the smooth switching between your tabs without any lags. And the best part is, you can also use Libre Office or Google docs without any performance issues to create different types of documents, spreadsheets, etc on it.
By being able to deliver the feature like 4k video output up to two monitors at the same time from the size of credit card, it is arguably the great step forward for the development for portable, cost-effective and noiseless computer. And I think that we should give a huge shout out to the Raspberry foundation for always producing the most affordable computer and improving it over time. Now with the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, you’re not limited to the same bulky laptop or desktop which requires hundreds of dollar to purchase. Now at just price of $35 dollar, anybody can own the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B from where they can perform their pretty much day to day activities regarding the use of the computer.