Raspberry Pi 5 is Here: Hands-on Feature Preview

The Raspberry Pi 5 has finally arrived. I have a unit in my hands and here is a quick preview of some of its features. Raspberry Pi doesn’t normally do announcements so they broke the tradition and pre-released the Raspberry Pi 5 about a month before its general availability.

Exciting New Features

The long-awaited update to their flagship model is here and it packs a lot of new features! Instead of listing all the basic features and specs, I’m going to write about what makes the Pi 5 so different from all of its predecessors.

PCIe Support

Right off the bat, I have to mention the presence of a PCIe connector. The Pi 4 Model B chip already had support for PCIe but it was in charge of controlling the 2 USB 3.0 ports. Eben (Raspberry Pi’s CEO) had hinted that the next iteration of the Pi Model B would include better PCIe support during an interview with Jeff Geerling. Here is what I posted on X/Twitter at that time.

Pi 5 will most likely include better PCIe support. I'd be shocked if it didn't since most SBCs are moving in that direction. 🧵

— rpilocator (@rpilocator) May 18, 2023

As mentioned in my post, most of the recent flagship SBC offerings from Radxa/OKdo and Orange Pi have a PCIe connector. The Pi 5 had to have a PCIe connector to be competitive. The question still remains on what can you run on this PCIe connector. It will depend on software support.

I think that going for a cable connector for the PCIe interface was the right move. I have a love/hate relationship with the onboard M.2 (PCIe) connector on my Radxa Rock 5B because although it provides great storage expandability, it is a very awkward implementation, with the PCIe connector sticking out of the board.

Raspberry Pi will also offer a M.2 HAT but it’s not clear if it will be ready when the Pi 5 is announced.

Dual Camera and Dual Display Support

I’m really (*really*) excited about the dual camera support. Raspberry Pi tells me the cameras are able of being multiplexed – capture images from both cameras at the same time. These are 4-lane MIPI connectors, so they are capable of moving quite a bit of data through the pipeline.

This is a big feature for industrial customers, as they usually have the need for multiple cameras for visual identification/inspection during the manufacturing process or quality assurance and shipping pipelines.

This is not surprising given the announcement that Sony is funding some of the camera AI-enabled image sensors development with Raspberry Pi

I have a good stash of Raspberry Pi cameras and will be having quite a bit of fun testing the dual camera support. More to come on this!

Not as exciting (to me), is the support for dual displays in addition to the two HDMI monitors. One thing to keep in mind is that the cameras and the displays share the same connectors. So you can run 2 cameras, 1 camera/1 display, or 2 displays at the same time.

The camera connectors on the Pi 5 are the same ones found on the Pi Zero series of boards and require a cable that is narrower on one end. The camera cable shipped with the Raspberry Pi camera modules is not compatible with the Pi 5, so you might have to source new cables if you don’t have any Pi Zero cables available. Also, keep in mind that camera (CSI) and display (DSI) cables have slightly different pinouts and they are not interchangeable.

New UART Serial Connector

This might seem like a small change but if you have ever had to debug a Raspberry Pi with a HAT attached to it, you will appreciate this new connector. Previously, you had to connect the UART leads to the GPIO header which was not the easiest task with a HAT blocking direct access to the GPIO pins.

I like that the UART connector is next to the HDMI ports, on the opposite side of the GPIO header. Again, this makes it easy to debug with a HAT attached to the Pi.

Active Cooling

Raspberry Pi is also launching a new heatsink dubbed the Active Cooler. This heatsink is only compatible with the Pi 5 as it uses the two additional holes on the board to be secured in place and it connects directly to a dedicated fan connector. On older Raspberry Pis, the fan is connected to the GPIO pins as the older boards don’t have a dedicated fan connector.

I’ve done some light tests with Active Cooler and it seems reasonably quiet during regular desktop operations. I barely noticed it was whirring away when I stressed the CPU and GPU watching a YouTube video :). I have not done any proper stress testing with the cooler installed. You can see the Active Cooler in operation in the video linked below.

Pi 5 vs Pi4 Physical Differences

If you haven’t watched, you should check out my video where I compare the physical layout of the Pi 5 to the Pi 4.

Here is a more detailed description of these differences.

Ethernet Jack and PoE HAT

The Pi 5 ethernet jack is now on the same side as the HDMI and power connectors, while the Pi 4 ethernet jack is right next to the GPIO pins. The PoE post – how the PoE HAT gets electricity from the ethernet jack – is also in a different position. This means the Pi 3/4 PoE HAT is not compatible with the new Pi 5.

I asked Raspberry Pi about this and they said the change was due to PCB trace routing and making sure they could fit everything on the board. They will be releasing an L-shaped PoE hat that is compatible with the Pi 5 active cooling heatsink.

Camera/Display Connectors

The standard position of the camera and display connectors, going back to the Pi 1B has been changed for the Pi 5. On the Pi 5, where the camera connector used to be, there are two camera/display connectors. This is described in more detail above.

Because of how close the camera/display connectors are to each other, it can be a bit fiddly to fit a cable into each of the connectors when using two cameras/displays. I had to break out some tweezers to make sure the cables were firmly secured in the connectors as my sausage fingers were not dexterous enough for the task.

Audio jack is no more!

The audio jack is absent from the Pi 5. To be honest, I don’t think this is much of a loss. I have always used an audio DAC on projects requiring audio output as the audio quality from the onboard audio jack can be pretty poor on the Raspberry Pi. There are still pads available if this feature is needed, but I doubt the average Pi user will be soldering an AV connector to their board.

Power Button

Yep, you read it right, the Raspberry Pi 5 now has a power switch. It’s pretty awesome to not have to unplug/plug the power brick every time you want to power up the Raspberry Pi. Another option to the unplug/plug method was to wire a switch connecting GPIO 3 and GND to act as a power switch, but this could be a little cumbersome when a HAT was attached to the Pi.

I tried using the Pi 5 power switch to shut down the board but it did not work. I have not tried adding the setting dtoverlay=gpio-shutdown to config.txt.

Case Compatibility

All of the layout changes listed above mean that Pi 4 cases are not compatible with the Pi 5. I’m sure 3rd party vendors will be quick to launch new cases. I am also sure the 3D printing community will quickly adapt available case designs to the new Pi 5 layout. But be warned, the

My Thoughts (for now)

The Pi 5 brings some of the features from the Compute Module 4 like direct access to PCIe and dual camera support. PCIe greatly expands the accessories you are able to connect directly to a Pi. For example, GSM modules, GPS, audio cards, and anything else that the software will support.

Personally, I’m looking forward to what the retro-gaming community will be able to do with the new Pi 5 GPU. I’m sure the folks over at RetroPie are already working on support for the Pi 5. Or at least, I hope they are 🙂

I’ll be using the Pi 5 as my workshop computer, where I can peek at KiCad files as I assemble and test new PCBs, use my favorite woodworking online tool (cutlistoptimizer.com), debug my Pico W projects, and inspect my soldering abilities with a Raspberry Pi HQ camera as a microscope. I suspect you will be seeing more content with the Pi 5 on this blog.

It looks like Raspberry Pi is taking another step in the direction of the manufacturing and industrial market. But the maker community and home users will certainly take advantage of these new features. As the creator of rpilocator.com – a tool used to keep track of Raspberry Pi computers in stock during the chip shortage – I would like to see Raspberry Pi making sure the retail market is stocked with the Pi 5.