In case you didn’t get that, let us reiterate: this is basically a
Raspberry Pi model 3 (which is still a perfectly good, capable Pi) but
smaller, and it costs only 15 bucks. It’s been under-clocked a bit to
1GHz instead of the Pi 3’s 1.2GHz, but it’s the same processor. (We
have a feeling that some of us are going to be experimenting to see if
we can overclock it and recover those lost clock cycles.)
There are a few other products in the Pi Foundation’s lineup that
come close to the Zero W2 in terms of size and power. The one
that comes to mind first is the Compute Module 3. The Compute
Modules tend to be forgotten by many makers when it comes to
building things because they’re not quite as user-friendly. They don’t
have connectors for HDMI and USB, or an SD card slot, as they’re
designed to plug into another board with a single edge connector.
Plus, when you add the cost of the development board to which
you’re connecting, the price increases quite a bit. But power- and
size-wise, the Compute Module 3 is pretty close to the Zero W2.
So what’s the big deal about the Zero W2? After all, there’s already
a Zero and a Zero W. First, if you’ve looked around recently, you may
have noticed it can be difficult to find a Zero. Maybe it’s because
there just aren’t many around, or it may be that they’re very popular,
but searching for a Pi Zero on sites such as Amazon or Pimoroni will
often bring up the Zero W but not the Zero. The Zero has one major
pro and one major con. The pro — the price. It’s hard to beat a Pi for
$5. The con — no Wi-Fi capability built in. If you want to connect the
Zero to a network, you have to use a USB-to-Ethernet adapter, which
either takes one of the precious ports on the board or requires a USB
hub, and both of those take up space that you may not be ready to
lose in the guts of your prototype.
The next step up, obviously, is the Zero W. We’ve always assumed that
users just prefer the Zero W because of its inbuilt Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
connectivity; many makers want to build connected devices, and a
device that is already set up to connect to Wi-Fi just makes sense.
The Zero W is only $10, but it has one drawback, and that is supply.
As of this writing, all suppliers selling the Zero W limit customers to
one, and this has not changed in the more than four years since it
was first released. (I was recently experimenting with a sort of Zero
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