Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W Review

Hello friends, today we will take a look at the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W.

When the original Raspberry Pi Zero released in November 2015 it was a big deal. At roughly the size of a pack of gum, the Pi Zero contained a 1 GHz processor and 512MB of RAM, giving it the same computational power as the full-sized Raspberry Pi B+ that had released just a year and a half earlier.

When the Raspberry Pi Zero W released in June 2017, retained the same tiny form factor and added 802.11 b,g, and n as well as Bluetooth 4.1 and Bluetooth Low Energy, which allowed makers to ditch their networking dongles and create truly connected, embedded computing projects.

For $10 USD you have access to a seemingly perfect single board computer that could be used for anything from creating a handheld emulation console to internet enabled motion sensors that would send a tweet to remind you to take your lunch to work.

In 2021 the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, a brand new single board computer that retains the networking functionality and 512MB of RAM, but replaces the Broadcom BCM2835 System on a Chip that has a 1 GHz single-core ARMv6 CPU with a Raspberry Pi designed SoC that has a 64 bit Quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, similar to the one found in the Raspberry Pi 3 B+.

Running at 1 GHz and supporting Bluetooth 5.2, the $15 Pi Zero 2 W is a multi-core with better networking capabilities than its predecessors, making it the perfect single board computer for your next project that requires a lot of compute in a tiny package.

I ran some system tests and after installing the latest version of the Raspberry Pi OS onto an SD card and configuring the install for remote desktop access, I logged into via SSH and performed a series of benchmarks using the "sysbench" testing suite. A single core CPU test completed in 238.1 seconds on the Zero W and 171.7 seconds on the Zero 2 W, which decreased to 43.9 seconds when run in multi-core mode.

RAM performance is also significantly faster, completing in 5.2 seconds on the Zero W and 1.2 seconds on the Zero 2 W. Finally, an integer counting test between 0 and 1,234,567 was also faster on the new hardware, completing in 111.3 seconds on the Zero W and 37.7 seconds on the Zero 2 W.

While the Zero line has arguably always been meant for embedded computing purposes, I also checked the performance of the Zero 2 W running in desktop mode and was surprised. Those familiar with the Raspberry Pi Desktop will feel right at home and accessing menu items and configurations felt a bit zippier on the Zero 2 W than its predecessors.

Web browsing using Chromium still causes the CPU usage to skyrocket though and tasks like watching YouTube are a non-starter, but basic offline tasks like editing text files and Python code no longer max out resources like they did in previous Pi Zero variants, which makes using the desktop a much better experience.

While these tests only begin to explore the Zero 2 W upgraded capabilities, they indicate that this new Raspberry Pi is a worthy addition to the Zero line, which will allow makers to create even more impressive projects than we could before.

Overall, I'm extremely impressed with the Pi Zero 2 W and can't wait to explore the capabilities of this board further! I already have tons of electronics projects in mind for this board that i can't wait to get started on.

I hope you like it and if you have any questions let me know in the comments.

Thank you for your time!