The price may vary depending on the country

Nov 10, 2014 10:28 GMT  ·  By

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has just announced that the Raspberry Pi Model A+ is now available for purchase, with a new low price of $20 (€16).

Details about the new Raspberry Pi Model A+ have been leaked ahead of time after Element 14, a major retailer that sells this hardware, posted information about the new board. The page was quickly deleted, but now that the cat is out of the bag, an official announcement has been released as well.

Despite what the name might imply, Raspberry Pi Model A+ is not actually a better version (in terms of hardware) than Raspberry Pi Model B+.

In fact, it's a smaller version with different hardware specs, but the construction and the features implemented for it allowed its makers to sell it really cheap, for $20 (€16). That is a low price and it's sure to attract a lot of new users and developers.

Raspberry Pi Model A+ is a guaranteed success

The new Raspberry Pi version is aimed at people who want a smaller form factor and a device that consumes even less power, although the previous Raspberry Pi models are already pretty economic when it comes with power consumption.

"When we announced the Model B+ back in July, we said that we'd also be producing a lower-cost variant, analogous to the original Model A. Since then, James has been beavering away, and today we're pleased to announce the release of the Raspberry Pi Model A+ at a new low price of $20."

"Like the Model A, the Model A+ uses the BCM2835 application processor and has 256MB RAM, but it is significantly smaller (65mm in length, versus 86mm for the Model A), consumes less power, and inherits the many improvements that we made to the Model B+," says Eben Upton, the CEO of Raspberry Pi's engineering team.

Some of the new features include a bigger GPIO header, which now has 40 pins, a new micro SD socket has been added instead of the old one, and the audio output should be much better.

The new Raspberry Pi Model A+ uses a 700MHz Broadcom BCM2835 processor with 256MB of RAM, it comes with 2 USB ports, an HDMI port, a 4 pole Stereo output and Composite video port, a CSI camera port (for the Raspberry Pi camera), a DSI display port (for the Raspberry Pi touchscreen display), and a micro USB power source. All of these are in addition to the features mentioned by Eben.

The new board should be available to all major retailers, including Farnell.

Raspberry Pi Model A+ (5 Images)

Raspberry Pi Model A+
Raspberry Pi Model A+has full HDMIA closeup of Raspberry Pi Model A+
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