what is in Raspberry Pi 4

In June 2019 the Raspberry Pi foundation surprised everyone by releasing it latest version of the Raspberry Pi 4.

This new version of our favorite mini computer is a complete overhaul of the platform, while keeping the well known form factor. In this post we’ll run through the most important changes.

Hardware Improvements

The new Raspberry Pi 4 has a bunch of hardware improvements, most importantly:

New more powerful CPU – its now using the Broadcom BCM2711, Quad core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5GHz
More memory options – you can now buy 1GB, 2GB or 4 GB versions
2 Micro HDMI ports supporting 4K monitors
2 USB3 ports for more bandwidth
Gigabit Ethernet with PoE support
802.11ac WiFi support
Bluetooth 5.0 and BLE support – great for IoT projects
Now uses USB-C for power supply allowing it to draw more power

Overall this represents a substantial improvement in performance and peripherals compared to the old Raspberry Pi 3 model. The board will keep the well known form factor, but obviously some ports will have new locations as the type has changed or new ports have been added.

Software Improvements

With the new version of the hardware platform the Raspberry Pi foundation also released a new version of their operating system Raspbian.

The new version called Raspbian Buster is based on the latest version of Debian. It includes a number of improvements:

Numerous technical improvements
Updated applications
Modernized user interface

Raspbian Buster is required when using the new Raspberry Pi 4 hardware, and is also backwards compatible with older versions of the Raspberry Pi platform.