When testing the Pi 3’s Wi-Fi throughput at home, we were pleasantly surprised by its range, especially considering the Pi 3 has such a tiny Wi-Fi antenna. We, therefore, suspect that the office environment was just too noisy for the Pi 3 to cope, owing to the dozens of routers and Wi-Fi-enabled computers in the vicinity. However, we had no such trouble testing with identical networking equipment at home. In the office, we initially had some trouble with the Raspberry Pi 3’s Wi-Fi it was fussy about connecting to a number of routers, and when it finally managed to connect, we only achieved a throughput of around 1Mbit/sec. While Raspbian will be the default OS of choice for many, having the option of so many operating systems through NOOBS is brilliant. When you boot up the Pi, you’ll get a choice of operating systems to install, from the easy-to-use Linux distro Raspbian to the OpenELEC media centre to the twilight zone of RISC OS. The easiest way to install an operating system on the Raspberry Pi is to download the NOOBS installer from and copy it to a microSD card, which should be 8GB minimum, and ideally rated at Class 10, the fastest you can get. The all-important 40 general-purpose input/output pins are present for hobbyist use, as are the interfaces for the optional camera and LCD display modules. Otherwise, it’s business as usual, with four USB ports and Ethernet on the rear, plus HDMI and a 3.5mm audio and composite video port. The more straightforward friction slot means that the tape stays in the drawer. This is one less thing to go wrong: we’ve had a spring-loaded slot break on a Pi 2 and had to hold the microSD card in with electrical tape. One change we approve of is that the microSD card slot has switched from a spring-loaded model to a simpler friction slot. The RUN (reset) header is now on the other side of the GPIO pins. The power and activity lights have migrated from the top left to the bottom left of the board, which may be a problem depending on your case’s design. There have also been some changes to the physical layout of the Pi 3’s motherboard, although it remains physically the same size as the Pi 2. The inclusion of Wi-Fi is particularly handy, as it means you’ll no longer need to take up one of your precious USB ports with a Wi-Fi adapter. The Pi 3 (or, to use its full name, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B) can claim an impressive list of features of features and upgrades from the Pi 2, including a speed boost (the Foundation claims a 50% increase) as well as built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capability. It may have sold more than eight million of its Pi mini-computers, but the Raspberry Pi Foundation wasn’t resting on its laurels when it came up with its latest flagship model. Our original Raspberry Pi 3 review continues below: Raspberry Pi 3 review: In full If not, it makes more sense to opt for a Model B+ instead. The practical differences aren’t huge, though, so if you can find the Model B at a discount the Model B is still worth picking up. And the processor is a tad nippier as well. It has faster wired networking, with 300Mbits/sec Ethernet. The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ has faster 802.11ac Wi-Fi where the original Pi 3 Model B has 802.11n. You'll also need to stick with the 32-bit release if you use the "legacy" version of the Raspberry Pi OS, which still uses Debian 10 ("Buster") as its base instead of the newer Debian 11 (" Bullseye").Īll Raspberry Pi OS images can be downloaded from the Pi Foundation's website.Update: The Raspberry Pi 3 is an excellent hobbyist’s mini PC, but since this review was first written a new, faster, better-equipped version has emerged. The 32-bit version of the Raspberry Pi OS image isn't going away, and it remains supported on both 32- and 64-bit Pi devices for anyone who prefers or needs it-old Pi and Pi 2 boards with 32-bit processors remain fully supported. The 64-bit versions of the images are actually a bit smaller in file size than their 32-bit counterparts, presumably because they don't need to support the full range of Pi hardware like the 32-bit images do. The "desktop with recommended apps" version of the OS isn't available in 64-bit yet, so you'll need to install things like LibreOffice and your preferred development tools yourself. As of this writing, there are only two versions of the 64-bit Pi OS image available: the "Lite" version, which has no pre-installed desktop environment or apps, and the version with the desktop and a bare minimum of apps pre-installed.
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