Are Raspberry Pi 5 projects still worth doing in 2026

[Isla]

The Pi 5 has been out long enough to have a mature ecosystem around it. Orange Pi, Rock 5 and similar boards are competitive on specs and sometimes cheaper. But the Pi ecosystem, community support, and documentation remain unmatched. Worth asking whether you should default to a Pi 5 for new projects or whether alternatives are worth the extra research time

[Finley]

Pi 5 for anything where documentation and community troubleshooting matters. Orange Pi 5 Plus if you need the raw specs and are comfortable doing more of the legwork

[StringTheory51]

The ecosystem argument still wins for me. Whenever I hit a problem on a Pi I find the solution in 30 seconds. On other boards that can take hours

[TheRizz00]

For home automation and media server stuff the Pi 5 is overkill unless you are doing heavy transcoding. A Pi 4 still does everything I need for 30 pounds less

[BigDog_Fan]

The Rock 5B is genuinely excellent for the money and the community has grown a lot. I would not dismiss it out of hand if raw performance matters

[Foundry20]

Docker on a Pi 5 with 8GB is my entire home server. Jellyfin, Pi-hole, Nextcloud, Home Assistant all running comfortably on one board

[DecentBloke]

The GPIO ecosystem for the Pi is still unmatched if you are doing hardware projects. That is not a competition yet

[GlassyCandle]

Power consumption on the Pi 5 under load is higher than people expect. Worth factoring in if it is running 24/7