Pi 3B+: 48 hours later
Unless you’ve been AFK for the last two days, you’ll no doubt be aware of the release of the brand-spanking-new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. With faster connectivity, more computing power, Power over Ethernet (PoE) pins, and the same $35 price point, the new board has been a hit across all our social media accounts! So while we wind down from launch week, let’s all pull up a chair, make yet another cup of coffee, and look through some of our favourite reactions from the last 48 hours.
Our Twitter mentions were refreshing at hyperspeed on Wednesday, as you all began to hear the news and spread the word about the newest member to the Raspberry Pi family.
Happy Pi Day, people! New @Raspberry_Pi 3B+ is out. pic.twitter.com/YcL2I0vpCv
— Tanya Fish (@tanurai) March 14, 2018
News outlets, maker sites, and hobbyists published posts and articles about the new Pi’s spec upgrades and their plans for the device.
“This sort of attention to detail work is exactly what I love about being involved with @Raspberry_Pi. We’re squeezing the last drops of performance out of the 40nm process node, and perfecting Pi 3 in the same way that the original B+ perfected Pi 1.” https://t.co/hEj7JZOGeZ pic.twitter.com/tKYHQoV1Jj
— Hackster.io (@Hacksterio) March 14, 2018
And I think we counted about 150 uses of this GIF on Twitter alone:
YouTube
https://twitter.com/awarburton/status/973869424552882176
A few members of our community were lucky enough to get their hands on a 3B+ early, and sat eagerly by the YouTube publish button, waiting to release their impressions of our new board to the world. Others, with no new Pi in hand yet, posted reaction vids to the launch, discussing their plans for the upgraded Pi and comparing statistics against its predecessors.
Long-standing community members such as The Raspberry Pi Guy, Alex “RasPi.TV” Eames, and Michael Horne joined Adafruit, element14, and RS Components (whose team produced the most epic 3B+ video we’ve seen so far), and makers Tinkernut and Estefannie Explains It All in sharing their thoughts, performance tests, and baked goods on the big day.
If you have a YouTube or Vimeo channel, or if you create videos for other social media channels, and have published your impressions of the new Raspberry Pi, be sure to share a link with us so we can see what you think!
We shared a few photos and videos on Instagram, and over 30000 of you checked out our Instagram Story on the day.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgTB_MAF65l
As hot off the press (out of the oven? out of the solder bath?) Pi 3B+ boards start to make their way to eager makers’ homes, they are all broadcasting their excitement, and we love seeing what they plan to get up to with it.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgWkRACF7HV
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgWmtzYFFaG
In the news
Eben made an appearance on ITV Anglia on Wednesday, talking live on Facebook about the new Raspberry Pi.
https://www.facebook.com/itvanglia/videos/2282586891755382/
He was also fortunate enough to spend the morning with some Sixth Form students from the local area.
On a day where science is making the headlines, lovely to see the scientists of the future in our office – getting tips from fab @Raspberry_Pi founder @EbenUpton #scientists #RaspberryPi #PiDay2018 @sirissac6thform pic.twitter.com/q7mlWkT8fH
— Sascha Williams (@Sascha_Williams) March 14, 2018
Principal Hardware Engineer Roger Thornton will also make a live appearance online this week: he is co-hosting Hack Chat later today. And of course, you can see more of Roger and Eben in the video where they discuss the new 3B+.
It’s been a supremely busy week here at Pi Towers and across the globe in the offices of our Approved Resellers, and seeing your wonderful comments and sharing in your excitement has made it all worth it. Please keep it up, and be sure to share the arrival of your 3B+ as well as the projects into which you’ll be integrating them.
If you’d like to order a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, you can do so via our product page. And if you have any questions at all regarding the 3B+, the conversation is still taking place in the comments of Wednesday’s launch post, so head on over.
66 comments
Chandler
I can’t wait to get my hands on my 3B+. Was a little late to the party Wednesday but when seeing 300+ comments, had feeling something was up. But I’m looking forward to play around with the new wifi with Proant antenna which I’ve been expecting for it to appear on the 3 ever since it came out on the Pi 0W. Going to tear off that shield and check it out.
Anyways congratulations on the new launch. I bow to the awesomeness to everyone there who worked on this.
Raspberry Pi FORREVVER!!! (with my arms across my chest in a Blank Panther salute)
Mike
When you want the new Pi 3 B+, but the local Micro Center Stores don’t have them yet, and hoping to possibly, if all the stars align correctly, maybe get them in middle to end of next week. :(
Jeff Findley
Bummer. I have a Microcenter about 20 minutes away from me. I’ll have to keep an eye on their website.
Dougie Lawson
One interesting point is that Rory Cellan-Jones (BBC Tech journo) hasn’t made a single mention of the RPi3B+.
He must have been completely assimilated into the AppleBorg.
We had stuff from Rory for every earlier Raspberry. So I wonder why not this time.
Matt Hawkins
Seems weird the new Pi was completely ignored by the BBC. Can you imagine them ignoring an Apple release?
tom
BBC don’t have a STEM bone in their body any more. Robot Wars is cancelled, for instance.
shannon
SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!!
Seriously, Estefannie needs to share some of those pies.
Matt Hawkins
The thing I love about the Pi is that it moves forward in exciting sensible increments without burning everything that went before it. This allows the community to keep building and helping more users on-board. I’ve just tested some bits of hardware and it all works fine. Thank you Pi Foundation for all your hard work. The Pi 3 B+ is not only more stuff for the same money but the new shiny bits make the board look beautiful.
Dominique Laloux
That’s a very good point, Matt.
The Raspberry Pi has become much more than “just” a toy helping individual tinkerers discover programming and electronics. For some of us, it became a precious tool to introduce ICT in schools, particularly where resources are scarce (in developing countries). In that context, continuity and reliability are critical characteristics.
Education doesn’t need brisk steps forward, but reliable tools that can be included in longer plans.
Many thanks and congratulations to the Foundation for their wise approach to “moving forward” in well thought of steps, respectful of what people are trying to achieve with their platform.
W. H. Heydt
That’s a good point to make to those who think the RPT should abandon Broadcom SoCs and the VC4 in favor of some other SoC with a different GPU. The point is also supported by Dr. Upton’s comment in the Anglia TV interview about being able to run new versions of Raspbian on *any* Pi, no matter how old.
Christopher Stanley
Well…. Technically the ethernet still shares the USB 2 BUS. So speeds are not going to be 1gig,more like 350mb,still much faster.
Elfen
I will get one as soon as I get the cash to buy it.
PS.BALU
Dear sir,
Please let me know how i am benefited with my raspberry pi3 model B.
Thanks.
Balu.
C Johnson
The upgrade is so small it’s not even worth taking my pi 3 out of the case.
James Hughes
You forgot to ad “In my opinion”, and for you, you are right. For many others however, they have a different opinion.
Pipuppy
For about 15 years my wife and two sons insisted they never new what to get for my birthday’s or Christmas. Then along came the Raspi a few years ago and now guess what…
I have an ever growing collection of Raspis and look forward to my next birthday in the secure knowledge I will be seeing a RPi3B+ shortly :-)
Its never easy to hide my delight at receiving another Raspi but the difficult part will be how to look genuinely surprised…again :-)
Esbeeb
I am so very happy! I grumbled in the past a few times (forum, and blog posts) about the Raspberry Pi having painfully slow disk I/O or network throughput.
Thank you for coming through with an update which addresses this! That Gigabit ethernet is a huge gain!! It makes mounting filesystems over NFS (which is going to need decent network throughput, as in, say >= 20 MB/sec, sustained) far more realistic and attractive, in settings like classrooms, with many Pis (where you really want to minimize management hassle).
Now the Pi seems to me far more like a serious, usable daily machine (and the Spectre and Meltdown immunity really means something there), and not just a toy for children.
The Tinkerboard was breathing down your neck hard, but now I think you’ve all once again redeemed yourself. Please keep up the good work! I’m cheering for you all heartily!
James Hughes
Not sure the Tinkerboard is really breathing down our necks to be honest. Their sales are rather lacklustre I am lead to believe, it’ll take a while to catch up the 19M neck…
Not to say we are not siting on our laurels. Lots of dev work going on.
Mike
My understanding is that the Tinkerboard has very poor support and a very small community. It has great hardware, but you’re just about completely on your own with nearly zilch in terms of documentation, projects, community, etc…
Jon Tschirgi
I’m 62 years old and can’t imagine life without ‘Pi’s to play with. I haven’t had so much fun since a built my Micro Ace (US version of Speccy kit) 38 years ago. I realize the Pi mission is to create interest in programming for children, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of those 19 million units have ended up in the hands of old timers like me. Are there any statistics in this area? I’m thinking of perhaps organizing a Pi club at the local Laguna Beach Senior Center.
Eben Upton
We say “children of all ages”, and we do mean it. And if you fancy a guest speaker for your club, let me know. I’m a frequent Laguna Beach visitor.
Jack Burton
I’ll soon be 65 and love playing with my Pi’s I have a long way to go though ,not the smartest when it come to learning code .so I rely a lot on Github …Thanks to the foundation for all the fun .my new Pi 3 b+ arrives tomorrow ,cant wait
Colin Allison
Here’s a 70-year old who also enjoys working with the Raspberry Pi. Keeps my brain alive.
Peter Sheppard
I got one!!! Pure chance. Happened to look on the Pimoroni Shop on Thursday lunch time. It arrived Friday PM between dropping the car off for the MOT and the washing machine engineer arriving. (Sorry about the name dropping, but that is GOOD service!!) Dropped it into my Heath Robinson Laptop, replacing the “three” that lived there, and baked it a Micro SD. In My ‘umble opinion, with the “three” it worked, with the 3B it is a usable (OK slow) laptop.
Great!
Peter.
chris stagg
still waiting on mine, posted out the morning you got yours, usually only take a day! (one town over)
chris stagg
*ordered yours
chris stagg
NM… finally got it… just an odd delay.
Anton Wösner
Compare Pi 3B and Pi 3B+
– more speed
– cooler
– and how it work with CPU-cooler
(german)
http://egiel.eu/?p=72
Eben Upton
Interesting curves: nice to see the updated thermal design working as intended.
AnnieC
Wow, that’s quite a big difference in the temps, great work on the new thermal design!
Szymon
To be honest Pi 3B+ is not something users were waiting. We are waiting for brand new Pi 4 with decent performance, more RAM and …. I guess higher initial price.
This is a small evolution step. POE pins are nothing new, only the transformer on board would be nice. Higher wifi speed and AC? It isn’t really important. Only major step is higher Ethernet speed.
You should already release brand new model because you are far behind Rockchip and Amlogic. Now rpi.gpio is being ported to other boards and that let me move my code mostly without any major modifications and run it on different boards. On different boards I miss only CE and FCC certification and this you advantage over chines producers.
James Hughes
You are in some ways right – users were not expecting any sort of upgrade. So this is an added bonus, since Eben has already stated that a major release is not expected for at least another year.
Of course, I should add that your comment is your own view, and not that of people who do actually want better Wifi speed etc. Always worth remembering that last week you could buy a Raspberry Pi 3 for $35, and this week you can buy a Raspberry Pi 3B+ for $35, and its doe shave a better feature set.
One final point that everyone who makes the same points as yourself seem to forget. The reason the Pi sells 10x to 50x more than any of these other devices in spite of their higher specifications is because of our solid HW design and even more solid software base. Solid HW design and getting a solid SW base takes lots of time – more than a lot of competitors have put in, which is why their SW and support is often dreadful. We spend time and money getting compliance certificates, we spend huge amount of money on optimising software for SBC (which competitors then use…), we contribute huge amounts back in to education, and we spend money on the great community the Pi has engendered. What we don’t do is rattle off a new board design every 6 months, whilst leaving all our back products to rot with out of date software and hopeless support. And that is why we sell millions into industry.
Exaga
We’re the paying customers and our opinions matter. Or are you saying otherwise? Without the support of people like us you wouldn’t have a Raspberry Pi Foundation or +18 million units out there in the world to boast about. It certainly has exceeded the 10,000 units which were initially planned. So, spare a thought for those who you look down on from Mount Olympi, who support you financially and in many other ways too.
If your RPi devices are that *good* why haven’t you yet acknowledged Slackware ARM as a viable operating system to run on them? There is no better educational tool available on the Linux platform than Slackware. On that basis Slackware is peerless.
When you use Raspbian, you learn Raspbian. When you use Slackware, you learn Linux.
Raspberry Pi Staff Simon Long
“If your RPi devices are that *good* why haven’t you yet acknowledged Slackware ARM as a viable operating system to run on them? There is no better educational tool available on the Linux platform than Slackware. On that basis Slackware is peerless.
When you use Raspbian, you learn Raspbian. When you use Slackware, you learn Linux.”
That’s your (cliched and rather biased) opinion, not a statement of fact. There are numerous places on the Internet where you can go to loudly shout about the supposed benefits of your chosen flavour of Linux and how it is so much better than all the others, but this isn’t one of them. Kindly keep the religious wars elsewhere.
Simon FD
“We’re the paying customers and our opinions matter.” – yes they do, but not in the way you’re suggesting. If you were paying a subscription or had some sort of ongoing contract with Raspberry Pi Foundation, then maybe your voice would carry some weight. However, in this case you’ve paid money for an offered product which partly goes into the development of the next edition but mostly towards expanding the IT literacy of the population (it is a charity, after all).
The model here is “if you don’t like it, don’t buy it”
This is all my humble opinion, obviously :)
James Hughes
Er, what? Raspbian is Debian LINUX. You learn Raspbian, you learn LINUX. We make very few changes to the underlying Debian OS. Just enough to get all our HW working – you know, the same changes that would be needed to make Slackware work. So I entirely refute your absurd claim that Slackware is peerless in education – that is patently untrue. That said, should you wish to port Slackware to the Pi (or has it already been done? Oh, yes, you run a website telling you how to do it. Biased much?), please go ahead – we welcome third party contributions to the Pi ecosystem.
As for customer opinions, of course we listen to customers, and we appreciate contributions. But one thing you need to consider is that we have a very astute development and technical team, and you can count on the fingers of one foot the number of times that a customer comes up with a list of features the Pi should have when there is something on that list we haven’t already thought of. I personally find it strange that people when they come up with lists of enhancements think that the people at Pi are so dumb they haven’t already thought of these things. We have. We also have a development roadmap for a number of years ahead. Lots of those things are on that roadmap. And when things are not on that roadmap it is for REALLY good reasons that have been thoroughly investigated.
Matt
“you can count on the fingers of one foot the number of times that a customer comes up with a list of features the Pi should have when there is something on that list we haven’t already thought of”
I think it should have cattle insemination facilities built in.
There – had your developers thought of that?
James Hughes
Damn.
Szmalu
Greetings from Poland!
https://youtu.be/Y64jW8HJ5-E
vijay
Finally, I got my new Raspberry Pi 3B+ model and now just want my hands on the Raspberry 4… However, the 3B+ isn’t as huge of an upgrade as the Pi 3B was, but it does offer a faster processor and better thermal management. But the Rasp 4 will be thanks to the folks at the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Lee Wilkin
I received my 3B+ this morning (thank you CPC for your competitive pricing and fast delivery)! I appreciate being able to use the official Raspberry Pi case and power supply from my 3B purchase a while back.
Wow … I’m impressed with the improved Wi-Fi performance!
Did you hijack a Google server-farm or something?! My full-fat Raspbian image downloaded incredibly quickly (compared to other image downloads performed close to a new product release). Well done to the server minions!
I haven’t tested the wired Ethernet performance (because my New Shiny is being used as a desktop computer, far from my home router). My primary use is word-processing but I’ll also be doing some programming, FTP, encoding, web-browsing and some dumb-terminal stuff.
The one criticism that I had with the 3B was the thermal design and management. I’m pleased to see an improvement in this area on the 3B+. It’s too soon to comment on the CPU performance increase. (I look forward to running a few compiling and encoding tests against 3B in the near future.)
* * *
People tend to focus on CPU clock-speeds but one has to be mindful of the purpose of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Improved CPU performance is just one element that aids ease-of-use UX (from a desktop perspective). Raspberry Pi tech facilitates the development of skills in critical thinking and problem solving. It provides a creative environment for young intellects to flourish. It can gift a mind with a fresh perspective on a subject previously judged to be boring or too difficult.
I ask you — is there anything more delightful than witnessing the epiphany of a child who has discovered that he/she is talented at something?
* * *
Thanks for putting Eben’s ITV Anglia interview on your website — I would have missed this because of work commitments.
I know that Eben’s discussion with Roger Thornton may have exceeded the technical threshold of some viewers but I’m sure that many Raspberry Pi enthusiasts found it enjoyable and fascinating. Many people don’t realise how much work goes into an incremental update like this. (“Tip of the iceberg” comes to mind.) Your high engineering standards put your SBC competitors to shame.
I know that I’ve said this before but I think that it’s worth repeating:-
If you have the original Raspberry Pi computer (with the original OS image on an SD-card) from 2012, boot it up and compare the UX and performance to the latest offering. The difference is simply staggering!
Thank you again for all your efforts!
James Hughes
Thanks you for your kind words!
Mike
How come these are near impossible to get in the USA right now? Ultra bummer. Everyone is sold out in the USA, except for one vendor who charges $15 for shipping.
James Hughes
Because we could not ship in the USA until the FCC compliance was published, and that was done on launch day, there is a bit of a gap whilst the supply chain is filled. I’m not sure of the current production levels, but we did make over 200k up front, so the chain should fill up quickly.
Liz Upton
They should be arriving with you in the USA very soon now. We have been bitten in the bums before by releasing simultaneously in the US and elsewhere; unfortunately, the FCC publishes paperwork online which identifies what products are being examined for conformance when as soon as those products are submitted, which has meant in the past that anybody looking at their website has been able to see that a new Pi was coming out before it was launched – we can’t send a product to shops without FCC certification. Our audience being a clever lot who do things like run Python scripts on web pages to spot things of interest to them, that’s meant leaks before, which has made it very difficult for us to keep embargoes in place. In order to avoid that happening, we have had to (reluctantly, I promise!) make the decision to file the paperwork at the same time as launching everywhere else. It only means a few days’ delay for those of you in the US, but we feel your impatience and we’re very sorry!
Mike
Thank you for the explanation. :)
Dave Thompson
After hesitating on previous releases, I found stock and ordered right away last week from the Pi Shop. My Pi3B+ boards arrived today. In California. A nameless distributor wanted $45.00 shipping, apparently from the UK (without indicating that in the shipping details). Pi Shop was just under 8$ and had them in my hands Monday morning. Pi Shop will be getting the order for the POE hats as well!
lionelon
Hi all,
I have only kind of question: is there an official 64b raspbian for this HW or is it still a 32b?
James Hughes
No, there is no official release. However there are a number of third party distro’s that are 64bit.
Heimo Wissing
I am disappointed! USB boot does not work :(
I got a SATA SSD with a no name SATA to USB adapter working as boot device with my Pi3. Today Pi3+ arrived and I set it up like Pi3, by programming program_usb_boot_mode=1 and program_usb_timeout=1. Unfortunately the Pi3+ with the “improved mass storage boot” still fails to boot.
James Hughes
Please post your problem on the forum – the blog isn’t really the place for tech support
Manuel
Where can i applaud the PoE feature? I just want to offset the negative feedback a little, since i have waited for this so long! It has been difficult to power the pi through the ethernet cable i run anyways. So much needed! Keep up the good work!
Helen Lynn
Right here is good :-) Thank you for your kind comments!
DDU
What ist the orgingal name of the PoE-Hat , where can i by that. does anybody has a Weblink for Details?
Vytis
One thing bug’s me out each time is the price tag. Raspberry is always a 35$ computer on paper, but never in reality. It’s not even 35eur. As far as official channels offer it’s almost 50eur. The same with rpi zero, nowhere close to a 5$ computer….
Anyway looking forward playing with a rpi3b+ unit some day.
James Hughes
Was there something you missed about the before tax and postage statement? Once you add VAT and P&P, the price does go up from the baseline $35. But we have always stated the price is exclusive of those figures, since they vary so much from country to country.
J Osborne
I can’t speak for other parts of the world, but some stores in the USA have it “in stock” which means no charge for shipping. In most states you still pay sales tax, but that is the same for a $1 candy bar, or a pound of cheese. (Exception: Fry’s sometimes has a “no sales tax” sale, where they pay the sales tax as opposed to marking everything down by 9.5% or whatever the exact sales tax is)
I bought one 3B+ for $35+tax and got a free RPi approved power supply (which I think sells for about $10), and later bought another and happened to get on the no-sales tax day. The free power supply one was a much bigger savings then the no-sales tax day (sales take is between $3 and $4 here for the Pi).
So it may or may not be common, but it definitely happens.
Jim
Took the SD card from my Pi 3B and put it into my Pi 3B+. It did not work. I have to wait until tomorrow to get a new card formatted and running. Still excited!
Raspberry Pi Staff Simon Long
With the card in your 3B, run “sudo apt-get update” followed by “sudo apt-get upgrade” – that should install the new firmware required for it to boot on the 3B+.
Martin
The PoE option is very interesting! The big problem with the 3B was the missing ESD protection behind the ethernet socket. I really want to know if this is fixed – we killed several Pi’s before we realized that our own PoE-HAT wasen’t the direct source of the problem…
chinaguy
Well here in China I will have to wait a bit to get my hands on the 3B+ as its marked on the local Toabao as 455rmb……which is a lot more then $35USD.
But on the plus side the 3B is marked down to as little as 165rmb which is a lot less then $35USD.
Just as a matter of interest I find no difference in quality or perforamance between the UK and Chinese made Pi’s as I have several of each at home and a classroom filled with them. The only difference you can see is the way the cardboard box has the raspberry printed!
William Stevenson
Another triumph! Well done RPi. I think some people just don’t appreciate how amazing it is that you get a complete new computer so cheaply! Slight blip when I found the micro SD from my Pi3B wouldn’t work, but the new image soon did the trick and I’m getting so used to re-installation that the jobs required to replicate the old Pi3B took little time, and the SD Card Copy utility is so quick, I soon had both systems going. Has anyone else noticed that you have to uninstall-reinstall Bonjour Print Services after Windows Insider Updates before you can get PuTTY working for headless operation?
Lars Oscarsson
I got a problem. Retropie 4.3 that works without any problem on my model 3B will not boot on the 3B+ Instead i get a blinking red light. Four long follwed by four short blinks. Any one have an idea why. OSMC (from this page works)
Liz Upton
Sounds like you’re running old firmware that doesn’t know about 3B+ – I’m not sure whether Retropie have done a new release yet. Head on over and check!
Thomas Brown
Pi 3B+ is my first Pi and its a bit fab.
This is my first return to Unix coding since college 25 years ago. Loving it. Works brilliantly straight out of the box.
This is going to be the start of a beautiful friendship methinks :)
Alex Bate
Excellent news. We hope you have the most splendid time with it!
Comments are closed