Raspberry Pi Zero becomes first computer given away as free magazine gift

Smallest and cheapest Raspberry Pi model costs just £4

The new Raspberry Pi is so small and cheap, that it has become the first computer to be given away as a free magazine gift.

The Raspberry Pi Zero measures just 6.5cm by 3cm, but despite it's small size it is a fully functioning single-board computer complete with 1GHz core speed, a Broadcom application processor, a micro-SD card slot, mini-HDMI socket, micro-USB sockets for data and power and 512MB memory.

The miniature computer is made in Wales and costs just £4 (selling for $5 in the USA). However, the makers of Raspberry Pi announced they are giving away a free Pi Zero on the front of each copy of the December issue of its in-house magazine, The MagPi.

Original versions of Britain's best selling computer were created by the not-for profit Raspberry Pi foundation to get school children into coding. The original Raspberry Pi Model B and its successors offered users a programmable computer for just $20-35 and has been bought by millions of people around the world. However, the organisation believed they could make a cheaper design that could be even more widely accessible.

Ebon Upton, founder of Raspberry Pi, told PE: “We created Raspberry Pi Zero as part of our mission to ensure that cost is never a barrier to access to open, programmable, computer hardware. We expect it to be used as an entry-level general-purpose computer, and as a component in educational projects in robotics and IoT applications. The MagPi team put an enormous amount of effort into putting the bundle together, and we're very proud to have been the first people to do this.”

It was reported that demand for the Pi Zero was so high that more than 80 percent of copies of The MagPi had been sold from newsagents within a day of the announcement and online stocks of the product rapidly depleted. Upton said that several tens of thousands of units have been manufactured but they expect “demand to outstrip supply for the next little while”.