Pico W5: New alternative to Raspberry Pi Pico comes with wireless connectivity

At the end of November, we reported on the Raspberry Pi RP2350 and the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W. Unsurprisingly the first alternatives are now already available. The Pico W5 is a new alternative based on the Raspberry Pi RP2350. Although this computing chip also has two Cortex-M33 computing cores, boards with the RP2350 as the primary computing chip are very underpowered in absolute terms and are not suitable as a desktop platform for everyday use like the Raspberry Pi 5. The Pico W5, on the other hand, is designed to connect sensors and actuators and, to put it simply, is more suitable for projects that are in close proximity to the hardware and in which, for example, the use of sensor data for certain purposes or the provision of such data in a network plays a central role.

The Pico W5 measures 51 x 21 millimeters, weighs 3 grams and is equipped with a USB-C port, which is also used to supply power. 520 KB of SRAM is installed, while the QSPI flash storage is 8 MB in size. Wireless connectivity via WiFi is also supported in the 5 GHz band, and connections to other devices can be established via Bluetooth 5.0 LE. The GPIO header consisting of 26 pins supports UART, SPI and I2C, among others.

The Pico W5 can be ordered from Elecrow for just under $7. The Raspberry Pi Pico 2 is available via Amazon for $10.89.