What happened to the Raspberry Pi Pad 5, & is the Raspberry Pi CM4 worth buying?

Last Updated on April 25, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

When we where evaluating the PinePhone, we became interested in the Raspberry Pi Pad 5 trough ETA PRIME:

• at the end of last year, we found Raspberry Pi CM4 modules at Digitec Switzerland which we where interested in, and we ordered one at Digitec.
• We ordered also a Raspberry Pi Pad 5 on Aliexpress.
• We received the Raspberry Pi Pad 5, but not the Raspberry Pi CM4 which we ordered at Digitec Switzerland. Our order was canceled after a view month by Digitec, they say it is no longer available from them.
• alternatively, Conrad Switzerland offers us for CHF 86.90 a Raspberry Pi CM 4 with 2 GB:

https://www.conrad.ch/de/p/raspberry-pi-cm4102000-raspberry-pi-compute-modul-4-2-gb-4-x-1-5-ghz-2332153.html?WT.mc_id=affiliate_awin_toppreise&utm_source=awin_de&utm_medium=cpo&awc=11467_1682455453_c44deced3c3e174cf58904d1c9a53d1d

• but it is not available. We will currently not order it until it is available again. CM4 by the way are are also sold on Ricardo Switzerland for around 100 USD.
• Conrad Switzerland want to sell us the Radxa Zero instead of the Raspberry Pi CM4, which we won’t do.
• But we will buy sooner or later a CM4 with at least 2 GB Ram. We want 2 GB Ram so that we can test how Ubuntu Desktop runs on it which requires 2 GB of Ram.
• Now, we have a Raspberry Pi Pad 5, but currently no CM4. We do not trust the CM4, since we found at different places information that the CM4 is difficult to handle. What exactly works with the CM4?
• We now found out, that the Raspberry Pi Pad 5 is not available anymore. It is still listed from the manufacturer, but not available anymore from there.
• The Raspberry Pi Pad 5 was a great concept, but unfortunately no more available.

After we reviewed and evaluated for such a long time to find a device with which we can work as a daily driver and are happy with it, it is difficult to convince us to buy the latest and the newest devices which claim to be able to do anything. For us personally, the most important thing is a community of happy users who report about their experience with their devices. For many devices we reviewed in our journal, we do not know of a community who is happy with those devices.