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Pi 5 has been out long enough that the question has shifted from “should I get one” to “is my Pi 4 project worth upgrading” — and the honest answer depends heavily on what you are actually running on it.
Raspberry Pi 4: still fine for light, low-power tasks
For projects that barely touch the CPU — Pi-hole, a simple MQTT broker, basic home automation — the Pi 4 remains genuinely adequate, and reusing one you already own for those tasks is the right call rather than an unnecessary upgrade.
- powful cputhe cpu of the raspberry pi 4 model b adopts the latest arm cortex-a72 architecture, which is also used in high-perfo…
- video output/gputhe on-board gpu of the raspberry pi 4 supports 4kp@60 and newly supports h.265 decoding, opengl es 3.0, etc.as…
- usb 3.0with a new soc, the speed of the raspberry pi 4 around i/o has been improved, and finally usb 3.0 is supported.usb boot…
Raspberry Pi 5: roughly double the real-world performance
Pi 5 benchmarks at around 2-2.5x the CPU and GPU performance of Pi 4, which is very noticeable the moment you run anything more demanding — Home Assistant with a lot of integrations, Frigate object detection, or general web browsing on the desktop.
- Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB RAM: Model SC1112 featuring a quad-core ARM Cortex-A76 processor running at 2.4GHz. Enhanced Connectivi…
Active cooling is no longer optional on Pi 5
Pi 5 runs hot enough under sustained load to thermal throttle without active cooling, unlike Pi 4 which mostly got by with a passive heatsink. Budget for the official active cooler as part of the Pi 5 purchase, not an afterthought.
- This is Official Active Cooler for Raspberry Pi 5
- Combines an Aluminium Heatsink with a Temperature-Controlled Blower Fan to accelerate heat dissipation
- How to Install: Connect the 4pin cable to the fan header on Raspberry Pi 5, and fix the Active Cooler via spring-loaded push pins
If your current Pi 4 project runs fine, there is no urgency to swap it. If you are hitting real performance ceilings — slow Home Assistant, laggy Frigate detection — Pi 5 is a genuine, not marginal, upgrade.