Raspberry Pi Launches Its Own Branded SD Cards and SSDs - Plus SSD Kits

An anonymous reader shared this report from the blog OMG Ubuntu:

Having recently announced is own range of Raspberry Pi-branded SD cards (with support for command queuing on the Pi 5 and reliable read/write speeds) the company is now offering its own range of branded Raspberry Pi SSDs... And for those who don't have an M.2 expansion board? Well, that's where the new Raspberry Pi SSD Kit comes in. It bundles the official M.2 HAT+ with an SSD for an all-in-one, ready-to-roll solution.

Eben Upton expects it to be a popular feature:

When we launched Raspberry Pi 5, almost exactly a year ago, I thought the thing people would get most excited about was the three-fold increase in performance over 2019's Raspberry Pi 4. But very quickly it became clear that it was the other new features — the power button (!), and the PCI Express port — that had captured people's imagination. We've seen everything from Ethernet adapters, to AI accelerators, to regular PC graphics cards attached to the PCI Express port... We've also released an AI Kit, which bundles the M.2 HAT+ with an AI inference accelerator from our friends at Hailo. But the most popular use case for the PCI Express port on Raspberry Pi 5 is to attach an NVMe solid-state disk (SSD).

SSDs are fast; faster even than our branded A2-class SD cards. If no-compromises performance is your goal, you'll want to run Raspberry Pi OS from an SSD, and Raspberry Pi SSDs are the perfect choice. The entry-level 256GB drive is priced at $30 on its own, or $40 as a kit; its 512GB big brother is priced at $45 on its own, or $55 as a kit... The 256GB SSD and SSD Kit are available to buy today, while the 512GB variants are available to pre-order now for shipping by the end of November.

So, there you have it: a cost-effective way to squeeze even more performance out of your Raspberry Pi 5. Enjoy!

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