The Raspberry Pi 5 has been out for a while now. It’s faster than the Pi 4, has a proper PCIe lane, better I/O, and enough grunt to run a lightweight desktop or a stack of services without breaking a sweat. But the real question isn’t “is it good?”—it’s “what’s actually worth building with it in 2026?” The landscape has shifted. Cheap x86 mini PCs have flooded the market. Cloud tiers are dirt-cheap. So where does a Pi 5 still make sense?
When the Pi 5 Still Wins
First, the obvious wins. The Pi 5 is still one of the best ways to learn. If you’re teaching someone Linux, networking, or scripting, a $60 board that you can wipe and reflash in minutes is hard to beat. No Windows license, no bloat, no fear of bricking the family PC. For classrooms, after-school clubs, or your own kitchen-table experiments, the Pi 5 is in a class of its own.
Second: low-power always-on workloads. A Pi 5 idles in the single-digit watts. Run Pi-hole, a small VPN gateway, a local DNS cache, or a lightweight home automation hub, and it’ll sit there for years without a fan (with a good case) and barely touch your power bill. Mini PCs can do the same, but they’re often noisier, heavier, and more expensive when you factor in the need for an SSD and RAM. The Pi 5’s official power supply and optional NVMe hat make it a tidy, predictable package.
Homelab and Self-Hosting
For a homelab, the Pi 5 is a solid node. Run Docker, a few containers—Nextcloud, Uptime Kuma, a small Postgres instance—and you’ve got a real home server. The PCIe 2.0 x1 lane means you can add fast NVMe storage via the official M.2 HAT and avoid SD card wear. That changes the calculus. You’re no longer gambling on card longevity; you’re building something that can run 24/7 for years.
The catch: if you need more than a handful of services or anything that’s memory-hungry, you’ll hit the 8 GB ceiling fast. The Pi 5 maxes out at 8 GB RAM. For a single-purpose box or a light multi-service setup, that’s fine. For “I want to run ten things at once,” a used NUC or a small x86 box with 16 or 32 GB will scale better. The Pi 5 is the right tool for a focused homelab node, not a do-everything beast.
Retro Gaming and Media
Retro gaming on the Pi is a classic use case. The Pi 5 handles up to N64 and some Dreamcast comfortably; earlier systems are trivial. Recalbox, RetroPie, and Batocera all support the Pi 5, and the improved GPU and CPU make shaders and higher resolutions more viable. If you want a small, quiet box under the TV that boots straight into a game list, the Pi 5 still delivers. Just don’t expect it to replace a gaming PC or even a Steam Deck for anything modern.
As a media player, the Pi 5 can run Kodi or Jellyfin client duties. Hardware decode for common codecs is there. For a bedroom or garage TV, it’s a cheap and flexible option. Again, mini PCs can do the same and sometimes offer better codec support or more HDMI 2.1 features—so the Pi wins on simplicity, size, and power, not raw capability.
Where the Pi 5 Doesn’t Make Sense
Don’t use a Pi 5 as your main desktop. Even with 8 GB and a fast SD or NVMe, it’s underpowered for heavy browsing, big spreadsheets, or any serious dev work. Fine for terminal work, light coding, and email—not for “replace my laptop.”
Don’t use it for anything that needs sustained multi-threaded performance. Video encoding, large compiles, or running multiple VMs will leave you waiting. For that, a used office PC or a mini PC with a real CPU will run circles around the Pi.
And don’t assume the Pi is always cheaper. By the time you add a case, power supply, storage, and maybe the NVMe HAT, you’re often in the $120–150 range. Deals on refurbished mini PCs sometimes land in that zone with more RAM and a full x86 stack. So the Pi 5 isn’t automatically the budget option—it’s the right option when small size, low power, and simplicity matter more than raw performance.
The Verdict
In 2026, the Raspberry Pi 5 is still worth it for: learning and tinkering, low-power always-on services (Pi-hole, VPN, DNS, home automation), a compact homelab node with a few Docker containers, and retro gaming or lightweight media duty. It’s not worth it as a main machine, a heavy server, or when a cheap x86 box would do the same job for similar money. Pick the project first; if it fits in the Pi’s sweet spot, the Pi 5 is one of the best ways to build it.
