This computer is the size of a credit card

Each week, we spotlight a cool innovation recommended by some of the industry's top tech writers. This week's pick is a computer the size of a credit card.

The Raspberry Pi 4 is a "computer the size of a credit card" that might be capable of replacing your desktop, said Scott Gilbertson at Wired. It's the fourth iteration of the Raspberry Pi, which was first released in 2012 as a bare circuit board, "intended as one part educational device, one part tinkering tool." But it became a phenomenon "used to power everything from scaled-down Mars rovers" to school science experiments, and spawned countless imitators.

The new Pi 4 is a grown-up version of the "tinkerer's toy." It's three times faster and comes with 4 GB of RAM, four times the memory of previous versions. The Pi 4 is still not in the same league as the latest desktops. But it's priced at just $55, and "if your computing needs are roughly on par with PC processing speeds from around 2012," the Pi 4 might be all you need to ditch the desktop.

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