Vilros Raspberry Pi 4 4GB Basic Starter Kit with… vs Raspberry Pi 5 8GB — Head-to-Head (2026)

Our verdict

Raspberry Pi 5 8GB is our pick.

For anyone starting a Raspberry Pi project in 2026, the Pi 5 8GB is the better buy. Its 2.4 GHz Cortex-A76 cores, 8 GB of RAM (double the Vilros kit's 4 GB) and PCIe/NVMe expansion give it years more headroom than the Pi 4-based kit for a moderate step up in budget. The Vilros Pi 4 4GB kit only wins if you need a complete, cooled, ready-to-run bundle today at the lower cost and your workload is retro emulation or a light always-on server.

Buy the Vilros Raspberry Pi 4 4GB Basic Starter Kit if you want an affordable all-in-one bundle (board, fan-cooled aluminum case, and switched USB-C PSU in one box) for RetroPie, Pi-hole, a Home Assistant node, or a classroom or teaching setup where 4 GB is plenty and you don't want to buy accessories separately. Buy the Raspberry Pi 5 8GB if you're building anything you expect to still be running in 2029: an NVMe-booted home lab, a Docker/k3s node, a camera or vision project, a self-hosted media server, or a board that will run modern 64-bit Linux desktops without feeling slow.

SpecPicks editorial verdict, written June 5, 2026. Prices move, so check the current price on each listing before you buy.