Raspberry Pi 2 hands-on: Is the souped-up board ready to take on the PC?

​Web browsing

Raspberry Pi 2 - Model B

The most widely-used piece of software on PCs is typically the browser, so it's reassuring the Pi 2 can navigate the web with relative ease.

Raspbian's Epiphany web browser took just over five seconds to load initially but afterwards started in a relatively nippy 2.3 seconds.

Opening pages takes only slightly longer than your average laptop, with the BBC homepage taking about 2.35 seconds, and sites such as ZDNet.com not taking much longer, an average of 3.3 seconds.

As you might expect performance is not flawless, you sometimes see a checked pattern when scrolling a page as the content renders. Also opening five tabs caused a noticeable delay when swapping between tabs as the pages loaded back in.

However, overall the Pi 2 proved a comfortable machine for browsing, one that fitted Upton's description as fulfilling a role as a house's second PC.

Raspberry Pi 1 - Model B

The Pi 1 in comparison fared far worse taking 10.5 seconds to load the Epiphany browser initially and six seconds subsequently. Opening pages took about twice as long, five seconds for the BBC homepage, and seven seconds for ZDNet.com

There was very clear lag when scrolling ZDNet, with the checked pattern taking several seconds to disappear as content was rendered. Opening five tabs also slowed page loading to a crawl and as the CPU maxed out.

Image: Nick Heath / TechRepublic

Email and cloud storage

Raspberry Pi 2 - Model B

With hundreds of millions of users, Gmail is one of the world's most widely used web-based email clients, so how does it run on the Pi 2?

Gmail defaults to its basic HTML view that requires the page to be reloaded more often and is missing features such as chat, yet is perfectly usable. It's reasonably snappy, with the site taking about five seconds to load initially and about three seconds subsequently.

Google Drive also reverts to a simpler view, which again works absolutely fine. It took about 30 seconds to upload a 1.7MB file over a 10 megabit connection.

Although Google Drive did lock-up once during one attempted upload, the rest of the time both Gmail and Google Drive worked without any lag.

Raspberry Pi 1 - Model B

Gmail takes longer to load, about seven seconds initially and just over three seconds subsequently, but remains usable if you're willing to wait a few seconds to view each message.

Google Drive took far longer to get going, more than 15 seconds, and suffered considerable lag when scrolling. More problematically the browser locked up and became unusable when trying to download and upload a file, as again the CPU maxed out.

Image: Nick Heath / TechRepublic

Office suite

Raspberry Pi 2 - Model B

The fact that a $35 machine can be used to run a free office suite is impressive.

The latest version of the open-source LibreOffice runs well, with Writer booting within 16 seconds initially, but opening almost instantly subsequently.

The application didn't bog down when handling larger files, opening this this multi-page document containing several forms took just over a couple of seconds, 2.3.

Similarly the machine handles large spreadsheets with relative ease, with LibreOffice Calc fetching this Excel table with more than 32,400 rows in about three seconds.

Browsing documents online also means viewing PDFs, and the operating systems' built-in PDF viewer also coped well, opening this paper within 3.5 seconds.

Scrolling through all three documents was smooth, apart from when scrolling to full-page images in the PDF, which triggered a 3.5 second delay.

Raspberry Pi 1- Model B

Again there was a pronounced difference in performance to the point where I found Libre Office to be unsuitable for certain tasks, with the suite taking more than 40 seconds to start Writer for the first time.

The document above took considerably longer to load, about 25 seconds, and suffered minor lag when scrolling. Similarly Calc took about ten times longer to open the above table but once open only hitched very slightly when scrolled.

Online forums seems to suggest Open Office to be a better choice of suite for lower specced Raspberry Pi models.

In contrast Raspbian's built-in PDF viewer opened the consultation doc as swiftly as on the Pi 2 and I was able to mouse through it almost as smoothly.

Image: Nick Heath / TechRepublic

Video

Raspberry Pi 2 - Model B

One complaint that some people may have is that Flash videos, such as those embedded into news stories on the BBC, won't work out of the box.

However, videos on YouTube do work on Raspbian's Epiphany web browser, as they are served by a HTML5 player.

Unfortunately I found the quality of the video to be poor, which is odd when you consider demo of the Epiphany browser from last year didn't seem to have the same issues.

As you can see from the photo there was considerable blockiness to the image, beyond the compression artifacts usually found in YouTube videos, that marred its fidelity. Also when in fullscreen mode the video was misaligned with the screen, with the top of top and left of the video not in view. The browser also crashed twice during different playbacks.

However, playback was perfectly smooth once the video controls faded from view and the video was quick to load, starting almost as soon as the play button was pushed.

Raspberry Pi 1 - Model B

The same movie trailer took longer to start but once it got going played equally smoothly. Unfortunately it also suffered from the same blocky picture and misalignment when in full screen mode. Once again the browser also crashed several times during playback.

Image: Nick Heath / TechRepublic

Photo editing

Raspberry Pi 2 - Model B

The machine opens large images with ease, with this 3840 x 1200 image loading from the desktop in about 2.5 seconds.

However, photo editing using GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) seemed less responsive. I experienced slight lag when switching between menus in GIMP and when using some of the editing tools, for instance Tools → Transform → Rotate. Here rotating the image by 110 degrees took about 33.5 seconds.

GIMP seemed perfectly usable, although I imagine delays could get tiring. Perhaps a lightweight alternative photo editor would make a better choice.

Raspberry Pi 1 - Model B

Loading images is slower, the image above opening in just over seven seconds.

Photo editing is somewhat painful. As with the Pi 2 lag is present when moving between menus. However manipulating images takes noticeably longer to the point where GIMP is not really usable. For instance, the above rotation operation took more than three minutes to get started, leading me to think I had locked up the system.

Image: Nick Heath / TechRepublic

​Mathematica

Raspberry Pi 2 - Model B

The reason the Raspberry Pi was created was to get children interested in learning about computers, and Raspbian comes with several education-focused programs.

One is Mathematica, a computational programming tool used in science, maths, computing and engineering.

On the Pi 2 the program booted up within 16 seconds.

Raspberry Pi 1 - Model B

As expected the application is far slower, taking about one minute and 34 seconds to open up.

Image: Nick Heath / TechRepublic

​Minecraft Pi

Raspberry Pi 2 - Model B

Minecraft Pi, a free version of the hugely popular crafting and exploration game that's bundled with Raspbian, ran without any problems.

The program generated its default small world within 20 seconds and navigating the blocky 3D world felt silky smooth, albeit with a short view distance.

Raspberry Pi 1 - Model B

Generating the world took about one minute but once in game it played as smoothly as the Pi 2.

Image: Nick Heath / TechRepublic

​Time to shutdown

Raspberry Pi 2 - Model B

Shutting down the desktop is nice and quick, taking between seven and eight seconds to power off.

Raspberry Pi 1 - Model B

The machine again was noticeably slower, with shutdown taking about 18.5 seconds.

Image: Nick Heath / TechRepublic

​Conclusion

The new model of the Raspberry Pi certainly goes a long way towards transforming the board into a PC you'd be happy to use each day. The improvement in performance over the first generation model B in many instances allows the Pi to run applications and sites that previously weren't really feasible, and shows how far the board has come.

Another point to note is that Raspbian has not yet been optimised for the Raspberry Pi 2's more powerful ARMv7-A architecture, something that Upton indicated should happen and which should further boost performance.

I had no major grievances in the short time I tested it and while the Pi might not match the performance of a budget laptop, it also undercuts their price by a considerable margin.

One caveat is that if you don't have a display, keyboard, mouse and wireless dongle, setting up the Pi can cost more than the board. However, if that's not an issue then the Pi 2 will do most things you expect from a PC and only cost you $35, which is a pretty tasty deal whichever way you slice it.

Raspberry Pi 2 - Model B

• Processor Chipset - Single board computer powered by a Broadcom BCM2836 ARMv7 processor
• GPU - Videocore IV
• Processor speed - 900MHz quad core processor
• RAM - 1GB
• Storage - MicroSD
• USB - Four 2.0 ports.  Up to 1.2A of power can be supplied to the USB ports enabling more power-hungry devices to be connected.
• Power draw - 1.8 @ 5v
• GPIO -  40 pin extended GPIO with first 26 pins identical to the first generation Model A and Model B boards to provide full backwards compatibility.
• Ethernet - 10/100

Raspberry Pi 1 - Model B (original model now discontinued)

• Processor Chipset - Broadcom BCM2835 System on a Chip based on the ARMv6 architecture
• GPU - Videocore IV
• Processor speed - 700MHz single core
• RAM - 256MB RAM
• Storage - SD card
• USB - Two 2.0 ports
• Power draw - 1.2A @ 5V
• GPIO - 26 pin
• Ethernet - 10/100

Image: Nick Heath / TechRepublic