Raspberry Pi Pico W Review: The Ultimate IoT Microcontroller Has Arrived

There’s a familiar spark that ignites every great electronics project: the “what if?” moment. What if I could monitor the temperature in my greenhouse from my phone? What if my letterbox could notify me when the post arrives? What if I could build a custom smart home device without being locked into a corporate ecosystem? For years, I’ve chased this spark, but the path from idea to reality was often cluttered with obstacles. The brain of any such project, the microcontroller, presented a frustrating dilemma. You could have affordability, but you’d sacrifice performance and ease of use. You could have power, but the cost would be prohibitive for a simple hobby project. And most frustratingly, you almost always had to add a separate, often complex and power-hungry module to get the one thing modern projects demand: wireless connectivity. This “bolt-on” approach felt clumsy, adding unnecessary complexity, soldering, and potential points of failure. The dream was always a single, affordable, powerful board with Wi-Fi built right in. A board that just *works*. The absence of such a solution meant projects stayed on the drawing board, their potential unfulfilled.

What to Consider Before Buying a Motherboard for Your Project

A motherboard, in the broadest sense, is more than just a circuit board; it’s the central nervous system of any computing device. Whether it’s a sprawling high-performance gaming PC or a tiny, single-purpose sensor node, the motherboard dictates capability, connectivity, and scale. For projects in the embedded and IoT space, a microcontroller board like the Raspberry Pi Pico W serves this exact purpose. It’s a key solution for bridging the digital and physical worlds, allowing you to read sensors, control motors, and, crucially, communicate that data wirelessly. The main benefits are immense: rapid prototyping, low power consumption, and a compact footprint that allows your creations to be placed almost anywhere.

The ideal customer for a microcontroller board is someone with a creative or practical problem to solve. This includes hobbyists learning to code, students building a science fair project, engineers developing a prototype for a commercial product, or artists creating an interactive installation. It’s for anyone who wants direct control over hardware and the ability to connect it to the internet. However, it might not be suitable for those who need to run a full desktop operating system, perform heavy computational tasks like video editing, or drive multiple high-resolution displays. For those needs, a full-size PC motherboard, which serves as the foundation for a desktop computer, is the appropriate choice. They offer vastly more processing power, memory capacity, and a standardized architecture for components like graphics cards and storage drives.

Before investing in the core of your next project, consider these crucial points in detail:

• Dimensions & Space: The physical size of the board is paramount. For wearable tech or compact sensors, a tiny board like the Pico W is essential. For a desktop PC, you must ensure your chosen motherboard (e.g., ATX, Micro-ATX) fits within your computer case and leaves room for cooling and components.
• Capacity/Performance: This is a tale of two worlds. For a microcontroller, performance is about clock speed (MHz), the number of processor cores, and the amount of SRAM and Flash memory. These specs determine how complex your code can be and how quickly it can react to inputs. For a PC motherboard, performance is defined by its chipset (e.g., Intel Z790, AMD B550), CPU socket compatibility, RAM speed and capacity (DDR4/DDR5), and the number of high-speed expansion slots (PCIe).
• Connectivity & I/O: On a microcontroller, this means the number and type of General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pins available for connecting sensors and actuators, as well as on-board peripherals like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. On a PC motherboard, this refers to the number of USB ports, SATA connectors for drives, M.2 slots for SSDs, and integrated networking like 2.5Gb Ethernet or Wi-Fi 6E.
• Ease of Use & Ecosystem: A product is only as good as its documentation and community support. For beginners, a platform with excellent tutorials, official libraries, and a thriving community forum is invaluable for troubleshooting. This applies equally to programming a microcontroller in MicroPython or navigating the BIOS/UEFI on a new PC motherboard to configure system settings.

Keeping these factors in mind, the Raspberry Pi Pico W stands out in several areas for its intended purpose. You can explore its detailed specifications and see the incredible value it offers.

While the Raspberry Pi Pico W is an excellent choice for embedded applications, it’s always wise to see how it stacks up against the competition. For a broader look at all the top models in the high-performance desktop space, we highly recommend checking out our complete, in-depth guide:

First Impressions: A Familiar Form Factor with a Powerful Secret

Unboxing the Raspberry Pi Pico W is an exercise in minimalism. It arrives in a simple, anti-static bag, but as one user noted, the packaging is effective and protective. The board itself is instantly familiar to anyone who has seen the original Raspberry Pi Pico. It maintains the exact same 21x51mm footprint, the 40-pin DIP-style layout with castellated edges, and the three-pin debug port. This commitment to maintaining the form factor is a brilliant move by Raspberry Pi, ensuring backward compatibility with a vast ecosystem of existing accessories and add-on boards (“shields”).

What immediately catches the eye, however, is the new addition: a small, silver metal rectangle at the end of the board. This is the RF shield covering the Infineon CYW43439 wireless chip and antenna. It’s a clean, professional integration that speaks to a well-engineered design. Picking it up, the board feels solid and well-made. The solder mask is clean, the components are perfectly placed, and the PCB feels, as one user put it, “surprisingly robust.” It feels less like a cheap hobbyist toy and more like a serious piece of engineering, ready to be deployed in a real-world application. This initial hands-on experience inspires confidence before you even plug it in.

Deep Dive: Putting the Raspberry Pi Pico W Through Its Paces

A spec sheet can only tell you so much. To truly understand a product, you have to get your hands dirty, write some code, and see how it performs under pressure. We spent weeks with the Raspberry Pi Pico W, pushing it from simple “blinky” tests to complex, network-enabled applications. Our findings confirmed our initial impressions: this isn’t just a Pico with Wi-Fi tacked on; it’s a fundamental step forward for accessible IoT development.

The RP2040 Heart: Dual-Core Power in a Tiny Package

At the core of the Raspberry Pi Pico W lies the same engine that powered its predecessor: the RP2040 microcontroller, designed in-house by Raspberry Pi. This chip was a revelation when it launched, and it remains incredibly impressive. Its headline feature is the dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ processor, running at a stock speed of 133 MHz. In the world of microcontrollers, having two cores is a luxury that provides immense flexibility. During our testing, this proved to be a significant advantage over single-core competitors. We were able to dedicate one core to managing time-sensitive operations, like polling a temperature and humidity sensor every second, while the other core handled all the networking tasks, like serving a web page with the latest data. This separation of concerns prevents network latency from interfering with sensor readings, leading to more reliable and responsive projects. The system feels remarkably fluid.

The 264KB of on-board SRAM is generous for a board in this class, allowing for complex data manipulation and buffering without running out of memory. We stress-tested it by creating a web server that not only displayed data but also logged it to a circular buffer in memory, and the RP2040 handled it without breaking a sweat. It feels, as users have noted, “surprisingly robust.” You can throw a lot at this tiny chip, and it just keeps going. The combination of dual-core processing and ample RAM makes the Raspberry Pi Pico W feel less like a constrained, low-end device and more like a capable little computer, ready for serious work.

Unlocking the “W”: Seamless Wireless Connectivity

This is, without a doubt, the star of the show. The “W” stands for Wireless, and Raspberry Pi’s implementation is nothing short of excellent. The integrated Infineon chip provides 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi, and getting it running is astonishingly simple, especially using MicroPython. Within ten minutes of unboxing, we had the board connected to our office Wi-Fi and fetching live data from a public weather API. The official MicroPython libraries are intuitive and well-documented. A few lines of code are all it takes to connect, make an HTTP request, and parse the JSON response. This ease of use cannot be overstated; it dramatically lowers the barrier to entry for creating genuinely useful IoT devices.

We then took it a step further by programming the Raspberry Pi Pico W to host its own web server. This allowed us to connect to it directly from a phone or laptop on the same network and view sensor readings or toggle the on-board LED from a simple web interface. The performance was fantastic. The web page loaded instantly, and commands were executed with no perceptible lag. The on-board antenna, integrated neatly onto the PCB, provided a stable and reliable connection throughout our testing area. This built-in connectivity transforms the Pico from a simple controller into a true IoT node. The possibilities it opens up are immense, from remote monitoring to wireless device control, and it’s a feature that makes this board an absolutely phenomenal value. For anyone looking to build a connected project, the Raspberry Pi Pico W is the new gold standard.

The Developer Experience: A Gold Standard Ecosystem

A powerful piece of hardware is useless without good software and support. This is where Raspberry Pi has always excelled, and the Raspberry Pi Pico W is no exception. The getting-started experience is incredibly smooth. To load new firmware, you simply hold down the BOOTSEL button while plugging it into your computer via USB. It then mounts as a mass storage device, and you can drag and drop a UF2 firmware file onto it. It’s foolproof.

Developers have a choice between two primary programming environments: MicroPython and the C/C++ SDK. For rapid prototyping and for those newer to programming, MicroPython is a dream. Using an IDE like Thonny, you can write code and interact with the device’s live REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop), allowing for interactive testing and debugging. The official libraries are comprehensive, covering everything from GPIO control to networking protocols. For those who need to squeeze every ounce of performance out of the hardware, the C/C++ SDK provides complete, bare-metal control. The documentation for both is exhaustive, with clear explanations, code examples, and detailed API references. This is complemented by a massive, active community of users who contribute tutorials, libraries, and support on forums. This robust ecosystem means you’re never truly stuck; an answer to almost any problem is just a search away.

Physical I/O and Project Versatility

Beyond its processor and wireless capabilities, the physical design of the Raspberry Pi Pico W makes it a joy to use in projects. It exposes 26 multi-function GPIO pins, which is a generous amount for such a small board. These pins can be used for a wide range of protocols, including I2C, SPI, and UART, allowing you to connect to a vast universe of sensors, displays, and other peripherals. Three of these pins are also capable of analog-to-digital conversion, perfect for reading analog sensors like potentiometers or light-dependent resistors. The board even includes an on-board temperature sensor connected to one of these ADC pins, which is a fantastic little bonus for monitoring the device’s own operating temperature or ambient room temperature.

During our testing, we encountered no issues with the GPIO functionality. Everything worked as documented. This brings us to a point raised by a user who received a unit with a non-functional on-board LED. While our test unit’s LED worked perfectly, this highlights a possibility of rare quality control defects. However, the same user confirmed that the core functionality—programming, Wi-Fi, and even the internal temperature sensor—worked flawlessly. This suggests that while a minor peripheral might occasionally fail, the core RP2040 chip and wireless module are highly reliable. The board’s design, with castellated edges, also means it can be soldered directly onto a larger, custom-designed PCB as a surface-mount module, making it ideal for moving from a breadboard prototype to a more permanent, professional-looking product.

What Other Users Are Saying

Our positive experience is largely echoed by the broader community. The consensus is that the Raspberry Pi Pico W is a game-changing product. Many users highlight its “surprisingly robust” nature, noting that it can handle complex tasks and continuous operation without issue. This speaks to the quality of the underlying RP2040 silicon and the overall board design.

However, the feedback isn’t universally perfect. We took note of one detailed account where a user received a brand-new board with a non-functional on-board LED. While disappointing, they were quick to point out that this was the *only* issue. They specifically mentioned that “in question of programming and the temperature sensor it had the correct functioning.” This is an important piece of feedback. It suggests that while minor manufacturing defects can occur, the fundamental logic and core features of the board are solid. It serves as a good reminder to test all components of a new board upon arrival, but it doesn’t detract from the overall reliability and incredible capability of the product.

Alternatives to the Raspberry Pi Pico W

While the Raspberry Pi Pico W is a “motherboard” for the world of connected micro-electronics, its function is vastly different from the motherboards that power desktop PCs. If your project involves building a computer for gaming, office work, or media consumption, you’ll need a completely different class of product. Here are three excellent alternatives in the PC motherboard space that serve different needs and budgets.

1. ASUS Prime B760-PLUS D4 ATX Motherboard

The ASUS Prime B760-PLUS D4 is a fantastic mid-range choice for builders using Intel’s 12th or 13th generation processors who want modern features without paying the premium for overclocking. It supports affordable and plentiful DDR4 RAM while still offering a next-generation PCIe 5.0 slot for a graphics card and three fast M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs. With 2.5Gb Ethernet and a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C port, it provides excellent connectivity for a powerful, modern workstation or gaming PC. This board is ideal for someone who wants a feature-rich, reliable foundation for a new PC without delving into the complexities and costs of the high-end Z790 chipset.

2. ASUS Prime A520M-A II/CSM AM4 Commercial Motherboard

For those on a tighter budget or building a system around AMD’s proven Ryzen 3rd generation processors, the ASUS Prime A520M-A II/CSM is a compelling option. Its Micro-ATX form factor makes it suitable for smaller cases, perfect for a compact home office or general-use computer. While it’s a more basic board, it still includes essential features like an M.2 slot for a fast boot drive, 1Gb Ethernet, and multiple display outputs (HDMI, DP, D-Sub). It represents a cost-effective and reliable entry point into the AMD ecosystem, prioritizing stability and value over cutting-edge performance features.

3. ASUS Prime Z790-A WIFI ATX Motherboard

This is the high-end enthusiast’s choice. The ASUS Prime Z790-A WIFI is built for those who want to maximize the performance of Intel’s latest and greatest processors. The Z790 chipset enables CPU and memory overclocking, and the board supports the latest, fastest DDR5 RAM. It’s packed with top-tier connectivity, including four M.2 slots, Intel Wi-Fi 6E, 2.5 Gb LAN, and a plethora of high-speed USB ports. With a robust power delivery system (16+1 DrMOS) and a premium feature set, this motherboard is designed for building a no-compromise gaming rig or a high-performance content creation workstation.

The Final Verdict: Is the Raspberry Pi Pico W Worth It?

After extensive testing, the answer is an unequivocal yes. The Raspberry Pi Pico W is not just an incremental upgrade; it is a transformative product for the maker community and IoT developers. By seamlessly integrating Wi-Fi into an already powerful, flexible, and affordable microcontroller platform, Raspberry Pi has eliminated the biggest hurdle to creating connected devices. The performance of the dual-core RP2040 is solid, the developer ecosystem is second to none, and the price point makes it accessible to everyone from absolute beginners to seasoned professionals.

While the limited on-board storage might be a constraint for massive projects, and there’s a small chance of encountering a minor QC issue like a faulty LED, these are minor caveats on an otherwise stellar product. For anyone looking to build a smart sensor, a custom home automation gadget, a robotics project with wireless control, or simply to learn about the intersection of hardware and the internet, the Raspberry Pi Pico W is the best tool for the job. It’s a phenomenal piece of engineering that delivers on its promise and then some.

If you’ve decided the Raspberry Pi Pico W is the right fit for your next big idea, you can check its current price and purchase it here.