| Category | Winner | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Processing Power | Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W | The RP2350's dual Cortex-M33 cores at 150MHz score 4.09 CoreMark/MHz versus the RP2040's Cortex-M0+ at 2.0 CoreMark/MHz — roughly double the throughput per clock cycle, compounded by the 13% clock speed increase from 133MHz to 150MHz. The M33 also includes a hardware single-precision FPU, eliminating the software floating-point penalty that slows sensor math and DSP workloads on the RP2040. Real-world, expect 2-2.5x faster execution for compute-bound tasks. |
| Memory and Storage | Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W | The Pico 2 W doubles both SRAM (520KB vs 264KB) and onboard flash (4MB vs 2MB). The extra SRAM matters for applications that buffer sensor data, run display framebuffers, or handle TLS connections — WiFi + TLS alone can consume 80-100KB. With 520KB, the Pico 2 W has meaningful headroom for complex MicroPython applications that would exhaust the original Pico W's memory. |
| Wireless Connectivity | tie | Both boards use the identical Infineon CYW43439 wireless module providing 2.4GHz 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 5.2. Range, throughput, and protocol support are identical. If your project is bottlenecked by wireless performance, neither board has an advantage — both max out around 10Mbps TCP throughput in practice and share the same antenna design. |
| Security and Cryptography | Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W | The RP2350 introduces a comprehensive security architecture that the RP2040 entirely lacks: ARM TrustZone for Cortex-M, signed boot with 8KB antifuse OTP for key storage, SHA-256 hardware acceleration, a hardware true random number generator (TRNG), and fast glitch detectors. For any IoT deployment where firmware integrity or credential storage matters — connected locks, payment terminals, industrial sensors — the Pico 2 W is the only viable choice. |
| I/O and Programmable State Machines | Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W | The RP2350 expands PIO from 8 to 12 state machines and PWM from 16 to 24 channels, while maintaining the same 26 GPIO pins and identical UART, SPI, I2C, and ADC peripheral counts. The extra PIO state machines matter for projects that bit-bang multiple custom protocols simultaneously — driving LED strips while reading rotary encoders while generating audio, for example. Most hobbyist projects will never exhaust either chip's PIO capacity. |
| RISC-V Option | Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W | The RP2350 includes dual Hazard3 RISC-V cores as an alternative to the ARM Cortex-M33 cores — you choose one pair or the other at boot, not both simultaneously. The RISC-V cores score 3.81 CoreMark/MHz (slightly below the M33's 4.09) but use an open ISA with no licensing restrictions. This is valuable for education, RISC-V ecosystem development, and organizations avoiding ARM licensing. The RP2040 has no RISC-V option. |
Data from PAM Finds