The Pi Zero costs only $5

Raspberry Pi's credit card-sized single-board computers were designed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the goal of bringing programmable computers within the budget of millions who have previously been priced out of the market. Now Raspberry Pi has yet another nifty little programmable computer for us and this one is the cheapest it has ever made, called the Raspberry Pi Zero, this little computer only costs $5.

To celebrate the launch of the Pi Zero, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is giving away the tiny PC board with the December 2015 issue of the UK-based The MagPi magazine. The board is tiny, measuring just 65 x 30 x 5 mm, which has also saved some production costs. The Pi Zero has the same 40-pin GPIO output as all its larger siblings, letting users easily connect hardware components like LEDs and motors and control them using software.

So who is the Pi Zero for?

The next cheapest Pi in the family is the Model A+ which costs $20.

However, anybody looking to wait for an even cheaper Raspberry Pi is in for a disappointment as Upton warns the maker won't go below the one-latte cost "in the foreseeable future". The device measures just 65mm x 30mm x 5mm which makes it smaller than today's smartphones. The Raspberry Pi Zero has managed to pack a 1GHz ARM11 processor and 512 MB of RAM, which is significantly more powerful than the original $25 Raspberry Pi that launched three years ago. The full-size ports, though, are gone: instead, you'll find a micro-USB power port, another micro-USB port for data, a mini-HDMI, and the usual micro-SD slot for storage.

Video introducing the Pi Zero. If you want to get one, you should probably hurry: The foundation built "several tens of thousands of units" but they expect demand to outstrip supply in the near future. United Kingdom residents have an alternative method of getting their hands on the Pi Zero.

The Zero is available from a bunch of retailers in the United Kingdom for £4 (Element14, The Pi Hut, Pimoroni) and $5 in the US (Adafruit).

Over the years, the Raspberry Pi brand has become synonymous with bare bones, ultra-affordable, heavily customisable micro-computers.