Pico vs Pico 2 — which one do you have, and which should you get?
Applies to: Raspberry Pi Pico and Raspberry Pi Pico 2 (the plain variants; W adds wireless, H/with-headers adds pre-soldered pins).
Same body, different chip
Both boards are the same 40-pin castellated/through-hole DIP (51 × 21 mm) with the same pinout and the same micro-USB BOOTSEL flashing flow. Raspberry Pi states hardware and software compatibility between Pico 2 and Pico 1 — that is the official claim, quoted on the Pico 2 board page.
What actually changed, from the official comparison:
| Pico (RP2040) | Pico 2 (RP2350) | |
|---|---|---|
| Cores | dual Cortex-M0+ | dual Cortex-M33 or dual Hazard3 RISC-V (software-selectable) |
| Clock | 133 MHz | 150 MHz |
| SRAM | 264 kB | 520 kB |
| On-board flash | 2 MB | 4 MB |
| PIO blocks | 2 (8 state machines) | 3 (12 state machines) |
| Extra | — | TrustZone, signed boot, 8 kB OTP, SHA-256 accel, hardware TRNG, glitch detectors |
Both keep the same internal-function GPIOs (GP25 user LED, GP24 VBUS sense, GP23 SMPS power-save, GP29 VSYS monitor) and the same ADC reverse-diode limit on GP26–29 — those facts live on the two board pages with sources.
Naming traps
The generation is the number; everything after it is a variant feature, per the official naming rules:
- W = adds Wi-Fi/Bluetooth (2.4 GHz 802.11n + BT 5.2/BLE).
- H (Pico 1) or with headers (Pico 2) = pin headers pre-soldered. No suffix on a Pico 1 means you solder or clip pins yourself.
- A Pico 2 W is therefore a second-generation wireless board — it is not “a Pico W 2nd revision”.
Which to get
No official recommendation exists — decide by facts: existing tutorials and the largest example base target RP2040; the doubled SRAM, third PIO block and security features matter for heavier or newer projects. Any plain-Pico accessory that plugs into the 40-pin header fits both.
What this page cannot tell you
- Prices and availability — not part of the technical documentation; check current retail listings.
- Pico W / Pico 2 W wireless behavior — covered by a separate connectivity document, out of scope here.
- Benchmark comparisons — no official numbers; core-count and clock deltas above are the documented facts.
Sources
- Pico-series overview — models and generations (commit
21d772e7) - MCUID data records: Raspberry Pi Pico, Raspberry Pi Pico 2 — official “Differences from Raspberry Pi Pico” comparison with fixed sources