Waveshare's $11 RP2350B-Plus-W Packs Wi-Fi and 41 GPIOs Into a Pico-Sized Board

Sometimes the most exciting hardware isn't the most expensive. Waveshare's new RP2350B-Plus-W crams a remarkable amount of capability into a tiny, Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W-sized board — and it does it for under $12. For tinkerers, students, and IoT hobbyists, this is the kind of affordable workhorse that earns a permanent spot in the parts drawer.

Dual-Architecture Power in a Tiny Package

At the heart of the board is the RP2350B microcontroller in a QFN-80 package, which is genuinely unusual: it offers both dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 and dual-core RISC-V Hazard3 cores, each running up to 150 MHz, with two cores usable at a time. You can develop in Arm or RISC-V from the same board — a flexible playground for learning two architectures. Arm TrustZone security is on board too.

Generous I/O and Storage for the Price

The spec sheet keeps giving. There's 520KB of on-chip SRAM, 16MB of QSPI flash, and a reserved PSRAM interface for expansion. Crucially for real projects, the board exposes 41 GPIOs — 26 through standard headers plus 15 solder pads — along with SPI, I2C, UART, multiple ADCs, PWM, and 12 PIO state machines for custom protocols. That's a lot of pins for a board this small.

Built-In Wireless and USB-C

The "W" earns its name through an official Raspberry Pi RM2 radio module, delivering Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth 5.2 — the same wireless silicon as the Pico 2 W. A USB-C port handles power and drag-and-drop programming, so flashing firmware is as simple as dropping a file. The whole board measures just 51 x 21 mm excluding the antenna, in the familiar Pico form factor.

Why This Microcontroller Board Is a Maker Win

At $10.99 on Waveshare (and around $11.42 on AliExpress), the RP2350B-Plus-W lowers the barrier to wireless embedded projects to almost nothing. Whether you're a student wiring up your first sensor, a hobbyist prototyping a smart-home gadget, or an educator outfitting a classroom, a capable dual-architecture board with built-in Wi-Fi at this price is a small but genuine cause for celebration. It's a reminder that the maker movement keeps getting more accessible, one tiny board at a time.

Sources: CNX Software (June 1, 2026, updated June 2); Electronics-Lab (June 2026).