Some personal and obviously subjective thoughts on the Pi Zero 2W and Pi 3A+.
For quite some time I've run pihole on a Model 4B. I don't run much else so it was overkill and I want to use the 4B for other stuff. I tried a few times to run Pi-hole on a Pi Zero W or Pi Zero 2W but coming from the Pi 4B it always seemed a bit slower to resolve queries and it seems to have these momentary freezes, even in the terminal. I always went back to the 4B.
The other day I was at Microcenter and there was an open box Pi 3A+ so I bought it just because I didn't have one and thought the Dual Band wifi would be nice.
I put my PiServer SD card with Pi hole in it and set up the 5ghz wifi connection and was surprised that at how much better it ran vs a Pizero 2W.
I'm not sure if its my 2Ghz wifi causing the Pizero 2W(s) to seem to hiccup / freeze or if its the units but I'm kinda digging the Model 3A+.
From a value perspectiveI think the 3A+ actually wins out. While $10 more, you get the GPIO header, memory seperated from the CPU ( atleast 4c cooler w/o heatsink ), Dual Band Wifi, full size HDMI, Full size CSI and a DSI port You get the same amount of USB ports but type A. The only trade off is a slightly larger foot print.
Overall I'm pretty happy with the 3A+ and I think for a Pihole its in a nice sweet spot.
I'd be curious if anyone else experience the small freezes on the PiZeroW2. They are not long but its very noticable.
Just some observations.
