Remember when August was the sleepy month for makers? A time for tinkering, not announcements? Well, those days are long gone.
Last August (2024), we saw the debut of the RP2350 and the announcement of the Pico 2—two big moves that stirred up the microcontroller world. Fast forward to August 2025, and we’re now welcoming the A4 stepping of the RP2350, and it’s not just a minor revision. This update brings some genuinely useful changes that many of us have been waiting for.
🛠️ GPIO Pull-Down Fix: Finally
The headline fix? That pesky GPIO pull-down issue is gone. If you’ve ever had to work around it in your designs, you know how much cleaner things will be now. This alone makes the A4 stepping a worthy upgrade.
🔐 Security Hardening: Quiet Wins
There’s also some subtle but important security hardening baked in. These tweaks address edge-case vulnerabilities—some of which were flagged during last year’s hack competition. It’s great to see those community-sourced insights being folded back into the silicon.
⚡ Surprise Certification: 5V Tolerance!
And here’s the curveball: the RP2350 is now certified as 5V tolerant. That’s huge. It opens the door to direct interfacing with a whole ecosystem of 5V peripherals—no more level shifters or cautious voltage dividers. For me, this means I can hook up my trusty HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensors without fuss. That’s a win for simplicity and reliability.
August might still be summer, but it’s clearly not downtime anymore. With the RP2350 A4 stepping, we’re seeing thoughtful fixes, community-driven improvements, and a surprise feature that genuinely expands what this chip can do. If you’re building, prototyping, or just dreaming up your next project—this is the kind of update that makes it all a bit easier.
What are you planning to connect now that 5V is fair game?
I talk a bit more about the A4 Stepping on my YouTube channel.
