If you’re worried about the compactness of your project, not too worried about the number of I/O pins, don’t mind spending a bit more than the usual price (it might be hard to find), and don’t want to add any Shields, go with the Arduino Micro. Which is the Best Arduino Board for Your Project? The Arduino comparison table below shows a side-by-side comparison of the Uno, Mega 2560, and Micro.įigure 1: Arduino Uno, Mega 2560, and Micro comparison.įor a bottom line of which board you should use, it breaks down like this: With more SRAM space, the Arduino has more space to create and manipulate variables when it runs. The Mega 2560 has the most SRAM space with 8 kB, which is 4x more than the Uno, and 3.2x more than the Micro. The Flash memory on the Uno and Micro are the same at 32 kB, while the Mega 2560 has 256 kB, giving it 8x more memory space! The Flash memory simply means how big of a sketch/code you can upload to your Arduino, therefore if you have a hefty code the Mega 2560 is the way to go.Īrduino boards use SRAM (Static Random-Access Memory). It was a nice surprise to see that they all have the same clock speed at 16 MHz. The frequency/clock speed on these boards simply means how fast it can execute commands. You can check out some of the more helpful and interesting Arduino Shields, including the 1Sheeld+ (uses your smartphone as sensors) or a Relay Shield: See related productĪll three Arduino boards have their own level of processing power, so let’s talk about their frequency/clock speed. This means that most Shields are compatible with the Uno and Mega 2560, but the Micro will be out of luck.

Coming in last is the Uno, which has 14 Digital I/O pins (with 6 of them having PWM) and 6 Input Analog pins.Īlso good to note, is that both the Uno and Mega 2560 usually come in as through-hole, while the Micro’s pin layout of its header I/O’s allows it to fit into any breadboard or system. Surprisingly, the Micro has the 2 nd most pins out of the three, having 20 Digital I/O pins (with 7 of them having PWM) and 12 Input Analog pins. The board with the most pins is the Mega 2560, which comes in with a whopping 54 Digital I/O pins (were 15 of them have PWM) and has 16 Input Analog pins. To get connected to your computer and start coding, both the Uno and the Mega 2560 can easily connect with a Standard A/B USB cable, while the Micro will need a Micro-USB cable.Įach of these Arduinos have a different number of I/O pins. The pricing for Micro is usually around $19-25 (can be hard to find stock) while the Uno runs around $20-23, and the Mega 2560 comes in at $36 - $39. Arduino Uno dimensions of 2.7” x 2.1” fall somewhere in between the Micro and the Mega 2560. On the opposite side of the spectrum, the Arduino Mega 2560 board dimensions are about 4” x 2.1”, making it about 6x bigger than the Micro in terms of area size.

The Micro comes in, being true to its name, at 0.7” x 1.9” making it one of the smallest microcontroller boards out there.