the short answer is no. The longer answer is, maybe depending on what your expectations are and what is more important to you. The CM5 brings a much faster CPU to the table, but at this time the image is basically beta software and has some issues that I will talk about as I go along. I have found using a CM5 caused more difficulties than it was worth, so for the time being my recomendation is to stick with a CM4.
If your current image is older than a couple of months, yes, you should download the latest image, backup your data and write the newest image to you SD card.
At the time of this writing, the easiest to get CM5 is the 4GB RAM/32 GB EMMC. If that is all you can get and you are determined to use a CM5, then go for it. There are some advantages to it, first, you paid for it, so why not use it, and second EMMC drives perform sigificantly better than SD cards do. Having said that, the problem with the EMMC drive is you need a seperate board to flash the EMMC. Something like a Compute module 5 IO Board from the Raspberry Pi Foundation or a Waveshare Nano Base Board B. Second, you can use either the EMMC or the SD card, but not both, so you would be stuck with the EMMC drive, at least with the SD card, you can get a larger one when needed or you can have different cards with different OS's. Just to be clear, if you buy a CM5 or a CM4 for that matter, with an EMMC drive on it, you cannot use the SD card at all, you have no choice in the matter and I still recommend getting an 8GB module with no EMMC if you can.
The Raspberry Pi Founation has not released drivers for the audio chipset. Until they release drivers there is no sound and there is not much you can do about it except get a USB sound dongle. I had a couple of cheap VizGiz dongles laying around from another project and it worked just fine.
Update 2-28-2025: Sound has been verified to work.
Update 2-17-2025: The maintainer now has the audio drivers working and it is in the field for testing. I will update when we know the drivers are working and stable for production use.
Update 2-15-2025: Apparently there are now beta sound drivers for the CM5, the maintainer is as of this writing, working to integrate them into the Community image.
This is a known issue, the maintainer is aware of it and is working on it, just shut it down and try again, sometimes you have to do it 2 or 3 times.
Update 2-28-2025: This issue seems to have been fixed.
This is a known issue, the maintainer is aware of this issue and is working on it. In the meantime, get into the habit of opening a terminal and using "sudo shutdown now", instead of using the menu.
Update 2-28-2025: This issue seems to have been fixed.
This is a known issue, the maintainer is aware of this issue and is working on it.Sadly there does not seem to be any brands that consistantly work, you just have to try SD cards until you find one that works, or go with a CM5 with eMMC storage.
Update 2-28-2025: This issue seems to have been fixed with these settings;
Run this command
sudo rpi-eeprom-config -e
Backup your current settings and replace them with this;
[all]
BOOT_UART=1
POWER_OFF_ON_HALT=1
BOOT_ORDER=0xf1
SD_BOOT_MAX_RETRIES=2
SD_QUIRKS=1 -->
Yes, there will be heat issues. The uConsole is passively cooled and uses the aluminum bottom as a heat sink. This was designed with a CM4 in mind, the CM5's are much faster and consume a lot more power, which is disapated as heat. That back plate is going to get hotter than it did with the CM4. I don't know whether or not this is going to be a long term problem or not. All I can say is monitor the CPU temperature, if your uConsole is consistantly running above 60C, you likely have a heat problem. Try mounting a heat sink on the back of the uConsole over the area where the CM5 is located. You can also try under volting and under clocking the CPU if heat is really a problem. Which brings me to this, do not under any circumstance attempt to overclock a CM5, the passive cooling provided by the uConsole is not enough. You can check your CPU temperature with this command;
vcgencmd measure_temp
Higher energy consumption means shorter battery life and thats just a fact, there is not much you can do about it.