Performance-wise it's pretty much the same as the Pi 5 16GB (and can be slightly faster than the regular Pi 500 depending on the task, if it benefits from faster storage or more RAM...)
Since this is the first Pi with built-in NVMe (I'm not counting the Compute Module Developer Kit), I plugged in an eGPU and tested a new 15-line patch for AMD GPU drivers, which seems to support practically all modern AMD graphics cards[1].
> Our experiences with that programme informed the development of Raspberry Pi 400, our all-in-one PC, whose form factor (and name) harks back to the great 8-bit and 16-bit computers – the BBC Micro, Sinclair Spectrum, and Commodore Amiga – of the 1980s and 1990s.
(emphasis mine)
So the 400 name is explicitly inspired by such systems, their next one is called the 500, and the upgrade to that is called the 500+. I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that's exactly the inspiration.
One of the main differences between the ZX Spectrum and Spectrum+ was the upgraded keyboard. The original had the famous mushy rubber keys but the Spectrum+ had an injection-moulded keyboard
Jobs was "inspired" by a visit at Xerox labs, they showed him a GUI built using Smalltalk (which they'd also invented). So naturally, he ran back to his office and invented GUI ;)
Or for third I guess lol Jobs demoed a mac gui to Gates, and apparently Gates ran strait to his Microsoft office, where he too invented gui. Jobs was very upset for years.
I think it actually was an Apple innovation, at least for {hobbyist, home, personal} computers. I did some digging and wasn't able to find anything before the Apple II+ in 1979. Please do prove me wrong, though!
And the co-creator of ARM, Sophie Wilson, still works for Broadcom - the company which bought part of the remnants of Acorn (Element 14). This is where Eben Upton worked before going off to start the Raspberry Pi foundation.
Jack Lang was involved in the Pi, having also been involved in Netchannel, the STB company which used the Acorn technology and had funding from Hermann Hauser, co-founder of Acorn.
David Braben, co-author of Elite (and author of Zarch/Lander for the Acorn Archimedes) was an early Pi supporter.
So many comments are very negative here. I'm currently using a Pi 4 as my home desktop computer and I will probably replace it with a Pi 500+. I really want to avoid a pre-installed Windows, want my computer to be 100% silent, low energy, and I fancy the computer-is-in-keyboard feel. Sure, I might get a mini PC for a bit cheaper but I like to support Raspberry Pi. The products are easy to get into, have great and lasting software support, and a large community behind it.
As a desktop candidate role I would say that there is a pain of bones broken in the past. I have System Shock (1) for DOS and for MacOS. DOS version was playable in NTVDM for long, especially in 32-bit XP with VDMSound. MacOS version was, to be precise, Mac OS Classic version for Motorola CPU. And Mac OS switched CPU from Motorola to PowerPC. They had emulator bundled, but only for one switch. Soon after Motorola-to-PowerPC switch they did PowerPC-to-Intel switch. And Intel Mac OS did run PowerPC applications, but did not run Motorola applications. So I have managed to unpack StuffIt archives with System Shock for Mac OS, but never managed to run it. Actually, Intel transition was not momentarily. There was Intel x86 Mac OS and Intel x86-64 Mac OS. 10.4 Tiger could possibly run something 64-bit, but not GUI apparently. Later Mac OS introduced nice Objective-C 2.0 features as 64-bit only. Mac OS 10.6 was the last one to have Rosetta for PowerPC, and I hear complaints that it was a loss. Some games were left in PowerPC era, and "Mavericks forever" movement (10.8, the last skeuomorphic Mac OS) reports they regret not having access to PowerPC. And as you may now, modern Mac OS went to ARM. Each time there is a leap to another architecture, bones break. Legacy do not work anymore, and companies want us to move on, but we don't want to. Our broken bones hurt.
There is an ongoing problem with ARM being proprietary architecture. Our trained bones predict future pain. Again! When will be the end to this sufferring? If we are to adopt open RISC-V 64 in the end, let's just do it now and not get used to anything ARM.
1) The company "sold out". That is, in times of limited supply they prioritized fulfilling large compute module orders instead of the hobbyist market that initially supported them. To be fair if I was running that company I'd have done the exact same thing, it's obviously the right financial choice. Just, you know, it'll sting for the market that was shunned.
2) They got expensive. Especially for the Pi 4 which was still dreadfully slow. That slowness was excusable at $25. Not great but okay at $35. But when suddenly it was near enough to $100+ by the time you got all the required "accessories"? Or like the Pi 5 16gb is $132 like what on earth.
3) They got 'flaky'. It used to be the pi was the rock-solid option in the space. But now they keep making weird low-reliability decisions. Like the Pi 5 "expects" a rather uniquely high amp USB-C charger. 5A @ 5V is not a common USB-C charger feature. So whatever you happen to grab is probably not sufficient, and you'll have those annoying low power warnings randomly. They chose to have dual 4k HDMI ports and went with micro-HDMI. Which is a flaky connector you probably don't have cables for (and also dual 4K? on a pi?). They kept using microSD cards. The CPU power draw increased significantly, which for the performance delta is more than justified, except it still ships without any cooling.
One misconception that everyone keeps repeating is that the pi 5 expects and needs a 5v/5a power supply to work. The CPU and all the IO will work as expected with any USB pd charger that can do at least 15 watts. The only issue you will have is a power limit on USB peripherals that use a lot of power like hard drives. Keyboards, mice and webcams will work just fine with the 600 milliamp power limit.
Previous raspberry pis had low usb power limits and people did not consider those products dead on arrival. Now that they are trying to address a limitation in the original product people are discovering that the raspberry pi was always a very limited platform to begin and the next step is not an incremental bump to the specs but to just buy a regular computer.
Except as soon as you have some issue first comment will be "are you using official power supply"? I hate such comments with passion. Feels very corporatish support.
All of this plus, in regards to, number 2, x86 got cheap. For $80(well, pre tariffs at least) I can deal with a Pi 5s quirks and slowness, or I can buy a Radxa X4 with an Intel N100, a built in 2230 M.2 slot, 2.5GbE, and a Pi Pico with full GPIO. Software support? I have UEFI; literally anything I care to install will install from an ISO.
Literally the Radxa’s faults all boil down to the same faults the Pi has with the goofy form factor that forces you to cable squid, and the shitty microHDMI ports.
Did Radxa ever iron out the heat sink issue with the X4? IIRC, when released, the official heat sink needed shimming to make proper contact with the processor.
For mine, following Explaining Computers' advice, I put in a copper shim, and that solved the issue. But I'm not sure if they ever sold through the stock of their first revision heatsink. I think they did, but I haven't bought another since the first two.
4) The penny-pinching RPi does on hardware: be it RTC, usb power kerfuffle or ARM crypto extensions (finally added in Pi 5)
5) accessory lock-down: see the situation with Pi cameras, or better yet DSI displays (CM4 datasheet: Although Linux kernel drivers are available, the DSI interface is not currently documented. Only DSI displays supported by the official Raspberry Pi firmware are supported.)
6) half-assed documentation (if you know, you know)
7) the ever-present marketing to compensate for the previous points, and the fact that it works
This is exacerbated by its popularity so people tend to treat raspberry pi as a hammer for all of their nails, while in many cases a 2$ mcu would suffice or a more network-capable SoC would be a much better fit (raspberry Pi NAS, pihole etc).
Pi5 with 4GB of ram is like £45 and runs fine for me on a standard super cheap 5v@3A charger. I think it's gone up probably less than inflation. I get where you're coming from though.
These are good explanations. Their reputation as a platform for learning and tinkering was damaged, and subsequent missteps didn't improve the situation.
The Pi500+ does seem like a good system, but it's not alone at that price point, and people may still remember being told that they weren't the company's priority.
No pointing device, which means you need an external mouse, no big deal except then you need a desk to put under the mouse. Unlike a laptop with a built in pointing device, so you can use it on your lap like its name suggests. Making that mistake in the 400 was, ok fine, a mistake. Perpetuating it to the 500 and now the 500+ just seems malicious.
And yeah, people say clip-on trackball, but I haven't seen one that fits on the 400 case and doesn't cost a bundle. Links would be appreciated.
Here here! I'm using a Pi 5 and I added the Pi SSD Kit that sits on top of the fan. It made all the difference in the world! I installed Ubuntu and use it for all internet stuff.
I agree. This is a genuinely good desktop for 'normal' tasks, sure you're not going to be running local LLMs or handling big 3D files but 4 decent arm cores, 16GB of RAM and a NVMe drive is more than enough for most.
Computer-is-in-keyboard is a good idea if keyboard is right. But this all-white dull stuff is no match for IBM Model M style of contrast keyboards full of sense. SUBOR SB97 is what I think of as good computer-is-in-keyboard looks. They just cloned IBM Model M. Just clone IBM Model M and you are fine
I object to this labelling: the term “all-in-one PC” has always been used to mean a computer integrated into a screen, to which you must add a keyboard and mouse (or more likely it will be bundled with a low-quality keyboard and mouse). But this is a computer integrated into a (good) keyboard, to which you must add a screen and mouse—and screens are more expensive than keyboards. Even a basic not-too-horrible screen will cost another $80, and the sort of screen you might like to pair with such a keyboard might be double that.
You plug it into the family TV. Just like you did in the eighties when you were a kid learning to program with your Speccy or c64 or whatever. Mom or Dad or your siblings can hang out and comment on what you're doing with it. That's the experience Raspberry has been claiming to want to reproduce since they first came onto the scene in 2012, despite them not getting around to stuffing a Pi into this form factor until 2022.
Lying on the living room floor looking up the the TV was great for getting a sore neck. And I still have crusty calloused skin on my elbows from the carpet. Getting an Amiga later on with an actual monitor that sat on a desk was amazing.
Yeah; the marketing language around new Pi products is always a bit flowery... besides this misnomer calling it 'AIO', the marketing also says "uncompromising performance" and "premium desktop computer", which I'd argue are quite a stretch, unless you're comparing it to SBCs and not... desktop computers!
Below $200 laptops are way worse than what people imagine.
Too many people look at ads, see something that looks like a laptop, and assume it's just a "no thrill" machine that mostly works. I've heard so many "how bad can it be?" hot takes as they've never used anything at that price.
※refurbished is another story, here we're talking about a new and under guarantee device so that wouldn't compare.
But then, 2 min into the video they upgrade to 16G RAM and a 1TB SSD before going on to check the perfs. That's a testament to me of how usable they think the laptop is in its sold state.
You don't get support and the laptop can fail on you on week 4 you're just SOL.
I understand the value of second hand, and randomly bought a discarded corporate HP tower for my home server. But I see it more as a hobby as I can probably fix most issues, than as a purchasing strategy I'd recommend to non technical people for instance.
If you're really concerned, you can buy two $100 secondhand laptops. If one fails, you can use the other. Good secondhand laptops in that price range will be more like 8 or 10 years old, but still usable as basic daily computers.
I've had an excellent experience using secondhand business-class laptops. Several nonprofits I'm involved have nothing but these sorts of laptops, and I've only used secondhand laptops since 2019.
If you're interested in buying secondhand laptops, I strongly recommend you look at any "business-class" model from any manufacturer. Laptops that cost $1,000+ and are aimed at business fleets, rather than individual consumers. These laptops tend to be very well-made, are designed for commonly-broken parts to be easily replaceable, and are widely available secondhand as companies update their laptop fleets. Here's an incomplete list of manufacturers and series:
* Dell Latitude (except the budget 3xxx models) and Precision
* HP EliteBook and ProBook
* Lenovo ThinkPad X, T, and P series (in order from small & light to big & powerful)
* Panasonic ToughBook (rugged!) and Let’s Note
* Fujitsu Lifebook
* Acer TravelMate and Extensa
* Asus ExpertBook
* Toshibe Portege and Tecra
* Epson Endeavor
To harp on avhon's point, ThinkPads have specific lines where most parts are made to be easily replaceable: the RAM, SSD, wi-fi card, fans etc. are user accessible. Not all ThinkPads do, so you need to at least care about the line (X, P, T, E, etc., it's a whole world), and check the repair guides and community reception.
Panasonic also has a stellar reputation in that regard.
Bear in mind they will break and you'll be hunting for parts, it's just a lot easier and viable than some other laptops.
I bought that specific model because they're a step up from the E-series (which is actually good now), but not as expensive as the X or T series. I'm very familiar with Thinkpads (I personally have owned 5, and have bought 3 for family, all used, all functioning perfectly). That specific model does not have soldered ram, has lots of replacement parts, is still fairly new, I'd owned an L14 Gen 1, and to be honest, it was just a good deal considering it was in mint condition.
With thinkpads, assuming you're buying used, you can pay the premium for a T or X series, and get a laptop with essentially the same parts, but maybe a better screen or chassis, or you can save money and go with the L or E series. NB, the T and X series oftentimes have soldered RAM, so if you're not satisfied with the amount of ram already in it, do your due diligence to ensure that the model support using SODIMM/replacing the ram.
Yes. I bought a 200€ laptop a decade ago. It was on clearance sale, so no backsies. It was so bad I couldn’t in good conscience ask for more than 50€ when I sold it like 2 days later.
It was great on paper. But the quality of the touchpad was awful. And paired with win8, which relied heavily on touchpad gestures, it was basically unusable.
Adam Savage posted a video a couple of weeks ago, where he discusses this keyboard with Ryan Norbauer. That thing is overengineered to the point I'd argue it actually becomes some sort of artistic statement.
At least Norbauer immediately states that it's "probably the world's most insanely irrationally hyperengineered keyboard" and later on continues that "nobody needs a 3000 dollar keyboard."
It's clear from that it's a sincere hyper-obsession, shared by others within a small community. I can respect that more than just making something expensive for the sake of appealing to ultra-rich who wish to flaunt their wealth.
That's unnecessarily negative. I'd argue it's not overpriced in the least. It's insanely pricey, of course, and that price tag comes with no real utility above and beyond what a more mundane mechanical keyboard would provide, but it's priced pretty fairly considering the costs involved.
I really like my new macbook keyboard but hate apple. There's something cool about buying from small designers that make something you can't get anywhere else, not because it's rare, but executed in a way that makes no business sense at scale. Find your niche.
Mobo integrated graphics require CPU support. Maybe you bought one of the slightly cheaper Intel "F" chips without realising it lacks the graphics support?
Holy smokes, they actually fixed my personal pet peeve of this entire product line: it has an internal M.2 slot. The performance of pretty much any SD card for a desktop workload is poor to say the least, and letting a USB boot device dangle out kind of defeats the purpose of the form factor. But this new model has actual fast internal storage!
P.S. HN mods, consider fixing the submission name. It’s 500+, not 500, and that completely changes the meaning of the article.
According to Jeff Geerling's video, the main PCB in the 500+ is identical to the 500, same revision and all. Presumably they planned both the 500 and 500+ at the same time so they designed a single PCB that could accommodate both, and then only populated the m.2 parts when building a 500+.
So I don't think they "backed out" rather just didn't have the 500+ ready to launch yet.
Note that the mechanical keyboard is probably one of the major reasons the Pi 500+ took a lot longer to release than the regular 500.
According to an interview on the Pi blog[1], it was "years", with prototypes being built through 2023.
I know the design lifecycle for a product like this is in the 3-5 year range, and adding on a custom mechanical keyboard in a mass-market product like this is a tall order.
Honestly I'm not put off by the $200 price tag. If you use one in person (like at a Micro Center here in the US), you'll feel it's a decent midrange mechanical keyboard. It won't compete on the high end (IMO $200+), but to strap that onto a decent low-end PC in a fanless design isn't cheap, even at the scales Raspberry Pi operates.
They have some margin, for sure, but that's also how they turn profit, which is especially useful since then went public.
At least they're still putting out products like this, that don't really have any industrial/commercial appeal, compared to specialized compute modules for individual customers[2].
All the marketing for this advertises it as a desktop computer. What's the appeal of this compared to a cheaper and more powerful N150 NUC, or a used mini PC if it's for personal use where you just need one?
A N150 has about twice the CPU performance, hardware video decoding that isn't crippled, and much more software built for its architecture among other things.
And the N150 had mainline linux support from day one, whereas I'm not sure if there's proper support for pi5-family devices in a released mainline kernel even now, two years after the launch.
They used to do an good-to-adequate job of linux support, but nowadays they seem rubbish at it. Nobody wants to be stuck on a downstream kernel full of cobbled-together device support that's too poorly-written to upstream.
This has been the primary hurdle for me. I like it when I can just install regular linux and be on my way. Having to do a bunch of kernel nonsense is just not fun. I don't even mind messing with the kernel, but I want to use the mainline kernel.
Give it to your kid. Plug it into the family TV. Let them learn to hack while you're around to answer questions. Just like when you were a baby hacker in the eighties.
Less software is good - it makes kludging up your own more appealing, and there's a guide to getting started with that right there in the manual.
(Or you could try plugging a goggle-mounted display into it and using it as your personal cyberdeck.)
Good news we are not in the 80s anymore. A $200 used thinkpad is much better for your kids to learn hacking. And you can use your TV when they are messing around neighborhood AP.
Hacking into some platform makes very tied to it. I still recall how to program smooth scrolling in EGA/VGA. It becomes an explored world, and is ARM good for being tied to? ARM has an ongoing problem of being proprietary, and RISC-V is to come as a solution. If ARM is neither past nor future, then we should not getting tied to it.
Maybe get ITX-Llama and let parent and kid be tied to all the same platform? Have something common to discuss, something common to play. And MiniMig or Apollo A600 may do the trick. CheckMate Retro IPS display. It is past, but great past. Alive in our souls.
The appeal is the form factor, really. A decent amount of compute (not amazing, but decent) built into a decent mechanical keyboard (jury's out, but I'll believe the sales pitch until shown otherwise) is unusual.
> What's the appeal of this compared to a cheaper and more powerful N150 NUC, or a used mini PC
This is a very good question. The Pi 500+ is a beautiful product, but when compared in terms of price/value to the NUC and various other mini PCs, its value proposition is questionable.
Perhaps the target group are enthusiasts who had 8/16-bit "all-in-one" computers like Commodore64, Amiga, Atari, ZX Spectrum, Acorn etc., in their younger years and now want to buy something similar (non-x86) for themselves or force it on their kids. :)
ASUS PN42 is also passive, but they do not mention it. You can find this out from teardown pictures. They also have certified 32GB memory sticks from Crucial.
I've been around long enough to find it absolutely astonishing, that you can now fit a computer with 16gb of ram, 265gb of storage and a quad core processor, with no cooling, inside a keyboard.
It is astonishing! It's especially impressive when you realize that the motherboard itself is so small that most of the keyboard interior is basically empty space [0].
For a comparison, the "similar" computer from 2006 [0] had a maximum configuration of 4xCPU @ 1 GHz and 8GB of RAM. It weighed 60 lb (27 kg) and looked like this:
Those capabilities have been in a much smaller slab you have been able to carry around in your pocket for the last 5 years minimum, and that slab was a fully functional computer with full touchscreen display input, microphone/speaker, and cellular.
The Samsung S20 Ultra (2020) has 16gb RAM 256GB of good fast storage, and with Dex you can connect it to a monitor and keyboard+mouse via a USB C dock and get a desktop window environment.
Of course the RPi costs less, but marvel over that, not the form or compactness. RPi innovated on cost, but this capacity in this form is everywhere. They don't even use most of the space inside the keyboard, the compute module is all the size of a smartphone.
Yeah it's the cost as well that's impressive. I've got a Samsung S25 Ultra in my pocket right now, but it cost like... £1200, so I'm less blown away by that somehow
The iPhone Air has an A19 (50% faster than M1 in single core and 10% faster in multi-core benchmarks), 12GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage in a space no larger than the raised bar the camera sits in.
The ultimate I want it, I don't need it. What would I possibly use this for I can't already do? No clue. But there's a fire of desire burning in me - for this thing! I am on a no-buying streak due to the economy. But in another universe I would've already purchased this.
IMO the coolest thing about this is that it all fits in a keyboard. It would be awesome if this came bundled with smart glasses, so I could walk into a coffee shop with just keyboard and glasses, and get work done without having to hunch over my laptop. Of course the present offering is lacking in computing power (and any form of display)
Wow this is great, didn't realize this had become affordable! I'm going to google around, but do you know if any of the glasses would be "plug an play" with my (windows 10) laptop? I regularly work on my laptop to coffee shops, so if I can just add the glasses to my setup and eliminate posture issues, that would be amazing!
Who is this product for? I've abandoned RPi after the rise of sub $200-PCs on Amazon, which usually come with power supply, on/off buttons, dual full size HDMIs, SSDs etc etc.
Micro HDMI is basically a non working connector. It baffles me how it was even approved. One of the requirements of a connector is to work. Micro HDMI doesn't work. Sure, it might look like it's working (if you take a picture of a connected device) but in practice it doesn't work. Just a slight touch and you're losing signal. Immediately one might think that their connector, cable or device are broken. And this is a very valid guess. But the connector is not broken by accident, it was broken bydesign. A consumer connector shouldnot require an additional exoskeleton to work. It means it's broken bydesign if it does.
because it's not popular and less durable. I can forgive the use of micro hdmi on limited size product. But this computer 100% has enough space for full size hdmi.
I'm confused by the use case for this. The keyboard gets a cable running to a monitor. Might need a power cable as well but let's assume usbc covers both.
An alternative is a raspberry pi on the vesa mount, or attached to the monitor arm. The cable to a keyboard is now optional, wireless USB being much easier than wireless displayport.
> The keyboard gets a cable running to a monitor. Might need a power cable as well but let's assume usbc covers both.
Unfortunately it doesn't cover both. You do, in fact, need at minimum 2 cables connected to it - one for display & one for power. And one of those cables is, unfortunately, micro-HDMI. A super fragile port that you almost certainly don't have a cable lying around for as well.
The marketing blurb that's linked makes it quite clear that this targets retro hobbyists, who want a modern take on the C64. It's not really meant to be a practical design.
It still is a more practical design than a flat keyboard, which only masochists would use willingly.
It gives me somewhat more Amiga A500 and A500+ vibes... ;)
I see it as a spiritual successor to my much loved childhood Amiga A500 which partially spurred my life long love of computing.
The GPU pins on the back are nice, as is the fact that all IO is cleanly at the back of the device.
That being said, my only real desk is almost entirely consumed by workstation/gaming PC and it's associate monitors that ironically this more convenient form-factor is less convenient for my use cases.
I have a bunch of Pi4s at home they work well as I can power them over PoE, don't spit out too much heat, have a well supported stable OS and are great for running small personal projects and workloads. (Home assistant, DNS, a few other docker containers that power things internal to my network) - sure a NUC would be more powerful, but then I have to find a way to route power in to it, and I'm running out of wall sockets!!
I think this is a wrist geometry thing. A macbook dock that lifted the back, putting the keyboard on a slant, did serious damage to my wrists over the period of a year or so. That was the better part of a decade ago.
They've slowly partially healed since changing to a keyboard parallel to the desk surface. There are climbing moves I still cannot do because of it. Ymmv.
So if they had made one change, it would be fantastic as a throw-in-the-backpack computer.
That change would be to support display port alt-mode on a USB-C port, rather than only having mini-HDMI. If they'd done that, you could plug AR glasses like the XReal One straight into it, and not need a separate screen. Your entire compute becomes a keyboard+power, glasses, and wireless mouse. That would be really nice: two cables, total, one for power to the pi and one from the pi to the glasses.
As it is, you need an hdmi to usb-c converter, which also needs to be powered, another couple of cables, and more of a setup faff each time. It sounds minor, but it's a missed opportunity. For me it turns it from "take my money" to "eh... I can do better."
The point being that it's not a laptop. It's a proper no-compromises keyboard (ok, ish) with a cinema-screen-sized display that nobody can look over your shoulder at.
I thought these kinds of ~affordable computers in keyboards were obviously aimed at families/young users plugging into an existing TV in the living room, like a modern take on the C64.
> wireless USB being much easier than wireless displayport
I'm sure you meant bluetooth but just so we're all clear: Wireless USB isn't easy at all. Hardware availability for it is very limited and you'll need adapters on both ends. Frankly there's more hardware to wirelessly transfer HDMI than USB.
The problem of a Linux phone is not the hardware, it's the software. Are you doing to run a desktop OS on it? No. And if you want something like Android but not Android itself, how are you getting enough quality apps made? What about things like banking apps, who is going to port those?
While I would like a pure Linux phone, I think the only reasonable course of action is Android with something like Samsung's DeX on top. Maybe that is something they could do, but I don't see this happening any time soon.
Those interfaces exists and are pretty mature compared to their current marketshare which is near zero.
What is missing though is a real developer/hacker community around Linux on mobile because even installing Linux on a smartphone is a huge PITA starting by being lucky enough to own or find a compatible terminal. Something from the Raspberry PI foundation with official support, clear and easy to buy would be absolutely groundbreaking and could became THE platform to develop Linux on smartphones.
Linux is really not that far behind, it just lacks a real community.
They just need to add slot for sim and 4g/5g support, you leave the rest to the community to play with, there is Ubuntu Touch, LineageOS, SailfishOS, postmarketOS, Plasma Mobile, Tizen, KaiOS, Mobian, PureOS, GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, /e/OS, Replicant, Droidian, Maemo Leste etc. - if there would be hardware available, people would play with it.
I realize I'm probably in the 0.001% by having this opinion (so don't take this as criticism or request for change or even a suggestion), but the reason I'm not buying this is the mechanical keyboard. Strongly prefer chiclet keyboards.
> When we’re designing new Raspberry Pi products, we naturally look back to the computers of our childhoods: the tastefully beige BBC Micro, the Sinclair Spectrum with its rubber keyboard, the Commodore 64 “breadbin”, or the grandfather of them all, the Apple II.
Now someone needs to make the keycaps with the right themes - black with function keys for the BBC, QL-looking for the Spectrum, shades of brown for the 64, and brown with "BELL" on the G for the Apple II.
Although for many years people have just been putting Pis inside actual home computer cases. In the BBC case, as a (software programmable) Second Processor connected over the Tube.
Nice! I hope keyboard computers will find their niche market. I've been looking for one that I could carry around, mostly in-between home and my coworking where I already have displays. My MacBook works just fine but I've grown to dislike carrying around a laptop. It's a bit heavy, there's the temptation of using it everywhere, and it's just average on comfort when sitting in front of a bigger display.
The RPI computers aren't a good fit for software dev, the closest thing I found is Project CJ64 [0] that relies on a Framework board, but that's not a finished product.
Finally, a complete modular portable desktop, made in Europe, for about $350 usd (keyboard, mouse, camera, mic, display, power supply).
I'm impressed. Although, a little late in the race to compete with US or Chinese PC makers. However, they've a good chance to influence drone and robotic computing, same goes for Arduino.
Hardware engineers Simon Martin and Chris Martin have been beavering away on Raspberry Pi 500+ for years, through a process of iteration that’s seen a total of ten factory trips to China, six PCB revisions...
The Pi is already a module. I'd love to see the Pi "hundred" series start to incorporate modular designs between the keyboard and compute so they can be updated independently.
I've seen a couple examples on the forums of people building their own keyboards for the RPi 500.
With the RPi 500+ the RP2040 keyboard controller was moved from the motherboard to the keyboard's PCB.
The narrower ribbon cable has lines for USB and power control, not the full keyboard matrix like on the RPi 500. But the new keyboard would still have to handle power control.
Even on the RPi 500 the RP2040 is programmable, so a replacement keyboard wouldn't necessarily be limited to Raspberry Pi's keyboard matrix if you alter the firmware.
I think the future of computing is Arm, or at least not Intel. Once you've experienced completely silent computers, there is no going back.
I used to be that kid with a spectrum from Sinclair back in the 80s. Seeing a product like this without subscription, without forced updates, without windows or iOS, gives me hope for the future of computing.
This is maybe what looks like a hacky little thing to some, to me, it looks like the future of linux desktop.
Kindof same... but for me it's frustrating that they don't include any sort of mouse device, which negates the "all in one" of it.
Too much on Linux (and websites!) expect mouse-style input, so.... you have to have a mouse, the stupid HDMI adapter, etc...
It's almost a better form factor to use a regular pi paired with the Logitech keyboard + trackpad setups. You can almost treat the pi as if it were an inline power brick.
The alternative (that I haven't quite gotten around to trying yet) is to use one of the "use your phone as a mouse" apps, basically it installs a mouse-listener-over-WiFi and then at least you can emergency-browse with the "just a computer in a keyboard" setup.
Daily driving with a Pi was very very close to possible for me, back in 2020 when I last tried it, but unfortunately a Pi 4 just didn’t have enough oomph to handle bigger web apps like outlook webmail,
Google’s productivity suite, or a few other tools I needed for my job.
The Pi 5 finally upgraded to an out-of-order CPU, so it's ~3x faster than a Pi 4. It's a huge jump. The caveat being it definitely needs a cooling solution now.
I used a Raspberry Pi 400 for couple years as my home computer and embedded software projects. It worked surprisingly well for my needs: internet browsing, C++ development, web development.
In my experience, its a lot better than the Pi 4 was at fitting this niche, but unless you really need ARM or Pi GPIO or some other specific feature you're better off just using an N150 based mini pc.
I've been using keyboards since ... well since they replaced electric typewriters which in turn replaced my Royal mechanical typewriter. I never much thought about keyboards until the keyboard on my Lenovo Ideapad. I thought that was the best keyboard ever.
Until I laid out $120 for a mechanical keyboard (a Nuphy Air75). I just love it.
And here is a mechanical keyboard with a computer inside (actually two; one just to program the keyboard) that isn't that much more than I paid for my Nuphy. I already own three rpi that I don't use. But the itch to buy one of these is attacking me. Maybe I'll get some AI glasses...
For 200€, you can get yourself an old Thinkpad, flash it with some coreboot variation, install a GNU/Linux distribution and in process you will learn more things and it is not an RGB keyboard; it is really an "all-in-one PC".
"For that price, you can just use an old laptop" has been true ever since the OG Raspberry Pi showed up ~13 years ago.
And that's great, and stuff, if what a person wants is the most compute they can get for the fewest dollars possible.
But when someone instead wants a quite small computer that is actually friendly to hardware tinkering, and they want to buy it new, then a used Thinkpad will not scratch that itch -- but a new Raspberry Pi will.
(It's a bad comparison. It always has been a bad comparison.)
13 years ago, we only had the Raspberry Pi Model B at $35 (about $50 in today's money -- same as a 2GB Pi 5), and just as today we still needed to get all of the accoutrements in-place to make it work: A power supply that it actually works with, a case, an SD card, perhaps a wifi adapter...
$150 is plenty to buy a used PC system here in 2025 that still works, just as $100 was plenty to buy a working used system in 2012.
As a point of reference: The last used system I bought was a little Lenovo M600. It was $50, delivered, a couple of years ago.
As another point of reference: My daily-driver laptop is a Thinkpad T530 that was ~$200 (I paid a little extra for a disturbingly-clean example that included a discrete GPU and the fanciest of the screens that could be equipped).
Anyway: I saw these same discussions about pricing back when the first Pi was still new -- just on Slashdot instead of HN. People have been comparing the prices of used PC hardware to the prices of new Raspberry Pis for as long as we've had Raspberry Pis.
(And to be clear, I'm not trying to fanboy anything. This isn't Highlander: There can be more than one. I've got Raspberry Pis that do stuff, and I also have PC hardware that does stuff, and I'm OK with this.)
This really comes down to a matter of preferences, but I've never used the GPIO either. The reason is that a microcontroller board makes a much better GPIO for my use. Then I can unplug it and put it away when I'm done, use it with any PC -- desktop or laptop -- give it away, and carry it into the room where my soldering station is. A microcontroller also opens up the whole world of stand-alone gadgets.
Naturally software / firmware support is an issue. If the stuff you want to do is easy to code on your preferred platform, that's a reason to keep using it.
A lot of hardware startups/projects use Raspberry Pis. You program in a real Linux environment and still have access to I2C, SPI, and serial ports, which lets you talk to all kinds of chips out there.
I am aware. But I don't program, I have no interest in hardware hackery like this, and one of the things I most like about the Pi range is that I can run OSes that are not Linux. I think two of my Pis currently run RISC OS. I could also run NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Plan 9, Windows IoT, or Inferno. I do not know of any other SBC with so many options.
I am not saying these things are not valid, but they are not unique selling points -- other Pi-style SBCs offer them too.
However, the Pi has other merits that other SBCs don't: price, range of OSes, long-term OS support, a vast range of special-purpose distros for everything from server to dedicated special-purpose client stuff.
Their original premise, a super low cost linux system for hardware exploration, is constantly being undermined by their price, imo. For most projects, as long as you don’t need GPIOs or super low power consumption, you should probably use an old mini pc that’s destined for scrap and cost less.
Is it really? If you want super low cost, they have the zero w2, the rpi2, the rpi3, etc. I feel they've already mostly perfected the products for that purpose. But of course they don't want to just 'stop building', so now they're moving up to more premium options. I feel there's nothing wrong with this. If you want the low cost exploration, stick with the things they designed forever ago, which fit that purpose.
The problem is that their high end options kind of suck from a performance/$ perspective. For $200, you can just get a $140 mini pc that will be 10x faster than a Pi and a keyboard to plug into it.
I don't think the lower end pi's are perfected (or anywhere near) either. The actual products are pretty good, but all the peripherals are pretty expensive and make the value a lot worse. A Rhasberry Pi zero only costs $15, but the case and SD cost $5 each, so the most basic config ends up costing way more than it should.
If they wanted to expand their offerings, IMO they should have focused on delivering sensible bundles (e.g. Pi+SD+case+power adapter) that aren't huge markups over the board alone (or maybe making variants custom tailored to specific use cases, e.g. a Pi-zero with emmc storage and insulated so that it doesn't need a case for long term use).
A $80 x86 mini PC is wildly more powerful than prior Pis - at least so far as my home assistant use-case goes (Pi 4). Of course, the Pi is still king of power consumption (where x86 has improved, somewhat) and form-factor.
So Pi is really filling a niche where you want form-factor, perf, and power consumption - but not necessarily price. This keyboard is firmly in that niche.
The 500+ is nearly my dream PC. While I would have preferred a slightly different keyboard layout, it's really nice to be able to carry your PC around and have a nice desktop Keyboard.
Having followed rpi from the start, I suspect the choice of "200" is a marketing ploy to make the potential customers compare it to a refurb laptop. The company has a good product with a massive peripheral market, and you can open it up and add bells and whistles (literally). And a mechanical keyboard! I'd get one in an instant except my pi 5 with a Bluetooth keyboard is still going strong.
I really wish Raspberry Pi (or someone) would make something like this but with a decently sized portable display. $100-$200 machine with a 10-14 inch 720p or 1080p screen would be really beneficial for access to computer education. Closest thing I've seen is the now-discontinued "PiTop", but even that was too expensive for the performance level.
An improvement over Pi 500 in many ways, but adding keys to the right of heavily-used (r) Shift / Enter / Backspace would make it much harder to find these keys without looking at the keyboard.
The previous version also had half-height arrows that had some negative space ("not keys") above them, and so it was easier to position the fingers over the arrows just by feel; this one makes it harder.
I'd hope the next generation returns to the previous keyboard layout (which was almost perfect for me.)
> people who prefer mechanical keyboards already have the muscle memory
The problem with that is that every mechanical keyboard is different, so that muscle memory needs a refresh with each new keyboard. More importantly, people who are used to Pi 400 or Pi 500 (non-plus) have a different muscle memory.
> I depend on Delete and Home/End/Page Up/Page Down
For me, Fn-⌫, Fn-←, Fn-→, Fn-↑ and Fn-↓, respectively, do the job. On my keyboard, Fn is the button in the lower left corner, so it's easy to find by feel, ⌫ is in top right corner so it's easy to find by feel, and the negative space above half-height arrows makes it easy to find the arrows too.
I've bought pretty much all of the pis over the years, and was shocked at how capable the pi5 is at doing everything I need from a computer, including programming in a heavy IDE. Unfortunately, it's a non starter for doing anything serious on though as there's still AFAIK no support for full disk encryption in the installer, even if installing to SSD. Such a lost opportunity to be a 'PC' replacement.
A nice nod to the past, but my problem with the Raspberry Pi series has always been that the power brick has been immense. One thing that would be cool is if there were one like this with an integrated power-supply and an internal reel for the power cable. As it is, the power bricks are always the largest part of these devices.
Since the original 500 was released, I don't think there is any other major manufacturer that followed, even the Chinese mini PC makers. It feels like nobody really wants this product other than maybe some Raspberry Pi users? If this form factor makes sense, you would expect other people to build similar devices, like what happened after Steam Deck.
Might be good value for the keyboard alone but too bad they couldn't put anything better than the 7 year old A76 CPU in there. I understand the reasoning, the ecosystem consistency, I know that the price limits how cutting edge the internals can be, but it's still a pity, for my interest at least.
If this is like the RPI4 with a single global model I'm wondering how it passes FCC regs, in that presumably the Wi-Fi is flexible enough to transmit on illegal US channels (i.e. Ch 12-14 on 2.4).
The usual way to do it is to use the same regdomain as the current access point, with a fallback to a default country code of '00' (which allows only the minimal set of frequencies which are acceptable globally).
Its dimensions are 312mm × 123.06mm × 35.76mm, so volumetrically it's 107.8% of a generic 14 inch laptop I'm currently typing on.
The power button is the top right key on the keyboard, right next to the F12 / Delete key.
It is wedge-shaped, not a box. And a lot of the thickness is because it has a mechanical keyboard. You should really compare it to a "gaming laptop" that also has a mechanical keyboard — and those tend to be quite thick as well.
As a tech toy, it’s lovable. But for it to feel like a real “desktop in a keyboard” it needs more performance. I would love for something like this to be a breakout product that is real-world useful.
This seems like an interesting product for tinkerers and hobbyists, or possibly for educational purposes (e.g. Linux computer for university students to learn on). I find it hard to see how this can replace a more typical small desktop computer though.
What sort of things are most people doing on their desktop computer that needs more power or RAM though? I can't imagine.
You can still buy woefully underpowered laptops with hopeless resolutions and with 4GB of RAM running Windows 11, and that is a horrible desktop experience. At least with this it is a usable desktop machine, where the normal bottleneck was IO speed.
For those who don't read through the specs, it uses Gateron KS-33 low-profile 'blue' switches (though the plastic on the Pi 500+ switches is grey, not blue).
In my testing, the keyboard was between 55-60 dBa from about a foot away. Not quiet, but so much better to type on than the Pi 400/500's chicklet keyboard that came before.
It's a mid-tier mechanical keyboard with low-end desktop performance. So it's not going to move the needle if you're satisfied with an N150 mini PC and a cheap keyboard. But if you were already thinking of buying a Pi, or you like the keyboard-computer aesthetic, this is now the top-end for that (especially considering the 16 GB of RAM).
Ack. I got one of these things and they are HORRIBLE.
1. It would be very nice if there was anything in the box with a pointer to setup instructions (since it's obvious setting up the 500+ is different than setting up previous models.) A QR code, a URL, a printed manual. Anything. But I can use DuckDuckGo and found a couple of third-party sites and a few YouTube videos. I tried piecing together the process. It would be great if the Raspberry Pi team would make a simple web page that tells you things like:
a. Where do I download the image for the Pi 500+ (since the stock 2025-05-13 image doesn't work for the 500+.)
b. I only have one monitor, which HDMI port to I use?
c. Every other machine I've had, you can plug a mouse into the USB 3 port. I mean, you probably want to save that port for a peripheral that can use the extra speed, but it should work. Is this true for the 500+? Will I destroy the machine if I plug the mouse into the blue USB ports? I'm embarrassed I have to ask this since any other machine I wouldn't worry about it, but the out-of-the-box experience is so bad, I've lost faith in the Pi organization to make anything that works, much less performs well.
2. I needed a display so I figured I would buy a Pi branded monitor. At least this thing came with an insert that told me it wouldn't work without an external power supply. Could you have put that on the web site so I would have known to purchase an extra power supply? No problem, I have several around the house.
But... what does it mean when I plug everything together and the monitor power LED blinks red, then turns of and then nothing happens. I verified the monitor works by plugging it into a different machine, but shouldn't it work with the RasPi 500+??? I'm missing something here and it's not in the documentation.
3. I finally got the 500+ turned on and generating a picture. It stops on the "booting from SD card," the display flashes and then it says "waiting for network. connect ethernet cable." I have to connect via an ethernet cable to configure it? You mean the OS image on the SD card doesn't know how to configure the device?
This thing is NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME. I'm going to see if I can return this one cause after several hours of fiddling, I can't get the Pi to drive the Pi monitor (but the Pi will drive an Asus monitor I have in the lab and my "regular form factor" Pi 5 can drive the monitor. There's something screwy going on here and there's no documentation describing how to setup the 500+.)
Save your money. Wait several months for them to get the kinks out.
I got the monitor to work. Turns out you CAN'T drive it with a Pi 500+, even though the insert in the monitor box says you can, but at lower brightness settings. (I turned the brightness all the way down and tried powering it from the 500+ but no dice.) If you get one of these, you will DEFINITELY require an external power supply, at least if you're using it with a 500+. I'm using the (I think) 95w power supply from an old MacBookPro, seems to drive the monitor like a champ.
Though as best I can tell, the keyboard is quite nice. If I can't return it, I'll probably rip it apart and try to graft it onto the Pi 400 I have downstairs.
Hmm... tried editing the original post, but no love.
Turns out it was a pair of bad video cables. I swapped in the video cable from the "normal" form factor RasPi 5 I bought a few months ago and everything works fine.
I still think there should be a piece of paper in the box that says "plug the cable in THIS HDMI micro port," but everything else seems to work. The keyboard is quite nice. Not as good as my IBM Model M, but what is?
The CanaKit support guys were quick, polite and pointed me towards several decent debugging steps, but they are selling HDMI cables that don't work with the 500+ (or the RasPi 5 I have downstairs.) And I thought I was buying an official RasPi power supply, but I looked back at the order and sure enough it was the cut-rate CanaKit branded wall-wart. The power supply was on me, I didn't look closely enough when ordering. But the bad cables are on them. I can't really recommend purchasing from them when there are other options where you can buy working accessories.
But... moral of the story is... a bad video cable can make the system look like something weirder and worse is going on. I should have known to test the simplest thing first, but I had to trudge downstairs, move a bit of equipment to get to where the good cables were. So I guess there's an additional moral which is "always have a known good video cable handy."
If it's just the keyboard appearance itself piquing your interest, you might check out the Keychron K3 (the brand has apparently grown a lot since I was last shopping around for keyboards, so it looks like they have a "K", "K Pro", and "K QMK" as well as several other "[Insert Letter Here]" lines of models now... back then all they had were K keyboards).
To clarify, this is to say I'm looking on their website right now and seeing at least five variants of "K3" alone.
It's hard to tell when all the promotional photos are showing either a partial shot or an aggressive angle, but it looks so much like my K3 that I actually thought they were going to say they collaborated with Keychron on the design.
Yep I second this. I have a K1 (I think) with blue switches. The switches are the most important choice - since that controls the entire feel of using the keyboard. When I first got mine, I got red switches. But red switches don’t give you any tactile feedback when it passes the threshold to be considered “pressed”. I swapped to blues and I love them. Very satisfyingly clicky. They’re a bit loud though. Swapping switches is easy - I think the replacement set of blues just set me back $20 or something.
If there are any computer shops you can go in person to try them out, I highly recommend it. They make a lot of different switches and the feel is a very tactile, personal thing. (Though I think I’d also be happy with yellow or brown switches after some time with them!)
I have plenty of decent external keyboards about. I usually have to make my own. Keychrons are pretty decent except for the difficulty of updating the firmware and having to pay extra for proper back-lighting on some models.
The whole device pegs my nostalgia meter. It's almost like a C64, but it has a decent OS and now it has a better keyboard than the C64 ever had.
Though it would be a decent standalone keyboard if they updated the 'Pi Keyboard' design (one of their oldest products) with this top case, and with a USB 3 hub integrated into it. Price would have to be in the sub-$100 range to be interesting, though.
For schools in particular, the promise to keep making them until at least January 2035 is a big boon for replacing broken ones. Even if it'll likely be replaced with something better long before then.
I did not!* Through many Pis serving many years and experiencing many power outages.
But I'm using CanaKit power supplies (which supply 5.1 volts, Rpis are notoriously flaky if the voltage dips just a little below 5v) and ATP industrial automotive-grade flash cards (not a big premium in absolute terms, I think 32 gig cards are $13 on Digikey).
* Okay okay, before I switched to those accessories I did have problems.
Just to add to this train, I've run at least 10 Pis on microSD cards averaging 3 years each (mostly Pi 4s, added a couple Pi 5s), and have not had one issue on any of them... it's mostly down to using a good microSD card (I settled on SanDisk brand), a good power supply (good PoE+ HAT or official PSU), and not writing tons and tons of data to microSD (use NVMe or USB SSD/HDD if you need that).
I put an NVMe SSD in a USB3 enclosure and boot my Pi 4 from that, just to be safe. But I've never actually experienced Pi SD card corruption. I don't know whether it's because I choose good power supplies, good cards, or both.
What's the point of this? Most of us here on HN probably already own good to god tier mechanical keyboards. If I really wanted a Pi (I don't), I would get a VESA mount for it. But you have to keep it mind that Pi's can't even play 4k videos at 60fps reliably and are kind of a terrible choice for general desktop use against N100 (or later) mini-PCs, or even used thin clients like ThinkCenters with laptop CPUs that are far more capable.
Maybe it can be an advanced keyboard that does more than just a keyboard. Like maybe it calls an LLM and types shit for you, and you plug it into something else as a USB device, and implement USB 1.0 by bit-banging the GPIO or some shit
But I assume that's not the pi 500? I mean, this series has/is a keyboard, and if you are just running it as a server, you save some money by buying a regular version
This one has been on my radar as a first computer for my son for a while - just lock out the wifi and set it up with a "boot to basic" image maybe?
Certainly something which could grow to support some Arduino work.
EDIT: Admittedly this would be a no brainer if there was an off-the-shelf Atari ST style thing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST purely for the sheer mass providing some protection.
Kids don't want "boot to basic". Old fogey's like me brought up on Commodore 64 look back on boot to basic like the good old days, but "boot to basic" is long gone and no-one is interested in that, except conceptually old people think it makes kids learn because that's what made them learn, but back in the old days you tolerated boot to basic in a world in which the only computer for 3 square miles was the BBC micro sitting in front of you.
I think this "boot to basic" idea fails with contemporary software. Just basic thought experiment. When was last time you did any project with full knowledge of what exactly you were going to use? And by full I mean every single software library and tool down to specific version. These days you need to be able to pull dependencies or tools from Internet. Anything else would be just torturing or wasting yourself.
It made sense when you did not have infra build for distributing things and things made were pretty simple. Now I feel like it would be just waste of time.
A large part of the original Ethos of the Raspberry Pi foundation is to bring back some of the technology fascination and allure that children in 1980's Britain experienced with the BBC Micro and Acorn computers (which ultimately led to today's ARM).
We can assume the 500 is meant more as a nostalgia 'one-computer-for-every-child' design more so than a powerful work house for developers.
If you're buying Raspberry Pi's, either the form factor or power requirements really worked for you, such as if you're in robotics, IoT sensors, or hardware-adjacent stuff, or you knew you were spending a little bit extra for the hobby space.
That includes all the people setting up home labs for their own learning. An M1 is about $250 refurbished under Amazon's protection program. If you intend to use this as a hybrid device, which many frugal people do, then you'll also likely be using this as a desktop device connected to a monitor. The cost of electricity will rival your purchase in a year.
If you're gonna buy a throwaway computer for a child to experiment with, IMO a used Mac Mini delivers unbelievable price efficiency as a general-purpose computer. Use it as a server, use it for programming, use it for homework.
If you are going down this path, an N150 machine is cheaper, more flexible (Windows), more readily available, brand new, and performant enough for all the above use-cases. An old Mac Mini makes no sense to me.
Ah, the N150 machines are around $400-500 for me in the NUC. In that case it'd make sense to go for a new M4 Mini for $400 at Costco or student prices.
They are £150-£250 on Amazon right now. Cheaper if you buy elsewhere and wait 2 weeks for delivery. $400 is not a realistic price, are you looking at something else?
The 20 dollar minicomputer has now become the 200 dollar rgb keyboard. Still, I’ve tried and using a raspberry pi as a desktop computer but everything is so impractical. Maybe the pi 5 is better, but I do not believe it’ll ever replace normal desktop computers. Raspberry Pi’s started as a small board which you can even run Linux on, with low power consumption, so toucan run it day round for services like home assistant. In my opinion, it should stay that way.
The 20 dollar minicomputer has not become the 200 dollar rgb keyboard. You can still get a ~20 dollar Raspberry Pi minicomputer that runs Linux and has low power consumption: The Pi Zero 2. They expanded their range of products on the top, both performance and price wise, but boards on the other end of the range are still on offer.
Huh I read minicomputer and assumed we were talking about the first home computers, which that was about their epoch. (TBF I don't think any were ever $20 so that's on me).
Although if you go from the Pi 1 in 2012 at $35 at launch, it would be about $50 today.
> I read minicomputer and assumed we were talking about the first home computers, which that was about their epoch.
The minicomputers of the 1960s were only "mini" compared to earlier mainframes; they were still far too large and expensive for home users to even consider. Home computers didn't really come about until the late 1970s.
Nit: It's the Pi 500+ (the + was eaten up by HN's automated title sensationalism-removal, I guess)
And I've posted benchmark data to my sbc-reviews repo here: https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/81
Performance-wise it's pretty much the same as the Pi 5 16GB (and can be slightly faster than the regular Pi 500 depending on the task, if it benefits from faster storage or more RAM...)
Since this is the first Pi with built-in NVMe (I'm not counting the Compute Module Developer Kit), I plugged in an eGPU and tested a new 15-line patch for AMD GPU drivers, which seems to support practically all modern AMD graphics cards[1].
[1] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/full-egpu-acceleratio...
> Nit: It's the Pi 500+
I really want to hope the name is a nod to the Amiga 500+ (which had twice the RAM of the A500 ..)
This made me do some research and I'd say it appears so.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-500-and-raspbe...
> Our experiences with that programme informed the development of Raspberry Pi 400, our all-in-one PC, whose form factor (and name) harks back to the great 8-bit and 16-bit computers – the BBC Micro, Sinclair Spectrum, and Commodore Amiga – of the 1980s and 1990s.
(emphasis mine)
So the 400 name is explicitly inspired by such systems, their next one is called the 500, and the upgrade to that is called the 500+. I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that's exactly the inspiration.
One of the main differences between the ZX Spectrum and Spectrum+ was the upgraded keyboard. The original had the famous mushy rubber keys but the Spectrum+ had an injection-moulded keyboard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum#ZX_Spectrum
So with a nod to both the 500+ and Spectrum+, it's a pretty apt name.
I guess its Pi 1200 next then?
Apollo A6000
quite possible because it's from Europe, but remember that Apple was sticking + on the end of their model names 6 years before the Amiga existed.
> remember that Apple was sticking + on the end of their model names 6 years before the Amiga existed.
Did they? AFAIK, Apple always used “Plus”, not “+” (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_Plus, https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ftp.apple.asimov.net/documenta...), and “+” is shorthand invented by the community.
The Macintosh Plus, similarly, wasn’t a Macintosh+ in Apple’s marketing, AFAIK.
And, looking at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_500#Amiga_500_Plus, it doesn’t look like Commodore stuck + on the end of their model names, either.
I think that many companies have been appending + to the end of product names for an extremely long time. This is hardly an Apple innovation.
Next you're gonna try and tell me that Apple didn't invent the mobile phone. Or the portable MP3 player. Or the windowing GUI.
Jobs was "inspired" by a visit at Xerox labs, they showed him a GUI built using Smalltalk (which they'd also invented). So naturally, he ran back to his office and invented GUI ;)
There is no prize for second… unless you do it better.
Or for third I guess lol Jobs demoed a mac gui to Gates, and apparently Gates ran strait to his Microsoft office, where he too invented gui. Jobs was very upset for years.
No, but they did invent rounded corners :^)
Steve Jobs invented the "+" sign at Reed College!
/s
Yes but it was much more stylish: ⌘
/s
No, it was not Steve that found the Symbol but Susan Kare the Macintosh graphics artist. https://www.folklore.org/Swedish_Campground.html
But unlike Steve, Susan will live on immortal - as the inventor of the Dogcow.
Yeah, that means it was Steve. :P
/s
(joking, relax..)
I think it actually was an Apple innovation, at least for {hobbyist, home, personal} computers. I did some digging and wasn't able to find anything before the Apple II+ in 1979. Please do prove me wrong, though!
I found an old edition of Byte from 77 where they advertise a "Vector Graphic Vector 1+":
https://isaac.lsu.edu/byte/issues/197710_Byte_Magazine_Vol_0...
A quick search doesn't find me pictures, but I did find a "Vector 1++”:
https://vintagecomputer.ca/vector-graphic-vector-1/
The BBC Model B (the machine the Raspberry Pi got its A/B designation) was supplemented with a Model B+ in 1985, with twice the memory.
https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/BBCB+6...
Acorn Archimedes 400 series, and the 500 series that followed it (in practice only the A540). The original ARM workstations.
The single board computer Pi naming scheme is based on the BBC Micro (Model A, Model B).
As for the 'plus' - Acorn A7000+ was the last of the Acorn desktop computers to be released.
There is a heavy Acorn influence with Raspberry Pi, for good reason.
Don’t forget that ARM was originally the Acorn RISC Machine.
And the co-creator of ARM, Sophie Wilson, still works for Broadcom - the company which bought part of the remnants of Acorn (Element 14). This is where Eben Upton worked before going off to start the Raspberry Pi foundation.
Jack Lang was involved in the Pi, having also been involved in Netchannel, the STB company which used the Acorn technology and had funding from Hermann Hauser, co-founder of Acorn.
David Braben, co-author of Elite (and author of Zarch/Lander for the Acorn Archimedes) was an early Pi supporter.
Is my math not mathing today, or is that patch more than 15 lines? :)
So many comments are very negative here. I'm currently using a Pi 4 as my home desktop computer and I will probably replace it with a Pi 500+. I really want to avoid a pre-installed Windows, want my computer to be 100% silent, low energy, and I fancy the computer-is-in-keyboard feel. Sure, I might get a mini PC for a bit cheaper but I like to support Raspberry Pi. The products are easy to get into, have great and lasting software support, and a large community behind it.
I've noticed Raspberry Pi posts here always attract tons of negative comments, regardless of what the article is about.
As a desktop candidate role I would say that there is a pain of bones broken in the past. I have System Shock (1) for DOS and for MacOS. DOS version was playable in NTVDM for long, especially in 32-bit XP with VDMSound. MacOS version was, to be precise, Mac OS Classic version for Motorola CPU. And Mac OS switched CPU from Motorola to PowerPC. They had emulator bundled, but only for one switch. Soon after Motorola-to-PowerPC switch they did PowerPC-to-Intel switch. And Intel Mac OS did run PowerPC applications, but did not run Motorola applications. So I have managed to unpack StuffIt archives with System Shock for Mac OS, but never managed to run it. Actually, Intel transition was not momentarily. There was Intel x86 Mac OS and Intel x86-64 Mac OS. 10.4 Tiger could possibly run something 64-bit, but not GUI apparently. Later Mac OS introduced nice Objective-C 2.0 features as 64-bit only. Mac OS 10.6 was the last one to have Rosetta for PowerPC, and I hear complaints that it was a loss. Some games were left in PowerPC era, and "Mavericks forever" movement (10.8, the last skeuomorphic Mac OS) reports they regret not having access to PowerPC. And as you may now, modern Mac OS went to ARM. Each time there is a leap to another architecture, bones break. Legacy do not work anymore, and companies want us to move on, but we don't want to. Our broken bones hurt.
There is an ongoing problem with ARM being proprietary architecture. Our trained bones predict future pain. Again! When will be the end to this sufferring? If we are to adopt open RISC-V 64 in the end, let's just do it now and not get used to anything ARM.
I think that's a combination of things:
1) The company "sold out". That is, in times of limited supply they prioritized fulfilling large compute module orders instead of the hobbyist market that initially supported them. To be fair if I was running that company I'd have done the exact same thing, it's obviously the right financial choice. Just, you know, it'll sting for the market that was shunned.
2) They got expensive. Especially for the Pi 4 which was still dreadfully slow. That slowness was excusable at $25. Not great but okay at $35. But when suddenly it was near enough to $100+ by the time you got all the required "accessories"? Or like the Pi 5 16gb is $132 like what on earth.
3) They got 'flaky'. It used to be the pi was the rock-solid option in the space. But now they keep making weird low-reliability decisions. Like the Pi 5 "expects" a rather uniquely high amp USB-C charger. 5A @ 5V is not a common USB-C charger feature. So whatever you happen to grab is probably not sufficient, and you'll have those annoying low power warnings randomly. They chose to have dual 4k HDMI ports and went with micro-HDMI. Which is a flaky connector you probably don't have cables for (and also dual 4K? on a pi?). They kept using microSD cards. The CPU power draw increased significantly, which for the performance delta is more than justified, except it still ships without any cooling.
One misconception that everyone keeps repeating is that the pi 5 expects and needs a 5v/5a power supply to work. The CPU and all the IO will work as expected with any USB pd charger that can do at least 15 watts. The only issue you will have is a power limit on USB peripherals that use a lot of power like hard drives. Keyboards, mice and webcams will work just fine with the 600 milliamp power limit.
Previous raspberry pis had low usb power limits and people did not consider those products dead on arrival. Now that they are trying to address a limitation in the original product people are discovering that the raspberry pi was always a very limited platform to begin and the next step is not an incremental bump to the specs but to just buy a regular computer.
Except as soon as you have some issue first comment will be "are you using official power supply"? I hate such comments with passion. Feels very corporatish support.
Did you check to make sure you were using the official power supply before posting?
All of this plus, in regards to, number 2, x86 got cheap. For $80(well, pre tariffs at least) I can deal with a Pi 5s quirks and slowness, or I can buy a Radxa X4 with an Intel N100, a built in 2230 M.2 slot, 2.5GbE, and a Pi Pico with full GPIO. Software support? I have UEFI; literally anything I care to install will install from an ISO.
Literally the Radxa’s faults all boil down to the same faults the Pi has with the goofy form factor that forces you to cable squid, and the shitty microHDMI ports.
All for the same price.
Did Radxa ever iron out the heat sink issue with the X4? IIRC, when released, the official heat sink needed shimming to make proper contact with the processor.
For mine, following Explaining Computers' advice, I put in a copper shim, and that solved the issue. But I'm not sure if they ever sold through the stock of their first revision heatsink. I think they did, but I haven't bought another since the first two.
I'm going to add:
4) The penny-pinching RPi does on hardware: be it RTC, usb power kerfuffle or ARM crypto extensions (finally added in Pi 5)
5) accessory lock-down: see the situation with Pi cameras, or better yet DSI displays (CM4 datasheet: Although Linux kernel drivers are available, the DSI interface is not currently documented. Only DSI displays supported by the official Raspberry Pi firmware are supported.)
6) half-assed documentation (if you know, you know)
7) the ever-present marketing to compensate for the previous points, and the fact that it works
This is exacerbated by its popularity so people tend to treat raspberry pi as a hammer for all of their nails, while in many cases a 2$ mcu would suffice or a more network-capable SoC would be a much better fit (raspberry Pi NAS, pihole etc).
Pi5 with 4GB of ram is like £45 and runs fine for me on a standard super cheap 5v@3A charger. I think it's gone up probably less than inflation. I get where you're coming from though.
These are good explanations. Their reputation as a platform for learning and tinkering was damaged, and subsequent missteps didn't improve the situation.
The Pi500+ does seem like a good system, but it's not alone at that price point, and people may still remember being told that they weren't the company's priority.
This is why I am negative on them. Apart from point 1, which I didn't really care about at the time.
And SDCards. Who kept making that decision?
No pointing device, which means you need an external mouse, no big deal except then you need a desk to put under the mouse. Unlike a laptop with a built in pointing device, so you can use it on your lap like its name suggests. Making that mistake in the 400 was, ok fine, a mistake. Perpetuating it to the 500 and now the 500+ just seems malicious.
And yeah, people say clip-on trackball, but I haven't seen one that fits on the 400 case and doesn't cost a bundle. Links would be appreciated.
Here here! I'm using a Pi 5 and I added the Pi SSD Kit that sits on top of the fan. It made all the difference in the world! I installed Ubuntu and use it for all internet stuff.
Yeah I don't get it. I have one as my always-on server and also the only thing I port-forward, a home base if you will. Love it.
I agree. This is a genuinely good desktop for 'normal' tasks, sure you're not going to be running local LLMs or handling big 3D files but 4 decent arm cores, 16GB of RAM and a NVMe drive is more than enough for most.
Computer-is-in-keyboard is a good idea if keyboard is right. But this all-white dull stuff is no match for IBM Model M style of contrast keyboards full of sense. SUBOR SB97 is what I think of as good computer-is-in-keyboard looks. They just cloned IBM Model M. Just clone IBM Model M and you are fine
PRi 5 is miles faster than 4. So you'll be happy once you upgrade.
> 100% silent
Careful, the mechanical keys are of the clicky-clacky kind.
> The ultimate all-in-one PC
I object to this labelling: the term “all-in-one PC” has always been used to mean a computer integrated into a screen, to which you must add a keyboard and mouse (or more likely it will be bundled with a low-quality keyboard and mouse). But this is a computer integrated into a (good) keyboard, to which you must add a screen and mouse—and screens are more expensive than keyboards. Even a basic not-too-horrible screen will cost another $80, and the sort of screen you might like to pair with such a keyboard might be double that.
You don't add a new screen.
You plug it into the family TV. Just like you did in the eighties when you were a kid learning to program with your Speccy or c64 or whatever. Mom or Dad or your siblings can hang out and comment on what you're doing with it. That's the experience Raspberry has been claiming to want to reproduce since they first came onto the scene in 2012, despite them not getting around to stuffing a Pi into this form factor until 2022.
Or you plug it into one of your old monitors. We all have them laying around.
Ever since I had my own source of income, I've only bought laptops and I do not possess any monitor (old or new) at home.
Writing this, I just realized that even at work, we only have a single monitor. And it's stored on a shelf not even plugged.
If that's the only thing keeping you from buying and using a raspberry pi, you can get secondhand monitors or TVs for $20 or so.
> even at work, we only have a single monitor. And it's stored on a shelf not even plugged.
Sounds like a suitable candidate for one of these then? :)
> Mom or Dad or your siblings can hang out and comment on what you're doing with it.
This sounds really cozy. For those of us who never got to experience it - bring it back!
Lying on the living room floor looking up the the TV was great for getting a sore neck. And I still have crusty calloused skin on my elbows from the carpet. Getting an Amiga later on with an actual monitor that sat on a desk was amazing.
Yeah; the marketing language around new Pi products is always a bit flowery... besides this misnomer calling it 'AIO', the marketing also says "uncompromising performance" and "premium desktop computer", which I'd argue are quite a stretch, unless you're comparing it to SBCs and not... desktop computers!
I'd prefer more honest marketing:
- ARM system that fits inside a decent compact keyboard
- acceptable performance for basic computing tasks
- mostly as usable as a mini PC running Linux
- 5-10 years of software support
- easy access to GPIO pins
etc.
> Even a basic not-too-horrible screen will cost another $80
I believe the idea is that you'd plug it into the TV you already have, like we did in the 1980s.
Or you just buy a below $200 laptop.
Below $200 laptops are way worse than what people imagine.
Too many people look at ads, see something that looks like a laptop, and assume it's just a "no thrill" machine that mostly works. I've heard so many "how bad can it be?" hot takes as they've never used anything at that price.
※refurbished is another story, here we're talking about a new and under guarantee device so that wouldn't compare.
Lon Seidman just reviewed a $180 HP laptop from Walmart. Intel N150 processor, can run Linux and has upgradable RAM and storage:
https://youtu.be/FRNz-xakWB8
But then, 2 min into the video they upgrade to 16G RAM and a 1TB SSD before going on to check the perfs. That's a testament to me of how usable they think the laptop is in its sold state.
Looks like the SSD is about $80 on Amazon.com and the RAM maybe $30+, so that's already a significant fraction of the device's original price.
Still reasonably affordable, though. But it's not under $200.
You can buy a near mint lenovo l14 gen 3 from 2022 for $200. I know this because I bought one for my in-laws a few days ago.
You don't get support and the laptop can fail on you on week 4 you're just SOL.
I understand the value of second hand, and randomly bought a discarded corporate HP tower for my home server. But I see it more as a hobby as I can probably fix most issues, than as a purchasing strategy I'd recommend to non technical people for instance.
If you're really concerned, you can buy two $100 secondhand laptops. If one fails, you can use the other. Good secondhand laptops in that price range will be more like 8 or 10 years old, but still usable as basic daily computers.
I've had an excellent experience using secondhand business-class laptops. Several nonprofits I'm involved have nothing but these sorts of laptops, and I've only used secondhand laptops since 2019.
I guess I'm just lucky because none of the 8 laptops I've bought used off ebay in the last 13 years have failed yet.
Why that specific model, tho? I'm looking for something like that. Are there other worthy models?
If you're interested in buying secondhand laptops, I strongly recommend you look at any "business-class" model from any manufacturer. Laptops that cost $1,000+ and are aimed at business fleets, rather than individual consumers. These laptops tend to be very well-made, are designed for commonly-broken parts to be easily replaceable, and are widely available secondhand as companies update their laptop fleets. Here's an incomplete list of manufacturers and series:
* Dell Latitude (except the budget 3xxx models) and Precision * HP EliteBook and ProBook * Lenovo ThinkPad X, T, and P series (in order from small & light to big & powerful) * Panasonic ToughBook (rugged!) and Let’s Note * Fujitsu Lifebook * Acer TravelMate and Extensa * Asus ExpertBook * Toshibe Portege and Tecra * Epson Endeavor
To harp on avhon's point, ThinkPads have specific lines where most parts are made to be easily replaceable: the RAM, SSD, wi-fi card, fans etc. are user accessible. Not all ThinkPads do, so you need to at least care about the line (X, P, T, E, etc., it's a whole world), and check the repair guides and community reception.
Panasonic also has a stellar reputation in that regard.
Bear in mind they will break and you'll be hunting for parts, it's just a lot easier and viable than some other laptops.
I bought that specific model because they're a step up from the E-series (which is actually good now), but not as expensive as the X or T series. I'm very familiar with Thinkpads (I personally have owned 5, and have bought 3 for family, all used, all functioning perfectly). That specific model does not have soldered ram, has lots of replacement parts, is still fairly new, I'd owned an L14 Gen 1, and to be honest, it was just a good deal considering it was in mint condition.
With thinkpads, assuming you're buying used, you can pay the premium for a T or X series, and get a laptop with essentially the same parts, but maybe a better screen or chassis, or you can save money and go with the L or E series. NB, the T and X series oftentimes have soldered RAM, so if you're not satisfied with the amount of ram already in it, do your due diligence to ensure that the model support using SODIMM/replacing the ram.
Yes. I bought a 200€ laptop a decade ago. It was on clearance sale, so no backsies. It was so bad I couldn’t in good conscience ask for more than 50€ when I sold it like 2 days later.
It was great on paper. But the quality of the touchpad was awful. And paired with win8, which relied heavily on touchpad gestures, it was basically unusable.
I bought a Thinkpad t80 and had been pretty good so far
With 16GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD? Has the market really gotten that far?
Yeah I was thinking, for the price of this Pi 500+ I can get a pretty badass secondhand ThinkPad and it will probably be more powerful, too. /shrug
> screens are more expensive than keyboards
This keyboard https://www.norbauer.co/products/the-seneca?variant=48640876...
is more expensive than Pro Display XDR with nanotexture and the 1k stand
Adam Savage posted a video a couple of weeks ago, where he discusses this keyboard with Ryan Norbauer. That thing is overengineered to the point I'd argue it actually becomes some sort of artistic statement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3FEv1qw4_w
At least Norbauer immediately states that it's "probably the world's most insanely irrationally hyperengineered keyboard" and later on continues that "nobody needs a 3000 dollar keyboard."
It's clear from that it's a sincere hyper-obsession, shared by others within a small community. I can respect that more than just making something expensive for the sake of appealing to ultra-rich who wish to flaunt their wealth.
Overpriced to the point that it becomes an artistic statement: “The buyer fell for it again”
That's unnecessarily negative. I'd argue it's not overpriced in the least. It's insanely pricey, of course, and that price tag comes with no real utility above and beyond what a more mundane mechanical keyboard would provide, but it's priced pretty fairly considering the costs involved.
I really like my new macbook keyboard but hate apple. There's something cool about buying from small designers that make something you can't get anywhere else, not because it's rare, but executed in a way that makes no business sense at scale. Find your niche.
I agree and I’ll even cop to having fallen for it a bit myself. But I’m not saying I didn’t fall for it. They aren’t that great for this usecase.
I love it. Great artists ship and they are making what they want and lucky enough to have others that appreciate it and buy.
Seems like the Rolex of keyboards.
People gush over how it's built as if it actually improves the function of it.
The term I've used for these is "single board computer".
Yeah but screens are dirt cheap if you are willing to buy them used via classified ads.
Or you just learn to compute blind
Did this when I built a server with integrated graphics only to find that the motherboard somehow didn't support it
Mobo integrated graphics require CPU support. Maybe you bought one of the slightly cheaper Intel "F" chips without realising it lacks the graphics support?
It was just K, not KF
I also don’t get the language and would prefer to supply my own Keychron with a regular raspberry pi.
Spending more on the keyboard than on the pi! :-)
Holy smokes, they actually fixed my personal pet peeve of this entire product line: it has an internal M.2 slot. The performance of pretty much any SD card for a desktop workload is poor to say the least, and letting a USB boot device dangle out kind of defeats the purpose of the form factor. But this new model has actual fast internal storage!
P.S. HN mods, consider fixing the submission name. It’s 500+, not 500, and that completely changes the meaning of the article.
> Holy smokes, they actually fixed my personal pet peeve of this entire product line: it has an internal M.2 slot.
What's odd is that the original 500 already had an unpopulated M.2 slot, so they considered it a year ago but backed out for whatever reason.
According to Jeff Geerling's video, the main PCB in the 500+ is identical to the 500, same revision and all. Presumably they planned both the 500 and 500+ at the same time so they designed a single PCB that could accommodate both, and then only populated the m.2 parts when building a 500+.
So I don't think they "backed out" rather just didn't have the 500+ ready to launch yet.
Note that the mechanical keyboard is probably one of the major reasons the Pi 500+ took a lot longer to release than the regular 500.
According to an interview on the Pi blog[1], it was "years", with prototypes being built through 2023.
I know the design lifecycle for a product like this is in the 3-5 year range, and adding on a custom mechanical keyboard in a mass-market product like this is a tall order.
Honestly I'm not put off by the $200 price tag. If you use one in person (like at a Micro Center here in the US), you'll feel it's a decent midrange mechanical keyboard. It won't compete on the high end (IMO $200+), but to strap that onto a decent low-end PC in a fanless design isn't cheap, even at the scales Raspberry Pi operates.
They have some margin, for sure, but that's also how they turn profit, which is especially useful since then went public.
At least they're still putting out products like this, that don't really have any industrial/commercial appeal, compared to specialized compute modules for individual customers[2].
[1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/meet-the-engineers-behind-r...
[2] https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/09/23/raspberry-pi-cm0-cas...
>It won't compete on the high end (IMO $200+)
Even low-midend mech keyboard like attackshark x75 will be better
I don't think they backed out. It seems clear that they always have intended to offer these exact configurations, since they are using the same board.
Even the connection to the new keyboard was already present on the 500 even though it used another connector than the 500+
All the marketing for this advertises it as a desktop computer. What's the appeal of this compared to a cheaper and more powerful N150 NUC, or a used mini PC if it's for personal use where you just need one?
A N150 has about twice the CPU performance, hardware video decoding that isn't crippled, and much more software built for its architecture among other things.
And the N150 had mainline linux support from day one, whereas I'm not sure if there's proper support for pi5-family devices in a released mainline kernel even now, two years after the launch.
They used to do an good-to-adequate job of linux support, but nowadays they seem rubbish at it. Nobody wants to be stuck on a downstream kernel full of cobbled-together device support that's too poorly-written to upstream.
This has been the primary hurdle for me. I like it when I can just install regular linux and be on my way. Having to do a bunch of kernel nonsense is just not fun. I don't even mind messing with the kernel, but I want to use the mainline kernel.
Give it to your kid. Plug it into the family TV. Let them learn to hack while you're around to answer questions. Just like when you were a baby hacker in the eighties.
Less software is good - it makes kludging up your own more appealing, and there's a guide to getting started with that right there in the manual.
(Or you could try plugging a goggle-mounted display into it and using it as your personal cyberdeck.)
Good news we are not in the 80s anymore. A $200 used thinkpad is much better for your kids to learn hacking. And you can use your TV when they are messing around neighborhood AP.
Hacking into some platform makes very tied to it. I still recall how to program smooth scrolling in EGA/VGA. It becomes an explored world, and is ARM good for being tied to? ARM has an ongoing problem of being proprietary, and RISC-V is to come as a solution. If ARM is neither past nor future, then we should not getting tied to it.
Maybe get ITX-Llama and let parent and kid be tied to all the same platform? Have something common to discuss, something common to play. And MiniMig or Apollo A600 may do the trick. CheckMate Retro IPS display. It is past, but great past. Alive in our souls.
The appeal is the form factor, really. A decent amount of compute (not amazing, but decent) built into a decent mechanical keyboard (jury's out, but I'll believe the sales pitch until shown otherwise) is unusual.
> What's the appeal of this compared to a cheaper and more powerful N150 NUC, or a used mini PC
This is a very good question. The Pi 500+ is a beautiful product, but when compared in terms of price/value to the NUC and various other mini PCs, its value proposition is questionable.
Perhaps the target group are enthusiasts who had 8/16-bit "all-in-one" computers like Commodore64, Amiga, Atari, ZX Spectrum, Acorn etc., in their younger years and now want to buy something similar (non-x86) for themselves or force it on their kids. :)
Right, this thing is priced from an earlier (pre-BeeLink) era. There’s just so much more you can get for $200 nowadays, right off Amazon.
I hadn't looked lately but you're right. Intel N150 @3.6Ghz mini-PC with 16GB RAM, 512GB M.2 SSD, 3 USB 3.2 ports (10gbps) and dual 2.5 Gbps Ethernet all for $199 delivered tomorrow. https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-Lake-N100-Mini-Computer-Suppo....
It is fundamentally just a novelty product at this point.
It requires a separate keyboard, which means more space usage and more cables. And not sure, but I think the N150 has a fan, so more noise.
N150 machines come with or without fans, the chip is cool enough to run passively with a decent heatsink.
e.g. https://www.minix.com.hk/products/minix-z150-0db-fanless-min...
The ones with fans tend to be cheaper and have better sustained performance though.
ASUS PN42 is also passive, but they do not mention it. You can find this out from teardown pictures. They also have certified 32GB memory sticks from Crucial.
Looks like the whole tiny case is the heatsink, I like it.
It can be used as a usb gadget device, i am not aware of any SFF x86 PC that has such a chip.
Software support could be one if N150 wasnt x86 from intel.
Earliest post:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45370021
Other duplicates:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45375782
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372608
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372319
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45370260
And yes, the plus sign was omitted in all of them. (-:
I've been around long enough to find it absolutely astonishing, that you can now fit a computer with 16gb of ram, 265gb of storage and a quad core processor, with no cooling, inside a keyboard.
It is astonishing! It's especially impressive when you realize that the motherboard itself is so small that most of the keyboard interior is basically empty space [0].
[0]: https://assets.raspberrypi.com/static/25912715ba437c32c56757...
I'll be hanging around until someone mods more PIs into it.
Thinking of the old Slashdot joke but with a twist. Imagine a Beowulf Cluster inside your keyboard.
This might be (relatively) easily achieved by networking a couple of Raspberry Pi Zero 2's together under the Pi 500+ keyboard shell.
That's incredible!
For a comparison, the "similar" computer from 2006 [0] had a maximum configuration of 4xCPU @ 1 GHz and 8GB of RAM. It weighed 60 lb (27 kg) and looked like this:
https://imgur.com/fc7BWTc
But Raspberry Pi 500+ has already 2.4GHz quad-core ARM64 CPU and 16GB RAM.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Tezro
Those capabilities have been in a much smaller slab you have been able to carry around in your pocket for the last 5 years minimum, and that slab was a fully functional computer with full touchscreen display input, microphone/speaker, and cellular.
The Samsung S20 Ultra (2020) has 16gb RAM 256GB of good fast storage, and with Dex you can connect it to a monitor and keyboard+mouse via a USB C dock and get a desktop window environment.
Of course the RPi costs less, but marvel over that, not the form or compactness. RPi innovated on cost, but this capacity in this form is everywhere. They don't even use most of the space inside the keyboard, the compute module is all the size of a smartphone.
Yeah it's the cost as well that's impressive. I've got a Samsung S25 Ultra in my pocket right now, but it cost like... £1200, so I'm less blown away by that somehow
They can already fit a way faster machine, inside something that can fit in your pocket. It also comes with a very high resolution screen.
The iPhone Air has an A19 (50% faster than M1 in single core and 10% faster in multi-core benchmarks), 12GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage in a space no larger than the raised bar the camera sits in.
Better yet. It would have made the TOP500 in 1997.
The ultimate I want it, I don't need it. What would I possibly use this for I can't already do? No clue. But there's a fire of desire burning in me - for this thing! I am on a no-buying streak due to the economy. But in another universe I would've already purchased this.
IMO the coolest thing about this is that it all fits in a keyboard. It would be awesome if this came bundled with smart glasses, so I could walk into a coffee shop with just keyboard and glasses, and get work done without having to hunch over my laptop. Of course the present offering is lacking in computing power (and any form of display)
just get a foldable keyboard with your ar glasses
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43985513
Wow this is great, didn't realize this had become affordable! I'm going to google around, but do you know if any of the glasses would be "plug an play" with my (windows 10) laptop? I regularly work on my laptop to coffee shops, so if I can just add the glasses to my setup and eliminate posture issues, that would be amazing!
$200 and still micro HDMI? No, thanks.
Who is this product for? I've abandoned RPi after the rise of sub $200-PCs on Amazon, which usually come with power supply, on/off buttons, dual full size HDMIs, SSDs etc etc.
That's fine if you want a PC which is totally orthogonal to what the Pi is originally for.
The 500+ doesn't deliver on the original RPi scenarios either.
I have seen this comment a few times, why do people hate micro hdmi?
Micro HDMI is basically a non working connector. It baffles me how it was even approved. One of the requirements of a connector is to work. Micro HDMI doesn't work. Sure, it might look like it's working (if you take a picture of a connected device) but in practice it doesn't work. Just a slight touch and you're losing signal. Immediately one might think that their connector, cable or device are broken. And this is a very valid guess. But the connector is not broken by accident, it was broken by design. A consumer connector should not require an additional exoskeleton to work. It means it's broken by design if it does.
because it's not popular and less durable. I can forgive the use of micro hdmi on limited size product. But this computer 100% has enough space for full size hdmi.
I suspect they had chosen the same HDMI port as was on the SBC so as to reduce confusion for the consumer.
What's a reputable brand here?
Beelink seems to be one of the better brands. I own one and have no issues.
I'm confused by the use case for this. The keyboard gets a cable running to a monitor. Might need a power cable as well but let's assume usbc covers both.
An alternative is a raspberry pi on the vesa mount, or attached to the monitor arm. The cable to a keyboard is now optional, wireless USB being much easier than wireless displayport.
Keyboard can now be flat too.
When is this a good idea?
> The keyboard gets a cable running to a monitor. Might need a power cable as well but let's assume usbc covers both.
Unfortunately it doesn't cover both. You do, in fact, need at minimum 2 cables connected to it - one for display & one for power. And one of those cables is, unfortunately, micro-HDMI. A super fragile port that you almost certainly don't have a cable lying around for as well.
The marketing blurb that's linked makes it quite clear that this targets retro hobbyists, who want a modern take on the C64. It's not really meant to be a practical design.
It still is a more practical design than a flat keyboard, which only masochists would use willingly.
It gives me somewhat more Amiga A500 and A500+ vibes... ;)
I see it as a spiritual successor to my much loved childhood Amiga A500 which partially spurred my life long love of computing.
The GPU pins on the back are nice, as is the fact that all IO is cleanly at the back of the device.
That being said, my only real desk is almost entirely consumed by workstation/gaming PC and it's associate monitors that ironically this more convenient form-factor is less convenient for my use cases.
I have a bunch of Pi4s at home they work well as I can power them over PoE, don't spit out too much heat, have a well supported stable OS and are great for running small personal projects and workloads. (Home assistant, DNS, a few other docker containers that power things internal to my network) - sure a NUC would be more powerful, but then I have to find a way to route power in to it, and I'm running out of wall sockets!!
I think this is a wrist geometry thing. A macbook dock that lifted the back, putting the keyboard on a slant, did serious damage to my wrists over the period of a year or so. That was the better part of a decade ago.
They've slowly partially healed since changing to a keyboard parallel to the desk surface. There are climbing moves I still cannot do because of it. Ymmv.
So if they had made one change, it would be fantastic as a throw-in-the-backpack computer.
That change would be to support display port alt-mode on a USB-C port, rather than only having mini-HDMI. If they'd done that, you could plug AR glasses like the XReal One straight into it, and not need a separate screen. Your entire compute becomes a keyboard+power, glasses, and wireless mouse. That would be really nice: two cables, total, one for power to the pi and one from the pi to the glasses.
As it is, you need an hdmi to usb-c converter, which also needs to be powered, another couple of cables, and more of a setup faff each time. It sounds minor, but it's a missed opportunity. For me it turns it from "take my money" to "eh... I can do better."
and if you want to be extra sure, you should throw in a monitor into your backpacl
and tada, you made a laptop
The point being that it's not a laptop. It's a proper no-compromises keyboard (ok, ish) with a cinema-screen-sized display that nobody can look over your shoulder at.
good news, you can connect your laptop to cinema-screen-sized.
I thought these kinds of ~affordable computers in keyboards were obviously aimed at families/young users plugging into an existing TV in the living room, like a modern take on the C64.
> wireless USB being much easier than wireless displayport
I'm sure you meant bluetooth but just so we're all clear: Wireless USB isn't easy at all. Hardware availability for it is very limited and you'll need adapters on both ends. Frankly there's more hardware to wirelessly transfer HDMI than USB.
That's a nice gadget. But now: raspeberry's company has tons of money and demonstrated its ability to deliver good quality, inexpensive computers.
So WHY don't they make a linux mobile PHONE ?
That would change a lot of things
The problem of a Linux phone is not the hardware, it's the software. Are you doing to run a desktop OS on it? No. And if you want something like Android but not Android itself, how are you getting enough quality apps made? What about things like banking apps, who is going to port those?
While I would like a pure Linux phone, I think the only reasonable course of action is Android with something like Samsung's DeX on top. Maybe that is something they could do, but I don't see this happening any time soon.
You may be interested in this : https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Category:Interface
Those interfaces exists and are pretty mature compared to their current marketshare which is near zero.
What is missing though is a real developer/hacker community around Linux on mobile because even installing Linux on a smartphone is a huge PITA starting by being lucky enough to own or find a compatible terminal. Something from the Raspberry PI foundation with official support, clear and easy to buy would be absolutely groundbreaking and could became THE platform to develop Linux on smartphones.
Linux is really not that far behind, it just lacks a real community.
Idk, it's not obvious that you shouldn't run a desktop OS on a phone. What's yourr main issue with that?
You could run android apps in a Android container as needed.
I personally would very much like a device that's a pocketable desktop-OSed computer that can make phone calls and 2FA.
They just need to add slot for sim and 4g/5g support, you leave the rest to the community to play with, there is Ubuntu Touch, LineageOS, SailfishOS, postmarketOS, Plasma Mobile, Tizen, KaiOS, Mobian, PureOS, GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, /e/OS, Replicant, Droidian, Maemo Leste etc. - if there would be hardware available, people would play with it.
A good phone is an order of magnitude more complex than this.
I realize I'm probably in the 0.001% by having this opinion (so don't take this as criticism or request for change or even a suggestion), but the reason I'm not buying this is the mechanical keyboard. Strongly prefer chiclet keyboards.
You can get the Pi 400 or 500 then. :-)
Ugh that's what I get for reading in a hurry... Didn't know these existed, thanks for the heads-up! Already ordered one
> When we’re designing new Raspberry Pi products, we naturally look back to the computers of our childhoods: the tastefully beige BBC Micro, the Sinclair Spectrum with its rubber keyboard, the Commodore 64 “breadbin”, or the grandfather of them all, the Apple II.
Now someone needs to make the keycaps with the right themes - black with function keys for the BBC, QL-looking for the Spectrum, shades of brown for the 64, and brown with "BELL" on the G for the Apple II.
Although for many years people have just been putting Pis inside actual home computer cases. In the BBC case, as a (software programmable) Second Processor connected over the Tube.
* https://youtube.com/watch?v=mP7fiaync5E
Some newly made replacement cases for the Amiga have even incorporated screw mounts for Raspberry Pi.
> QL-looking for the Spectrum
I was going to object, but probably right to just skip the horror of the true Spectrum keyboard.
Maybe they meant the ZX Spectrum II, known to some as “The Toaster” for some reason.
Rubber keyboard, I heard it referred to as dead-flesh.
It put me off computing for a few years, that and all the bloody modes for different keywords.
You are mixing up several different computers here.
> Maybe they meant the ZX Spectrum II
No. There was never never a "Spectrum II".
The second model after the original 16K and 48K was the ZX Spectrum Plus, in a keyboard derived from the 1984 Sinclair QL design.
http://www.retro8bitcomputers.co.uk/Sinclair/ZXSpectrumPlus
Then the 3rd model was the ZX Spectrum 128, in the same keyboard, but with more ports and a large external heatsink.
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/2584/sinclair-zx-spe...
> known to some as “The Toaster” for some reason.
Nope. The 128 was known as the "toastrack" for the heatsink.
> Rubber keyboard, I heard it referred to as dead-flesh.
Not since the Plus model, no.
After the 128, Amstrad bought the brand. It launched the ZX Spectrum +2 and +3.
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/3648/Sinclair-ZX-Spe...
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/509/Sinclair-ZX-Spec...
Those are the closest to the nonexistent model number "II" but they do not have the QL-derived keyboard.
Nice! I hope keyboard computers will find their niche market. I've been looking for one that I could carry around, mostly in-between home and my coworking where I already have displays. My MacBook works just fine but I've grown to dislike carrying around a laptop. It's a bit heavy, there's the temptation of using it everywhere, and it's just average on comfort when sitting in front of a bigger display.
The RPI computers aren't a good fit for software dev, the closest thing I found is Project CJ64 [0] that relies on a Framework board, but that's not a finished product.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQEN17L84jg
Finally, a complete modular portable desktop, made in Europe, for about $350 usd (keyboard, mouse, camera, mic, display, power supply).
I'm impressed. Although, a little late in the race to compete with US or Chinese PC makers. However, they've a good chance to influence drone and robotic computing, same goes for Arduino.
Sorry to say that I don't think any of it is made in Europe. From https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/meet-the-engineers-behind-r...:
Hardware engineers Simon Martin and Chris Martin have been beavering away on Raspberry Pi 500+ for years, through a process of iteration that’s seen a total of ten factory trips to China, six PCB revisions...
You're correct actually, I missed that. With Raspberry Pi they moved production to the UK (Wales) in 2012 - (Factory tour article in 2023 - https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/how-raspberry-pis-are... ).
I wouldn't be surprised if they move production back to the UK assuming Pi 500+ starts doing well.
Already benchmarked by Phoronix: https://www.phoronix.com/review/raspberry-pi-500-plus
The Pi is already a module. I'd love to see the Pi "hundred" series start to incorporate modular designs between the keyboard and compute so they can be updated independently.
I've seen a couple examples on the forums of people building their own keyboards for the RPi 500.
With the RPi 500+ the RP2040 keyboard controller was moved from the motherboard to the keyboard's PCB. The narrower ribbon cable has lines for USB and power control, not the full keyboard matrix like on the RPi 500. But the new keyboard would still have to handle power control.
Even on the RPi 500 the RP2040 is programmable, so a replacement keyboard wouldn't necessarily be limited to Raspberry Pi's keyboard matrix if you alter the firmware.
I keep waiting and waiting for a revival of beige plastic in the tech industry. This would be a perfect candidate.
https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chas...
I think the future of computing is Arm, or at least not Intel. Once you've experienced completely silent computers, there is no going back.
I used to be that kid with a spectrum from Sinclair back in the 80s. Seeing a product like this without subscription, without forced updates, without windows or iOS, gives me hope for the future of computing.
This is maybe what looks like a hacky little thing to some, to me, it looks like the future of linux desktop.
Is it possible yet to Miracast from the Pi to a smart TV? I like the form factor, but I'd love to only be tethered to power and not HDMI.
Kindof same... but for me it's frustrating that they don't include any sort of mouse device, which negates the "all in one" of it.
Too much on Linux (and websites!) expect mouse-style input, so.... you have to have a mouse, the stupid HDMI adapter, etc...
It's almost a better form factor to use a regular pi paired with the Logitech keyboard + trackpad setups. You can almost treat the pi as if it were an inline power brick.
The alternative (that I haven't quite gotten around to trying yet) is to use one of the "use your phone as a mouse" apps, basically it installs a mouse-listener-over-WiFi and then at least you can emergency-browse with the "just a computer in a keyboard" setup.
This is impressive but really odd.
Isn't the entire point of Raspberry Pi to not be premium with a nice form factor, etc.
And why would I use a mechanical keyboard to drive the type of workload I'd be doing on a Pi.
Seems like they've taken super opposite and incompatible parts of PC use-cases and combined them in a really odd way.
Great industrial design. Which again isn't something I'd want from a Pi. But at the same time we all appreciate.
I kind of like it but do find it baffling.
I wish C64-like PC-in-keyboard models came back in general. I was born too late to ever see them and they all look so cool..
Daily driving with a Pi was very very close to possible for me, back in 2020 when I last tried it, but unfortunately a Pi 4 just didn’t have enough oomph to handle bigger web apps like outlook webmail, Google’s productivity suite, or a few other tools I needed for my job.
How does the Pi 5 family compare, five years on?
The Pi 5 finally upgraded to an out-of-order CPU, so it's ~3x faster than a Pi 4. It's a huge jump. The caveat being it definitely needs a cooling solution now.
Pi 4: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/976221
Pi 5: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/9348462
but for funsies, an N150 (same price as a Pi 5 - arguably cheaper since it comes with a case, cooling, power supply, etc...): https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/10304384
I used a Raspberry Pi 400 for couple years as my home computer and embedded software projects. It worked surprisingly well for my needs: internet browsing, C++ development, web development.
In my experience, its a lot better than the Pi 4 was at fitting this niche, but unless you really need ARM or Pi GPIO or some other specific feature you're better off just using an N150 based mini pc.
I've been using keyboards since ... well since they replaced electric typewriters which in turn replaced my Royal mechanical typewriter. I never much thought about keyboards until the keyboard on my Lenovo Ideapad. I thought that was the best keyboard ever.
Until I laid out $120 for a mechanical keyboard (a Nuphy Air75). I just love it.
And here is a mechanical keyboard with a computer inside (actually two; one just to program the keyboard) that isn't that much more than I paid for my Nuphy. I already own three rpi that I don't use. But the itch to buy one of these is attacking me. Maybe I'll get some AI glasses...
For 200€, you can get yourself an old Thinkpad, flash it with some coreboot variation, install a GNU/Linux distribution and in process you will learn more things and it is not an RGB keyboard; it is really an "all-in-one PC".
"For that price, you can just use an old laptop" has been true ever since the OG Raspberry Pi showed up ~13 years ago.
And that's great, and stuff, if what a person wants is the most compute they can get for the fewest dollars possible.
But when someone instead wants a quite small computer that is actually friendly to hardware tinkering, and they want to buy it new, then a used Thinkpad will not scratch that itch -- but a new Raspberry Pi will.
(It's a bad comparison. It always has been a bad comparison.)
Any laptop you could buy 13 years ago for $25 would probably be parts only. So no, that's not true.
13 years ago, we only had the Raspberry Pi Model B at $35 (about $50 in today's money -- same as a 2GB Pi 5), and just as today we still needed to get all of the accoutrements in-place to make it work: A power supply that it actually works with, a case, an SD card, perhaps a wifi adapter...
My time machine is a little rusty, but all that and a breadboard was about a hundred bucks around that time: https://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1206862
Or, you know: About $150 in today's money.
$150 is plenty to buy a used PC system here in 2025 that still works, just as $100 was plenty to buy a working used system in 2012.
As a point of reference: The last used system I bought was a little Lenovo M600. It was $50, delivered, a couple of years ago.
As another point of reference: My daily-driver laptop is a Thinkpad T530 that was ~$200 (I paid a little extra for a disturbingly-clean example that included a discrete GPU and the fanciest of the screens that could be equipped).
Anyway: I saw these same discussions about pricing back when the first Pi was still new -- just on Slashdot instead of HN. People have been comparing the prices of used PC hardware to the prices of new Raspberry Pis for as long as we've had Raspberry Pis.
(And to be clear, I'm not trying to fanboy anything. This isn't Highlander: There can be more than one. I've got Raspberry Pis that do stuff, and I also have PC hardware that does stuff, and I'm OK with this.)
if you use the raspberry as computer(instead of developing platform), why buy breadboard and other glitter ?
The OG raspberry, with some cheap $5 mouse/keyboard, a $10 microsd, and you have a working computer for less than $50
The OG Raspberry Pi was $50 in today's money -- for the bare board and nothing else at all.
There is nothing to discuss whilst real factors like inflation are willfully ignored.
2012 was a long time ago, and these boards were not as inexpensive as rose-tinted glasses may suggest.
The power of the Pi comes from the standardized 40 pin GPIO for hooking other devices up to.
This really comes down to a matter of preferences, but I've never used the GPIO either. The reason is that a microcontroller board makes a much better GPIO for my use. Then I can unplug it and put it away when I'm done, use it with any PC -- desktop or laptop -- give it away, and carry it into the room where my soldering station is. A microcontroller also opens up the whole world of stand-alone gadgets.
Naturally software / firmware support is an issue. If the stuff you want to do is easy to code on your preferred platform, that's a reason to keep using it.
I've owned 7, no, 8 of them so far. One is running in my "server room" right now, as my Pi-Hole.
I have never ever connected anything to the GPIO.
A lot of hardware startups/projects use Raspberry Pis. You program in a real Linux environment and still have access to I2C, SPI, and serial ports, which lets you talk to all kinds of chips out there.
I am aware. But I don't program, I have no interest in hardware hackery like this, and one of the things I most like about the Pi range is that I can run OSes that are not Linux. I think two of my Pis currently run RISC OS. I could also run NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Plan 9, Windows IoT, or Inferno. I do not know of any other SBC with so many options.
I am not saying these things are not valid, but they are not unique selling points -- other Pi-style SBCs offer them too.
However, the Pi has other merits that other SBCs don't: price, range of OSes, long-term OS support, a vast range of special-purpose distros for everything from server to dedicated special-purpose client stuff.
I connect various devices over I2C and SPI bus for evaluation.
USB from any PC to an Arduino is like $0.50.
"It just works", this idea is not.
Yes, except the Pi is a throwback to the keyboard as entire computers:
- Commodore Vic 64 - Atari ST
Also, this was popular for kids during the pandemic.
I'd consider these pretty viable for kids setup with an apple ii emulator to start.
We are going to see a $1,000 Raspberry pi in the next decade, won't we?
Their original premise, a super low cost linux system for hardware exploration, is constantly being undermined by their price, imo. For most projects, as long as you don’t need GPIOs or super low power consumption, you should probably use an old mini pc that’s destined for scrap and cost less.
Is it really? If you want super low cost, they have the zero w2, the rpi2, the rpi3, etc. I feel they've already mostly perfected the products for that purpose. But of course they don't want to just 'stop building', so now they're moving up to more premium options. I feel there's nothing wrong with this. If you want the low cost exploration, stick with the things they designed forever ago, which fit that purpose.
The problem is that their high end options kind of suck from a performance/$ perspective. For $200, you can just get a $140 mini pc that will be 10x faster than a Pi and a keyboard to plug into it.
I don't think the lower end pi's are perfected (or anywhere near) either. The actual products are pretty good, but all the peripherals are pretty expensive and make the value a lot worse. A Rhasberry Pi zero only costs $15, but the case and SD cost $5 each, so the most basic config ends up costing way more than it should.
If they wanted to expand their offerings, IMO they should have focused on delivering sensible bundles (e.g. Pi+SD+case+power adapter) that aren't huge markups over the board alone (or maybe making variants custom tailored to specific use cases, e.g. a Pi-zero with emmc storage and insulated so that it doesn't need a case for long term use).
A $80 x86 mini PC is wildly more powerful than prior Pis - at least so far as my home assistant use-case goes (Pi 4). Of course, the Pi is still king of power consumption (where x86 has improved, somewhat) and form-factor.
- $200 PC: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266099800893 - Core i5 @ 3GHz
- $80 PC: https://www.ebay.com/itm/135697152406 - Core i3 @ 3.5GHz
So Pi is really filling a niche where you want form-factor, perf, and power consumption - but not necessarily price. This keyboard is firmly in that niche.
Those examples are for Refurbished, not New.
That $200 PC has $150 shipping and another $150 import duties
Looks amazing.
Keyboards that put various control keys down the rightmost edge of the keyboard -- these drive me insane.
Fitt's Law and me with keyboards.
I could just remap the keys, or cover that edge of the keyboard somehow.
Which would also be an homage to the classic computers that we all grew up with: covering that Reset Key on the Apple ][ with a cassette tape case.
(fancy example https://www.callapple.org/vintage-apple-computers/apple-ii/h... )
The 500+ is nearly my dream PC. While I would have preferred a slightly different keyboard layout, it's really nice to be able to carry your PC around and have a nice desktop Keyboard.
Having followed rpi from the start, I suspect the choice of "200" is a marketing ploy to make the potential customers compare it to a refurb laptop. The company has a good product with a massive peripheral market, and you can open it up and add bells and whistles (literally). And a mechanical keyboard! I'd get one in an instant except my pi 5 with a Bluetooth keyboard is still going strong.
I really wish Raspberry Pi (or someone) would make something like this but with a decently sized portable display. $100-$200 machine with a 10-14 inch 720p or 1080p screen would be really beneficial for access to computer education. Closest thing I've seen is the now-discontinued "PiTop", but even that was too expensive for the performance level.
An improvement over Pi 500 in many ways, but adding keys to the right of heavily-used (r) Shift / Enter / Backspace would make it much harder to find these keys without looking at the keyboard.
The previous version also had half-height arrows that had some negative space ("not keys") above them, and so it was easier to position the fingers over the arrows just by feel; this one makes it harder.
I'd hope the next generation returns to the previous keyboard layout (which was almost perfect for me.)
> keys to the right of heavily-used (r) Shift / Enter / Backspace would make it much harder to find these keys without looking at the keyboard.
I'd think that people who prefer mechanical keyboards already have the muscle memory so that that isn't a problem.
Personally, I depend on Delete and Home/End/Page Up/Page Down for my text/code editing and find any keyboard without them to be deficient.
> people who prefer mechanical keyboards already have the muscle memory
The problem with that is that every mechanical keyboard is different, so that muscle memory needs a refresh with each new keyboard. More importantly, people who are used to Pi 400 or Pi 500 (non-plus) have a different muscle memory.
> I depend on Delete and Home/End/Page Up/Page Down
For me, Fn-⌫, Fn-←, Fn-→, Fn-↑ and Fn-↓, respectively, do the job. On my keyboard, Fn is the button in the lower left corner, so it's easy to find by feel, ⌫ is in top right corner so it's easy to find by feel, and the negative space above half-height arrows makes it easy to find the arrows too.
I've bought pretty much all of the pis over the years, and was shocked at how capable the pi5 is at doing everything I need from a computer, including programming in a heavy IDE. Unfortunately, it's a non starter for doing anything serious on though as there's still AFAIK no support for full disk encryption in the installer, even if installing to SSD. Such a lost opportunity to be a 'PC' replacement.
Can't you just run a normal Linux distribution if you want that, or does that not work any more?
On the product page [1] they mention
> 2.4GHz quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 CPU, with cryptography extensions
What is "cryptography extensions"?
[1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-500-plus/
Accelerated hardware instructions for cryptographic primitives, like AES or SHA-256.
See: https://developer.arm.com/documentation/101754/0624/armclang...
A nice nod to the past, but my problem with the Raspberry Pi series has always been that the power brick has been immense. One thing that would be cool is if there were one like this with an integrated power-supply and an internal reel for the power cable. As it is, the power bricks are always the largest part of these devices.
Since the original 500 was released, I don't think there is any other major manufacturer that followed, even the Chinese mini PC makers. It feels like nobody really wants this product other than maybe some Raspberry Pi users? If this form factor makes sense, you would expect other people to build similar devices, like what happened after Steam Deck.
Might be good value for the keyboard alone but too bad they couldn't put anything better than the 7 year old A76 CPU in there. I understand the reasoning, the ecosystem consistency, I know that the price limits how cutting edge the internals can be, but it's still a pity, for my interest at least.
Nice I make good money repairing high end cameras by replacing micro HDMI ports. I hope it becomes standard lol.
Looks quite alright and as someone from the 8 bits generation I get the idea, added to my possible gadgets list.
If this is like the RPI4 with a single global model I'm wondering how it passes FCC regs, in that presumably the Wi-Fi is flexible enough to transmit on illegal US channels (i.e. Ch 12-14 on 2.4).
Am I missing something?
The usual way to do it is to use the same regdomain as the current access point, with a fallback to a default country code of '00' (which allows only the minimal set of frequencies which are acceptable globally).
But what if you're using mesh or running an AP? Won't the software out of the box allow you to set the regdomain to AU?
Its dimensions are 312mm × 123.06mm × 35.76mm, so volumetrically it's 107.8% of a generic 14 inch laptop I'm currently typing on. The power button is the top right key on the keyboard, right next to the F12 / Delete key.
It is wedge-shaped, not a box. And a lot of the thickness is because it has a mechanical keyboard. You should really compare it to a "gaming laptop" that also has a mechanical keyboard — and those tend to be quite thick as well.
As a tech toy, it’s lovable. But for it to feel like a real “desktop in a keyboard” it needs more performance. I would love for something like this to be a breakout product that is real-world useful.
This seems like an interesting product for tinkerers and hobbyists, or possibly for educational purposes (e.g. Linux computer for university students to learn on). I find it hard to see how this can replace a more typical small desktop computer though.
What sort of things are most people doing on their desktop computer that needs more power or RAM though? I can't imagine.
You can still buy woefully underpowered laptops with hopeless resolutions and with 4GB of RAM running Windows 11, and that is a horrible desktop experience. At least with this it is a usable desktop machine, where the normal bottleneck was IO speed.
STILL no full size HDMI port? Did they let Officer Mayonnaise spec the port on this one?
This seems like it would be great together with a pair of display glasses (like those from XREAL, for example). But I wish it had a TrackPoint.
Oh man! It has a REAL keyboard! TAKE MY MONEY!
For those who don't read through the specs, it uses Gateron KS-33 low-profile 'blue' switches (though the plastic on the Pi 500+ switches is grey, not blue).
In my testing, the keyboard was between 55-60 dBa from about a foot away. Not quiet, but so much better to type on than the Pi 400/500's chicklet keyboard that came before.
It's a mid-tier mechanical keyboard with low-end desktop performance. So it's not going to move the needle if you're satisfied with an N150 mini PC and a cheap keyboard. But if you were already thinking of buying a Pi, or you like the keyboard-computer aesthetic, this is now the top-end for that (especially considering the 16 GB of RAM).
[dead]
Ack. I got one of these things and they are HORRIBLE.
1. It would be very nice if there was anything in the box with a pointer to setup instructions (since it's obvious setting up the 500+ is different than setting up previous models.) A QR code, a URL, a printed manual. Anything. But I can use DuckDuckGo and found a couple of third-party sites and a few YouTube videos. I tried piecing together the process. It would be great if the Raspberry Pi team would make a simple web page that tells you things like:
a. Where do I download the image for the Pi 500+ (since the stock 2025-05-13 image doesn't work for the 500+.)
b. I only have one monitor, which HDMI port to I use?
c. Every other machine I've had, you can plug a mouse into the USB 3 port. I mean, you probably want to save that port for a peripheral that can use the extra speed, but it should work. Is this true for the 500+? Will I destroy the machine if I plug the mouse into the blue USB ports? I'm embarrassed I have to ask this since any other machine I wouldn't worry about it, but the out-of-the-box experience is so bad, I've lost faith in the Pi organization to make anything that works, much less performs well.
2. I needed a display so I figured I would buy a Pi branded monitor. At least this thing came with an insert that told me it wouldn't work without an external power supply. Could you have put that on the web site so I would have known to purchase an extra power supply? No problem, I have several around the house.
But... what does it mean when I plug everything together and the monitor power LED blinks red, then turns of and then nothing happens. I verified the monitor works by plugging it into a different machine, but shouldn't it work with the RasPi 500+??? I'm missing something here and it's not in the documentation.
3. I finally got the 500+ turned on and generating a picture. It stops on the "booting from SD card," the display flashes and then it says "waiting for network. connect ethernet cable." I have to connect via an ethernet cable to configure it? You mean the OS image on the SD card doesn't know how to configure the device?
This thing is NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME. I'm going to see if I can return this one cause after several hours of fiddling, I can't get the Pi to drive the Pi monitor (but the Pi will drive an Asus monitor I have in the lab and my "regular form factor" Pi 5 can drive the monitor. There's something screwy going on here and there's no documentation describing how to setup the 500+.)
Save your money. Wait several months for them to get the kinks out.
I got the monitor to work. Turns out you CAN'T drive it with a Pi 500+, even though the insert in the monitor box says you can, but at lower brightness settings. (I turned the brightness all the way down and tried powering it from the 500+ but no dice.) If you get one of these, you will DEFINITELY require an external power supply, at least if you're using it with a 500+. I'm using the (I think) 95w power supply from an old MacBookPro, seems to drive the monitor like a champ.
Though as best I can tell, the keyboard is quite nice. If I can't return it, I'll probably rip it apart and try to graft it onto the Pi 400 I have downstairs.
Hmm... tried editing the original post, but no love.
Turns out it was a pair of bad video cables. I swapped in the video cable from the "normal" form factor RasPi 5 I bought a few months ago and everything works fine.
I still think there should be a piece of paper in the box that says "plug the cable in THIS HDMI micro port," but everything else seems to work. The keyboard is quite nice. Not as good as my IBM Model M, but what is?
The CanaKit support guys were quick, polite and pointed me towards several decent debugging steps, but they are selling HDMI cables that don't work with the 500+ (or the RasPi 5 I have downstairs.) And I thought I was buying an official RasPi power supply, but I looked back at the order and sure enough it was the cut-rate CanaKit branded wall-wart. The power supply was on me, I didn't look closely enough when ordering. But the bad cables are on them. I can't really recommend purchasing from them when there are other options where you can buy working accessories.
But... moral of the story is... a bad video cable can make the system look like something weirder and worse is going on. I should have known to test the simplest thing first, but I had to trudge downstairs, move a bit of equipment to get to where the good cables were. So I guess there's an additional moral which is "always have a known good video cable handy."
Okay. I can recommend CanaKit again. When I told them it was a cable problem they refunded my card. No muss. No fuss. No paperwork.
Not a real keyboard until it has at least 103 keys.
Pish. If you need more than 48 keys, you should go for the Symbolics Lisp Machine keyboards. IBM PC standard keyboards are pale imitations.
Inspired by those, this is a real keyboard: https://mechboards.co.uk/products/hyper-7-v4
I have this: https://marius95.go.ro/posted/keyboard.jpg
Is it ... is it worth buying for the keyboard alone?
If it's just the keyboard appearance itself piquing your interest, you might check out the Keychron K3 (the brand has apparently grown a lot since I was last shopping around for keyboards, so it looks like they have a "K", "K Pro", and "K QMK" as well as several other "[Insert Letter Here]" lines of models now... back then all they had were K keyboards).
To clarify, this is to say I'm looking on their website right now and seeing at least five variants of "K3" alone.
It's hard to tell when all the promotional photos are showing either a partial shot or an aggressive angle, but it looks so much like my K3 that I actually thought they were going to say they collaborated with Keychron on the design.
Yep I second this. I have a K1 (I think) with blue switches. The switches are the most important choice - since that controls the entire feel of using the keyboard. When I first got mine, I got red switches. But red switches don’t give you any tactile feedback when it passes the threshold to be considered “pressed”. I swapped to blues and I love them. Very satisfyingly clicky. They’re a bit loud though. Swapping switches is easy - I think the replacement set of blues just set me back $20 or something.
If there are any computer shops you can go in person to try them out, I highly recommend it. They make a lot of different switches and the feel is a very tactile, personal thing. (Though I think I’d also be happy with yellow or brown switches after some time with them!)
I have plenty of decent external keyboards about. I usually have to make my own. Keychrons are pretty decent except for the difficulty of updating the firmware and having to pay extra for proper back-lighting on some models.
The whole device pegs my nostalgia meter. It's almost like a C64, but it has a decent OS and now it has a better keyboard than the C64 ever had.
Definitely not.
Though it would be a decent standalone keyboard if they updated the 'Pi Keyboard' design (one of their oldest products) with this top case, and with a USB 3 hub integrated into it. Price would have to be in the sub-$100 range to be interesting, though.
This would be so much better to use in schools than Macs, iPads or crappy Windows PCs.
I hope many schools see this and will consider it.
For schools in particular, the promise to keep making them until at least January 2035 is a big boon for replacing broken ones. Even if it'll likely be replaced with something better long before then.
If they implement DisplayPort (or USB-C DP Alt Mode), I'm in.
Nice Tenacious D quote
I wish you were there.
From 5$ to 200$
is it with or without a cooling fan?
Without, there's a big heatsink inside meaning a fan isn't required.
Why are Rpis still bothering with SD cards? Who did not get their pi card corrupted while used as a server?
Second paragraph in the article:
"Raspberry Pi 500+ boasts ... an internal M.2 socket pre-fitted with a 256GB Raspberry Pi SSD"
so I'm not sure what your point about SD cards is in this case.
I did not!* Through many Pis serving many years and experiencing many power outages.
But I'm using CanaKit power supplies (which supply 5.1 volts, Rpis are notoriously flaky if the voltage dips just a little below 5v) and ATP industrial automotive-grade flash cards (not a big premium in absolute terms, I think 32 gig cards are $13 on Digikey).
* Okay okay, before I switched to those accessories I did have problems.
Yeah, worst thing about it. You can’t really push it to do a lot of tasks because sd cards are so unreliable, compared to nvme for example.
This has an nvme with the OS pre-installed.
It has a built-in 256GB SSD
The SD card is a very easy common and well documented way for new users to image the device.
Are sd cards still corrupting all the time in rpi servers even with high-quality SLC sd cards, or just with cheap consumer sd cards?
Most likely cheap or fake SD cards. I've been running a Raspberry Pi camera (recording) to a SanDisk SD card for years and it's still going strong.
Same here. My Raspberry Pi Zero camera has been running non-stop for more than 2 years without a single issue.
Just to add to this train, I've run at least 10 Pis on microSD cards averaging 3 years each (mostly Pi 4s, added a couple Pi 5s), and have not had one issue on any of them... it's mostly down to using a good microSD card (I settled on SanDisk brand), a good power supply (good PoE+ HAT or official PSU), and not writing tons and tons of data to microSD (use NVMe or USB SSD/HDD if you need that).
I put an NVMe SSD in a USB3 enclosure and boot my Pi 4 from that, just to be safe. But I've never actually experienced Pi SD card corruption. I don't know whether it's because I choose good power supplies, good cards, or both.
What's the point of this? Most of us here on HN probably already own good to god tier mechanical keyboards. If I really wanted a Pi (I don't), I would get a VESA mount for it. But you have to keep it mind that Pi's can't even play 4k videos at 60fps reliably and are kind of a terrible choice for general desktop use against N100 (or later) mini-PCs, or even used thin clients like ThinkCenters with laptop CPUs that are far more capable.
Maybe it can be an advanced keyboard that does more than just a keyboard. Like maybe it calls an LLM and types shit for you, and you plug it into something else as a USB device, and implement USB 1.0 by bit-banging the GPIO or some shit
I don't own a mechanical keyboard but it's fun because you could upcycle it at end of life to a cool keyboard.
Incredible that, once again, they've crippled this thing with insulting micro-HDMI ports.
do I need one? will I buy one? how can I not. :-/
Why they keep raising prices? They are going for laptop prices with this pace
What's the point of this? Where does it fit, who is it aimed at apart from Explaining Computers and good old Jeff Geerling (hiya Jeff!).
Maybe if it has been designed into a retro style case or something?
As it stands it's very hard to see who would want this.
Since the original 500's release I have never seen a single forum post (in generic tech discussions) about the product.
In other words, for me who spends lots of timing reading/watching discussions/reviews of gadgets, this never came up once, anecdotally.
I don't think you are alone in your confusion.
One has been sitting in my hallway closet running a pretty complex HA setup. It has been so rock solid that I more or less forgot about it.
But I assume that's not the pi 500? I mean, this series has/is a keyboard, and if you are just running it as a server, you save some money by buying a regular version
Yes, a Pi 500.
This one has been on my radar as a first computer for my son for a while - just lock out the wifi and set it up with a "boot to basic" image maybe?
Certainly something which could grow to support some Arduino work.
EDIT: Admittedly this would be a no brainer if there was an off-the-shelf Atari ST style thing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST purely for the sheer mass providing some protection.
Kids don't want "boot to basic". Old fogey's like me brought up on Commodore 64 look back on boot to basic like the good old days, but "boot to basic" is long gone and no-one is interested in that, except conceptually old people think it makes kids learn because that's what made them learn, but back in the old days you tolerated boot to basic in a world in which the only computer for 3 square miles was the BBC micro sitting in front of you.
I think this "boot to basic" idea fails with contemporary software. Just basic thought experiment. When was last time you did any project with full knowledge of what exactly you were going to use? And by full I mean every single software library and tool down to specific version. These days you need to be able to pull dependencies or tools from Internet. Anything else would be just torturing or wasting yourself.
It made sense when you did not have infra build for distributing things and things made were pretty simple. Now I feel like it would be just waste of time.
clicky switches are a crime
I'm waiting for another mayor manufacturer to release their keyboard PC
Where's the plus sign in the original title? The current one (with "Raspberry Pi 500") does not make any sense.
Depending on what you want to experiment with, a Mac Mini might be far more cost-productive for most people wanting to play with software and servers.
A large part of the original Ethos of the Raspberry Pi foundation is to bring back some of the technology fascination and allure that children in 1980's Britain experienced with the BBC Micro and Acorn computers (which ultimately led to today's ARM).
We can assume the 500 is meant more as a nostalgia 'one-computer-for-every-child' design more so than a powerful work house for developers.
yes, but without us, who will teach these children to piss and moan about everything!?
this device would make a very practical workstation for developing Raspbery Pi software for little embedded RPi projects.
I was also thinking for children and education, since the all-in-one setup ditches the strengths of the RPi, such as form factor and power draw.
Sure, where can I get a new one at comparable Pi prices?
If you're buying Raspberry Pi's, either the form factor or power requirements really worked for you, such as if you're in robotics, IoT sensors, or hardware-adjacent stuff, or you knew you were spending a little bit extra for the hobby space.
That includes all the people setting up home labs for their own learning. An M1 is about $250 refurbished under Amazon's protection program. If you intend to use this as a hybrid device, which many frugal people do, then you'll also likely be using this as a desktop device connected to a monitor. The cost of electricity will rival your purchase in a year.
If you're gonna buy a throwaway computer for a child to experiment with, IMO a used Mac Mini delivers unbelievable price efficiency as a general-purpose computer. Use it as a server, use it for programming, use it for homework.
If you are going down this path, an N150 machine is cheaper, more flexible (Windows), more readily available, brand new, and performant enough for all the above use-cases. An old Mac Mini makes no sense to me.
Ah, the N150 machines are around $400-500 for me in the NUC. In that case it'd make sense to go for a new M4 Mini for $400 at Costco or student prices.
They are £150-£250 on Amazon right now. Cheaper if you buy elsewhere and wait 2 weeks for delivery. $400 is not a realistic price, are you looking at something else?
I asked for a new one, and I am not going to pay such prices for 2nd hand stuff, assuming they exist at all, cheapest is 320 € on Amazon Germany.
The 20 dollar minicomputer has now become the 200 dollar rgb keyboard. Still, I’ve tried and using a raspberry pi as a desktop computer but everything is so impractical. Maybe the pi 5 is better, but I do not believe it’ll ever replace normal desktop computers. Raspberry Pi’s started as a small board which you can even run Linux on, with low power consumption, so toucan run it day round for services like home assistant. In my opinion, it should stay that way.
The 20 dollar minicomputer has not become the 200 dollar rgb keyboard. You can still get a ~20 dollar Raspberry Pi minicomputer that runs Linux and has low power consumption: The Pi Zero 2. They expanded their range of products on the top, both performance and price wise, but boards on the other end of the range are still on offer.
By the inflation calculator that's dead on the money though: https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1960?amount=1
> $1 in 1960 is worth $10.95 today
$20 * 10 = $200
I thought that computers were supposed to get cheaper over time?
The first Raspberry Pi was not released in 1960.
Huh I read minicomputer and assumed we were talking about the first home computers, which that was about their epoch. (TBF I don't think any were ever $20 so that's on me).
Although if you go from the Pi 1 in 2012 at $35 at launch, it would be about $50 today.
> I read minicomputer and assumed we were talking about the first home computers, which that was about their epoch.
The minicomputers of the 1960s were only "mini" compared to earlier mainframes; they were still far too large and expensive for home users to even consider. Home computers didn't really come about until the late 1970s.