HANDS ON Raspberry Pi has unveiled a fully loaded version of its computer-in-a-keyboard, featuring oodles of RAM, an SSD, and a clicky, mechanical keyboard. However, you’ll pay a relative premium for these features.
At first glance, the Raspberry Pi 500+ could be an ordinary Pi 500, Raspberry Pi’s other computer-in-a-keyboard offering. However, look a little closer, and there are some subtle and not-so-subtle hints that this is something just a little different. The case is slightly bigger (it measures 312 mm x 123 mm x 35.8 mm). The device is slightly heavier. And the keyboard… the keyboard is the first clue that this is a distinct beast.
Although attaching clicky keyboards to one of the USB ports on a Raspberry Pi is not new, incorporating a mechanical keyboard into the device marks a first for the company, and another step on the path to recreating the aesthetic of ’80s tech icons such as the BBC Micro. Tapping away on the laptop-like keyboard of modern devices might be efficient, yet there is nothing quite like banging away at something based on mechanical switches.
The Pi 500+ utilizes Gateron Blue KS-33 low-profile switches and comes with tools to remove the keycaps, allowing for easy replacement with alternatives.
Prying off the keys with the tools provided (click to enlarge) – Pic: Richard Speed
And yes, the keyboard lights up. There are some headache-inducing RGB presets, but we suspect many people will likely settle for a simple backlight or, as in the case of Pi supremo, Eben Upton, turn them most of the way down in regular use.
Rainbow bright if you’re short a nightlight (click to enlarge) – Pic: Richard Speed
The RGB LEDs under the keys can be controlled from the command line or via a Python library. Alternatively, the keyboard includes some presets, accessible from the F4 key.
The keyboard is the most significant visual change on the Pi 500+. There are now 12 function keys and dedicated PgUp, PgDn, Home, and End buttons. The three lights have gone, although the power key lights up appropriately, and the keyboard looks and feels just a little bit bigger.
The rest of the hardware matches the Pi 500 (Upton told us that the PCB and silicon stepping were identical). This means a 2.4-GHz quad-core, 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 CPU, Dual-band (2.4GHz and 5.0GHz) IEEE 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet, and Bluetooth 5. However, the LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM has been doubled to 16GB.
In day-to-day use – writing articles, surfing the web, etc – we had no performance problems using the device and Raspberry Pi OS, which is based on the Debian Linux distribution. The Pi 500+ comes with the usual suspects preloaded, such as LibreOffice, and we encountered no slowdowns in normal use. That said, an attempt to fire up 50 tabs of Google Maps caused free memory to drop like a stone. 100 tabs of The Register, on the other hand, were fine.
Unscientific, but you get the idea. Performance was more than acceptable.
The same cannot be said for the GPIO port. As in the cases of the Pi 500+’s stablemates, the Pi 400 and 500, it is mounted horizontally rather than using the vertical orientation of the basic computer. This means that some HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) hardware will need an adaptor to be used. It’s a necessary and familiar compromise for the computer-in-a-keyboard form factor, but will still be potentially annoying to some hobbyists.
In addition to being slightly thicker and larger than the Pi 500, the unit is also heavier. The new keyboard goes some way to explaining this, and there is also an enormous lump of metal – a one-piece aluminum heatsink familiar to Pi 500 owners – visible to anyone curious to know what is inside the case.
Five ordinary screws are all that stand between a user and the machine’s internals. While the metal shields most of the important bits, the other star of the show, a 256GB SSD, is accessible and easily upgradeable. Sizes up to the M.2 NVMe 2280 form factor can be slotted in, although it’s a shame that the company didn’t tweak the case by adding an Amiga 500-style trapdoor.
The microSD card slot remains, and it is possible to boot from microSD if required, however, booting a Pi from an SSD is a delight. The SSD, which comes preinstalled with Raspberry Pi OS, is screamingly fast compared to what went before – as it should be.
This is not the inexpensive computer gathering dust in the drawer of unfinished projects. The Pi 500+ is a premium product and carries (in the Pi world at least) a premium price tag of $200.
Yes, $200. You can pick up a Pi 500, with 8 GB RAM and no SSD, for $113.97 at The Pi Hut. For the recommended retail price of $200, you can now get the Pi 500+ with 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and a mechanical RGB keyboard. A power supply and video cable are extra, although Upton told us that plans are afoot to sell a kit version.
It is undoubtedly a good device, and peak Pi for the time being, but that price puts the Pi 500+ in some powerful company. Shop around, and you can easily find diminutive devices packing just as much, if not considerably more, punch.
We asked Upton why the company, which is historically known for its hardware that can be cheaply picked up and played with by hobbyists and businesses alike, would release such a device.
He replied, “Because it’s there?”
“The goal of Raspberry Pi (as a consumer/hobbyist/educational product, as distinct from its modern use as an embedded/industrial compute platform) has always been to offer affordable PC-like products across a range of price/performance points.
“This just extends that up and to the right a bit, for the power user who wants a no-holds-barred Arm-based Linux PC in a beautiful form factor.”
There are no plans to retrofit the Pi 500+ components to a Pi 500; the rest of the connectors remain unchanged, including the 40-pin GPIO header. The micro HDMI connectors also remain, as do a pair of USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 port. USB-C is strictly for power only, and Upton told us that “Raspberry Pi is likely USB-A ride-or-die for at least one more generation.”
There is also, thankfully, no AI key on the keyboard.
Five normal screws are all that stand between you and and the guts of the machine, including a replaceable SSD (click to enlarge) – Pic: Richard Speed
As for potential customers, GPIO quibbles aside (which are not unique to the Pi 500+), it’s a dream machine for enthusiasts seeking a factory device with SSD fitted. However, for users where the mechanical keyboard isn’t an essential, and performance from a microSD card is more than adequate, the Pi 500 is probably a better bet – it has half the RAM, but as The Reg noted in our 16 GB Pi 5 review, consideration needs to be given to workloads, and for many users 8 GB will be plenty.
All in all, this is indeed peak Pi – for the moment, at least. The keyboard is a pleasure to use and brings back plenty of memories of pounding the keys of a school’s BBC Micro when an Elite session didn’t go as hoped. The SSD, while not the most capacious available, keeps the computer running at an impressive pace, and the nod to expandability is appreciated.
However, that price tag is off-putting when compared to the rest of the range. While ensuring the SSD can be replaced is good, it’s a shame the company didn’t go further and engineer an enclosure capable of accepting different Compute Modules.
We also asked Upton about the other end of the product spectrum, where the distinctly long-in-the-tooth Pi Zero 2 can be found. At the moment, there remains no comment on an update. ®