Five years ago, I spent a happy month reviewing the Raspberry Pi 400 for Stuff. Unlike other Pis, that one shoved an entire computer inside a keyboard. It felt just like the good old days of the Commodore 64, the ZX Spectrum and the BBC Micro. (Why, yes, I am a child of the ’80s. Why do you ask?) Last year, Raspberry Pi amped up its all-in-one and added 100 to the number. Now, the company has plussed that up and yet made something new. And that’s because the Raspberry Pi 500+ is a premium slice of Pi.
That’s obvious the second you clap eyes on the thing. The keyboards on the 400 and 500 were nice enough – low profile efforts that felt like cheaper, spongy iMac keyboards. But this revamp goes full-on clacky, with Gateron Blue KS-33 low-profile switches. And, yes, you get a tool to prise the key caps off if you want to replace them. Also, good news, fans of PgUp, PgDn, Home and End – Raspberry Pi has also used this redesign as an excuse to slap on those extra keys.
True colours
So what else is new? For starters, there are individually addressable RGB LEDs (complete with a bunch of eye-searing presets), to satisfy even the most nerdy Pi fans. No word as to whether they can flash like a police siren if someone tries to steal your pride and joy, mind. On the more practical side, there’s now a 256 SSD nestled inside, which should seriously speed things up during general use. And 16GB of RAM will net you many more open browser tabs before the Raspberry Pi 500+ starts to wheeze.
Beyond that, the specs are basically Pi 500 déjà vu: 2.5Ghz quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 CPU, dual-band Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 5, 2x USB 3, 1x USB 2, micro HDMI, plus a GPIO port to plug in all sorts of goodies but that you’ll sometimes need an adapter for because it’s horizontal, unlike on the Pi 5. (Gnash.) Oh, and there is one other thing that isn’t the same: the price. Fancy keys don’t grow on trees, so the 500+ will set you back $200/about £172.
That’s quite the jump from the 500 – almost double – but as someone who spends most of my days tapping away at keys, I’m tempted. And you can still boot from microSD, which means the Raspberry Pi 500+ can become a retro-gaming machine via a swift restart into Batocera. Who knows? With that lovely new keyboard to type on, I might even finally finish Zork.
