The Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard laptop builds considerably on the Raspberry Pi 400 legacy—and it has a heap of standout options that make it completely price shopping for.
1. A A lot Extra Highly effective Processor
Just like the Raspberry Pi 400, the Raspberry Pi 500 is impressed by a equally named single-board laptop, the Raspberry Pi 5. The PI 500 is basically a Raspberry Pi 5 in a keyboard kind issue, which signifies that it has the identical 2.4GHz quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 processor and RP1 I/O controller.
Based mostly on Raspberry Pi 5 speeds, the Raspberry Pi 500 presents two to 3 occasions the pace of the Pi 400 keyboard laptop and can outperform the older PC at each computing job. That is excellent news for customers thinking about sport emulation, searching/streaming, and operating heavy-duty programming IDEs (built-in improvement environments) like Visual Studio Code on a Raspberry Pi.
If you would like even sooner speeds, you possibly can overclock the Raspberry Pi 500, however you’ll run into thermal throttling sooner or later (round 2.9GHz to three.0GHz).
2. 8GB of RAM for Demanding Functions
The soldered reminiscence on the Raspberry Pi 500 has additionally acquired a large improve to 8GB, up from 4GB on the sooner keyboard laptop. Extra RAM means which you can run extra purposes and processes concurrently. So, you possibly can open extra tabs within the Chromium browser and have extra apps operating within the background with out worrying about RAM utilization.
Additionally, the Raspberry Pi 500 makes use of LPDDR4x reminiscence, which presents double the pace (at much less voltage) of the Pi 400’s LPDDR4 chip. Mixed with sooner SD card learn/write speeds, the Raspberry Pi 500 delivers a smoother and extra fashionable expertise in comparison with the Raspberry Pi 400.
3. Sooner USB Ports
The Raspberry Pi 500 retains the double USB 3.0 ports and a single USB 2.0 port from the Pi 400. Just like the Pi 4, the USB 3.0 ports on the Pi 400 share a most bandwidth of 5Gbps; that’s, you get slower speeds when each ports are transferring information on the similar time.
Due to the RP1 1/O controller, the 2 USB 3.0 ports on the Raspberry Pi 500 now provide extra bandwidth, as much as 5Gbps per port. You possibly can get pleasure from sooner information transfers for copying massive information or utilizing exterior SSDs.
4. No Want for Exterior Cooling
The Raspberry Pi 5 is infamous for being the one entry within the single-board laptop sequence to require cooling for many makes use of. The Raspberry Pi 500 fixes this by together with the heatsink contained in the keyboard. The passive warmth spreader covers the floor of the printed circuit board and prevents any overheating/thermal throttling points throughout regular operation. This removes the necessity for an lively cooling fan or exterior heatsink—which is sensible with the Raspberry Pi 500’s design.
The Raspberry Pi 500 Is Not Excellent
My largest gripe with the Raspberry Pi 500—additionally famous by most reviewers—is the lacking M.2 slot. Probably the most spectacular addition to the Raspberry Pi 5 by far was the PCIe Gen 2 connector, which introduced NVMe drives and AI accelerators to the Raspberry Pi ecosystem. Due to this fact, it’s disappointing that there is no such thing as a option to join M.2 SSDs to the Raspberry Pi 500, particularly since there’s an unsoldered M.2 socket on the board.
Additionally, I might have most well-liked a keyboard with improved tactile suggestions. A budget membrane keyboard on the Raspberry Pi 400 is the one main disadvantage to an otherwise great portable computer. Nonetheless, I perceive that there’s a sure worth level to be met.
Extra superficially, I’m keen on the crimson and white coloration scheme of the Pi 400 and want they saved that for the Pi 500 (or at the very least for a later variant).
The Raspberry Pi 500 is barely costlier than the Pi 400, at $90 for the keyboard (and a 32GB SD card) and $120 for the desktop package with a mouse, official energy provide, show cable, and a newbie’s information.
Regardless of its flaws, the Raspberry Pi 500 is a good keyboard laptop with a number of computing energy for its dimension and worth level. It won’t discover use in lots of electronics initiatives, however it’s good for instructional functions and normal computing on the go.
