Raspberry Pi has just announced the launch of the Pi 400. This is, essentially, a Raspberry Pi 4 inside an official Raspberry Pi keyboard.
TL;DR – it’s really nice and will certainly be a solution to “I just want to use a Pi as a desktop machine!”.
Get on from The Pi Hut or Pimoroni.
Away from the basics, it actually contains a redesigned Pi 4 board that is much larger than normal, but also much shorter than the regular board. It contains an updated Broadcom 2711 processor that will run at 1800MHz and breaks out all the ports to the back of the keyboard. You can see the insides of the keyboard here (thanks to Jeff Geerling for this photo):
I was lucky enough to get access to a Pi 4 unit a week or so ago. It’s extremely well-built – the moulding is of the highest-quality – with no creaking even when twisted. It feels very solid (thanks to the very large heatsink plate stuck to the processor) and, actually, quite “expensive”.
The Pi 400 is available on its own at $70 (or your local equivalent) or at $100 with all the gubbins you need to get going, such as the official power supply, cables and a copy of the Official Raspberry Pi Beginners book. There are also local variations of keyboard that will be available soon.
Other non-UK resellers can be found from the Resellers page on the Raspberry Pi website.
Thanks to The Pi Hut for the full kit image!
You can see a nice walk-round video from Matt Hawkins of Raspberry Pi Spy here
Other articles
- Don’t tear yours apart to take a look inside – let someone else do it for you! The Pi Hut has done a lovely teardown so you can see what’s under the hood! Take a look here.
- Les Pounder has done his usual sterling job on a review over at Tom’s Hardware.
- Jeff Geerling has also done a review over on his blog.
- Nice tear-down and review from CNX.
- Lovely photos from Raspberry Pi Spy.
- Wired’s (very positive) review of the Pi 400.