Raspberry Pi 400 Is Out and It’s a Desktop PC Priced at $70
- Raspberry Pi has released an old-school computer based on the Pi 4 board, called the “Pi 400.”
- The compact computer is priced at just $70, and it’s a keyboard with plenty of I/O and a quad-core CPU with 4GB of RAM.
- The foundation’s designers have spent many months developing the product, paying great attention to the thermal aspect.
Raspberry Pi is actively responding to the increased need to work and study from home with the release of the Raspberry Pi 400 PC. This is basically a keyboard that hosts a Raspberry Pi 4 inside its guts, featuring all of the needed ports on the backside. It’s certainly a throwback to classic computers, reminding older users of the age when Commodore Amigas and ZX Spectrums ruled, but in 2020, it’s just an amazing bargain.
For just $70, you are getting a compact, high-quality keyboard, an adequate set of I/O ports, 4GB of RAM, a quad-core 64-bit processor, the ability to hook up two 4K screens, a Wi-Fi adapter, and even a 40-pin GPIO extension that can open an entire realm of extension possibilities.
Paying $100 could get you the “Personal Computer Kit,” which includes the Pi 400, the official Pi mouse, a USB-C power supply, an SD card which comes pre-loaded with the Raspberry Pi OS, a micro HDMI to HDMI cable, and the ‘Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide’ book.
As a Christmas present for children, the kit would be an amazing opportunity to introduce them to coding projects, let them experiment with electronics, explore the vast database of community projects, enable them to study from home, and realize their first networking concepts.
The product is available in the UK, US, and France, while Italy, Germany, and Spain will follow next week. The Pi 400 is expected to hit India, Australia, and New Zealand as soon as the compliance certifications are ready, possibly within Q1 2021.
For those of you thinking this is just a Raspberry Pi 4 inside a keyboard, you are partly right. The Pi 400 is based on the Raspberry Pi 4, but it is built upon a custom board made specifically for this keyboard-case, paying great attention to thermal management and heat dissipation. This allows the Pi 400 to run cooler and thus faster than a regular Raspberry Pi 4 board, so it’s not the same thing essentially.
For those of you who missed that news, Ubuntu 20.10 came out a week ago and is basically a version devoted to Raspberry Pi 4, so you could be giving the popular Linux distro a spin on the Pi 400 once it arrives home.