Raspberry Pi 400: the $70 desktop PC

Congratulations with this new product!! Exciting!!

What is internal storage space available. (What type HDD)
How can I get it. I am from India/Maharashtra/Pune… A computer dealer since 22yrs.

Sad, they have not listed India exclusively, rather as “Rest of the world”. Even Indonesia is listed. We export IT to the world, yet they think we are not worth the exclusive mention. Very Sad.

Eben says: “We expect that Approved Resellers in India, Australia, and New Zealand will have kits and computers in stock by the end of the year.”

In general the Pi boards use micro SD cards as the default storage. The kit for Pi 400 comes with a 16GB card. Otherwise the standalone unit which is just the keyboard with the integrated SBC does not so users have to supply their own but choose which size they want.

You can always connect an external USB hard drive. Get one that has external power.

There is no onboard storage. The role of conventional HDD/SSD is taken up by the MicroSD card, similar to what you add in your phone.You can choose different capacity for MicroSD card.I have 2 cards, one loaded with Ubuntu, other with Retropie

Congratulations on big launch! Great product, perfect timing:)

I kind of want one but only to take it apart. I wonder if they’re using a Compute Module or an entire custom PCB.

It’s a new board entirely, and also includes a newer revision of the BCM2711 SoC; check out some pictures and a full teardown on my blog post here: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-teardown-and-review

It’s a neat little board, and I can tell a lot of thought, testing, and revision went into getting the Pi to live well inside a small plastic keyboard!

Cool, thank you.
I kinda wished they had used the Compute Model. I love up-gradable hardware. But I guess, the form factor wouldn’t allow it.

I believe the C0 stepping game with the 8GB Pi.
I’m sure there is a technical post about it somewhere.

Is there enough space in the case to squeeze in an SSD?

If it included an option to connect an SSD internally it would be a must buy item. As is, for the price it’s an amazing value.

Tear-downs of the board appear to show plenty of room for an m.2 slot, which would be a lot more useful than a 2nd HDMI connection (even full-size)! How many regular PC’s (that would probably be a lot more appropriately powerful) have 2 HDMI ports? That dual+micor “innovation” broke a lot of cases’ forward compatibility with that odd “feature”. Seems they missed an opportunity to come up with some really useful expansion capability with this all new 400 board design.
But, I guess I will wind up getting one (or more…) eventually when the hype dies down, and the supply ramps up.

It is a custom Raspberry.long strip.youtube has some videos showing how the metal heat strip keeps it cool.

It’s a custom PCB.

I used to love my Amiga and this hits just all those buttons. Are there any plans to release other keyboard layouts (swedish for example?)

This! Norwegian layout for me. I guess it will come in later releases, as I saw they have released nordic layouts (and others) for the official keyboard.

https://cpc.farnell.com/search?st=raspberry%20pi%20400 seems like yes

Not initially but later as they wrote, there is a link to the official Raspberry Pi keyboard in this news article and there is such Swedish keyboard so a SE/SWE keyboard for Sweden will come later.

Thanks! I must have skimmed over that part. :)

if they sell an “official” keyboard in whatever layout you prefer, then it is switchable… I took my 400 apart and painted the case bottom black, then took the black “official” keyboard apart and took just the keyboard…. the ribbon plugged right into the 400’s board and I snapped it back together and now have a completely black pi 400….. so if they sell a Norwegian official keyboard, it will cost you the extra $15 or so for the “official” keyboard, but it takes about 10 minutes to swap them, if you are not disassembling the 400 for painting, it does not even require a screwdriver

…so the “official keyboard” matches the dimensions of the Pi400 case exactly?! Because what you described is exactly what I am hoping to do…

Fantastic! I would’ve been happy with a generic Nordic layout but pleasantly surprised by this. Wow! I NEED one as a RetroPie system and use it like a ZX Spectrum, C64 or Amiga!

A generic Nordic layout felt disrespectful (kind of like selling a US layout in the UK), so Simon put in the work on doing separate Danish, Sweden and Norwegian SKUs of the keyboard. We’ll replicate this with Raspberry Pi 400 in due course.

What about a swiss keyboard? Using a german keyboard feels the same for us as using a US one in the UK!

That is great news. Do you have a ballpark timing on on “due course”? Before or after Christmas, before summer 2021? :-) cheers

As you, I was missing the SE layout as it would have been perfect for a christmas gift but I took a longshot and ordered the DE version instead. Qwertz instead of Qwerty and hopefully the keys are rather easy to switch, if not then its just about two keys misplaced.

Hi Tony,

May I know where you ordered it from? I don’t seem to find a site that delivers to Sweden right now.

Thanks,
Manoj

I remember the excitement of firing up a ZX80.
Bought my first Pi about 6 years ago.
My computing needs, given I do a lot of 3D modelling mean I need something with a bit more power, but there’s something cool about getting back to basics

Oh, now this is fantastic. I only keep keyboards around for my Raspberry Pis. Excited to get my hands on one!

Hopefully – it will also be available in other colours? Like Black/Slate.

I woud love to see this!

Ditto. Another vote for slate grey.

The colour of the thing has to be just about the least important thing about it

Slate grey would be absolutely amazing!

This is truly a 1982 style personal computer form factor. I absolutely love this.

Surely the laptop must be next on the list?

The old ZX used to have an aluminium plate heatsink under its keyboard too, you could feel the warmth in that corner. Though that was to cool the power regulator rather than the Z80 40 pin DIL CPU.

I would surely like a laptop version of this :D

Nah bro, there is already a company that does it. PI-top. They have a laptop. Unfortunately, pi-top 3 only works with rPi 3 so 4’s don’t work but i hope to see laptop modules for rpi 4 very soon using this as a desktop PC rn very good using 8gb model while writing this review. But that would be a good business idea and would sell very well a nice cheap laptop that can still be used for projects like the GPIO pins will still remain accessible for projects and offer different RAM options, but a laptop is a very good idea, in general! Hope this helps.

I’m not even sure if the laptop form factor would be needed. It’s quite easy to hook this the Pi 400 up to a portable monitor, like the Asus Zenscreen, and have the best of both worlds.

Perfect. A desktop PC at an affordable price.
Well done RaspberryPi !!

hmmm, interesting…
Any plans for one with a “real” keyboard, like the BBC Micro, and not the horrendous chiclet thing which has taken over the world?

I intend to build this into my own mechanical keyboard as the gut of this looks like a great basis for a project

That was my first thought. I think it’s an amazingly well judged piece of design for an outrageously low price, but I’d love to see a Filco or equivalent sitting on top.

Please write up an Instructable if you do this. My thought is to 3D print the top part as a plate where I can put any mechanical switch I need. I don’t really want to handwire the keyboard, but I don’t see anyone making a PCB for a keyboard in that form factor.

Hi, this is great sounds like a great piece of kit. Please make it easy as can be to connect to a Miracast receiver without the need to first setting up a monitor. I thank you in advance.
Best Regards
Joakim

Great little PC, really reminds me of my old Amiga and ZX. :)

Awful accessibility design in one key area. Why on Earth did they not move the USB 2.0 so it was next to the GIPO, therefore ensuring right-hand users could attach the official mouse there and not have to deal with the the extremely short cable crossing over the HDMI and power leads? A truly short-sighted mistake!

Don’t be so hyperbolic. Nothing wrong with the placement of the ports.

Pihut are doing a wireless 3 button mouse for £7. But it would be very easy and cheap to add a usb extend cable to the short official mouse.

I’m a righty (well, at least for mouse use), and I didn’t have any problem with the length of the included cable and port placement.

If you want the mouse to be very far from the keyboard this could be an issue, but I had full range of motion without the cord being in the way in all my testing.

If I were to use it as my daily desktop, I’d likely get a wireless mouse or trackpad anyways.

It’s evident it’s because of routing. Mind that the connector order is the same as on Raspberry Pi 4 model B, except USB-C power jack. It’s impractical to cross high speed interfaces on a PCB.
I’m wondering about a different thing – why didn’t they use full size HDMI connector – at least one? microHDMIs are flimsy, they can easily get broken. While moving the computer on a desk, you can easily break it. And most people move a keyboard from time to time, to change ease pain. Your comment is partially valid though, because when moving the computer a bit, crossed cables touch each other. On the other hand, microHDMI is “shielded” by USB-C from USB cords, so to say.

Wow, awesome product. I really like it. Now you can fulfill your Shadowrun Decker fantasy: carrying a keyboard that is actually your entire computer :)

Will you be making a black version?

And how long to wait for the remaining language versions, especially interestedin the Swedish one … (will they come this year, or only next year / later)?
Thanks!

Swedish won’t quite make it this year, but should appear early next year. No plans for a black/grey SKU (and remember it’s a full set of language SKUs, so quite an inventory challenge) at the moment, but I expect once we start to push this seriously into corporate settings we’ll see a lot of demand for one.

Damn it!! I was eager to give a PT version to one of mine kids this Christmas! Guess a Pre-Order receipt instead will do! :)

was able to make a black version for about $20 extra…… buy the black official keyboard (about $15), open it up and release the ribbon connector that connects the keyboard to the usb hub inside. Set the 2 parts aside. Open the 400 the same way, also release the ribbon cable. The the white keyboard. connect the ribbon to the black official keyboard bottom, squeeze closed and you now have a white/black keyboard….. remove the heat shield, the 4 screws that hold the pi 400 board into the case and finally the board. Spray paint the bottom black ($5 can of matte black spray paint)… When completely dry, re-assemble the board, heat shield, and the black keyboard from the black “official keyboard”. They can be swapped very easily…. Whole project took me about an hour, 30 minutes of that waiting for the black paint to dry

What RAM options will there be?

This one having the name “400” implies 4GB, so maybe there will be an 800, which is an Atariesque numbering scheme.

OMG! I never thought about that. Now I’m going to need to write my own Star Raiders clone :-)

Raspberry Pi 400 has 4GB of RAM, which should be ample for the majority of users; if you need more, Raspberry Pi 4 with up to 8GB might be the one for you.

I was just wondering if there will be a Raspberry Pi 800 with 8GB?

Ah, you’re assuming the “4” in “400” refers to RAM, whereas I guessed it was because it’s a Pi 4.

Maybe they should have called it the Pi 404, then the 408 could be a future 8GB version? Also 404 is an excellent geek number, being the HTTP error code for “not found”.

404 would is a brilliant idea! I love it!
Maybe they could name them 440, 480, etc., as that would be referring to the legendary Acorn Archimedes models.

Calling it the Pi 404 would have been a terrible idea! Can you imagine the “Error 404 Not Found” jokes whenever it was out of stock?

My old laptop’s name on my LAN is ‘notfound’.

(I am joking; it obviously wouldn’t work… but) surely the additional 4GB memory should be added via a wobbly RAM pack on the expansion port on the back?! And secured with raspberry coloured blu-tack. :D
There’s probably a market for empty plastic boxes hanging off the expansion port, *just* to keep this tradition alive!!

Raspberry Pi 400 is a very interesting computer. But if I should buy it, only with 8GB ram. So I’ll wait for future version.

Great!!!
I need an Spanish keyboard right now!!!
Hahahaha.
Have you got any aprox date when it will be?

You can pre-order RIGHT NOW from RaspiPC and Tiendatec, both Raspberry Pi Approved Resellers – they’ll be able to ship next week.

Ok, as a fan boy, I need to buy one. :D ;) ha ha
Very nice, I wonder how well it would work in the class room setting? Looks like it could be a perfect fit.
a little surprised did not use the compute board. Was that because of cost? I’m expecting a long list of people asking for an 8 gig version without really knowing why they would want an 8 gig version. Great work. :)

Above a certain scale, chip-on-board wins over having a separate module. And Raspberry Pi 400, with a 200ku initial production run, is above that scale.

Please consider selling a breakout adapter for that keyboard port for the Raspberry Pi 400 board meant for mods without your keyboard I’m sure many will be interesting in using that board alone to modify it into the chassis of old combo-computers with integrated keyboards, like the BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 or Amiga 1200, repurposing the original keyboards in those.

I was thinking the same. Mod it to fit a mini razer keyboard. :)

Many of our distributors are selling it as an accessory. There are breakout types for plugging into a bread board and there are extender types for plugging a “hat” in.

Are you saying that there are already breakout boards available for this new Raspberry Pi 400 board with an adapter for the FFC cable so that only the mainboard itself could be used in other keyboard chassis?
Mind that I’m not asking about the Raspberry Pi 4 Compute Module but specifically the board inside this new Raspberry Pi 400 product.
The point would be a mod to be able to hook up a third-party proprietary keyboard to the FFC connector on the Raspberry Pi 400 board instead of the keyboard that you ship with the product.

love it, memotech or ZX spectrum fashbacks!
From a few use cases though, this is better as a device even when ignoring the keyboard, as all the IO is on one side. I can think of several project its worth it just for that

Indeed! Here is a comparison between the ZX Spectrum the the Raspberry Pi 400: https://www.spinellis.gr/blog/20201102/

Great. I was waiting for something like this.
Please release 8GB RAM & Japanese keyboard model as soon as possible.

Yes, I also want the 8 GB version

If you need 8GB then I would expect you’ll also be using a more robust ‘professional’ keyboard. 4GB is plenty for the target audience. This is not for you if you ‘need’ 8GB.

You don’t need a more robust keyboard to use 8 GB RAM! I have an 8 GB RAM Raspberry Pi 4 and use it with the official Raspberry Pi Keyboard (UK/GB model).

How did you use the 8gb? Did you use the kit and just buy the 8gb separate? The 8gb would def be ideal and prob doesnt cost much more.

I have the Raspberry Pi 4 B with 8 GB RAM – not the Raspberry Pi 400 with 4 GB RAM. Raspberry Pi 400 can probably only be RAM upgraded in the future by switching the whole circuit board (PCB). The keyboard part is the same (except for some printing regarding Scroll Lock) on the official Raspberry Pi keyboard and the Raspberry Pi 400.

I’m also curious what is the relationship between keyboard layout and ram requirements…

Ha ha did not see that response coming. My thoughts is that if someone ‘really’ needs 8 gig of ram then they will be using it a lot. As good as that little keyboard is, I would not want to use it 8 hours a day 5 days a week. Just like to make it clear, this product is excellent and I don’t think it needs to be changed at all. I was just questioning the people who seem to think they need 8GB.

I think most HPC clusters do not even have a keyboard…

Yes I would also prefer the 8GB variant

I’d love a 8Gb model as well as my 24/7 online computer.
Yes, it also reminds me of the ZX-Spectrum.
I need a machine like this to give to my folks as well so it can be their emergency desktop.

Wow, this is really cool!
In my opinion, this is what has been asked for a long time, to build it into the keyboard.

Please make a version for Russia.

Perfect! An affordable desktop PC.
Well done RaspberryPi

Nice! Amiga is back ;-)… Maybe a suggestion : You can propose more colors as optional kits (ex. Amiga, ZX80, C64, CPC464…). Sure it will sell!

That would be cute. I did joke about putting a rainbow strip across a corner like a ZX spectrum. Maybe someone could design some decals.

Retro Recipes had those mockups made! The Speccy: https://ee1.nl/misc/rpi400-zxspectrum.png and all the others from 11:15 in their review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nopc7mJUDkM

Nice! Amiga is back ;-)… Maybe a suggestion : You can propose more colors as optional kits (ex. Amiga, ZX80, C64, CPC464…). Sure it will sell!

Fantastic stuff. A strong contender for my Christmas list. If there was an 8GB version now I would already be adding to my shopping basket.

I would love to see a 8GB Version!
This Is one of my favorite List for Christmas!

No audio socket ? Bearing in mind most monitors don’t have built in speakers this is a major omission.

Bluetooth to the rescue.

When the Raspberry Pi project was launched it was made clear that one of the design goals was to minimise the cost to the user. I think Eben talked about his experiance in saving up money to buy a second hand BBC micro resulting in the Raspberry Pi being a machine that could be bought for pocket money. So we had a machine priced for the “cost of a course text book” that could be powered by a spare micro USB phone charger, used cheap microsd cards for storage and had composite video out that could drive an old crt TV along with analog audio output. All chioces that made the Pi more affordable and accessible to more people. Now we have decision that means a new Pi user has to spend more, either on a TV, monitor with speakers or blutooth audio.

No,a new Pi user can still buy a Pi4 and use the 3.5mm jack socket on there. This is an alternative form factor to the cheaper Pi, not a replacement.
Plus you have USB too.

Usb for Av out ? It’s ok (Even better than onboard) to use a usb for out, but i will miss a LOT the composite output. It will be pretty hard to see a strong argument to remove it. Save a few cents in the end on production ? There’s plenty of space there. Even the Pi4 that has dual hdmi out still has the 3.5mm plug there. I can’t see a reason to not include it. ;( (I ordered mine already). They could at least do as the PiZero and leave some solder points to get the composite video out.

I’d love to know what proportion of kids have ‘an old crt tv’ and an audio system with 3.5mm input! By comparison, how many kids have a modern TV in their bedroom? Similarly, at a recent youth event I asked how many people had external bluetooth speakers for their phones and it was 80%.

@Paul: don’t forget that the Raspberry Pi is a world product. Hardware availability and affordability differs between countries. Even in the US, there are over 77 million CRT TVs.

I have a three flat screens with only composite or SCART, and three CRTs with only composite. The flat screens are a TV, car monitor, and DVD player. The CRTs are two small B/W TVs and an old green computer monitor for an Apple II.

use old phone chargers? I think not you’ll get an undervoltage warning constanly on screen. maybe a
PI zero but from PI 2 and on you’ll need an original powersupply as phone chargers give out 4,7 – 5 volts and the
PI’s need 5,1 volt . This could be a local problem as in Denmark we have 220volts not 240 resulting in a slightly lower output if charger is not specificly 220 volt

“Most monitors don’t have speakers” might be confirmation bias from your own selection. I have two and they do have speakers.

Since I’ve picked up most of my monitors used, and they generally don’t have HDMI, *most* of them don’t have speakers, though two or three of them do.

If you’re buying new monitors with HDMI inputs, then speakers are probably expected, but when you’re using Pi (especially when using bunches of Pis) keeping the price of the monitor down is a major factor…so speakers aren’t something I look for.

Most HDMI monitors have an audio-out connector. The Pi can send audio over HDMI, and the monitor outputs that via the 3.5mm jack.

For about $25-$30 US, you can get an HDMI to audio out splitter,… You’d just need a second HDMI cable, and audio cables (optical, digital, or RCA).

That is a game changer for the Raspberry Pi absolutely brilliant. Can it take M.2 SSD?

in a caddy, externally via USB3, like the Pi4.

It’s a shame there isn’t a single USB port accessible internally (hmm, maybe via a trapdoor a la Amiga) where an external drive could be added!

Reichelt here in Germany already has them in stock, I immediately ordered one to make a multi-system 8- and 16-bit home computer out of it. C64, Atari 8bit, Spectrum, BBC Micro, Atari ST and Amiga all in one system.

I’d love to do this, however I haven’t seen a decent way of doing it (simple menu on startup which launches the machine of choice).

RetroPie gets raved about but when I tried to use it it was mostly fine for consoles but awful for home computers.

Amazing thing. Can’t wait till I get my hands dirty on this one :)

Man!, I remember seeing some guy build a keyboard with an embedded Pi Zero a long time ago on Instructables.com
this makes it even more child friendly and sort of a computer even more friendly if you want to use it in one of those poverty stricken countries to provide better education to the kids.

Fantastic! Of all the vintage computers, I think this most resembles the Acorn Electron!

Agree, but a little nicer!

And a little faster ;)

It will be fun if we can run it wirelessly through any software and hardware integration (like screen sharing) as well as have option to add rechargeable AA batteries with charging circuitry. Again if we can run Android TV OS on it dedicatedly then it will add more value and attract amateurs. Again overclocking and dedicated cooling system may help. I think in the next launch these are important than remaining accessories. But, it satisfies for now and really want it in Bangladesh.

I would suggest it has USB-C output with Video and Power Supplier to USB Touch Monitor

I wonder if it have visible power and activity leds ?

It has a green power LED that can be configured to be an activity LED if this is your preference.

Good work!!! When the Pi was created with the idea of bring a “cheap computer” to each school and kid, it was a success but limited to 512MB/1GB, but this is really “the new ZX Spectrum/BBC Micro”.

Now, Please consider:
– Selling the case (keyboard) without the motherboard, so that the FPGA scene can fit ZX-Unos, Mists, Misticas, SIDIs, N-go’s and other boards inside it!!!
– Offering a 8GB version.
– Offering non UK/US keyboards: i.e. Spanish layout with the key next to left shift. Otherwise people won’t be comfortable using it.

The Spanish version is available on pre-order.

If you navigate yourself to one of the distributors (e.g. pimoroni) you will see you can already get a Spanish layout, as well as some others.

Awesome Product, it would be cool if there was an 8GB Version :) You could name the 4GB Version NotFound (404) and the 8GB Version TimeOut (408) ;)

Don’t think I wasn’t tempted by Raspberry Pi 404.

One should always give in to temptation … that’s what it’s there for! :-)
Got my 400 yesterday … lovely bit of kit. Have no idea what I’ll actually do with it – already have about a dozen or so Pi3’s and 4’s but just had to have the 400 as it tickled my nostalgia button going back to my ZX81 / Spectrum / TI99/4A / Electron / BBC / Amiga days.

To bad it wasn’t made with a PI2, or it could’ve beer 200 (ok).

*been*

And there will be tons of stupid jokes when ordering these, like Pi404 – Not found in stock, Pi408 – Timeout waiting for fulfillment. Not a good idea, imho

…ahhhh but unlike NVIDIA these have been available to purchase from release. :-D

Well done the Pi Foundation!

Many congratulations! Another great product ?

Looks a great product. Well Done !

Brilliant! Any internal connections with IIC for putting an RTC module in? I’m sure an RTC module would have to be specially designed!

This looks great, and the kit is a good deal! But you still won’t sell any full kits in The Netherlands, I’m afraid. In NL we need an EU adapter, so the UK and US kits don’t qualify. But nobody uses DE or FR keyboards, it’s almost all US (international version with € key) and a few NL keyboards (on Mac mainly). So, if the market for NL keyboards is too small to justify a separate layout for you guys, then the solution would be to sell a US keyboard kit with an EU power adapter … Hopefully that could be feasible?

And to simplify that choice, please add a € sign to the US keyboard! In red, on the 5 key as AltGr-5, like how it’s done usually on US international keyboards.

I understand that this has already been brought up by resellers before release and there is an “EU” variant of the kit coming with a US keyboard and an EU power supply. Indeed CPC already list an EU variant of the kit on their site https://cpc.farnell.com/raspberry-pi/rpi400-kit-eu/raspberry-pi-400-kit-eu/dp/SC15854?st=raspberry%20pi%20400 .

Ah that’s great, thanks for the info. Now for that € key… ;-)

I see a Kensington Lock – is it connected to the mainboard or just the plastic shell? Can you open the keyboard with attached Kensington Lock and grab the mainboard?

Just the case, see e.g. https://www.jeffgeerling.com/sites/default/files/images/3-pi400-in-shell.jpeg via https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-teardown-and-review

It also appears to not be reinforced.

Yes – the only goal with the lock in this iteration is to force a thief to destroy the resale value of the product in stealing it.

Congratulations on creating a new Raspberry Pi form factor :-) I hope it will get loved by Raspberry Pi fans around the world, the same as his close cousin, the Pi 4!

What you need next is an official raspberry pi monitor. 17inch 1080p with a powered usb plug to power the Pi 400 from. All in the same colours / style. :) Maybe a USB3 hub too all incorporated….

I’d like to see the 10″ DSI display that was mused about back when the 7″ was in development.

An official 17″ would be nice, too, though I’d go for 1280×1024 (or some such) rather that 1920×1080.

Good point, old school square. Make it run from 12v so good for 3rd world school projects (and my campavan). Run it of a battery, power Pi 400 from monitor.

Hyperbolic? When all the marketing material shows the official mouse on the left-hand side of the P400 then there obviously is an issue! Furthermore, you obviously haven’t used a corded mouse dragging over other cables. Certainly you seem to know little about accessibility, nor design.

Fan-boy much?

It just makes the photo look nicer. You can cross the cable over the other cables. The mouse cable is long enough to do that.

The point I was making is if the designers had moved the USB 2.0 port to the other side, there would be no cable-crossover, which IS a problem or you wouldn’t have had to worry about making the photographs look nicer in the first place.

I’m making a specific point here, not some generalisation. This is something that should have been addressed at the design stage.

What do you have against left handed people? This really is irrelevant. I have a multitude of cables running all over each other on my desk. It’s just a fact of life.

AGAIN, the point I was making was THUS:

If the USB2.0 port was on the other side then the mouse could have been placed on the right for right-hand users and the left (yes, unfortunately using a USB 3.0) for left-hand users, if required. I have SEVERAL set-ups and not one crossed cable among them..

Drag from a cable when using a wired mouse could have be EASILY avoided by moving the USB2.0. I don’t see why you fan-boys are having a hard time seeing a simple design and accessibility flaw..

It’s not about throwing around banal insults like “fanboi”.
It’s more that something appearing a big deal to you seems trivial to me. I really don’t give a flying fig if cables cross and there will be no drag.

It’s a problem of choosing between case design or PCB design. “Move the connectoe” is easy to say but might complicate things in the circuit. It’s a compromise. I myself hate cables and would go the Bluetooth mouse way, but having used the Pi 400 I can tell the position of the USB 2.0 connector is not an issue.

Can I use it as a normal Keyboard – for external PC, not only with built in RPi?

It would be possible to do this, but you’d have to run a simple buildroot SD card which runs a suitable dwc2 OTG HID driver to pretend it is a keyboard…

Otherwise, you can use the Pi 400 as a Barrier server to the other computer… See my other blog post for details!

Gordon

So generally, it is not out of the box, and I can’t just unplug usb cable, so it’s a standalone machine again. That’s a pitty, I wanted to by it as a second keyboard for my desk. Obviously it would be coolest keyboard with GPIO oirts accessible.

Just buy the Official keyboard, then – if what you want is a keyboard, buy a keyboard.

I try lsusb -t and found every USB ports connected to PCIe and USB type-C just use for power supply.
I can’t find way out to use OTG on RPi 400

Great job.. This is perfect timing for remote learning during Covid. Tired of monitoring the kids to make sure they are not playing, rather than working. If they want to play using this , they will actually have to learn something to do that. Welcome to the 80s kids. Just need to make it boot to a blinking cursor.

That would be cool. And a message saying how many bytes are free. Actually at 4GB, it has 64K of memory for every byte of a Commodore 64’s 64K of memory…

Ahhh, The very machine that started the journey for me as a teenager, into Uni, and beyond into Genome Project automation research, and Cyber Security…
Congrats on this latest machine, it will really help push the Foundations effort globally..

I can absolutely reassure you that kids will have no difficulty at all doing things with a Pi4-class system other than their classwork. It’s why I have to keep an eye on my grandson and remind him that he’s *supposed* to be watching his class and not some game or video.

hello,
Does the the raspberrypi in the keyboard is easily replaceable/upgradable?
Thanks

RPI400 has just been announced and you’re asking for an update?
From todays POV it isn’t, but may change in the future for sure.

What is the slot in the middle about? Is it RAM?

What slot?
In the center you can see the SoC, which thermally connects to the large heat sink plate with a thermal PAD.
The black device below it is actually the 4G DRAM chip, soldered to the board, There is NO simple way to upgrade the RAM, that is just wishful thinking.
There are no immediate plans to bring out a 8G version, it is overkill even 4G is very difficult to fill up, even with ridiculously many tabs open in the browser.

So, I take it you’re not an artist and haven’t done several layers of high resolution renderings? I admit that it’s niche, but if you bother going with 64 bit OS, then the extra RAM will be appreciated.
After all, the same argument can be said regarding 32 vs 64 bit OS. Who needs 64 bit? Nobody, that’s who.
This, in addition to the current programmers’ habit of just requiring multi GB of RAM just to load the program. What are you going to do? Write every programs yourself just to make sure they’re efficient?

If you are an artist doing several layers of high resolution renderings then choose the right tool for the job.

I choose RaspiZero. Hmmph. It has nice form factor that travels well with my chromebook. Larger projects go to Raspi4, which is desktop. So, you’re telling me that I cannot use these desktop PC alternative as desktop PC?
Do you tell off people much? Why are you so hostile?
You want learning? RaspiZero.
You want productivity? Raspi4.
Simple as that.

I think this product could be ideal for schools since you don’t want to share keyboards in the age of pandemics, but you can share screens.

wonder If i could squeeze and nvme into there.

Absolutely beautiful! Reminds me of my old ZX Spectrum!

No comments , just big hugs and kisses love you guys , keep on the amazing work , 30 years experience sysadmin and the warez I have the most fun with are RPI

Hugs and kisses gratefully received. This one’s been a major effort (for the team – I just get to watch), and we’re delighted with how it’s been received.

Has it been stress tested by Aphra?

In the context of the other things they’ve achieved, this doesn’t seem like it would be too difficult, so interested to see what these were (speaking from a position of almost complete ignorance :))

I am thinking about all those children who, during the pandemic, don’t have access to IT equipment at home. I’m thinking about all the elderly or those staying at home in a similar situation.
How easy would it be to for them to own and use a Pi400 ?
If the Pi400 meets their needs for a general purpose computer this could be revolutionary. Is a large scale roll-out practical ?

It is. We certainly have the production capacity. But the UK government needs to want to solve the equality of access problem, and I don’t see any real evidence of that.

The UK government needs to solve much more problems, digital divide being only one of them. More exactly, if they solved other problems, they wouldn’t need to solve it on that big scale. But they won’t solve anything, because governments nowadays aren’t for ordinary people.
We had similar situation here in 2000’s with internet connection. Major (formerly state) telcos were trying to recover their ISDN investments by holding speeds low, price of internet connection high and holding ADSL deployment. So we’ve created our own, WiFi (mostly) networks ourselves. We’ve even developed fast ethernet FSO bridges with low latencies.
RPF is doing the same in the computers for kids department. I wonder, would some charity get through with financing _other_ children’s computers and internet connection? Does RPF do it? I mean – “buy a RPI for a child” style of thing. Charity for other poor people.

It looks very very cool! I want buy one :)

Looks fantastically designed and very nicely packaged. I just wish you would work on the OS appearance, it really is awful and first impressions count when kids open load something up for the first time. I’d much prefer if you did a version of Ubuntu with the pre packaged software of Raspbian.

RPF / RPT offer Raspberry Pi Operating System in 3 versions, do not know where you get the idea it runs Raspbian Operating System.

Regards Ubuntu and other Operating Systems if the developers offer a suitable version then one can run that.

The $70 version does not include a SD Card with Operating System.

Congratulations on big launch! Great product, perfect timing:)

Amazing! I was going to purchase a Pi4 with keyboard et all, but definitely want this for Xmas.
I’ll second the requests for an 8GB and black variants.

Great product from the Taspberry Pi Foundation! I am eager to get one and try it. The 8GB version -when it comes out- will be a hit!

It reminds me one old rare PC built into keyboard, in other words all-in-one in keyboard. The device was known as Jamicon SpaceStation.

Interested to know – why did you not use the Compute Module 4 for this?

Seems like a perfect use case for it – and would allow it to be upgradeable and hackable.

It would make the product MUCH more expensive

To a first approximation it would make it between $5 and $10 more expensive. But of course this is much more expensive by Raspberry Pi standards.

You forgot the 3.5mm? :S Strange considering what type of device it is and how much room there is.

I also miss the 3.5 mm for audio and composite video. I use it to connect to a HiFi amplifier.

Use a set of USB speakers instead, or use Bluetooth speakers

Thats good idea, adding all features of Pi 4 I/O and Compute model will be good

So I’d already pre-ordered a CM4 and IO board to do exactly this. However, this looks as though it will do the job even better. I’ll have to think of a new idea for the CM4 and think of a suitable excuse to tell the wife. ( she also thinks it’s a great Xmas pessie! )

Congrats! I’m impressed! I’m looking forward to the day when you do an official release of 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS. (I’m patiently waiting for Wireguard being easily available in Raspberry Pi OS 64bit).

Just download the latest version (beta) here:
https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_arm64/images/

Does the Pi 400 have all the ports that RPi4 offered? I’m particularly curious about the display and camera connectors, as I don’t see them in the pics.

None of them (CSI/DSI) is there –> you will have to use RPI4 instead

It doesn’t have the composite audio/video output either.

Will this be able to USB boot from a ssd like the pi 4? If so, count me in.

USB Boot is supported providing you are running a recent release of an Operating System.

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/raspberry-pi-400-review-faster-cpu-new-layout-better-thermals

Excellent will order it right away! Can you guys please make 16GB RAM versions of this product and Raspberry Pi 5.

Yeah, in the time the RPI 5 comes out in a few years, anything can happen, but why wait.

Love it. Will pick one up. Do have a small wish list though for future editions:
– 8GB Version
– Black colour option
– Touchpad on the right hand side, designed in such a way to invoke the integrated tapedecks of old.

The touchpad option was very tempting, but it felt like it would only be of use to a minority of users. Something for a future product, maybe.

It not having a touchpad is the only thing stopping me from buying one, but I can understand that it would raise the cost and not everyone wants it. I have long been toying with the idea of putting a Pi in a Logitec K400+ by vacuum forming a new plastic base for it.

With a touchpad would become the ultimate portable device. I would not mind paying a bit more if it was included

I ordered the RPi400 after watching the superb review from Explaingcomputers on YouTube. Great form factor, reminiscent of my ZX81 and Acorn Electron from back in the day. Pity the machine has not reverted back to full size HDMI ports though, even at the cost of losing one of these two ports.

RiscOS is supported so you can relive the Acorn Archimedes.

Great job!
Is the Russian keyboard version in a plan?

This is amazing, the 400 looks like a great package. Good job Pi team! I love this community.

Congratulations, but don’t you think that a version with integrated touch pad would be cooler?
Regards

I do, but we always have an eye to which features “pay their way” by being used by a majority of users.

Will you do a “behind-the-scenes” where you talk about the design decisions made for the keyboard?

I’d really like to know why you chose to design a complete custom board. From what I can see a compute model + custom breakout board would fit into the keyboard as well *and* would make the specs up-gradable and/or configurable.

A custom board is cheaper to make, can have better thermals, and a CM4 board design won’t fit anyway.

Have a look at the tear down at https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-teardown-and-review

There’s a very large dented area in the middle of the heat shield between the keyboard and the PCB. Judging from the size of the SoC, I’m quite certain that there’s enough space for the latest compute module. After all, it’s only 40 by 55mm. If they had taken a flat heat shield instead of the dented on they also would have enough height clearance, as well.

With regards to the PCB, the most complex part of the Pi is already on the compute module. In the presentation of the CM4 they took great pride in how easy it should be to create a simple board to drop it in. So in essence the daughter board might actually have been cheaper than an entire new Raspberry Pi design.

There is almost always a scale beyond which it makes sense to go chip-on-board, and we are building *lots* of these boards (200ku in the first instance). One caveat: if the small module allows you to downgrade the PCB tech level (layer count, track and gap spec, HDI) of the large carrier board you can get some savings, but that isn’t the case here.

If knowledge of this product got disseminated to the mainstream media (and there were journalists who understood) Santa would be on the phone looking for a lot more than 200ku!

I think someone from the Pi Foundation mentioned they’d have another post about the Pi 400 tomorrow, maybe covering some of the background and design decisions. I’m eagerly anticipating that!

It was already worth the adoption of a SSD disk instead of an SD card, even if it was by choice.
In this set could also be thought of a 107-key keyboard.

I’m guessing that it won’t take long for somebody (perhaps several somebodies) to create a 3D printable model for the lower case shell so people can change the color as they see fit.

On the other hand a person could simply disassemble the unit and paint the lower case shell in any color they like provided they can find a can of spray paint in that color.

I also pretty much expect to see3D models for “extended” lower cases that have room for an SSD or other fast storage in the space below the keyboard, though how those would connect to the main board would need to be worked out.

Yes, we’re going to see plenty of sprays/decals/3D prints and so on, aren’t we? I’m looking forward to those.

Does this raspberry have an inner fan?

No, but it’s got a massive heat spreader/heatsink that’s almost the entire size of the keyboard attached to the CPU.

It definitely doesn’t need a fan, as tests have proven.

Another fantastic, innovative and cost effective way for coders, hobbyists and enthusiasts. Well Done!!!!

I hope the legends on that keyboard are dye sublimated. Color legends on white plastic is an ideal combo for dye sublimated printing. If it were, then it would have more longevity than most keyboards on the market today. Do that, and you’d probably start seeing these things pop up as kiosks in lots of places.

Congratulations on the new product
I see Raspberry strategy is towards desktop market. I wonder if this is a correct move

So do we, of course :)

This is awesome!
I work in a school as an IT Technician and over the last lockdown we provided a number of Chromebooks to students who didn’t have access to computers at home. I was thinking just the other day that perhaps the school could invest in some Raspberry Pi 4 kits to provide to others who needed access to a computer, but something like this would be even better.

This has got me wondering, would next year perhaps bring us an official Raspberry Pi mini notebook? :-)
Rob

The….Raspberry 64?

Excellent news!! This is my first entry to my Christmas presents for myself. Now my only problem is: Is there a chance that this is shipped directly to Mexico? There really is a big market for RPIs here.

Interesting idea, but I think you missed a trick there. It would be better if it was a special compute module base and you could just upgrade the compute module as you chose. Oh, and all those buttons and still no simple on/off switch? Years in development and still no switch?

What’s the big deal with a power switch. Doesn’t seem like much difference between the physical action of pulling a cable versus pressing a button. It will just add cost for circuitry and hardware. Also having to disconnect a cable it is more obvious to inexperienced users that no power is being applied and learn safe habits when dealing with electronics.

Well, you can turn it off (and on again) with Fn-F10.

Excellent – now I don’t have to read the manual!

Can’t resist…

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Well, it’s not exaclty at the level of Apple.
For one thing, there are no pentalobe screws.
Also,
no glued-in parts,
no expensive screen to crack,
no overpriced singe-source parts,
no need for dongles,
no overheating proprietary expensive power adapter,
no self-deteriorating white cables made of kitty-crack chewable plastic,
no need for a keyboard recall,
expandable,
upgradeable,
user-serviceable,
lighter,
no need for AppleCare.
And oh yeah – it sells for less than the price of AppleCare alone.
It’s just not going to be the complete experience you get from Apple.

Pity that the camera connector was skipped… Especially these days where “class webinars” are the common now :-)

Why is it £94 in the UK $100 in the US? $100 is roughly £78 with the current exchange rate. It makes no sense for a Pi which is mainly manufactured in the UK to be more expensive in the UK compared to the US? If it can be $100 for the US market, it would be cheaper than that in the UK because you’re not doing international shipping.

Obviously you forgot to add the UK VAT.

Three words – Value Added Tax. The $100 US price is pre-tax, the £94 UK price is with tax included, as matches the custom on either side of the pond.

I must admit I forgot that US prices are pre-tax. That does explain it. Thanks.

Dr. Upton pulls (another) rabbit out of his hat.

Way clever. I am one of those that would prefer the black/gray color scheme, but I dare say that will probably happen fairly soon.

As for use as “remote learning” platform… Audio would obviously be handled by dongle as no Pi has audio input, so that just eats a USB port. Video input…since the CSI interface isn’t exposed (and I think that is an oversight that should be fixed), the only option is to use a USB camera, and there goes the only remaining USB port, since one will be needed for the pointer device of ones choice.

The lack of a DSI connector is something that one could argue about, but for the anticipated uses, I don’t see that as an issue, especially since the HDMI ports are available.

Eben Upton may well be a good engineer but he and his team are bad designers. The Raspberry Pi 4 B and now the Pi 400 has missed a handful of obvious design cues. Some should have been caught pre-production with regards to the Pi 400 and some should not have been pushed post-production with the Pi 4B.

I look forward to you releasing a Product which has all the features you feel are important at a comparable price,. Maybe on sale at Easter ?

You did of course note I said ‘design’, not features? The issue I have with the Pi 400 is port placement, plain and simple, no additional costs involved. Learn to read, thanks!

But can it run Crysis?

Am I the only one disappointed in the overall product? Why on earth didn’t you also release the board as a separate component!? Many people have been waiting for a flat form factor RPI 4, much like the zero, that includes USB3.0. I don’t want to spend $70 to rip out the board, I should be able to buy the board separately.

Can we get a bigger microSD card option than 16gb? If not, are there instructions for using a 128gb uSD and recommendations which cards work best by brand and type (e.g., A1, A2, Endurance)?

Yes, 128gb SDXC cards work even in the older models. Any legit brand will work and depends really on how much money you want to spend on quality. I personally have a 256gb Sandisk in mine. Just make sure to load a direct booting OS image instead of using NOOBS:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/

*looks at 1/2 finished keyboard case on 3d printer* well I guess I wont be needing this fir my zx spectrum emulator build any more

What happens when the keys the keyboard wear out or malfunctions?

Well, if it malfunctions within warranty, send it back. When it comes to wear-and-tear failures, we haven’t decided whether to make replacement keyboard matrices available, but I think it’s a fair bet that we will.

Verrrrry funnnnnny … but, you’re about five months early for April Fools Day, you dummies! Huh? Whaaaaa?? Are you kidding me??? This really is a joke, right???? Oh, who cares, even if it was real, it’s got to be out-of-stock everywhere already, since I live eight time zones Left of Center of the Pi Universe. Waaaaait a minnnnute! It’s in stock at CanaKit????? Bought!!!!!

Yet-another Rabbit Out of Ye Olde Hat! It makes me wonder just what else is gestating in the bowels (oops, sorry, that’s a reeeeeally horrible visual, let alone a metaphor!) of Ye Olde Pi Towers?

Congratulations, Eben and The Knights Who Say “Ni!” … I mean, “Pi!” :D

Thanks Jim. I’m sure we have one or two surprises left up our … sleeves.

Until the official layout for other countries, it would be nice to have keyboard stickers like we use in refurbished laptops, but in this case with raspberry pi matching colors.

Will this support a touchscreen monitor with its functions. Also, will I be able to use it for zoom, save a zoom call and use a virtual background?

Brilliant. Can’t wait anymore…

where did the audio connector go?

Not present on this version. You’ll need to use an HDMI display with speakers, or an external USB audio device.

Or indeed Bluetooth speakers/headphones (right?)

Awesome! Please make a black, 8GB version with analog audio out :)

Do you have Hebrew letters keybord?

No, but Hebrew is in the next tranche of languages for the standalone keyboard, and so will likely make its way to Raspberry Pi 400 next year.

Ha ha brilliant! We have not come back full circle. Yes we are now back in the 80’s at the height of personal computing and Eben McFly has single-handily pulled us all kicking and screaming Back to the Future. However this is not just simply a nostalgia product but a viable modern update that will be so easy to use yet still powerful and flexible enough to educate future engineers, even in low income regions. That is highly commendable. Congratulations!

Looks Great! but why in uk costs almost 100£?

$100 + 20% VAT, converted to GBP is ~£93.

I wonder if creators tried to use this keyboard with crippled cursor keys? This basically renders the whole design as useless. Imagine retropi ported to this where retro computers use cursor keys a lot. It will be painful to use this.. Too bad…

Crippled as in small? Like a MacBook?

Retropie already exists for the RPI 4, and so will also run on the RPI 400.
On retropie you can configure any key you like for left, right, and up and down so if you don’t like the arrow keys, simply choose other keys. Or connect an USB joystick or joypad.

I bought one as soon as it was made available on 2nd Nov here in Malaysia (and I already own four Raspberry Pi 4s). The retro form-factor with shades of Commodore 64, Amiga 500 and Atari 520ST, was simply to enticing to resist. I predict RPT is going to sell a shipload of these things before the year is out. An instant classic!
I wonder if it’s possible to fit a M.2 2280 SSD into the empty space forward of the motherboard, with a small cutout to loop the USB cable out to the USB 3,0 port. (I don’t care about voiding the warranty). Also, I’d like to see how far the revised SoC with the Stepping C0 can be pushed. I already overclock my RPi 4 8GB’s CPU to 2350MHz and GPU to 750MHz, with 4kp60=1. And that is from a 1.5GHz base clock. I wonder how much headroom there is with the 1.8GHz base clock? Can’t wait. Thanks RPT for such an exciting new product! Simply brilliant!

I hope you enjoy it. Liz and I miss being able to travel to Malaysia, though my waistline benefits from being a long way from Penang.

My Raspberry Pi 400 arrived today. Fantastic bit of kit this is. Love the Fn-F10 hold-down to shutdown and power up. Love the spring-loaded microSD card slot. Love the form-factor. Love the low price. Love the fact that I am overclocking the CPU to 2.35GHz and it has been running stable for over 8-hours already. USB Mass Storage Device booting works flawlessly out-of-the-box. Love the fit-and-finish of the whole thing. Kudos to the whole team behind this product. This thing makes me grin with joy.

Where can I find the PDF? I’d like to look into it more.

You can find the Raspberry Pi 400 Product Brief at: https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/pi400/pi400-product-brief.pdf

I found the Beginner’s Guide 4th Edition here: https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/books/beginners-guide-4th-ed

Awesome! But I would want an 8Gb version – any plans fot that??

Will the board be available separately?
I can think of several projects where having all the connectors (apart from the GPIO pins) on the same side would make things so much neater…

You can design a CM4 Carrier Board to suit your requirements.

Dam it, I’ve got to build another desk now! :D I think one of these in a lab or on an electronics workbench would work really well.

I think its a really nice idea and a great way for people to get started. For me its the first raspberry pi product I’m not interested to own, but that’s only because I already have a pi 4 and a wireless desktop. The pi foundation are once again genius!

There seems to be sufficient space to mount an M.2 SSD enclosure internally, in that empty internal space to the left of the RJ45 port and the BOURNS SM51625L chip. The Kensigton lock keyhole could be cut out with a Dremel tool and a USB cable could be run through to connect the external-facing USB 3.0 port to an internally mounted slim M.2 SSD enclosure. Simple double-sided adhesive tape should be enough to secure the SSD enclosure in place. I’ll try it when my Raspberry Pi 400 unit arrives in 2 days time. Also looking forward to doing Fn-F10 to startup or shutdown the unit. I can’t remember being this excited about a new Raspberry Pi product since the launch of the Raspberry Pi 4 back in 2019.

This is an absolutely wonderful product! However, for me, I’ll wait for the Pi 800. 8GB please…
Chuck

Just speaking to it would be a nice adoption to the camera function to provide the complete future kid proofed online class version of an RPi Keyboard.

Is caps lock needed? A lot of chromebooks no longer have this as its annoying for kids to deal with when trying to type, log in, etc…

I’m an enthusiastic believer in the War on Caps Lock: so much real estate, so little value! But it would have been brave, I think, to drop it from our first keyboard-integrated product.

Congrats. Fantastic retro design. Cannot wait anymore to hold a PI 400 in my hand and to try it out.

shame i would only buy it if it had 8gb ram never mind.

Now I’m wondering, does the USB-C port also allows data to and from the Raspberry Pi?

Would be neat if you could use a USB-C monitor that also powers the Pi400 through USB-PD, and also use it to access the accessories connected to it.

This is fantastic! I wonder how difficult it would be to mod in a pointing stick / nub to the keyboard so it’d be fully usable without a mouse ?

Pointing stick integrated on the keyboard and mounted centrally like the Trackpoint on IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad laptops would have been awesome!

… Why did you opt out of using the compute module for this? Wasn’t it specific the purpose of the compute module, to facilitate designs like this, where the complex part could be replaced by swapping it out or just ease the design? I’m citing you below. I would like to be really impressed by this product, as i were until i saw it’s custom board.

I can but conspire about you releasing a new socket and design for the Compute Module series, making the old form factor obsolete, even thou i believe your explanation, and then release this product that do not utilize the module, neither the old nor new, as almost to prohibit upgrade possibilities – or at least counter the exact sustainability of the Compute Modules possible exchange if the SoC goes bad for what ever reason. If for no other reason, wasn’t a series 400 a perfect opportunity to market the possibility of the flexible Compute Module, even if the module is mostly marketed to industrial or large business operations?

CM3: “… and designing the Module into a custom system should be relatively straightforward because we’ve put all the tricky bits onto the Module itself”
CM4: “… design for our most powerful Compute Module yet, and is also designed for integration into end products.”

And you claim and promise to have the CM4 in production until at least 2028, so why didn’t you use it?

Above a certain scale, chip-on-board generally beats modules. That scale is surprisingly large (tens of thousands of units), but we are building *hundreds* of thousands of Raspberry Pi 400s.

Great job, congrats. This kit looks great and a great price too.

I like the idea of this. I also get the point of keeping cost and price low. But the use of internal space is poor. Internal cooling too. Not even cooling blocks on any of the other ciruits like usb controller etc. No internal disk. No 3.5mm audio jack. No full size hdmi. As an Pi 200 entry model it is passable. But a 400 has to be better than this. But keep at it I guess….

Nice Keyboard for sure.
Only when the target was the students at home to get their online classes then they missed one essential part.
The use of a webcam or the RPi Camera would have been of great use to all those students to connect with their keyboard, adding the cam on top of the keyboard, connecting a screen with speakers and a mouse and they would have been in their online classrooms. Just speaking to it would be a nice adoption to the camera function to provide the complete future kid proofed online claas version of a RPi Keyboard.
Hope to see it soon integrated to the RPi Keyboard 400VM (V for Visual and M for Microphone) ;-)
Kind Regards,
XSZ

Where are you finding this for $70? It’s $100 everywhere I look

The unit is $70, the kit $100. So go here:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400-unit
and click “Buy Now”.

Is it possible to swap the top of RPI400, with the top from the official non-us keyboard, to change layout?
does the mounting holes and ribbon connector match?

Well done! First person to figure that out.

So if the top can be swapped with the official keyboard, can the top be swapped with the official Slate Grey keyboard as well? :)

Very nice. I hope Turkish support come for this product.

So… is the Pi component hot-swappable? As in, if you develop a new Pi, can you pay for an upgrade and swap the Pi mobo out, reusing the keyboard? I hope that could be the case eventually if not currently.

We’re not guaranteeing that any future mainboard would be compatible with the Raspberry Pi 400 housing, but we certainly wouldn’t change anything gratuitously.

It would be awesome to have included a TrackPoint mouse so that it would have a built-in yet compact mouse option.

While I agree that a track point in the keyboard would be very nice to have, I fear that we are a very small minority in that opinion. Far more people hate them. For me, the feeling is mutual when it comes to track pads (which is why I’m happy one *isn’t* included).

I also pretty strongly suspect that including it would raise the cost, and doing that for the few of us that like track points would doom the effort right there.

My preferred add-on pointing device is a trackball. Unfortunately, no one seems to make small–“travel”–versions of them…at least not that I’ve been able to find.

What I do expect to see listings for pretty quickly are 10-key sets to go with the keyboard. (Again, something I never use, but I know some people really like them.)

Eben, has the team considered giving the keyboard a faster scan rate? This blog post keeps coming up on hacker news: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/927593460642615296, titled “almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983”
Which led to these posts: https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/ https://danluu.com/input-lag/ He computers of the 1970’s to now, and asks, “why do modern computers feel slower”? In addition to faster scan rate, switching the keyboard from USB to PS/2 might help the USB stack has a lot of latency.

I will be staggered if an actual human can spot the difference in keyboard latency between PS/2 and USB.

I recently had my first SD failure with a raspi3 and found out that is a thing. Any chance to make a space in the keyboard for a larger form factor SSD? That would solve the memory disk failure problems for the most part.

https://images.app.goo.gl/pnGivXz5vdYgtGPLA = Hey Raspberry pi Foundation! [1] You should consider renaming your Facebook Page to include the word Foundation on the end. [2] Congrats on this new product the pi 400 — it looks very sleek and fun, reminiscent of the neon colors on the bulbous iMac monitor-computer-in-one from the mid to late 1990s; and [3] it looks great for home virtual computing/pandemic computing/homeschooling/elderly parents. However, [4] chalk up one #fail for not having included a small clickable [left and/or with right-click] joystick or mouse roller ball in the keyboard, or small glide pad… Kind of essential! {Sorry but while I am bending your ear, [5] chalk up another #failure for not standardizing on naming conventions such as “+” meaning the pi4+ would be 8gb of RAM versus the regular pi 4 being 4gb of RAM?

I think we will have to live with our mistakes ;)

It’s a pity you don’t include 8GB. This would typically be used as a desktop and with 64bit OS only few browser windows quickly consume a lot from the 4GB RAM.
Please make the 8GB version, I’m sure you’ll sell it easily.

With 8 GB RAM, M.2 slot and full-sized HDMI it’d be a killer PC. :-)

+1 for an M.2 expansion slot with buses for PCI Express, SATA, and USB 3.0

I’m very curious to know how the power down/up functionality with f10 works. Can it be achieved on Pi4 (and earlier versions) with a standard USB keyboard? Is it peculiar to the new processor variant? It’s so much more practical than wiring buttons to GPIO pins. It’s only taken 8.5 years, after all! (I’m kidding).

It uses the Holtek keyboard controller to enter (and exit) an ultra-low-power mode where the main PMIC is completely powered down.

Does it also turn off 5V into USB ports or GPIO connector?

Wow, thumb up for Rapi! Bring back memory like ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro etc. Well done and wish you every success for it!

Nice, but I echo a few comments here regarding some short-comings/missed-opportunites:
1: Why no 3.5 audio out? Surely it wouldn’t have been that hard to includ it?
2: 8GB version would be nice.
3: Could’ve included a few more USB ports
4: A wireless mouse would be better.
5: Why is the price so much higher in Australia (even taking exchange-rates into account)?
Cheers,
Mike.

Yes, that price looks excessive. We’ll look into it.

Your Dutch reseller is also 10% more expensive than elsewhere. I always order from the UK because even with shipping across the channel it’s cheaper than Kiwi. Of course that might change soon ;(((

Outstanding product. I wish your video showed it running a zoom, google Meet, and Teams meeting. Doesn’t need to be simultaneous. Just show off for low income parents with kids home for preventing COVID.

An excellent development!
In terms of retro/80s home computers, it reminds me of an Oric 1…

I think addition of lipo (possibly 18650×2) with charger and undervoltage protection would have made it more portable with lesser wires…thats one thing i have been missing.

This looks great! Would it be powerful enough to run design software like Figma?

Suggest adding a “3.5 mm phone connector” to future versions.

I would think that quite a few people who will use it as a desktop computer would wish it to have a stereo audio output with microphone input combo jack as well.

Such a 3.5 mm phone connector is also known as “phone jack”, “headset jack”, and “headphone jack”.

*No* Pi has audio input, let alone analog audio input, so adding that to the Pi400 would be a completely new feature. The solution is a USB dongle, either a single 4-pole 3.5mm jack, or 2 3.5mm jacks if your headset has separate headphone and mic plugs. There are many of them out there and they’re generally fairly inexpensive.

As much as I like this project, I wouldn’t buy anything with 4 GB of RAM and no audio jack. I know it would just get on my nerves quickly. And I’d happily pay more if you’d release a “Plus” version with enhanced features (incl. more memory and jack). There’s no use in reminding me that I can use USB audio and whatever; I know and that’s just going against an idea of a compact “microcomputer” that I’d be happy to have. Thanks & all the best.

eMMC port for an eMMC storage module had also been very nice to have on these, similar to what most Hardkernel ODROID single-board-computers has (Hardkernel also have matching eMMC modules).

eMMC (embedded MMC) uses NAND storage chips so is not only normally faster than SD cards but more importantly, much more stable and less prone to corruption, so fewer people could have bad experience storage failures on the Raspberry Pi 400.

What does the word “400” mean? Does anyone know?

As far as I gathered from Eben, it’s a bit of a nod to various 1980s machines and also lends itself to naming later models of similar things 400+, 500 etc etc

May I politely ask that all the people saying it should have this and that feature which is missing that they pool their resources and create a product which has every single feature included, probably based on a CM4. Look forward to it being released by Easter 2021.

In addition to having every feature complained about being missing in the Pi 400 (and all other Pi models, while we’re at it), the Pi 9000 will feature the latest in AI (Artificial Incompetence) and will come fully integrated into a spacecraft capable of carrying five crew members (three in suspended animation). It will be able to enter orbit around Jupiter … on a one-way mission, unfortunately, unless returning to Earth orbit as the Star Child in a protective bubble is considered qualifying as a return trip. It will be announced on April 1st, 2021, and deliveries will begin commensurate with that date! :D

So this is finally the cheap computer for everyone that was thought of in the 90ies.

Any plan to provide Chromium OS images for Raspberry Pi 400?

Chromium OS is the development version of Chrome OS but its principal user interface is the Chromium web browser rather than the Google Chrome browser. It is considered among the the best “Internet OS” for computer illiterate today, with even the best with perhaps the exception being Google’s commercial Chrome OS.

There are only 2 active developers of Chromium Operating System.

Neverware do not support the ArM CPU Architecture.

FydeOS has limited support for the 4B:
https://github.com/FydeOS/chromium_os-raspberry_pi/releases

what the easy’st way to connect to vga ?

There are micro-HDMI to VGA adapters available so that would make it really easy.

It just lacks a caddy to integrate an 2.5 inch or M.2 SSD connected to a internal USB 3 slot.

Really, provision for at least an M2.drive or 2.5″ SSD is a no brainer. It simply makes little sense to not offer that capability, the extra plastic clips required to accommodate such is not a big deal.

I feel this is the correct direction and a great idea to implement. Sadly the most obvious was completely missed. No facility to have an M2.Drive or SSD within the keyboard itself. If there is ONE THING Holding back further sales & deployment of Raspi’s is data storage being readily available…

Several people make the same point but this is implicitly addressed in the various CM4 presentations. The BMC chip has only 1 PCI express lane so you can EITHER have, USB 3 or NVME or SATA but NOT any 2. As USB 3 to NVME and USB 3 to SATA are readily available and exceedingly cheap, it makes more sense to provide USB 3 and let the user decide.

¿Porque no lo hicieron plegable? Era más lógico pues la idea de una raspberry es la portabilidad debido a su tamaño, no voy a andar con un teclado de aquí para allá, ya existen, debieron pensar en eso, mala idea, bien feo que se verá al expandirlo con cualquier adaptación.

Porque la idea de ESTA Raspberry no es la portabilidad, si no la accesibilidad. Es una computadora de escritorio de bajo costo. No está diseñada para que nadie ande con ella de aquí para allá. Para eso ya existen otros productos de la misma marca.

Can’t wait to get it with Danish Keyboard, 8GB Ram and 64bit OS with USB 3.0 boot support direct.

I would love to donate one of these to a student that has issues learning from home and needs to connect with their remote learning for School or College, hopefully the Schools and Colleges will see this as a cheaper option to Chromebooks.

If the keyboard had a built-in touch pad (like the Logitech K400), it would make an amazing all-in-one system. Cut out the mouse, and it becomes even more portable. Think modern US hotel room with TV; don’t need a laptop, just the Pi.

It’s a bit faster clocked, so can the Pi 400 output 2x 4kp60?

Congratulations! Another amazing product!
How about a RPI camera port?
Or an audio port on the side?

Ordered the kit yesterday, it arrived this morning and I’ve just finished setting up! It’s good to see a personal computer that comes with a comprehensive user manual to get things started, and doesn’t want to enmesh the user with demands to sell their souls to the operating system supplier!

While unboxing, I was struck by the realisation that the computer weighed less than the manual…
Pi 400: 385g
Beginners Guide: 486g

Hmmmmm….

Oh yes, and the above post was made using the Pi 400!
(This one too…)
Just dug out a bluetooth speaker and it pairs easily to the Pi. What next???

Brilliant! I was missing the audio out too, but had yet to think about a Bluetooth speaker! Problem solved!

Thanks, Raspberry Pi Team. You have really made my day/month/year/decade. I’ve ordered one already and I don’t think I’ve been this excited about a new bit of tech since getting a spectrum 35 years ago. Keep it up!

Great job! As pointed out by others, please release a black/grey version with 8GB. M.2 would be perfect since having a USB SSD outside the case is a pain.

Question: In the meantime, can we simply buy the Grey external keyboard and swap the top case/keyboard?

Pax
2nd November 2020, 9:55 pm
Is it possible to swap the top of RPI400, with the top from the official non-us keyboard, to change layout?
does the mounting holes and ribbon connector match?

Reply to Pax

Eben Upton
Raspberry Pi Staff Eben Upton — post author
2nd November 2020, 10:59 pm
Well done! First person to figure that out.

Would be nice to label hdmi ports on case as to which is which: hdmi1 and hdmi2. It is confusing to route audio correctly, especially as drop down menu on speaker icon just shows hdmi if you have monitor plugged in hdmi1 but shows hdmi1 and hdmi2 if you plug it into hdmi2. I am also sad to see analog out go. I use it a lot with Sonic Pi 3.2.2 fed to external amp. My hdmi monitor does not have an external audio jack. Now I lose a usb port to add an audio dongle. But to be fair overall this is a great addition to the range. Well done.

I’ve seen a comment about linking up with Citrix, but I was wondering whether it would be possible to get AWS to support a full client build of AppStream.
I know it’s only available as a Windows client, and that AppStream is (mostly) usable through a web browser, but there are things that will only work correctly through the fat client.

Great and a nice piece of kit, could the next version or even another version to run alongside have an internal SSD memory card to also boot off, 8 GB memory and a 64 bit OS.
A sort of alternative to a chrome box or Intel NUC for the grown up’s :-)

While I love the new 400 and I think I’ll grab one before year’s end… I’d actually more would like to see an 8Gb model (just like the newest Pi4) and I’d also like to see full-size cursor keys. (And if there was room below, a S-ATA drive would be awesome too.)

When can we get a pi laptop?

Pi laptop could replace few or all books for kid’s also make education more interactive. All ports enabled (including pci) is just jaw dropping.

Pi laptop could replace books for kids and make best education access all the places.
Just can’t wait to buy one for my kid.

Designing Raspberry Pi 400 Blog
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/design … ry-pi-400/

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/designing-raspberry-pi-400/

Sooo… how is it cooled / how hot does it run?? Will CPU throttling kick in after minutes of use or is it actually useable? Shall I wait for the reviews?

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-teardown-and-review

plz come to Brazil, big fan here

I just read an article in The Verge quoting Eben Upton
“The dream always with Raspberry Pi is to lure people into buying a PC and then trick them into becoming computer programmers,”
I think this product finally hits that nail firmly on the head; this product will reach another market which would be turned off by the seeming complexity of a bare-bones pi 4. Well done and thank you.

Is this made in Wales?
Nice to see the Centronics port appear again, just like on its older brother the Dragon32

:)

Nearly 40 years ago, I was the European Technical Manager for Centronics – we made printers that cost $2000-$10,000 but every couple of days I get a phone call from somebody with a home computer asking about the Centronics port! Even worse, I still have occasional flashback nightmares about wiring a DB25 RS232 port.

Eben, I noticed the Raspberry Pi 400 has a BOURNS SM51625L GbE PoE Transformer module on the motherboard just behind the RJ45 port. Does this mean we can power the Raspberry Pi 400 without needing to use a USB-C PSU and just use a PoE Ethernet cable connected to a PoE switch? Also, with the PoE transformer module already integrated in the motherboard, do we still need to attach a PoE HAT? Having integrated PoE will greatly simplify Enterprise or Industrial deployment.

Will you be able plug in external camera devices to to Pi 400?
Also what is the max size microSD card that can be used, as not stated in the spec sheet?

It would be extremely bad “marketing tactics” not to make a PI800 or PI408 (8G).

Using a tray type insertion of FUTURE Pi Hardware, like PCMCIA card inserted externally to its slot or like in case of CD into DVD players, within the Kepboard below space (as presently used in Pi 400) will make the keyboard always useful, future replacements/upgrades easy (DIY). An USB 3.x Type C port by default, is very much needed, as all future A/v and data I/O are depended on it, a wireless Keyoard options would be good, so that one can use it, across many devices.. Hoping, there is more space beneath Keyboard, providing some I/O options of Compute I/O module or USB combined eSATA(p), A/v port, 3.5 mm, SIM tray. One more option, which I never found in any of SCB which are having the latest encoding and decoding IC, is an integrated F cable connector, (To receive Ariel or Sattelite dish FTA TV DVB signals). Sorry for more expectations. Thanking you,

Great design, now a pro version with 8Gb memory and an internal M2 slot.

Yup, 8GB, internal SSD space, black casing… I’d definitely buy that..!!

Lovely stuff;best looking all-in-one computer since the Oric Atmos !

Couldn’t agree more (as a former Atmos,Oric 1 and Telestrat owner), now we just need some Atmos decal’s to finish the look :D

Yup and a nice PING for the startup sound :-)

Just got my Pi 400 this morning and it’s an amazing little computer and It’s already replaced my 8GB 4B as my main desktop (the 400 runs 10-15 degrees C cooler than the 4B even when overclocked to 2.3ghz).

All I can say is well done and thank you to all involved in bringing such a great little (micro) computer to the world, and I can see it taking off just as well as all the other Pi models that came before it.

Cheers from a very proud Raspberry Pi 400 owner (and multiple other Raspberry Pi models).

Popping up ideas when looking at the pictures:
– 7″-10″ GPIO mounted and connected display anyone ?
– GPIO connected battery for on the go VNC/ssh pi-top?
– GPIO+USB+power plug-in connected case with battery for official raspberry pi display for ultimate pi-top?
Sky is the limit here :)

Can this boot from USB? Can it boot from network? If so that could free up the SD card slot for user data (my thinking may be trapped in the early ‘90s here – where people carried around floppy disks-but having a free SD card slot may still be useful – flashing new operating systems , copying photos/music directly etc. My thinking here may be trapped in the early 2000s here though)

I can confirm it boots from USB (mine’s running off a 480GB SSD drive), network boot should work as it’s basically a Pi 4 in a different format and I can’t see why it wouldn’t be able to.

Would like to see an 8 gb model, along with a thin jumper cable for making an external drive as the main boot medium.

Hi .
This is great . I worked with old personal computers like spectrum , commodore 64, and Amiga 500 .
Already I worked with raspberry pi 2 and 3 to program in Python .
It’s great to see this product and it’s price .

Boys! You missed it by that much! You should have included a mouse pad on the keyboard like the mini Logitech keyboard I don’t really want to be hassling with a mouse with such a small keyboard. When you create one with that keyboard, I’ll definitely get one!

…Like the Logitech k400+

I have dozens of Logitech K400+s for all of my Pii used to teach classes and labs – as Tony the Tiger would say, “They’re G-R-R-R-E-A-A-A-A-A-T!!!”

Nice! Can i install SSD inside? When not? Why why why? ???

I have a very simple question. Will the pi 400 come in Black like the official keyboard?

I’m waiting for an Amiga style case for it or maybe some keycap stickers with Amiga logos/colours. Can always respray from that garish colour it comes as stock ;-)

Did everyone miss the fact that a phone has already all the power we need to run a PC? Connect a Mouse, Keyboard and Display with an Adapter to your Phone via USB-C and you are ready to go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMT6NW1QWxs

Watched the video, 59% of phones don’t work, you may have to buy $50-$100 of other bits and it’s still Android, not Linux – none of the fundamental features of the Pi. Certainly a no brainer – don’t even bother!

Wow. It looks very very cool! I want buy one :)

Nice product !!!
When you says French keyboard is supported, I guess you talk about the French keyboard for France, right. In the French part of Québec, we have a keyboard that is based on QWERTY – Mac and Windows keyboards are different. Although I guess the answer is no, this French keyboard for Canada will not be available, how can we find a way to support this keyboard ? The name of the keyboard under Windows is Français (Canada). Maybe stickers to put on the keys ?
Thanks

Fantastic idea, this is just the product the none makers of the world need, don’t get me wrong I’m a Pi fanatic and to the people that keep saying why is this port missing and why no camera connector, your missing the point. Many people that see the Pi are not makers or interested in putting things together, they want just a computer so to many folks the Pi seem complicated to deal with, nothing wrong in that. The beauty of this product bring’s that kind of person to the platform, they will have a computer they can just use especially if they get the kit. If it sparks more interest they have the GPIO pins to play with but this machine I feel is geared towards coding and getting people into that along with general computing. Its just more mass consumer friendly, myself I have so many Pi but ordered this the minute it was launched, got mine and I love the thing. It does bring me back to my ZX81 and ATARI 600XL days, my hats of to the Eben and his team at the Pi foundation

I wish it had a trackpad built right in.

Nobody mentioned the Texas Instruments 99/4a (PC), so I have. 1980. A keyboard based computer. First 16 bit processor, full text to speech synthesis, peripheral expansion slots, etc – “Elliot”

Man, I gotta tell ya, my timing re Raspberry Pis is just absolutely impeccable. I built my Pi3 tablet (love it, BTW, it’s my lunchtime entertainment system at work); two weeks later, I read that the Pi4 is released. So a few months ago, a guy hight eabani on Thingiverse posted a model that holds a Pi4, an SSD, and a Royal Kludge keyboard: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4303511. Now, well, I guess you know what happened. While I’m sorely tempted, at least for now I believe I’ll pass on the Pi400; I’m just too pleased with my current setup, even if I did brick it playing with Ubuntu (their boot-from-usb setup doesn’t play nice with PiOS’s version). It has a pristine, all-white theme to it (printed it Silk White PLA) and strongly resembles the old Amiga and the “real” keyboard is a large plus. It does lack GPIO access but that’s not a problem for me. Good job, though, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps next time I won’t have a recent toy… Although I do sort-of think that four RPis is probably enough for any one person.

Will you bring also a greek keyboard in the future?

Placed pre-paid order from Kanyakumari, South India. The dealer is waiting for the first batch of consignment next week. Hope I’ll get it in a week or two. Eagerly waiting for it.

Just like my ZX Spectrum! Beautiful!
I want to give to my 9 year old son.
When will be available the manual in Portuguese?
João
Lisbon – Portugal

This looks amazing and takes me back to the early days of 80’s computing visually but with meaty innards. I am going to buy one for my nephews, and one for me of course!

When Will It come to Brazil?

It’s just an updated and improved “Acorn Atom”

I don’t understand why the industry saves on half a centimetre so that they can’t provide a normal-sized escape key. This is possibly the most-used key for something like two-third of people digging into Unix with any degree of seriousness. And there’s the chicklet keyboard: Even age-old thinkpad keyboards, about the same size, were way better–and a joy to use. I find that I lose something like 10 wpm on a chicklet keyboard vs. a reasonably normal desktop keyboard, in trade for a lot of annoyance. Even if you’re not or only entry-level “tech-savvy”, touch-typing is a valuable and relatively easily attainable skill, but chicklet keyboards are entirely the wrong tool for efficiency and enjoyment. And you could’ve saved yourself an external mouse by providing a trackpoint.

Hello, Eben. I mentor and support a refugee leader/educator in Kakuma camp, Kenya. He is the founder of Kakuma Vocational Center which will be the first maker space in the camp. We have heard about the Pi 400 and the students are very interested in learning to code and robotics. When do you think the device will be available in Kenya/Africa and is there a way for the Raspberry Pi Foundation to support his efforts to teach youth these essential skills. Thank you in advance for kindly considering my request.

Next Steps: add a slot on mother board to allow users to add laptop ram sticks, and a slot for upgradable cpu’s, then this will really start to shine

I have ordered the Pi 400 from maker right in US on Nov 2nd and still have not received one

I see this as my main computer going forward, I tried an older pi some time ago and it was almost, but not quite, there.
I would be happy to hear from someone with the new 400, who has connected two displays and opened a Word document of 200-300 pages. Possibly while on a Zoom conference and browser open.
Thanks.

I can’t wait to get one, or rather, I can wait until they are available in a neutral color :P

Which is the proper keyboard model should be set in the Keyboard Layout settings?

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=289934&p=1758812#p1758780

Are they going to produce a black keyboard too?

I am curious, what about an arabic keyboard?
does it support other languages such as mandarin as well, or coming later?

I think it would best to offer a blank keycap option. Using dysub technique it is quite easy to make an individual layout for your needs; no matter if you need realistic mandarin or want somethink more exotic like tlhIngan Hol (Klingon), Sindarin, Quenya or any combination.
As dysub transfer is easy and duable and any printshop can print you the transfer paper, a blank white keycap set is everthing needed to give the user the option for diy instead waiting untill the layout they need or simply want is available. In my opinion a blank external keyboard wich fits also in the case of a pi 400 would be optimal; sou you could swap out the keyboard permernantly if you need f.e. mandarin permernantly or use it as secondary keyboard if you only sometimes need a special layout.

i bought the pi400 and power supply buy its not working with OS that works with pi 4 4g.any ideas

I received my Pi 400 yesterday and spent the day setting it up to run Ubuntu. It was crashing until I found a bigger power supply. The performance seems weak for a quad core 1.8 ghz machine. I’m thinking that my SD card is the bottleneck and have a faster card on order. I’d like to boot and run off an SSD or perhaps a fast USB 3 thumb drive but haven’t figure out how to do that yet. I’ll continue to experiment with it. But for about $70 it’s a neat little machine.

Nice, EXCEPT:
1) why, when there’s an 8GB version of the RasPi4 available, would anyone make a board that’s for a graphics intensive DESKTOP machine rather than for an embedded to, wit 4GB RAM instead of 8GB RAM?
2) Also, with an entire keyboard to space, a space for an optional USB-to-SSD device would be nice, to avoid yet another cable salad

I’ve been using my Raspberry Pi 400 now for ten days and I am absolutely loving it. It has held up very well to being overclocked to 2.35 GHz and is stable as a rock. USB boot from a Samsung PCIe SSD works beautifully, with Chrome 84, YouTube 1080p, NetFlix 1080p, LibreOffice, RetroPie 4.7.1 all working flawlessly. Here are three tips I’d like to share with other Pi 400 owners:
1) Overclock to 2.35 GHz. You are missing out on a lot of latent performance if you don’t overclock. You’ve already paid for it. You may as well wring every last drop of performance out of it. Here are the settings I use in my /boot/config.txt:
[all]
arm_64bit=1
hdmi_enable_4kp60=1
over_voltage=15
arm_freq=2350
gpu_freq=750
gpu_mem=256

2) Boot from SSD. If you are still booting from microSD, you don’t know what you are missing on your Pi 400. With the recent drop in global SSD pricing, this is the best time to get one for your new Pi 400. An M.2 SATA SSD in an external enclosure connected to the Pi 400’s USB 3.0 socket really makes a Pi 400 fly. If you are shopping for an M.2 SSD enclosure, make sure it supports UASP (USB-Attached SCSI Protocol) mode and the TRIM command. This means paying attention to the bridge controller chip within the enclosure. I’ve had excellent results with ASMedia ASM1153E/ASM235 chips for SATA M.2 SSDs and ASMedia ASM2362 and Realtek RTL9210 for NVMe SSDs. Expect about 375-385 MB/sec speeds (measured by fio), as the SSDs are bottle-necked by the USB 3.0 port’s approx. 475MB/sec speed limit (5.0 Gbps divide by 8 = 625 MB/s, minus 20% for 8b/10b encoding overhead, minus another ~4% for other overhead.)
3. If you choose to use microSD cards to boot and run your Pi 400, set the power LED to show card activity. This will visually indicate when the microSD card is being read or written to. Use Raspberry Pi Configuration or raspi-config to set it.

Do you think wanting 8GB RAM for better perf becomes a side issue with 4GB and booting from NVMe SSD? I would expect to primarily run Home Assistant with the occasional plugging into a 4K display.

Looks a great product but with a few issues that can easily be resolved. Also great opportunities for future development. Key problem is the lack of an audio jack and no guidance on what to do. I spent hours trying to get USB Speakers and Sound Cards to work. Still not working. Spent ages delving into configuration files, Alsa sound directories and using sound tools, due to available information being out of date. This highlights the need for key features to work and documentation to be accurate. More support documentation and guidance is needed especially for a personal computer. This is a Linux personal computer and not a development board. For example guidance on saving work, when SD Cards can easily be corrupted; the problems around SD cards that have poor random access; the dangers around connecting pins incorrectly or drawing too much current. Even the need to use 3A USB C power supplies, needs to be spelt out. Exposed GPIO pins are an issue for a personal computer. A paper clip could cause serious damage. A simple cover or female rather than male pins would be better. The lack of breakouts is both an opportunity and an issue. For schools and code clubs, there is an opportunity to develop a breakout that meets their wider requirements (e.g. more power and connectivity for sensors, small motors, servos, analogue, neo pixels, AI cameras). Given this is a personal computer, I would expect the pins to be isolated from the main board. Shouldn’t need to buy a new computer if a wire is misplaced. Great opportunity for Pi to branch out a bit ???. I’ve purchased a few ribbons and bits and pieces but its currently a dogs dinner between pin extensions, I2C, UART and SPI. My impression is that the beginners market has resulted in a revolution in Software frameworks so that connecting AI cameras, reading advanced sensors and controlling robotics is more or less click and point. Simple block commands generate/use the Python and Arduino C. Great opportunity for this new device to join the revolution.

Where is the orientation of the GPIO documented, e.g. when looking at the GPIO header on the back of the Pi 400 which end is pin 1?

When viewed from the back of the Raspberry Pi 400, Pin 1 is at the top-right corner of the GPIO pins, while Pin 40 is at the bottom-left corner. The pin markings for PIN1 and PIN40 are actually moulded into the red plastic housing for easy orientation.

Wow! Congratulations! My kids would love to have this, so do i :)

When the 8GB RAM version?? I would love this product with 8GB, would be perfect to do any task at home.

Please release a 16gig version. It’s a great way to get students to learn and get them to do some serious programming.

This is so close to being a must buy. Raspberry Pie just might become the new Commodore.
What is it lacking?
– Memory expansion up to 16 gigs of ram.
– SSD nvme slot in the keyboard.
– 64 bit operating system.
At this point, the Raspberry Pie would become a low cost alternative to Mac and Windows machines.

It is great, it would be nice if include trak pad also with keyboard. so no need to connect mouse. Thanks

I received my Pi400 yesterday, nice!
I reworked my wooden board display completely, now I have my “easy to move anywhere” Pi400 laptop, powered from 5V/3A powerbank hanging at back of display. Only two cables (power/HDMI) come from display to Pi400 backside, mouse cable is hidden in space below Pi400. Bill of material total cost is 139.50$. Cable wise very clean, see photo:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=140&t=289934&p=1765074#p1765074

Please release a Taiwanese version of Raspberry Pi 400, and please consider a 8GB version as well, thanks!

Eben,
I just want to say a big thank you for bringing the Pi to us.
Though I missed out on a university education and am not a computer or software engineer I’ve had an interest in computing for a long long time (anyone remember Byte magazine and Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor?).

The magic of having these little things available is hard to explain and not for everyone but for me they help to satisfy an endless curiosity for how things work and a deep disdain for all things proprietory and sealed off from the user/owner.

My collection of Pis are already falling into dis-use and gathering cobwebs but I recently got a gift of the Pi 400 so and am looking forward to installing the new optimised Ubuntu server o/s and connecting it to 16Tb of external disk drives. This will replace a proprietary nas that failed miserably and tied me to a limited eco system, with Ubuntu installed the world is my oyster again.
Somewhere along the line my interest in Pis and all things computing has seeped into my sons life and he too is now an avid Pi/Linux user…. so my work here is done!

A big shout out to my short list of computing heroes/technologies…
Eben Upton/Raspberry Pi – Obviously!
Linus Torvalds/Linux
Mark Shuttleworth/Ubuntu
Guido van Rossum/Python
Massimo Di Pierro/Web2Py

Too bad it has not been available in Germany so far in any of the pi carrying online shops. It is listed, but zero stock. Will there be ever?

Will this ever be in stock in German stores? It’s listed in the typical go to pi online stores, but zero stock since the first day apparently; regular pi 4 are available.

Can the Fn+F10 be reused as Scroll Lock, similarly to official RPi keyboard? Or we are stuck with no Scroll Lock.

Is there any plan to get 8 gb RAM ????
This will make it a great Christmas gift.

You did so many things right on making the 400. It puzzles me why a power switch was not added. Plugging the USB cable in and out to cut power causes a lot of wear and tear on the connector. It seems a simple and logical item to have on a keyboard system that all except the Sinclair zx8X series were able to include. Also second spin of the 400 it would be nice to have an 8 or even a 16 GB option. This little computer is awfully darn close to a desktop replacement at this point why not push it over the edge and make it a desktop replacement? I really prefer this new form factor as it eliminates a lot of wire clutter and if you want to take the unit to another location it greatly simplifies packing it up. As I said before you got a lot of it right.

There is a sort of switch. You can turn it off and on with Fn+F10.

Also an audio out Jack would also be a logical addition. I can use bluetooth, but an analog out would also allow the use of cheap headphones in economically challenged parts of the world.

The raspberry pi 400 is a nice computer, but its very delicate.
I have it for one week and its all ready defect: Both micro-hdmi didnt work any more.
What a shame. :/

This 400 version gets a Swedish layout (SE) sometime in january 2021, ive commited to getting to one o these, it looks to be awesome. but a question , will there be kits (power adapter, Mouse, HDMI , SD card with Pi os, the book with beginner tips on Pi ) offered as kits with the new alternate keyboard layouts aswell ?

Can grow to 16 gb memory in rasberry pi 400?

i’m thinking this thing lacking an 8gb memory chip and starting off with a 4gb is a marketing thing. they will sell all the 4’s and then come out with an 8’s for 20 dollars more and eveybody will cheer. a marketing ploy from those crafty Brits.

The 4GB 400 gets sluggish after 16+ chromium tabs. Please let us have an 8GB version.

Key-board-lime Pi? (just putting it our there)

Sadly one essential keyboard option is missing: blank.
As the Pi 400 is the perfect computer for retro emulation, you might want the fitting keycaps to use (nearly) the same layout like on an original Amiga. Or you simply want a keybord with dvorak layout or neo2 (which is the opimiced layout for german language). Stickers are simply ugly and not very durable. But dyesub can be done quite easy. Every printshop can print you a sheet with your individual design mirrored on a transfer paper; you can iron it on any plastic, so the dye sublimates into the keycaps giving you your individual design. So it is quite sad a computer for tinkering does not offer tinkering with the keyboard layout.
Of course you can disassemble the keycaps, put them in 65°C hydrogenperoxid for 4h, repeating this 3 times and get the protective lack over the padprint destroyed to make the keycaps blank again. But it would so much nicer having a blank keyboard from the start…

Heard many excellent recommendations before I came to your website. Wanted to definitely try out a totally new PC, especially from what I have heard and read.
However, when I was about to place an order it said “no resellers with your criteria”, which is Home PC, English, U.S. (?)…Any other options, please?

I’d buy it if there was an 8gb version, but don’t see the point of it when I already have a keyboard and mouse to go with my 8gb Pi 4b.

I have a Raspberry Pi 400 kit on the way :-) . What is a recommended monitor to use it on? It’s a brand new thing for me. Thank you much!

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