Raspberry Pi 500 Review: The keyboard is the computer, again

Main oddities about the Pi 500, to me:

- Designing a custom PCB for a more PC-like Pi, but then not merging the functionality of the official M.2 HAT despite plenty of available packaging space. Being able to just slot in an SSD would greatly expand the operating envelope of the product.

- Sticking to Micro HDMI ports, again despite plenty of space & with everyone having standard HDMI cables already on hand, or surely able to procure them more affordably.

A lot of scorn for this latest offering from Pi, but I think perspective is important here. No, most of us here do not have a use for the Pi 500 or it's display, but in part so the world where a lightweight low-consumption device can open some doors for connectivity and learning, this looks like a great solution.

We tend to forget that not everyone on the planet has the same resources or needs we do.

> 45% colour gamut

$100 for an e-waste monitor is poor value, for that money you can get a portable monitor with full sRGB, high refresh rate, etc

I get that the target group probably is fine with running everything off of an SD card. But, I still think it's a mistake to not offer an M.2 slot without soldering.

The smaller drives are very affordable and the performance difference is huge.

Love to see and I've been waiting for the Pi500 release for awhile. I'm running my house on Pi400s so the Pi500 will be a huge upgrade. They are still silent, have double the RAM, triple the speed, so whats not to like? Plus they will fit into the exact same desk crevice where the current Pi400s live.

New Pi day is the best day!

I’ve been using the new Pi Monitor for a couple of weeks. It’s very reminiscent of the easel-style Apple Displays from back in the day.

I’ve mainly been using it as a second display but plan to wall-mount it to show the family calendar, as they’ve made it really easy to flip the back leg and hang it on a hook.

I think these are going to sell really well into education and back offices.

I like the idea of a cheap pc/keyboard combination, it's a bit of nostalgia for the olden days of the the amiga 500 or the c64 or the atari st, but I also think it would still work great as a form factor, like mac mini inside a keyboard, maybe? But it has to be done right. Why in the pi 500 they kept the mini hdmi and did not add a connector for m.2 is a bit beyond me. There apparently is space and marking for an nvme on the board, but no connector.

I bought the 400 on a whim and it came in handy when both my main and space computer broke: If you connect a hard drive through a powered USB hub, you can actually use this for real work, albeit very slowly.

These days, I mainly use it as a Commodore 64: https://imgur.com/Afq9uFq

The word "Mediocre" comes to mind. Still using Micro HDMI, weirdly added unusable nvme ensuring people know its not the final product and if they want nvme they'll be having to pay for a replacement at some point down the line, plus increasing the price by around 30%.

Feels very much like they've given up even pretending to try and understand what their customers want. The micro hdmi thing is just incredibly stupid, they know full well how pissed off customers were over that yet did it again.

I understand that peoppe usually use medium PI boards for electronic projects. But other that, isn't it more cost effective and organized if you get minipc (something like N100 kit) for projects like backups machine or selfhosting projects?

This and the monitor, plus the lack of M2 slot (more below) make me think they have a cheap-o student laptop in the works.

- monitor can be powered from the pi 500 at 60% - has built in speakers, plus some hdmi stuff to strip the audio line to a line out on the monitor for headphones/speaker - there's gonna be a 16GB model - add the M2 slot back as a "premium" feature - the existing PCB will fit pretty nicely into a laptop case

plow all this into a laptop-like case with a touchpad and you have a ~$300-400 laptop with workable, real-world performance perfect for impulse purchases, kids, and hobbies. With market differentiators of

- low power - low cost - good software/hardware ecosystem - gpio built-in

They're really only one or two steps away from this. I'd bet by next Christmas.

Original submitted link was the announcement post: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-500-and-raspbe...

How usable is the PI5 as a desktop PC replacement? The PI4 was too slow to run anything serious.

Unfortunately, it seems it cannot be used just as a keyboard for other devices.

I have a similar gripe with iMacs and most all-in-one PCs that they cannot be used as a monitor for other devices. Once the PC/Mac inside becomes obsolete, the whole device becomes useless even though it has an excellent display that still works.

This is kind of the keyboard equivalent of this.

My pi400 has been my replacement Ti994/A for the last few years - I could not love it more.

I just decided to give a go at a pi5 last week. I was pretty enthusiastic and had planned to boot it via ssd, but after hours of trying to get the wifi chip working, I re-packed it and returned it.

I tried 3 separate high quality class 10 sd cards, re-wrote all of them twice, once with dd and then with rasp imager with no success. I couldn't connect to the home router (2.4g wpa3) even after syncing the channel and couldn't even connect to my phone's open AP. But it did connect to an open Xfinity AP. It could see all the available APs, but just couldn't authenticate or connect.

I booted the rpi3 to figure out wtf was going on and it connected to everything without trouble. I then updated the pi5, but the problems persisted.

I was only able to find a few posts describing the issue, but none with a reasonable solution.

The experience pretty much killed my enthusiasm for the pi5, but I remain interested in the nature of the bug. Any thoughts?

Seems like they should have used a compute module instead of building out a new PCB? Any idea why that wasn't done? Pretty damning not to dogfood your own product.

Is the Pi 500 fanless? Do I read that correctly?

I haven't been able to find this anywhere: does the 500 at least keep the PCIe ribbon connector that the base Pi 5 has?

The lack of an M.2 slot is a massive disappointment. I was really hoping it'd have one as that'd make it a viable desktop machine. A micro SD as primary storage just doesn't cut it anymore.

It has PoE and M2.... but neither are populated. Very disappointing considering the increased cost.

> Lack of NVMe storage

That will hurt sales.

And they are going to manufacture this for next 9 years... How usable will it by the end, knowing the trends in software.

Still, I feel it is pretty reasonably priced as whole unit considering other products from them.

;(

* no 802.11s s == mesh is best choice today. * no mechanical keyboard ? * I prefer chocolate / planck layout * fat, still too fat

options

* I need power, mobility power for computer. Why not put 2-3 x 18650 for ups or emergency working?

No nvme port, or is there a nifty fix?

Is it hard to have it with Dvorak keyboard layout?

In a world where N100 exists, only Zero and Nano Pis are interesting. The main/x00 lines are not good deals for desktop or self-hosting use.

Not sure what the point the monitor makes.