If you have ever wondered if there is any Desktop PC that comes at a very cheap price, you probably wouldn't have looked at Raspberry Pi, no one did. Until now, Raspberry Pi was a compact, small machine with limited performance but it has changed with the arrival of Raspberry Pi 400. Raspberry Pi 400 is a complete personal computer built into the Raspberry Pi Keyboard giving us the cheapest complete computer of all time.
Last year in December, the Raspberry 4 Model B was launched and around 30 million units were sold in a short amount of time. Then came the upgraded version of Raspberry Pi 4, the Raspberry Pi 400.
The Raspberry Pi 400 is 20% faster than the 4 Gigabyte version of the Raspberry Pi 4 and is designed in the Raspberry Pi Keyboard. To get started, all you need is to hook the Raspberry Pi 400 to an external monitor and you are good to go.
Price and Availability
The Raspberry Pi 400 is priced at $70 in the USA and £67 in the UK as of its own. There is also another option to purchase the Raspberry Pi 400 bundle that includes:
- Raspberry Pi 400 Computermicro SD card with pre-installed Raspberry Pi OS
- Official Raspberry Pi USB mouse
- HDMI or micro HDMI cable
- The Official Raspberry Pi beginners guide
The Raspberry Pi beginners Guide is the finest source for you to get started using your new computer.
Specifications
The Raspberry Pi 400 has additionally built-in the official Raspberry Pi keyboard but it is based on Raspberry Pi 4. So the Raspberry Pi 400 also has a Quad-Core Cortex-A72 64-bit processor clocked at 1.8 GHz (Surprisingly faster than MacBook Air), 4 Gigabyte LPDDR4 3200 RAM, Bluetooth 5.0 for faster and more reliable connectivity, and dual-band wireless LAN.
The specifications of Raspberry Pi 400 are pretty decent and useful for home studies or work specially in the current situation of Covid19 and can be considered as an alternative for the traditional desktop PC up to a certain extent.
Raspberry Pi 400 Ports
Since the RPi 400 is encased in the Raspberry Pi Keyboard, it has allowed for the addition of multiple ports increasing the usability of Raspberry Pi. The RPi 400 has ports as below:
- Gigabit Ethernet2 × USB 3.0 and 1 × USB 2.0 ports
- Horizontal 40-pin GPIO header2 × micro HDMI ports (supports up to 4Kp60)
- H.265 (4Kp60 decode)
- H.264 (1080p60 decode, 1080p30 encode)
- OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics
- MicroSD card slot for operating system and data storage
- 78- or 79-key compact keyboard (depending on regional variant)
- 5V DC via USB connector
The Overview of RPi 400-
The RPi 400 when unboxed has a functional look with bright red color at the side and base of the keyboard. Since the Pi is already inside the keyboard, there aren't many cables around the board making spider webs.
The length of the cable was short than expected but it's workable. The entire kit costs $100, and for that price point, it is not fair to complain too hard about the looks and aesthetics.
Although the keyboard is compact than a regular-sized keyboard that may not be ideal for people with big hands and might find themselves using backspace frequently.
The keys on the Raspberry are fairly spaced and travel distance is accurate with less clicking sound. The initial layouts for the Raspberry Pi keyboards will be US English, UK English, German, Spanish, French, and Italian.
With the number of cons, the pro outweighs the Raspberry Pi 400. The RPi 400 supports the dual-display with its micro HDMI ports, but you need to purchase an extra cable since there is only one cable in the box.
In the audio department, the Pi does not have a 3.5 mm audio jack that was available on the previous generation pi. But you can always use the USB headsets or Bluetooth headsets if required.
The build quality of Raspberry Pi is very sturdy and robust. The keyboard has more thickness/ elevation on the top side making it inclined. This way the typing is more comfortable and also has a space for cooling of Raspberry.
Our Verdict
For a price of $100 or less, the RPi 400 is a complete desktop replacement with certain constraints. The Raspberry Pi 400 is functional, reliable, highly portable, and suitable for daily work on a computer.
Yes, it might get a little frame drops while playing high-resolution videos or while doing back and forth from full-screen but it is still the best choice for $70.
What do you think? let us know in the comments section below.
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Previously published at https://techyeverything.com/raspberry-pi-400/