By now, you all should know that I’m a massive advocate for a Raspberry Pi going into any household that houses a human with an inkling of tinkering, coding, or computer knowledge. It’s the perfect little platform to get creative with, thanks to its affordable price, wide array of accessories, breakout boards, and open-source nature.
Then I saw the Pi 400, a “computer-in-a-keyboard” design that Raspberry Pi released with an integrated Pi 4. I loved the idea of buying an all-in-one Pi setup, ready and rearing to take whatever form of code you could throw at it.
And, obviously, the people loved it. Because Raspberry Pi went ahead and released the Pi 500, the same concept but with their latest Pi 5 board on the inside. However, this time around, they took it one step further and created a completely mechanical, addressable RGB keyboard that has the gamer inside of me absolutely salivating.
Hello Raspberry Pi 500+.
First, I never got to play with the Pi 400, and, believe it or not, I was born just slightly after the Commodore was popular, so this was my first experience with the computer-in-a-keyboard concept.
I love it. I have the 500+ in my laptop bag, eagerly awaiting any monitor I can find wherever I am. And, because it’s a Pi, I can also power it with a generally good Power Bank as well, which kind of feels like I’m carrying around some weird half laptop, in a damn cool way.
Admittedly, because the Pi is built into the keyboard, it loses a bit of its tinkering magic, but it leans much more into the coding and software project side of things, which I’ve actually enjoyed quite a bit more. You can still access the GPIO pins through the back of the keyboard with a breakout board, just like in the Pi 400, but it’s not as easy as the basic Pi 5 board on its own.
But that kind of defines the use case for the 500+ for me. It’s an all-in-one PC, built for small at-home software projects, code tinkering, and portability. All the ports, consisting of 1x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, 1x Micro SD Card slot, the USB-C power input, 2x Micro HDMI ports, and the Gigabit Ethernet port, are all located on the rear of the keyboard, making it easy to connect up and carry on with whatever project you’re busy with.
Of course, you could pick up the regular Pi 500 for around R3,500, and come to the same realisations, but for just a little bit extra, at around R4,400, the 500+ has some upgrades that feel well worth it.
Under the hood, the 500+ comes with the standard Pi 5, 2.4GHz CPU, 16GB of LPDDR4X RAM (8GB more than the standard 500), Bluetooth (BLE) 5.0 support, and a 256GB SSD (an upgrade over the 64GB SD card on the standard 500). Considering the costs of storage and RAM these days, those two upgrades alone are worth it, but the biggest upgrade, in my opinion, is the mechanical keyboard.
The Pi 500+ features low-profile Gateron Blue KS-33 key switches, low-profile custom Raspberry Pi keycaps, and addressable per-key RGB lighting. It’s completely unnecessary for a Raspberry Pi setup to have any of this, but man, does it really make a difference.
The keyboard really shifts this Pi setup from a simple tinkering device to something that feels ultra premium.
Overall, the Pi 500+ ticks a lot of boxes for me and where I feel the device sits in this ecosystem. By putting the Pi into an all-in-one style setup, you create a device that is instantly plug-and-play and gives users instant access to software and coding projects. Add to that the premium keyboard upgrade, the extra storage and RAM, and you’ve pretty much got yourself an unkillable little device that’ll run multiple at-home and small business projects with ease. Whether you’re building a little media centre for the lounge, or hosting the website for your small business, or even turning your house into Tony Stark’s mansion, the 500+ feels like the perfect gadget to sit and code it all.
