17 ms·

I've now played with a Raspberry Pi 400 for a week and here are my conclusions

316 points by MarkusWandel 6y ago

My brother gave me a Raspberry 400 (starter kit) because he knew I'd geek out on it and really evaluate it. If you give it fast enough "disk" storage it really moves. I plugged in a Kingston brand 120GB SSD on a USB3 adapter. hdparm -t gave 292MB/s read speed and the default LXDE environment was really crisply responsive, with even a first launch of Chromium taking less than two seconds. With such good storage, the only real limitation is that heavy Javascript stuff is too slow - 5+ seconds to switch between folders in Chrome, or for the thumbnail gallery to appear in Youtube. Also, video calling is marginal. Aside from that the CPU is fast enough. Then I accidentally yanked a cable. And the SSD was bricked. I was able to unbrick it again with the long-powerup-without-data-cable trick, but plainly this setup is too fragile. USB boot is a game changer. A junk drawer 8GB USB stick works just fine, aside from the fact that it takes many minutes to copy the OS image onto it in the first place. An old 60GB SATA laptop hard disk in the same USB3 case that I tried the SSD in is pretty good. About like a decent SD card, but without the scary wear/corruption issues. I can post the brand (Can$14 on Amazon) and the workaround needed for its broken (or at least Linux incompatible) UAS. Bluetooth Audio actually works. In the typical use case, with this thing plugged via HDMI/DVI adapter into an old junk monitor, you can use additional clutter, like a $3 USB headset adapter and computer speakers to get sound or at least plug in a headphone. But if you have a bluetooth headphone or speaker, you don't need cables at all. I can post the recipe that worked for me for this.

MarkusWandel 6y ago
Skype is not possible at this time. I tried 32 and 64 bit OS images, Chromium and Firefox. All are browser not supported, or it works but then doesn't make any attempt to use the webcam or a microphone (even the setup menu entry for this is missing). This being a web app, it could of course change any time. The other stuff that I tried - Zoom and Google Hangouts - worked, just not fast enough for good frame rate. A modern computer should have suspend/resume. This doesn't, but all kitted out with accessories - 7 port USB hub, USB headset, spinning laptop hard disk - it idles at 6-7 watts, plus it boots fast and shuts down almost instantly, so that's not a big issue. Now for a list of things that I think this is good for: 1. As an accessory to the family TV - for online video that the "smart TV" is too dumb for, for games and such. 2. As a classroom computer, with a few sample setups. 2a. Overlay mode (i.e. immutable SD card image and no wear) and everyone uses the same generic userID but then logs into their own google account. 2b. Overlay mode, immutable SD card image and everyone brings a USB stick to store their data on. 2c. Completely diskless mode, everyone has a USB stick they boot from (this works very well even with a typical slow USB stick). 2d. Completely diskless mode, PXE boot from a server (needs gigabit wired ethernet for adequate performance) 2e. Like 2c but with NFS home directories. This needs some sort of centralized account management. Practical as that is, probably Chromebooks are too well established for this to get any traction. 3. As the standard experimenter's Raspi. Costs about the same as a Raspi4 with a good aluminum fanless case, so you get the keyboard for free. 4. As a small NAS/DVR/whatever server node. Same as 3. You get Raspi4 performance and passive cooling for about the same price but a free keyboard. 5. As an extra homework/Youtube/whatever screen in a screen-constrained budget conscious family. Get a $10 monitor from Craigslist/Kijiji, a $2 HDMI/DVI adapter for it and you're off. Except for the sound thing; suggest Bluetooth for minimum clutter for that. Really a practical little machine, comparable to a decent 10-12 year old laptop with an SSD upgrade.
- severine 6y ago
  That's a great review, keep'em coming, people!
- MarkusWandel 6y ago
  1080p video playback is pretty decent. Youtube in Chromium or Firefox is mostly perfect but plainly with some frame drops. A h.264 encoded .mp4 file at that resolution, played with mplayer, is rock solid. VLC too, except mysteriously, it currently gives a black screen when set to fullscreen.
- slezyr 6y ago
  > This explains the cost, but why are they supposed to be more buggy? Should you have time to test those individually if there's just a small number of them? I had to set my user agent to Windows/Edge to make it work in Firefox. However, I can't remember if the audio/video worked.
behohippy 6y ago
I have one as well, and my experience with BT speakers is odd: It works fine in VLC, but not in Chromium or any of the pre-installed games.
- MarkusWandel 6y ago
  I used PulseAudio and removed "bluealsa". So far it's worked fine with everything. Unfortunately the standard LXDE volume/device selector icon doesn't play nice with PulseAudio so I have to use pavucontrol for that. The standard audio icon does pairing very well; by comparison "blueman" isn't as good.
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
Sounds like a neat bit of kit. For anyone unfamiliar, it's essentially an ARM-powered PC, in the form factor of a keyboard. [0] > I was able to unbrick it I know it's a nitpick, but if it can be repaired, it's not bricked. [0] https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400-unit/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400-unit/
- kencausey 6y ago
  From recent usage of the term 'bricked' here on HN I think those of us who consider bricking to at least require use of JTAG to alleviate to have lost the battle.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    I suspect few people on HN have truly experienced a "bricked" device in their lifetime. To you and me: Static electricity from the carpet discharging into the joystick port of a Commodore 64? Bricked. Yanked a cable from my Raspberry Pi and had to reboot in an unconventional manner? Not bricked.
    - wil421 6y ago
      I thought the same thing about an earlier post when someone said their MacBook Pro with a T2 chip was bricked. Something messed up and they had to use a special boot procedure while they were connected to another Mac to reflash the T2. People were up arms but I call not bricked!
    - sbassi 6y ago
      "Static electricity from the carpet discharging into the joystick port of a Commodore 64" Changing the CIA chip will fix the machine.
      - bigiain 6y ago
        In my head at least, that’s a pretty good determinate of “Bricked” Does it require a soldering iron to fix it? No. Not “bricked” Yes. “bricked” (But I also totally accept that technical people are going to lose the language war here, same as when I used to rant about rc quadcopters not being “drones” since they’re not autonomous.)
vincentsaulys 6y ago
ahhh I'm eagerly awaiting this to come out! Adafruit and PiShop don't have it yet :/
- macjohnmcc 6y ago
  I ordered one from SparkFun. They are out of stock now but they did ship mine and I will get it next week.
- joubert 6y ago
  I bought mine from https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-400.html https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-400.html right after release and it showed up quickly (IIRC shipping was from Vancouver).
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  Ordered from SparkFun a few weeks back when they were announced — mine showed up a week ago.
justin66 6y ago
> I plugged in a Kingston brand 120GB SSD on a USB3 adapter. > Then I accidentally yanked a cable. And the SSD was bricked. People who are going to use this as as their setup ought to buy a real, fast USB SSD, instead of relying on SSD drives plugged into adapters. They're engineered to deal with stuff like this and they're fast. (the Samsung T5 and T7 both benchmark even faster than what you saw, well above 300MB/s)
- LegitShady 6y ago
  I think the limitation is the raspberry Pi which has no sata or m.2 interfaces. That's why they used a drive with an adapter.
  - GordonS 6y ago
    OP mentioned USB SSDs, not SATA/M.2 SSDs. Would be nice for the next Pi to have an M.2 slot tho...
  - justin66 6y ago
    Accidentally unplugging an SATA or m2 drive will have similarly awful results.
jops 6y ago
I learnt to program on the ZXSpectrum with "Write Your Own Adventure Programs for Your Microcomputer" [0] The RPi400 with Pico-8 seems to tick the same boxes, so I got one for my 10yr old. He's loving it. Perfect use case. [0] https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Books/Write%20Your%20Own%20Adventure%20Programs%20(1983)(Usborne).pdf https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Books/Write%...
- abraxas 6y ago
  I wish there was a bare metal option that boots RPI 400 into a BASIC or Python interpreter the way the 8 bit machines used to
  - lixtra 6y ago
    What do you mean by bare metal? Booting into python (or basic) would probably take less than 1h for someone who knows what they are doing.
  - notpygame 6y ago
    There's a python/pygame/pygame_gui OS that does exactly this called snakeware. https://github.com/joshiemoore/snakeware https://github.com/joshiemoore/snakeware Grab the rpi4 image and go.
  - drcode 6y ago
    Pick up a pocket chip for $40 on eBay- you have to click a single button after boot and then can start coding a game with pico-8 in lua.
  - 0-_-0 6y ago
    Check out this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18228740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18228740
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    RISC OS for RPi can do this. Not sure if RPi400 is supported just yet.
  - 6y ago
tpmx 6y ago
I also got one. Really like the physical form factor and the keyboard. I don't think something like this is ideal for running a full-blown Linux/Chromium/Firefox desktop environment though - it's just too slow for the bloated web sites of today. And using a mouse isn't exactly "sit-in-front-of-the-tv" friendly. I like the idea of running something like BMC64 ("a bare metal C64 emulator for the Raspberry Pi with true 50hz/60hz smooth scrolling and low latency between input & video/audio") but unfortunately it doesn't work on the Raspberry Pi 400 yet.
- MarkusWandel 6y ago
  You can get relatively inexpensive wireless keyboard/trackpad combos. Generally they come with a receiver piece that ties up a USB port.
TonyTrapp 6y ago
> Then I accidentally yanked a cable USB-C is so outrageously bad in this regard. I have a smartphone on my desk, connected via USB3 for debugging. At some point it started reconnecting if I just slightly touch the phone or cable, which is extra fun if it happens mid-deployment.
- mikehodgson 6y ago
  Check for pocket lint or other debris in the socket. This exact thing was happening to me, a minute with a toothpick fixed it.
  - TonyTrapp 6y ago
    Will check, but it's unlikely since both the phone and cable only ever sit on this desk. It's a pure debugging device.
    - pbalau 6y ago
      Hot glue it in place? It's going to provide enough strength to keep the things attached, but still will be easy to remove if needed.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sorenjan 6y ago
  I think USB-C is designed to have the connector on the cable fail first, so maybe you can try to replace the cable?
  - nottorp 6y ago
    My testing phones (that sit on the table like the OPs) eat cables like popcorn. I never buy less than 3 cables at a time.
  - JKCalhoun 6y ago
    Maybe it's the too-stiff cables. As devices have become smaller, lower mass, our cable rigidity, thinness has not scaled proportionally.
tech5000 6y ago
I have been debating a Pi400 vs a Pinebook Pro as an Xmas gift for a 10-year-old. The Pi400 looks great except that it doesn't support a webcam+microphone(+audio out?) out of the box and attempts to find an HDMI monitor with these things built in and supported by the Pi have thus far been unsuccessful. Is it odd to be considering a Lunux laptop for a 10-year old? The open source ethos of both machines, seems ideal for this use case.
- fmakunbound 6y ago
  I don't think a Pinebook Pro has a 40 pin GPIO header, so the possibilities for interacting with the outside world are limited and thus fun is severely reduced.
- rev_d 6y ago
  The Pinebook Pro is pretty temperamental when it comes to things like battery management & performance. The Pi has more memory, more computing power, and is more reliable. Get him a Pi, and if he needs a laptop, pick up a used Thinkpad to go with the Pi. Source: I own both a Pi 4 & a PBP.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  I don't think the Pinebook Pro will be in stock until early next year.
grawprog 6y ago
I've been looking at either the pi 400 or or one of the pi 4 starter kits. For around the same price as the 400, I can get the 8GB pi and a full kit of accessories. But, I really like the idea of having everything just built into the keyboard. In your experience was the 4GB of RAM on the 400 reasonable? Ever since the 400 popped up on here i've been looking into both of them. I just worry the 400 lacks more long term versatility than a straight pi 4 with a kit. Any thoughts on this?
- m4r35n357 6y ago
  1. The 400 is faster than the 4 OOTB, and can be overclocked easily. 2. The 400 runs much cooler. 3. 4GB is plenty ;)
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  There's a dead comments that's saying exactly what I'll say: The 400 uses a slightly different chip that can be overclocked to 2.2 GHz while the regular Pi 4 can't really go above 1.8 if I recall. More info here: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-teardown-and-review https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-tear... EDIT: The comment I was referring to has been restored!
  - grawprog 6y ago
    Hmmm that doesn't seem true https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2020/02/12/how-to-safely-overclock-your-raspberry-pi-4-to-2-147ghz/ https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2020/02/12/how-to-safely-ov...
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      There seems to be 2 different version of the SoC, B and C https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/adventures-in-overclocking-which-raspberry-pi-4-flavor-is-fastest/ https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/adventures-in-overclocking-w... But I don't have any 4 right now, so I can't try it out.
- MarkusWandel 6y ago
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
I understand why the Raspberry Pi uses SD cards (cost, simplicity, ease of use) but the entire line would be so much more useful with onboard eMMC storage. SD cards are great for keeping cost down and getting started quickly by flashing OS images from a PC. However, enthusiasts spend so much time fiddling with external storage options and cobbling together messes of powered USB hubs, cables, external enclosures, and fiddling with kernel issues (USB attached SCSI) that a Raspberry Pi with built-in eMMC would be a breath of fresh air. They could even keep costs down by adding a connector for an eMMC submodule, similar to what ODROID has done with their boards.
- castratikron 6y ago
  I browsed the datasheet [1] for the BCM2711 processor and did not see an eMMC controller on this part. Assuming the SD card is connected by SPI which would explain why it's so slow. Also rules out eMMC. [1] https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/bcm2711/bcm2711-peripherals.pdf https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/bcm2711/bcm2711-periphera...
  - fest 6y ago
    The physical layer for eMMC is SDIO- the same is used for SD cards, at least if you want more than ~ a megabyte/s of interface bandwidth. IIRC the layers above SDIO are slightly different for eMMC and SD(HC), but generally SoCs that have SDIO interface support both types of memory.
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 has eMMC. Jeff Geerling benchmarked it and found it faster than his fastest SD card: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-compute-module-4-review https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-compute-... It's definitely not NVMe fast, but it's perfect for average workloads.
    - castratikron 6y ago
      Weird. So the processor has an eMMC controller but they left that out on the datasheet.
Joeri 6y ago
I got a pi 400 to replace a 2009 mac mini that was serving as the kids' computer but was struggling to play the online games they wanted (including scratch) because of missing webgl support in recent chrome updates. Performance is roughly on par with the core 2 duo in the mini, but the graphics is more powerful and fully supported by webgl, so in practice it struggles less with the scratch environment and online games than the mini did. I would however not consider it snappy, it is quite sluggish to use chromium on it. I got both netflix and disney plus to work with minimal effort but disney plus is very slow to load, it takes almost a minute to fully pop up. It does play fine when streaming video. The kids so far are quite happy and have been using it a lot more than they used the mac mini. It does everything they want (online educational games, some digital homework, and scratch), and they're not bothered by the sluggish loading of some sites. I think they also like the way it looks, it is a very fun looking little computer.
- webmobdev 6y ago
  But why are you using Chrome in the first place - it's a known memory and CPU hog! Doesn't Firefox or other Webkit based browsers support webGL fully?
  - stonogo 6y ago
    I don't understand what "memory and CPU hog" is supposed to mean here. Chrome runs faster than Firefox on every single ARM device I've ever used, and since the parent comment is explicitly about running a web app I would guess that nobody really cares if it takes slightly more resources to deliver good performance.
    - webmobdev 6y ago
      But the point is that the user isn't getting the expected performance and mentions Chrome specifically. So in this case using more resources on a constrained system is the main issue.
  - m-p-3 6y ago
    FF uses more memory on my system than Chrome now..
danparsonson 6y ago
> And the SSD was bricked. I was able to unbrick it again with the long-powerup-without-data-cable trick... What's the long-powerup-without-data-cable trick, if that's not a stupid question? Sounds like a useful thing to know!
- Zaskoda 6y ago
  I was wondering the same as I have an SSD I used as an external usb drive that has stopped working. I've never heard of a drive getting bricked much less there being a way to resolve it. I was assuming a permanent hardware failure of some kind.
- mightyoj 6y ago
  Check this out, I hadn't heard about it either but am testing it on a ssd now. https://dfarq.homeip.net/fix-dead-ssd/ https://dfarq.homeip.net/fix-dead-ssd/
  - danparsonson 6y ago
    Great article, thanks!
Havoc 6y ago
>USB boot is a game changer. A junk drawer 8GB USB stick works just fine As an aside, why isn't there a market for a say 10gig usb medium that isn't flakey AF like microsd etc that die if you squint at it a little too hard USB enclosure and an actually SSD seems like the cheapest option. There has got to be a middle ground here...
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  Also high endurance SD cards are an option.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  USB3 to M.2 adapter?
anandology 6y ago
I have been playing with a Raspberry 400 for couple of days now. I thought of recommend it for my nephew, but couldn't do it because of the following drawbacks. 1. Lack of 3.5mm audio jack or built-in microphone/speakers 2. Unable to run Zoom reliably Given that schools are closed (at least in India) and classes are happening over zoom, these two drawbacks makes it a no-go for my use case.
- 8bitsrule 6y ago
  Good point. Audio from a 3.5mm jack would add little to the cost, and also keep down headphone cost. Also, most monitors have really shitty audio. Boo. "Getting audio out of the Pi 400 was a bit of a challenge; it defaulted to attempting to deliver audio over HDMI, and Raspberry Pi OS' audio control dialog isn't the best. Even after changing the output device to USB Audio (my gaming headset), YouTube wasn't producing audio—and there's no "test" button I could find in Pi OS, like the one in Ubuntu's audio-control dialog. Closing and reopening the browser entirely after changing the output device resolved the issue, and audio played from the headset fine afterward." https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/raspberry-pi-400-the-under-100-desktop-pc-you-didnt-know-you-needed/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/raspberry-pi-400-the...
  - MarkusWandel 6y ago
    My experience has been fine. Whether with the default audio device picker (which doesn't work correctly once you've installed PulseAudio) or PA's own "pavucontrol" selecting output device is snap. Sometimes you have to restart the audio-producing program to use the new selection, which is a feature, not a bug - you could have different programs use different audio devices at the same time. So to get the usual 3.5mm jacks, just buy a cheap USB/analog headset adapter; about $3 from Ali Express. Select as input and output, and done. Microphone is usually not an issue if you're using a webcam since most have an adequate one built in.
- charwalker 6y ago
  Would you be able to output audio or have a audio/headphone/headset jack via a monitor over HDMI? Bluetooth is also an option but would require a headset and setup to work well I think.
phkahler 6y ago
I challenge anyone to run SolveSpace CAD software on one of these. It should be quite fun.
- eggsome 6y ago
  Being a small and light application I thought the new Occulus Quest would be a great platform for SolveSpace.
  - phkahler 6y ago
    Interesting. I assume that would mean interacting with the 3D model in some way. That could be fun - grab a vertex and move it around. It would require some changes to copy the model (and sketch entities) into the VR world since it can't maintain that kind of framerate while the geometry is changing. A voice interface for simple commands like adding dimensions would make it rather like the holodeck.
anderspitman 6y ago
I just spent a few hours fiddling with my new pi4 yesterday. Is it possible to get them to boot from USB without first setting it up to boot from SD and then cloning the disk? I'm guessing not since I think it has to flash some settings to the EEPROM, not just make changes to /boot. I was following this guide and couldn't even get these steps to work: https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/boot-raspberry-pi-4-usb https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/boot-raspberry-pi-4-usb
- magicalhippo 6y ago
  It seems they recently changed[1] the default boot order to SD Card followed by USB Mass Storage, from just SD Card. Of course if you get an Raspberry Pi made before this became the default then you're SOL. [1]: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bcm2711_bootloader_config.md https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...
  - anderspitman 6y ago
    Are those settings in hardware, or the EEPROM?
    - magicalhippo 6y ago
      This is the EEPROM settings.
      - anderspitman 6y ago
        But once I figure out how to properly flash it, I should be able to boot from a freshly created USB drive, without having to clone from SD?
        magicalhippo 6y ago
        Yes exactly, the EEPROM stores the settings rather than the config.txt file on the SD Card as with earlier Pi's.
cduzz 6y ago
"Back in the day" I managed a fleet of X terminals. Some were purpose built X terminals and some were old repurposed Sun 3/50 or 3/60 pizza boxes. I also ran a bunch of servers where they booted off of a small internal disk and otherwise lived entirely off of NFS. It all ran "just fine" on 10bt. Get off my lawn... One of these things seems ideal for "diskless" operation, especially if used in a lab setting.
musicale 6y ago
One thing I discovered using the Raspberry Pi is that Linux is constantly writing to the SD card, and it's very hard to stop this behavior, even if you turn off file system timestamps, disable logging, etc.. Cutting the power or resetting the Pi seems to result in relatively frequent data corruption, and I've also ended up with several unusable SD cards. However, switching to a read-only SD card and a RAM file system seemed to eliminate the file system corruption and SD card damage I'd been seeing in my Raspberry Pi-based design. No problem with power cycling the thing.
- dijit 6y ago
  This is going to sound like a meme, but seriously: install gentoo. “Linux” doesn’t write anything to the filesystem, but various helper utilities do, and this has become more true with systemd-journald.
HorizonXP 6y ago
I have one sitting here in a box that I'm planning to set up my 2 year old toddler with. He loves using my computer, so I'm hoping to put on some typing and other simple games for him to use. Goal is to connect it to an older monitor so he can "work like Diddy" and get him into real computers vs. the iPad. He's already able to type letters & numbers on the keyboard since he can read them, so it should just amplify his learning. And yes, he gets plenty of regular playtime outside and inside. He spends hours outdoors. It's mostly going to just "be there" to use as he pleases, especially with the upcoming cold weather and lockdown.
smileybarry 6y ago
You mentioned an external SSD and a microSD, but there's a nice inbetween option of using a thumb drive, like Samsung's FIT drives[1] where it's just a nub sticking out of the USB port. You get better performance than an SD card, something that can arguably get "SSD-like" performance in short bursts, and you don't have to jury-rig an external SSD to the Pi. Doesn't offer the same durability as a full-size SSD but might be good enough (and cheap enough to try IMO). There's also endurance microSDs made for constant writing -- and I bought one for my current Pi 4 -- but I don't have enough experience with those to say whether it solves the Pi corruption issues. [1] https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/usb-flash-drives/usb-3-1-flash-drive-fit-plus-256gb-muf-256ab-am/ https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/usb-flas...
zeckalpha 6y ago
Definitely an upgrade from your MP3 player! http://wandel.ca/homepage/jukebox.html http://wandel.ca/homepage/jukebox.html Always have been a fan of your site.
MR4D 6y ago
I would love to see them drop all connectors except for USB-C and an M.2
qwerty456127 6y ago
> Then I accidentally yanked a cable. And the SSD was bricked. I was able to unbrick it again with the long-powerup-without-data-cable trick, but plainly this setup is too fragile. What's the nature of this phenomenon? Why does it happen to Raspberry Pi but doesn't happen to classic x86 systems?
hestefisk 6y ago
Thanks for the review. I’m considering buying one for a set top box. Would it be powerful enough for that? Can it pull 4K video?
erichanson 6y ago
Can the 400 receive a bluetooth signal and act like a remote speaker? Specifically is the bluetooth hardware capable of that?
- askvictor 6y ago
  The ordinary raspberry pi can, so I would be very surprised if the 400 couldn't.

316 points by MarkusWandel 6y ago

MarkusWandel 6y ago

Skype is not possible at this time. I tried 32 and 64 bit OS images, Chromium and Firefox. All are browser not supported, or it works but then doesn't make any attempt to use the webcam or a microphone (even the setup menu entry for this is missing). This being a web app, it could of course change any time. The other stuff that I tried - Zoom and Google Hangouts - worked, just not fast enough for good frame rate. A modern computer should have suspend/resume. This doesn't, but all kitted out with accessories - 7 port USB hub, USB headset, spinning laptop hard disk - it idles at 6-7 watts, plus it boots fast and shuts down almost instantly, so that's not a big issue. Now for a list of things that I think this is good for: 1. As an accessory to the family TV - for online video that the "smart TV" is too dumb for, for games and such. 2. As a classroom computer, with a few sample setups. 2a. Overlay mode (i.e. immutable SD card image and no wear) and everyone uses the same generic userID but then logs into their own google account. 2b. Overlay mode, immutable SD card image and everyone brings a USB stick to store their data on. 2c. Completely diskless mode, everyone has a USB stick they boot from (this works very well even with a typical slow USB stick). 2d. Completely diskless mode, PXE boot from a server (needs gigabit wired ethernet for adequate performance) 2e. Like 2c but with NFS home directories. This needs some sort of centralized account management. Practical as that is, probably Chromebooks are too well established for this to get any traction. 3. As the standard experimenter's Raspi. Costs about the same as a Raspi4 with a good aluminum fanless case, so you get the keyboard for free. 4. As a small NAS/DVR/whatever server node. Same as 3. You get Raspi4 performance and passive cooling for about the same price but a free keyboard. 5. As an extra homework/Youtube/whatever screen in a screen-constrained budget conscious family. Get a $10 monitor from Craigslist/Kijiji, a $2 HDMI/DVI adapter for it and you're off. Except for the sound thing; suggest Bluetooth for minimum clutter for that. Really a practical little machine, comparable to a decent 10-12 year old laptop with an SSD upgrade.

severine 6y ago
That's a great review, keep'em coming, people!
MarkusWandel 6y ago
1080p video playback is pretty decent. Youtube in Chromium or Firefox is mostly perfect but plainly with some frame drops. A h.264 encoded .mp4 file at that resolution, played with mplayer, is rock solid. VLC too, except mysteriously, it currently gives a black screen when set to fullscreen.
slezyr 6y ago
> This explains the cost, but why are they supposed to be more buggy? Should you have time to test those individually if there's just a small number of them? I had to set my user agent to Windows/Edge to make it work in Firefox. However, I can't remember if the audio/video worked.

behohippy 6y ago

I have one as well, and my experience with BT speakers is odd: It works fine in VLC, but not in Chromium or any of the pre-installed games.

MarkusWandel 6y ago
I used PulseAudio and removed "bluealsa". So far it's worked fine with everything. Unfortunately the standard LXDE volume/device selector icon doesn't play nice with PulseAudio so I have to use pavucontrol for that. The standard audio icon does pairing very well; by comparison "blueman" isn't as good.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

Sounds like a neat bit of kit. For anyone unfamiliar, it's essentially an ARM-powered PC, in the form factor of a keyboard. [0] > I was able to unbrick it I know it's a nitpick, but if it can be repaired, it's not bricked. [0] https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400-unit/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-400-unit/

kencausey 6y ago
From recent usage of the term 'bricked' here on HN I think those of us who consider bricking to at least require use of JTAG to alleviate to have lost the battle.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  I suspect few people on HN have truly experienced a "bricked" device in their lifetime. To you and me: Static electricity from the carpet discharging into the joystick port of a Commodore 64? Bricked. Yanked a cable from my Raspberry Pi and had to reboot in an unconventional manner? Not bricked.
  - wil421 6y ago
    I thought the same thing about an earlier post when someone said their MacBook Pro with a T2 chip was bricked. Something messed up and they had to use a special boot procedure while they were connected to another Mac to reflash the T2. People were up arms but I call not bricked!
  - sbassi 6y ago
    "Static electricity from the carpet discharging into the joystick port of a Commodore 64" Changing the CIA chip will fix the machine.
    - bigiain 6y ago
      In my head at least, that’s a pretty good determinate of “Bricked” Does it require a soldering iron to fix it? No. Not “bricked” Yes. “bricked” (But I also totally accept that technical people are going to lose the language war here, same as when I used to rant about rc quadcopters not being “drones” since they’re not autonomous.)

vincentsaulys 6y ago

ahhh I'm eagerly awaiting this to come out! Adafruit and PiShop don't have it yet :/

macjohnmcc 6y ago
I ordered one from SparkFun. They are out of stock now but they did ship mine and I will get it next week.
joubert 6y ago
I bought mine from https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-400.html https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-400.html right after release and it showed up quickly (IIRC shipping was from Vancouver).
JKCalhoun 6y ago
Ordered from SparkFun a few weeks back when they were announced — mine showed up a week ago.

justin66 6y ago

> I plugged in a Kingston brand 120GB SSD on a USB3 adapter. > Then I accidentally yanked a cable. And the SSD was bricked. People who are going to use this as as their setup ought to buy a real, fast USB SSD, instead of relying on SSD drives plugged into adapters. They're engineered to deal with stuff like this and they're fast. (the Samsung T5 and T7 both benchmark even faster than what you saw, well above 300MB/s)

LegitShady 6y ago
I think the limitation is the raspberry Pi which has no sata or m.2 interfaces. That's why they used a drive with an adapter.
- GordonS 6y ago
  OP mentioned USB SSDs, not SATA/M.2 SSDs. Would be nice for the next Pi to have an M.2 slot tho...
- justin66 6y ago
  Accidentally unplugging an SATA or m2 drive will have similarly awful results.

jops 6y ago

I learnt to program on the ZXSpectrum with "Write Your Own Adventure Programs for Your Microcomputer" [0] The RPi400 with Pico-8 seems to tick the same boxes, so I got one for my 10yr old. He's loving it. Perfect use case. [0] https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Books/Write%20Your%20Own%20Adventure%20Programs%20(1983)(Usborne).pdf https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Books/Write%...

abraxas 6y ago
I wish there was a bare metal option that boots RPI 400 into a BASIC or Python interpreter the way the 8 bit machines used to
- lixtra 6y ago
  What do you mean by bare metal? Booting into python (or basic) would probably take less than 1h for someone who knows what they are doing.
- notpygame 6y ago
  There's a python/pygame/pygame_gui OS that does exactly this called snakeware. https://github.com/joshiemoore/snakeware https://github.com/joshiemoore/snakeware Grab the rpi4 image and go.
- drcode 6y ago
  Pick up a pocket chip for $40 on eBay- you have to click a single button after boot and then can start coding a game with pico-8 in lua.
- 0-_-0 6y ago
  Check out this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18228740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18228740
- zozbot234 6y ago
  RISC OS for RPi can do this. Not sure if RPi400 is supported just yet.
- 6y ago

tpmx 6y ago

I also got one. Really like the physical form factor and the keyboard. I don't think something like this is ideal for running a full-blown Linux/Chromium/Firefox desktop environment though - it's just too slow for the bloated web sites of today. And using a mouse isn't exactly "sit-in-front-of-the-tv" friendly. I like the idea of running something like BMC64 ("a bare metal C64 emulator for the Raspberry Pi with true 50hz/60hz smooth scrolling and low latency between input & video/audio") but unfortunately it doesn't work on the Raspberry Pi 400 yet.

MarkusWandel 6y ago
You can get relatively inexpensive wireless keyboard/trackpad combos. Generally they come with a receiver piece that ties up a USB port.

TonyTrapp 6y ago

> Then I accidentally yanked a cable USB-C is so outrageously bad in this regard. I have a smartphone on my desk, connected via USB3 for debugging. At some point it started reconnecting if I just slightly touch the phone or cable, which is extra fun if it happens mid-deployment.

mikehodgson 6y ago
Check for pocket lint or other debris in the socket. This exact thing was happening to me, a minute with a toothpick fixed it.
- TonyTrapp 6y ago
  Will check, but it's unlikely since both the phone and cable only ever sit on this desk. It's a pure debugging device.
  - pbalau 6y ago
    Hot glue it in place? It's going to provide enough strength to keep the things attached, but still will be easy to remove if needed.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sorenjan 6y ago
I think USB-C is designed to have the connector on the cable fail first, so maybe you can try to replace the cable?
- nottorp 6y ago
  My testing phones (that sit on the table like the OPs) eat cables like popcorn. I never buy less than 3 cables at a time.
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  Maybe it's the too-stiff cables. As devices have become smaller, lower mass, our cable rigidity, thinness has not scaled proportionally.

tech5000 6y ago

I have been debating a Pi400 vs a Pinebook Pro as an Xmas gift for a 10-year-old. The Pi400 looks great except that it doesn't support a webcam+microphone(+audio out?) out of the box and attempts to find an HDMI monitor with these things built in and supported by the Pi have thus far been unsuccessful. Is it odd to be considering a Lunux laptop for a 10-year old? The open source ethos of both machines, seems ideal for this use case.

fmakunbound 6y ago
I don't think a Pinebook Pro has a 40 pin GPIO header, so the possibilities for interacting with the outside world are limited and thus fun is severely reduced.
rev_d 6y ago
The Pinebook Pro is pretty temperamental when it comes to things like battery management & performance. The Pi has more memory, more computing power, and is more reliable. Get him a Pi, and if he needs a laptop, pick up a used Thinkpad to go with the Pi. Source: I own both a Pi 4 & a PBP.
CameronNemo 6y ago
I don't think the Pinebook Pro will be in stock until early next year.

grawprog 6y ago

I've been looking at either the pi 400 or or one of the pi 4 starter kits. For around the same price as the 400, I can get the 8GB pi and a full kit of accessories. But, I really like the idea of having everything just built into the keyboard. In your experience was the 4GB of RAM on the 400 reasonable? Ever since the 400 popped up on here i've been looking into both of them. I just worry the 400 lacks more long term versatility than a straight pi 4 with a kit. Any thoughts on this?

m4r35n357 6y ago
1. The 400 is faster than the 4 OOTB, and can be overclocked easily. 2. The 400 runs much cooler. 3. 4GB is plenty ;)
908B64B197 6y ago
There's a dead comments that's saying exactly what I'll say: The 400 uses a slightly different chip that can be overclocked to 2.2 GHz while the regular Pi 4 can't really go above 1.8 if I recall. More info here: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-teardown-and-review https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-tear... EDIT: The comment I was referring to has been restored!
- grawprog 6y ago
  Hmmm that doesn't seem true https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2020/02/12/how-to-safely-overclock-your-raspberry-pi-4-to-2-147ghz/ https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2020/02/12/how-to-safely-ov...
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    There seems to be 2 different version of the SoC, B and C https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/adventures-in-overclocking-which-raspberry-pi-4-flavor-is-fastest/ https://hackaday.com/2020/11/11/adventures-in-overclocking-w... But I don't have any 4 right now, so I can't try it out.
MarkusWandel 6y ago

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

I understand why the Raspberry Pi uses SD cards (cost, simplicity, ease of use) but the entire line would be so much more useful with onboard eMMC storage. SD cards are great for keeping cost down and getting started quickly by flashing OS images from a PC. However, enthusiasts spend so much time fiddling with external storage options and cobbling together messes of powered USB hubs, cables, external enclosures, and fiddling with kernel issues (USB attached SCSI) that a Raspberry Pi with built-in eMMC would be a breath of fresh air. They could even keep costs down by adding a connector for an eMMC submodule, similar to what ODROID has done with their boards.

castratikron 6y ago
I browsed the datasheet [1] for the BCM2711 processor and did not see an eMMC controller on this part. Assuming the SD card is connected by SPI which would explain why it's so slow. Also rules out eMMC. [1] https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/bcm2711/bcm2711-peripherals.pdf https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/bcm2711/bcm2711-periphera...
- fest 6y ago
  The physical layer for eMMC is SDIO- the same is used for SD cards, at least if you want more than ~ a megabyte/s of interface bandwidth. IIRC the layers above SDIO are slightly different for eMMC and SD(HC), but generally SoCs that have SDIO interface support both types of memory.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 has eMMC. Jeff Geerling benchmarked it and found it faster than his fastest SD card: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-compute-module-4-review https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-compute-... It's definitely not NVMe fast, but it's perfect for average workloads.
  - castratikron 6y ago
    Weird. So the processor has an eMMC controller but they left that out on the datasheet.

Joeri 6y ago

I got a pi 400 to replace a 2009 mac mini that was serving as the kids' computer but was struggling to play the online games they wanted (including scratch) because of missing webgl support in recent chrome updates. Performance is roughly on par with the core 2 duo in the mini, but the graphics is more powerful and fully supported by webgl, so in practice it struggles less with the scratch environment and online games than the mini did. I would however not consider it snappy, it is quite sluggish to use chromium on it. I got both netflix and disney plus to work with minimal effort but disney plus is very slow to load, it takes almost a minute to fully pop up. It does play fine when streaming video. The kids so far are quite happy and have been using it a lot more than they used the mac mini. It does everything they want (online educational games, some digital homework, and scratch), and they're not bothered by the sluggish loading of some sites. I think they also like the way it looks, it is a very fun looking little computer.

webmobdev 6y ago
But why are you using Chrome in the first place - it's a known memory and CPU hog! Doesn't Firefox or other Webkit based browsers support webGL fully?
- stonogo 6y ago
  I don't understand what "memory and CPU hog" is supposed to mean here. Chrome runs faster than Firefox on every single ARM device I've ever used, and since the parent comment is explicitly about running a web app I would guess that nobody really cares if it takes slightly more resources to deliver good performance.
  - webmobdev 6y ago
    But the point is that the user isn't getting the expected performance and mentions Chrome specifically. So in this case using more resources on a constrained system is the main issue.
- m-p-3 6y ago
  FF uses more memory on my system than Chrome now..

danparsonson 6y ago

> And the SSD was bricked. I was able to unbrick it again with the long-powerup-without-data-cable trick... What's the long-powerup-without-data-cable trick, if that's not a stupid question? Sounds like a useful thing to know!

Zaskoda 6y ago
I was wondering the same as I have an SSD I used as an external usb drive that has stopped working. I've never heard of a drive getting bricked much less there being a way to resolve it. I was assuming a permanent hardware failure of some kind.
mightyoj 6y ago
Check this out, I hadn't heard about it either but am testing it on a ssd now. https://dfarq.homeip.net/fix-dead-ssd/ https://dfarq.homeip.net/fix-dead-ssd/
- danparsonson 6y ago
  Great article, thanks!

Havoc 6y ago

>USB boot is a game changer. A junk drawer 8GB USB stick works just fine As an aside, why isn't there a market for a say 10gig usb medium that isn't flakey AF like microsd etc that die if you squint at it a little too hard USB enclosure and an actually SSD seems like the cheapest option. There has got to be a middle ground here...

CameronNemo 6y ago
Also high endurance SD cards are an option.
CameronNemo 6y ago
USB3 to M.2 adapter?

anandology 6y ago

I have been playing with a Raspberry 400 for couple of days now. I thought of recommend it for my nephew, but couldn't do it because of the following drawbacks. 1. Lack of 3.5mm audio jack or built-in microphone/speakers 2. Unable to run Zoom reliably Given that schools are closed (at least in India) and classes are happening over zoom, these two drawbacks makes it a no-go for my use case.

8bitsrule 6y ago
Good point. Audio from a 3.5mm jack would add little to the cost, and also keep down headphone cost. Also, most monitors have really shitty audio. Boo. "Getting audio out of the Pi 400 was a bit of a challenge; it defaulted to attempting to deliver audio over HDMI, and Raspberry Pi OS' audio control dialog isn't the best. Even after changing the output device to USB Audio (my gaming headset), YouTube wasn't producing audio—and there's no "test" button I could find in Pi OS, like the one in Ubuntu's audio-control dialog. Closing and reopening the browser entirely after changing the output device resolved the issue, and audio played from the headset fine afterward." https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/raspberry-pi-400-the-under-100-desktop-pc-you-didnt-know-you-needed/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/raspberry-pi-400-the...
- MarkusWandel 6y ago
  My experience has been fine. Whether with the default audio device picker (which doesn't work correctly once you've installed PulseAudio) or PA's own "pavucontrol" selecting output device is snap. Sometimes you have to restart the audio-producing program to use the new selection, which is a feature, not a bug - you could have different programs use different audio devices at the same time. So to get the usual 3.5mm jacks, just buy a cheap USB/analog headset adapter; about $3 from Ali Express. Select as input and output, and done. Microphone is usually not an issue if you're using a webcam since most have an adequate one built in.
charwalker 6y ago
Would you be able to output audio or have a audio/headphone/headset jack via a monitor over HDMI? Bluetooth is also an option but would require a headset and setup to work well I think.

phkahler 6y ago

I challenge anyone to run SolveSpace CAD software on one of these. It should be quite fun.

eggsome 6y ago
Being a small and light application I thought the new Occulus Quest would be a great platform for SolveSpace.
- phkahler 6y ago
  Interesting. I assume that would mean interacting with the 3D model in some way. That could be fun - grab a vertex and move it around. It would require some changes to copy the model (and sketch entities) into the VR world since it can't maintain that kind of framerate while the geometry is changing. A voice interface for simple commands like adding dimensions would make it rather like the holodeck.

anderspitman 6y ago

I just spent a few hours fiddling with my new pi4 yesterday. Is it possible to get them to boot from USB without first setting it up to boot from SD and then cloning the disk? I'm guessing not since I think it has to flash some settings to the EEPROM, not just make changes to /boot. I was following this guide and couldn't even get these steps to work: https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/boot-raspberry-pi-4-usb https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/boot-raspberry-pi-4-usb

magicalhippo 6y ago
It seems they recently changed[1] the default boot order to SD Card followed by USB Mass Storage, from just SD Card. Of course if you get an Raspberry Pi made before this became the default then you're SOL. [1]: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/bcm2711_bootloader_config.md https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...
- anderspitman 6y ago
  Are those settings in hardware, or the EEPROM?
  - magicalhippo 6y ago
    This is the EEPROM settings.
    - anderspitman 6y ago
      But once I figure out how to properly flash it, I should be able to boot from a freshly created USB drive, without having to clone from SD?
      - magicalhippo 6y ago
        Yes exactly, the EEPROM stores the settings rather than the config.txt file on the SD Card as with earlier Pi's.

cduzz 6y ago

"Back in the day" I managed a fleet of X terminals. Some were purpose built X terminals and some were old repurposed Sun 3/50 or 3/60 pizza boxes. I also ran a bunch of servers where they booted off of a small internal disk and otherwise lived entirely off of NFS. It all ran "just fine" on 10bt. Get off my lawn... One of these things seems ideal for "diskless" operation, especially if used in a lab setting.

musicale 6y ago

One thing I discovered using the Raspberry Pi is that Linux is constantly writing to the SD card, and it's very hard to stop this behavior, even if you turn off file system timestamps, disable logging, etc.. Cutting the power or resetting the Pi seems to result in relatively frequent data corruption, and I've also ended up with several unusable SD cards. However, switching to a read-only SD card and a RAM file system seemed to eliminate the file system corruption and SD card damage I'd been seeing in my Raspberry Pi-based design. No problem with power cycling the thing.

dijit 6y ago
This is going to sound like a meme, but seriously: install gentoo. “Linux” doesn’t write anything to the filesystem, but various helper utilities do, and this has become more true with systemd-journald.

HorizonXP 6y ago

I have one sitting here in a box that I'm planning to set up my 2 year old toddler with. He loves using my computer, so I'm hoping to put on some typing and other simple games for him to use. Goal is to connect it to an older monitor so he can "work like Diddy" and get him into real computers vs. the iPad. He's already able to type letters & numbers on the keyboard since he can read them, so it should just amplify his learning. And yes, he gets plenty of regular playtime outside and inside. He spends hours outdoors. It's mostly going to just "be there" to use as he pleases, especially with the upcoming cold weather and lockdown.

smileybarry 6y ago

You mentioned an external SSD and a microSD, but there's a nice inbetween option of using a thumb drive, like Samsung's FIT drives[1] where it's just a nub sticking out of the USB port. You get better performance than an SD card, something that can arguably get "SSD-like" performance in short bursts, and you don't have to jury-rig an external SSD to the Pi. Doesn't offer the same durability as a full-size SSD but might be good enough (and cheap enough to try IMO). There's also endurance microSDs made for constant writing -- and I bought one for my current Pi 4 -- but I don't have enough experience with those to say whether it solves the Pi corruption issues. [1] https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/usb-flash-drives/usb-3-1-flash-drive-fit-plus-256gb-muf-256ab-am/ https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/usb-flas...

zeckalpha 6y ago

Definitely an upgrade from your MP3 player! http://wandel.ca/homepage/jukebox.html http://wandel.ca/homepage/jukebox.html Always have been a fan of your site.

MR4D 6y ago

I would love to see them drop all connectors except for USB-C and an M.2

qwerty456127 6y ago

> Then I accidentally yanked a cable. And the SSD was bricked. I was able to unbrick it again with the long-powerup-without-data-cable trick, but plainly this setup is too fragile. What's the nature of this phenomenon? Why does it happen to Raspberry Pi but doesn't happen to classic x86 systems?

hestefisk 6y ago

Thanks for the review. I’m considering buying one for a set top box. Would it be powerful enough for that? Can it pull 4K video?

erichanson 6y ago

Can the 400 receive a bluetooth signal and act like a remote speaker? Specifically is the bluetooth hardware capable of that?

askvictor 6y ago
The ordinary raspberry pi can, so I would be very surprised if the 400 couldn't.