13 ms·

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

134 points by fridek 2y ago

esskay 2y ago
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.
- seba_dos1 2y ago
  It would be understandable if they kept the same case mold... but they did in fact reorder the ports.
  - esskay 2y ago
    Yeah that part makes it even more odd as instead of one new mold they now need 2 if/when they do add the nvme support.
- thiht 2y ago
  The word "Amazing" comes to my mind. My guess is you wildly overstimate how much people care about what you care about.
  - esskay 2y ago
    Not sure why you think I'm talking for everyone. This is a forum for discussion, where people share their views and opinions, mine was that it's mediocre, yours was that it's amazing. That's the great thing about opinions, we all have them, and people who slate other peoples opinions tend to look a bit silly. Also if you read here, their own announcement blog post, X, Bluesky and Reddit you'll find theres a fair few people sharing my views regarding micro hdmi and the nvme shenanigans. My guess is you wildly overestimated how much people care what you care about.
    - thiht 2y ago
      > Not sure why you think I'm talking for everyone. Fair enough. I still think "mediocre" is a strong word for a <$100 product that’s a real usable computer, with this form factor. For a first computer for example, it’s NOT mediocre.
zeristor 2y ago
No nvme port, or is there a nifty fix?
- sthlmb 2y ago
  It's missing the connector and power components on the PCB so you may be able to solder them all on yourself if you have the parts but it's going to be a pain in the ass :D
  - geerlingguy 2y ago
    Yeah; I attempted to solder on the slot... but realized after attempting it that all the power circuit components on the underside are also unpopulated. So you'd have to reverse-engineer that, get the components, solder all of them (many are tiny SMD), and solder on a couple caps on the top PCIe traces, and finally an M.2 slot on the pads up top.
elashri 2y ago
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?
- dijit 2y ago
  Largely, yes. Here's a much better and more in depth deep-dive into N100 vs Pi's by ExplainingComputers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hekzpSH25lk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hekzpSH25lk There's trade-offs in both directions, but largely rPI has marginally lower performance and power consumption compared to the N100. If you're not touching GPIO or need to stay under 15W strictly, then the PI is the better option. N100's seem to be slightly more expensive if buying from MSRP, but the second-hand market is much more competitive and there are more discounts available with N100 systems. RPI's are considered hobbiest tech so hold their value and are rarely discounted.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- ThatPlayer 2y ago
  It's a pretty common sentiment I've seen and agree with. Though I think the Pi 4 is still cost effective for its price if you don't need as much processing power.
- 5d41402abc4b 2y ago
  You can get a few generations old mini PCs with 16GB RAM and SSD at the same price as a PI.
  - danielheath 2y ago
    You can get brand new, current-gen (Alder Lake) mini PCs with those specs for the same price as a PI + storage + case + PSU.
2809 2y ago
It has PoE and M2.... but neither are populated. Very disappointing considering the increased cost.
kiririn 2y ago
> 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
- AlanYx 2y ago
  It's strange that they don't specify what gamut. I think it's possible that they mean 45% of the entire CIE gamut, which would be slightly larger than sRGB. (It's an odd way of specifying a monitor though, usually manufacturers specify as a fraction of either Adobe RGB or Display P3.)
  - sho_hn 2y ago
    DCI-P3 is about 45% of CIE, so maybe that? The product brief says 16.2M color depth, though, which would mean it's 6-bit + FRC which is bizarre to couple with an aim for DCI-P3, so perhaps not. Quite an odd product! I assume these are mostly all trade-ofs so you can power it on one of the Pi's USB-A ports without an additional PSU required.
    - my123 2y ago
      45% NTSC is what I'd expect
    - kuschku 2y ago
      You can also run much better panels off a Pi's USB-A port: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0CSJWPXBV/ https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0CSJWPXBV/ 109,99€ for a 16" 2520x1680 60Hz 100% sRGB 8-bit panel. Power via USB-C, video via USB-C or mini HDMI.
  - kiririn 2y ago
    I expected it to mean 45% NTSC.. panel gamuts are usually specified in marketing as either 45% NTSC, 100% sRGB, or some % of adobe rgb/display p3 for wide gamut Not sure why they dropped the NTSC, maybe consumers have cottoned on to NTSC keyword = bad monitor
5d41402abc4b 2y ago
How usable is the PI5 as a desktop PC replacement? The PI4 was too slow to run anything serious.
- geerlingguy 2y ago
  I was testing it for web dev, it's much better than the Pi 400/Pi 4 in that regard[1]. Still not near Apple M1 class performance, so you have to adjust expectations for media, creative stuff. But most things I've tested work fine now on the Pi if it works in Linux at all, which is a bit nicer than last time I tried 4 years ago. [1] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/pi-500-much-faster-lacks-m2 https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/pi-500-much-faster-la...
  - tunnuz 2y ago
    I should have waited to buy the 400 a few months ago.
  - supermatt 2y ago
    Any thoughts on why they didn't use a CM?
    - whitehexagon 2y ago
      I was also thinking that with the pi400, but that was clocked a bit faster than a pi4 if memory serves (the heatsink). Still, it would have been nice to have a CM5 that could later be upgraded to CM6. Anyway it looks like a wait and see for the Amiga500+ version for me, that M.2 prep. looks worth waiting for. Any maybe they got some more red paint in by then.
  - stiltzkin 2y ago
    [dead]
- cdt5050 2y ago
  Pi 5 is a great everyday desktop and development machine. Some websites are going to perform really badly, like a lot of news websites with lots of ads, but those tend to perform bad on my gaming PC, too, and I just think if a website performs bad on a Pi 5 it's really just not worth visiting.
Ekaros 2y ago
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.
- porcoda 2y ago
  The “trends in software” is the problem here: we’ve gotten greedy as developers and basically build assuming resources don’t matter. I am quite willing to bet that if we considered resources, we’d still be able to build all the stuff we want without assuming resources are free. Hardware would be viable longer. Efficiency unfortunately seems like the last thing anyone thinks about anymore, instead favoring time to market and layers upon layers that prioritize developer happiness and productivity over all else.
floppiplopp 2y ago
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.
0xEF 2y ago
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.
- gchadwick 2y ago
  I do find HN threads about R-Pi products weigh heavily negative. Yet despite the apparent many major issues that keep getting pointed out R-Pi seems to keep going from strength to strength. Maybe they understand their own customers and their market better than commenters here?
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    HN crowd is solid in some very narrow technical subjects. The more you deviate from those, the worse. It quickly degenerates into some incredibly stupid takes from people that clearly think very highly of themselves, and are unable to do any introspection. R-Pi offerings are fine. It is supposed to be a cheap computer, and they could get something that costs less than 200 bucks with a monitor. Definitely not bad.
    - Ekaros 2y ago
      I think the thing many are starting to feel that they are not cheap anymore. At least compared to some things like refurb laptops and such. Just recently saw 249€ Lenovo laptop with Ryzen 5 4500U, 16GB RAM and 480GB SSD. Not new, but still, more powerful and having storage too.
      - surgical_fire 2y ago
        Yes, but that is true for basically every consumer product. Cars, electronics, you name it. "You can buy old restored/refurbished thing cheaper than a cheap brand new thing" is hardly a very insightful take. Does that mean that there is no market for "cheap brand new thing"?
schappim 2y ago
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.
StayTrue 2y ago
Is the Pi 500 fanless? Do I read that correctly?
- sho_hn 2y ago
  Yes, it's fanless. It uses a large passive heatsink.
andridk 2y ago
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.
- cdt5050 2y ago
  The performance difference is practically unnoticeable in day-to-day desktop use. People don't really care about 15 second vs. 20 second boot time, and that first boot of Firefox is going to be another pretty meh comparison. Subsequent boots are going to be loading small enough data that the difference between will be meaningless. The main appeal to an NVMe on the Pi isn't speed, it's cost effectiveness. SSDs are cheaper at larger capacities than SD cards. A 1tb SD card is 2x the cost of a cheaper 1tb SSD. Storage speed is a bigger consideration on something like a gaming PC or a video editing machine, where you're going to be streaming gigabytes of textures/videos off of storage, not just trying to launch Firefox.
RedNifre 2y ago
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 https://imgur.com/Afq9uFq
sho_hn 2y ago
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.
- pdpi 2y ago
  The PCB has plenty of space for an M.2 slot (and, in fact, the PCB has pads for the connector and mounting holes, and is appropriately silk screened). The case design is just not designed for user serviceability, so having the slot would not be particularly useful. Jeff Geerling talks about this to some length in his video. Arguably, a non-user serviceable RPi is a bit of an odd choice, but the 400/500 are very much self-contained all-in-one products, which I guess makes it kind of reasonable.
  - sho_hn 2y ago
    Sure, but I'd expect a little lid to access the M.2 slot in the case design. "It's not that kind of product", but maybe it should be: Higher capacity microSD cards are more expensive than NVMe alternatives, which are generally faster.
    - Ekaros 2y ago
      Not to forget write cycles... Which can be real issue if you actually use system as desktop. In general NVME drives would likely be more reliable in long run. I really would not enjoy storage being corrupted or dead on this kind of device.
      - whitehexagon 2y ago
        I use a Pi400 daily but boot it from a small USB stick. So no SD card needed, and it seems faster.
akho 2y ago
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.
- tsak 2y ago
  Can you spec a N100 system with 8GB of RAM and at least 32 GB of (slow) SSD and land around the £100 / $120 price point of a Raspberry Pi 500 with 27W power adapter? Not to mention the GPIO header.
  - akho 2y ago
    The other replies have covered your first paragraph. This is easy. For tasks requiring GPIO, a Zero is usually more than enough, in my experience.
  - Citizen_Lame 2y ago
    Yes you can mate. In fact less then a £100 for n100, 256GB SSD, 16GB RAM, just look it up on AliExpress. You have promos on hotukdeals all the time.
  - mciancia 2y ago
    Yes N100 with 8gb ram and 256gb ssd is around 130eur on AliExpress
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    This[1] semi-random example comes with 16GB RAM and 512GB of SSD for $130 + $10 shipping. Here's[2] another form factor with similar specs for $140 with free shipping. That said, I'm sure the included RAM + SSD isn't the greatest. The ones I got in my case (different model and store) has been working fine so far, but it's a bit of gamble. [1]: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807325349169.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807325349169.html [2]: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805048559264.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805048559264.html
  - esskay 2y ago
    As others pointed out, yes you can. But you can get even better specs and at a lower price on eBay. Any of the Lenovo or Dell mini pc's are cheaper (around £50-£70 depending on the model) on eBay and SIGNIFICANTLY more useful. For people buying these as a computer the power difference isn't something that even enters their mind. How many average people do you see debating one tv over another because it uses 5w more power?
eth0up 2y ago
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?
EncomLab 2y ago
My pi400 has been my replacement Ti994/A for the last few years - I could not love it more.
qwertox 2y ago
> Lack of NVMe storage That will hurt sales.
jeden 2y ago
;( * 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?
supermatt 2y ago
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.
- supermatt 2y ago
  is this a dumb question or something? seems people dont like this comment and I cant figure out why.
  - signaturefish 2y ago
    I don't think it's a dumb question, though I guess some might question its relevance. Side-comments can be interesting, though. I don't know why they did it, but it follows the same pattern as the pi400 - develop a whole new board, rather than a daughterboard for the pi4 compute module. If I had to guess, it's probably about reducing e-waste: if someone wants a compute module and it's out of stock but there are pi500s available, why wouldn't they buy a pi500, strip the compute module out and dump the rest of the machine in the bin? And to be fair to them, they're dogfooding a fair amount - the RP1 and the RP2 are in the design, rather than a generic southbridge and keyboard controller.
itfossil 2y ago
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!
- heresie-dabord 2y ago
  I too have been excited about news of the Pi 500... I like it! I don't "run my house" (or NASA-level outdoor light displays [0]) with Raspberry Pi devices but I use the Pi 400 and an R.Pi 4 phatty as interchangeable workstations booting from a single external NVMe that I swap. The R.Pi 500 has 8GB RAM (phatter than the Pi 400) and a much better thermal profile than the non-kb R.Pi 5 because of the mainboard design and heatsink. As others have said, some opportunities for the R.Pi 500 may have been missed, such as M.2 or even a backlight for the keyboard. (Project: power an LED light from GPIO!) But the TDP, performance, and 8GB RAM are excellent features. And it's a portable system with keyboard ^_^ My ideal R.Pi would be using Display Port instead of HDMI but then the SOC (which has built-in HDMI) would be a different proposition. [1] [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/this-dazzling-raspberry-pi-christmas-light-show-is-incredible https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/this-dazzling-rasp... [1] https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=61566 https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=61566
jens-c 2y ago
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.
- supermatt 2y ago
  Are you sure about that? Other pis can use gadget mode to act as a device (like a keyboard). Has that been specifically disabled somehow for the pi500?
  - jens-c 2y ago
    That's not what I meant. I meant just using the keyboard part as a keyboard, out of the box, without the need to tinker with the pi's software and/or hardware.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
talideon 2y ago
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.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Original submitted link was the announcement post: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-500-and-raspberry-pi-monitor-on-sale-now/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-500-and-raspbe...
- geerlingguy 2y ago
  Yeah not sure why the link was changed from the official announcement to one of the reviews... confused me when I checked my comments and saw they were on a different post!
shark1 2y ago
Is it hard to have it with Dvorak keyboard layout?
stiltzkin 2y ago
[dead]
smileybarry 2y ago
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?
bane 2y ago
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.
Jackosas 2y ago
[flagged]

134 points by fridek 2y ago

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.

seba_dos1 2y ago
It would be understandable if they kept the same case mold... but they did in fact reorder the ports.
- esskay 2y ago
  Yeah that part makes it even more odd as instead of one new mold they now need 2 if/when they do add the nvme support.
thiht 2y ago
The word "Amazing" comes to my mind. My guess is you wildly overstimate how much people care about what you care about.
- esskay 2y ago
  Not sure why you think I'm talking for everyone. This is a forum for discussion, where people share their views and opinions, mine was that it's mediocre, yours was that it's amazing. That's the great thing about opinions, we all have them, and people who slate other peoples opinions tend to look a bit silly. Also if you read here, their own announcement blog post, X, Bluesky and Reddit you'll find theres a fair few people sharing my views regarding micro hdmi and the nvme shenanigans. My guess is you wildly overestimated how much people care what you care about.
  - thiht 2y ago
    > Not sure why you think I'm talking for everyone. Fair enough. I still think "mediocre" is a strong word for a <$100 product that’s a real usable computer, with this form factor. For a first computer for example, it’s NOT mediocre.

zeristor 2y ago

No nvme port, or is there a nifty fix?

sthlmb 2y ago
It's missing the connector and power components on the PCB so you may be able to solder them all on yourself if you have the parts but it's going to be a pain in the ass :D
- geerlingguy 2y ago
  Yeah; I attempted to solder on the slot... but realized after attempting it that all the power circuit components on the underside are also unpopulated. So you'd have to reverse-engineer that, get the components, solder all of them (many are tiny SMD), and solder on a couple caps on the top PCIe traces, and finally an M.2 slot on the pads up top.

elashri 2y ago

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?

dijit 2y ago
Largely, yes. Here's a much better and more in depth deep-dive into N100 vs Pi's by ExplainingComputers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hekzpSH25lk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hekzpSH25lk There's trade-offs in both directions, but largely rPI has marginally lower performance and power consumption compared to the N100. If you're not touching GPIO or need to stay under 15W strictly, then the PI is the better option. N100's seem to be slightly more expensive if buying from MSRP, but the second-hand market is much more competitive and there are more discounts available with N100 systems. RPI's are considered hobbiest tech so hold their value and are rarely discounted.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ThatPlayer 2y ago
It's a pretty common sentiment I've seen and agree with. Though I think the Pi 4 is still cost effective for its price if you don't need as much processing power.
5d41402abc4b 2y ago
You can get a few generations old mini PCs with 16GB RAM and SSD at the same price as a PI.
- danielheath 2y ago
  You can get brand new, current-gen (Alder Lake) mini PCs with those specs for the same price as a PI + storage + case + PSU.

2809 2y ago

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

kiririn 2y ago

> 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

AlanYx 2y ago
It's strange that they don't specify what gamut. I think it's possible that they mean 45% of the entire CIE gamut, which would be slightly larger than sRGB. (It's an odd way of specifying a monitor though, usually manufacturers specify as a fraction of either Adobe RGB or Display P3.)
- sho_hn 2y ago
  DCI-P3 is about 45% of CIE, so maybe that? The product brief says 16.2M color depth, though, which would mean it's 6-bit + FRC which is bizarre to couple with an aim for DCI-P3, so perhaps not. Quite an odd product! I assume these are mostly all trade-ofs so you can power it on one of the Pi's USB-A ports without an additional PSU required.
  - my123 2y ago
    45% NTSC is what I'd expect
  - kuschku 2y ago
    You can also run much better panels off a Pi's USB-A port: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0CSJWPXBV/ https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0CSJWPXBV/ 109,99€ for a 16" 2520x1680 60Hz 100% sRGB 8-bit panel. Power via USB-C, video via USB-C or mini HDMI.
- kiririn 2y ago
  I expected it to mean 45% NTSC.. panel gamuts are usually specified in marketing as either 45% NTSC, 100% sRGB, or some % of adobe rgb/display p3 for wide gamut Not sure why they dropped the NTSC, maybe consumers have cottoned on to NTSC keyword = bad monitor

5d41402abc4b 2y ago

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

geerlingguy 2y ago
I was testing it for web dev, it's much better than the Pi 400/Pi 4 in that regard[1]. Still not near Apple M1 class performance, so you have to adjust expectations for media, creative stuff. But most things I've tested work fine now on the Pi if it works in Linux at all, which is a bit nicer than last time I tried 4 years ago. [1] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/pi-500-much-faster-lacks-m2 https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/pi-500-much-faster-la...
- tunnuz 2y ago
  I should have waited to buy the 400 a few months ago.
- supermatt 2y ago
  Any thoughts on why they didn't use a CM?
  - whitehexagon 2y ago
    I was also thinking that with the pi400, but that was clocked a bit faster than a pi4 if memory serves (the heatsink). Still, it would have been nice to have a CM5 that could later be upgraded to CM6. Anyway it looks like a wait and see for the Amiga500+ version for me, that M.2 prep. looks worth waiting for. Any maybe they got some more red paint in by then.
- stiltzkin 2y ago
  [dead]
cdt5050 2y ago
Pi 5 is a great everyday desktop and development machine. Some websites are going to perform really badly, like a lot of news websites with lots of ads, but those tend to perform bad on my gaming PC, too, and I just think if a website performs bad on a Pi 5 it's really just not worth visiting.

Ekaros 2y ago

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.

porcoda 2y ago
The “trends in software” is the problem here: we’ve gotten greedy as developers and basically build assuming resources don’t matter. I am quite willing to bet that if we considered resources, we’d still be able to build all the stuff we want without assuming resources are free. Hardware would be viable longer. Efficiency unfortunately seems like the last thing anyone thinks about anymore, instead favoring time to market and layers upon layers that prioritize developer happiness and productivity over all else.

floppiplopp 2y ago

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.

0xEF 2y ago

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.

gchadwick 2y ago
I do find HN threads about R-Pi products weigh heavily negative. Yet despite the apparent many major issues that keep getting pointed out R-Pi seems to keep going from strength to strength. Maybe they understand their own customers and their market better than commenters here?
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  HN crowd is solid in some very narrow technical subjects. The more you deviate from those, the worse. It quickly degenerates into some incredibly stupid takes from people that clearly think very highly of themselves, and are unable to do any introspection. R-Pi offerings are fine. It is supposed to be a cheap computer, and they could get something that costs less than 200 bucks with a monitor. Definitely not bad.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    I think the thing many are starting to feel that they are not cheap anymore. At least compared to some things like refurb laptops and such. Just recently saw 249€ Lenovo laptop with Ryzen 5 4500U, 16GB RAM and 480GB SSD. Not new, but still, more powerful and having storage too.
    - surgical_fire 2y ago
      Yes, but that is true for basically every consumer product. Cars, electronics, you name it. "You can buy old restored/refurbished thing cheaper than a cheap brand new thing" is hardly a very insightful take. Does that mean that there is no market for "cheap brand new thing"?

schappim 2y ago

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.

StayTrue 2y ago

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

sho_hn 2y ago
Yes, it's fanless. It uses a large passive heatsink.

andridk 2y ago

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.

cdt5050 2y ago
The performance difference is practically unnoticeable in day-to-day desktop use. People don't really care about 15 second vs. 20 second boot time, and that first boot of Firefox is going to be another pretty meh comparison. Subsequent boots are going to be loading small enough data that the difference between will be meaningless. The main appeal to an NVMe on the Pi isn't speed, it's cost effectiveness. SSDs are cheaper at larger capacities than SD cards. A 1tb SD card is 2x the cost of a cheaper 1tb SSD. Storage speed is a bigger consideration on something like a gaming PC or a video editing machine, where you're going to be streaming gigabytes of textures/videos off of storage, not just trying to launch Firefox.

RedNifre 2y ago

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 https://imgur.com/Afq9uFq

sho_hn 2y ago

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.

pdpi 2y ago
The PCB has plenty of space for an M.2 slot (and, in fact, the PCB has pads for the connector and mounting holes, and is appropriately silk screened). The case design is just not designed for user serviceability, so having the slot would not be particularly useful. Jeff Geerling talks about this to some length in his video. Arguably, a non-user serviceable RPi is a bit of an odd choice, but the 400/500 are very much self-contained all-in-one products, which I guess makes it kind of reasonable.
- sho_hn 2y ago
  Sure, but I'd expect a little lid to access the M.2 slot in the case design. "It's not that kind of product", but maybe it should be: Higher capacity microSD cards are more expensive than NVMe alternatives, which are generally faster.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    Not to forget write cycles... Which can be real issue if you actually use system as desktop. In general NVME drives would likely be more reliable in long run. I really would not enjoy storage being corrupted or dead on this kind of device.
    - whitehexagon 2y ago
      I use a Pi400 daily but boot it from a small USB stick. So no SD card needed, and it seems faster.

akho 2y ago

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.

tsak 2y ago
Can you spec a N100 system with 8GB of RAM and at least 32 GB of (slow) SSD and land around the £100 / $120 price point of a Raspberry Pi 500 with 27W power adapter? Not to mention the GPIO header.
- akho 2y ago
  The other replies have covered your first paragraph. This is easy. For tasks requiring GPIO, a Zero is usually more than enough, in my experience.
- Citizen_Lame 2y ago
  Yes you can mate. In fact less then a £100 for n100, 256GB SSD, 16GB RAM, just look it up on AliExpress. You have promos on hotukdeals all the time.
- mciancia 2y ago
  Yes N100 with 8gb ram and 256gb ssd is around 130eur on AliExpress
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  This[1] semi-random example comes with 16GB RAM and 512GB of SSD for $130 + $10 shipping. Here's[2] another form factor with similar specs for $140 with free shipping. That said, I'm sure the included RAM + SSD isn't the greatest. The ones I got in my case (different model and store) has been working fine so far, but it's a bit of gamble. [1]: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807325349169.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256807325349169.html [2]: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805048559264.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805048559264.html
- esskay 2y ago
  As others pointed out, yes you can. But you can get even better specs and at a lower price on eBay. Any of the Lenovo or Dell mini pc's are cheaper (around £50-£70 depending on the model) on eBay and SIGNIFICANTLY more useful. For people buying these as a computer the power difference isn't something that even enters their mind. How many average people do you see debating one tv over another because it uses 5w more power?

eth0up 2y ago

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?

EncomLab 2y ago

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

qwertox 2y ago

> Lack of NVMe storage That will hurt sales.

jeden 2y ago

;( * 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?

supermatt 2y ago

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.

supermatt 2y ago
is this a dumb question or something? seems people dont like this comment and I cant figure out why.
- signaturefish 2y ago
  I don't think it's a dumb question, though I guess some might question its relevance. Side-comments can be interesting, though. I don't know why they did it, but it follows the same pattern as the pi400 - develop a whole new board, rather than a daughterboard for the pi4 compute module. If I had to guess, it's probably about reducing e-waste: if someone wants a compute module and it's out of stock but there are pi500s available, why wouldn't they buy a pi500, strip the compute module out and dump the rest of the machine in the bin? And to be fair to them, they're dogfooding a fair amount - the RP1 and the RP2 are in the design, rather than a generic southbridge and keyboard controller.

itfossil 2y ago

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!

heresie-dabord 2y ago
I too have been excited about news of the Pi 500... I like it! I don't "run my house" (or NASA-level outdoor light displays [0]) with Raspberry Pi devices but I use the Pi 400 and an R.Pi 4 phatty as interchangeable workstations booting from a single external NVMe that I swap. The R.Pi 500 has 8GB RAM (phatter than the Pi 400) and a much better thermal profile than the non-kb R.Pi 5 because of the mainboard design and heatsink. As others have said, some opportunities for the R.Pi 500 may have been missed, such as M.2 or even a backlight for the keyboard. (Project: power an LED light from GPIO!) But the TDP, performance, and 8GB RAM are excellent features. And it's a portable system with keyboard ^_^ My ideal R.Pi would be using Display Port instead of HDMI but then the SOC (which has built-in HDMI) would be a different proposition. [1] [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/this-dazzling-raspberry-pi-christmas-light-show-is-incredible https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/this-dazzling-rasp... [1] https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=61566 https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=61566

jens-c 2y ago

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.

supermatt 2y ago
Are you sure about that? Other pis can use gadget mode to act as a device (like a keyboard). Has that been specifically disabled somehow for the pi500?
- jens-c 2y ago
  That's not what I meant. I meant just using the keyboard part as a keyboard, out of the box, without the need to tinker with the pi's software and/or hardware.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

talideon 2y ago

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.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

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

geerlingguy 2y ago
Yeah not sure why the link was changed from the official announcement to one of the reviews... confused me when I checked my comments and saw they were on a different post!

shark1 2y ago

Is it hard to have it with Dvorak keyboard layout?

stiltzkin 2y ago

[dead]

smileybarry 2y ago

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?

bane 2y ago

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.

Jackosas 2y ago

[flagged]