Raspberry Pi 500: X Best Features Of The New Keyboard Computer

In November 2020, Raspberry Pi disrupted its established line of single-board computers (or SBCs for short) with the release of the Raspberry Pi 400, essentially a more user-friendly version of the Raspberry Pi 4 SBC that the company released over a year earlier. Instead of being a bare board intended mainly for use by dedicated tinkerers, the Pi 400 came prebuilt in a case with a keyboard built into it as well as a microSD card with Raspberry Pi OS pre-installed. It still needed a power supply, HDMI cable, and a mouse, but aside from the lack of a power supply, you can say the same thing about the stock version of Apple's Mac Mini.

Now, in December 2024, 14-plus months after the release of the Raspberry Pi 5, the Pi 400 has gotten a follow-up, the Raspberry Pi 500, which was announced on December 9. As its predecessor was to the Raspberry Pi 4, the Raspberry Pi 500 is to the Raspberry Pi 5, the same board thrown in a cute little keyboard case. There are other differences, though, like the addition of a heatsink, which had to happen given the Pi 5's beefier CPU. If you want, you can spend an extra $30, for a total of $120, to get a kit that includes the USB Type-C power supply, HDMI cable, and mouse. In addition, the Pi 500 was announced alongside another new product, the 15.6-inch Raspberry Pi Monitor. Let's take a look at some of the more attractive features of the Raspberry Pi 500.

In the upgrade from the Raspberry Pi 4 to the Raspberry Pi 5, one complicating factor was that the Raspberry Pi 5 was the first model that needed a heatsink and fan to live up to its full potential. For basic computing, you don't need one, but if you're going to really push the CPU and GPU by, for example, emulating PlayStation 2 games on your Raspberry Pi 5? Then you definitely needed some extra cooling help. "The takeaway here is that you really want to invest in an active cooler this time," said popular emulation authority Modern Vintage Gamer on YouTube. "I wouldn't recommend using a Raspberry Pi 5 with anything substantial without an active cooler." Raspberry Pi — the company — was clearly aware of this, as it has various official coolers and cooler cases available for the bare boards.

With the Raspberry Pi 500 being a prebuilt, self-contained version of the Raspberry Pi 5, one would hope that it has a cooling solution built-in. That's doubly true since its predecessor, the Raspberry Pi 400, doesn't have any kind of cooling apparatus. Sure enough, the Pi 500 includes a built-in aluminum heatsink. However, being a passive cooler, it raises the question of whether a Pi 500 can be pushed to the performance levels of a Pi 5 since there's no fan to help pull the heat away. So far, it looks good, with Tom's Hardware describing the heatsink's performance as "remarkable," even when overclocking the CPU.

If you've wanted a Raspberry Pi 5 for serious classic gaming because of the overall bang for your buck but were discouraged by the need to buy an aftermarket case and/or heatsink, much less assemble the parts yourself, then you're in luck. The Raspberry Pi 500 is a Raspberry Pi 5 with an aluminum heatsink in a snazzy-looking keyboard case, all pre-built, and comes with a 32GB microSD card. This all only retails for $10 more, at $90, than a bare Raspberry Pi 5 board sans microSD card. It's still missing a USB Type-C power supply — Raspberry Pi is obviously assuming you have plenty of those lying around — and the HDMI cable needed to connect it to a TV or monitor, though you can grab a "Desktop Kit" that includes those items and an HDMI cable for an additional $30.

With reviews of the performance of the heatsink being very positive so far, it looks like this is a very solid alternative to the Raspberry Pi 5, even for gaming, especially if you'd prefer to have something fully prebuilt. Regardless, if you've been on the fence about a Raspberry Pi 5, the negligible increase in price makes the Pi 500 an incredibly tempting alternative to the Pi 5 for anyone looking to use it more as a general-purpose desktop computer.

One of the coolest things about the Raspberry Pi 500 (and previously the Raspberry Pi 400) is that you don't technically don't need any additional input devices to use it. That's because the case is also the keyboard. As of this writing, the official Raspberry Pi website doesn't have a specs page up yet for the Pi 500 that includes its physical dimensions, but the footprint of the Pi 400 measures a little over 11 inches across, giving a decent indication of how big it might be. Your mileage may vary as to whether or not that's comfortable enough for regular use, especially since, with the simultaneous release of the Raspberry Pi Monitor, the Pi 500 is explicitly positioned as a desktop computer replacement.

However, if your plan is to use the Raspberry Pi 500 as a classic gaming hub or something else that you'd ideally be using with something like a wireless gamepad as the primary input device, then the keyboard size doesn't matter as much. If you look at it as a way for you to be able to easily set up your Raspberry Pi 500 without having to keep a USB keyboard around the house, then it's pretty enticing. And if you have tiny hands, then it's probably even more enticing as an all-in-one desktop computer, making it an interesting choice as, for example, a child's starter computer.

Sure, the Raspberry Pi 500 is basically just a Raspberry Pi 5 in a package that's friendlier for the average user. But it's still a Raspberry Pi 5 at heart, and the Raspberry Pi 5 is easily the most powerful model in the history of the single-board computer series to date. That's particularly tantalizing if you're interested in using Raspberry Pi 5 to run a classic console emulation-centric operating system like RetroPie or Batocera.

If you're a fan of video games from the sixth generation of consoles or earlier, then the Raspberry Pi 5 and Raspberry Pi 500 are both capable of smoothly running the vast majority of emulators and games you throw at them. Raspberry Pi boards aren't yet capable of emulating games from the original Microsoft Xbox, but the Pi 5 — and thus the Pi 500 — has the horsepower to do a great job with the Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo GameCube, and, to a lesser extent, the Sony PlayStation 2. We haven't seen any specific reviews yet looking at how the Pi 500's passive cooling handles emulation of those consoles, which was better off with an active cooler on the Pi 5. But with Tom's Hardware verifying in its review that the heatsink keeps the system on a chip sufficiently cool even when overclocking, it seems like the Pi 500 should be able to easily compete with the Pi 5 when it comes to heavy loads like 3D game emulation.

If you were already in the market for Raspberry Pi's existing keyboard computer, the Raspberry Pi 400, then the best feature may simply be the overall spec improvements in the Raspberry Pi 500. The jump from the 4/400 to the 5/500 is pretty significant, even before you get to the computers' raw horsepower. The networking is now significantly faster, with the ethernet going from 1 gigabit to 2.5 gigabits per second and the Wi-Fi leaping a generation from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6. The display output is also upgraded, as the device's two micro-HDMI ports are now capable of feeding 4K displays at 60Hz.

On the inside, the 500's system on a chip is a lot beefier, with the 500's Broadcom BCN12712 ARM Cortex A76 CPU delivering about two to three times the performance of the 400's Broadcom BCM2711 ARM Cortex A72. On the GPU side, the 500's VideoCore VII, which supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and Vulkan 1.2, is also a significant upgrade from the 400's VideoCore VI, which supported up to OpenGL ES 3.1 and Vulkan 1.0. The GeekBench scores for the new CPU speak pretty loudly, as, from the Pi 400 to the Pi 500, the single-core score jumps from 249 to 892, while the multi-core score is 717 to 2112, living up to the promises of tripled performance. If you're in the market for one of Raspberry Pi's keyboard computers, the Pi 500 is a lot beefier, especially for gaming purposes.