By By Tom Fenton03/23/2026
Publication Date: 2026-03-23 00:00:00
Hands-on with a Pi 500+
When the Raspberry Pi 400 launched in 2020, I was excited because it reimagined what a small computer could be by placing a computer (Raspberry Pi 4) into a keyboard chassis. The concept wasn’t new, as the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum did decades earlier, but the Pi 400 revitalized this concept.
Raspberry refined that idea in 2025 with the release of the Pi 500, modernizing it with more powerful internals, better connectivity, and other improvements. I bought one and wrote a review of it. I was impressed by it, as for around a hundred bucks, you get a system that can be used to create documents, surf the web, and watch videos. Furthermore, I hoped it would encourage young users to experiment with programming and other IT-related tasks. However, it was not without faults, well, not really faults, more like trade-offs that had to be made to keep it at this price point.
Now, just months later, we have the Raspberry Pi 500+, a device that addresses many of the Pi 500’s limitations while keeping the same “computer-in-a-keyboard” form factor.
I plan to use the Raspberry Pi 500+ over the next few weeks in various scenarios — as a desktop replacement, a virtual-machine host, and a platform for AI work.
I will run it through its paces…