- 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.
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.
If this cost $5 more and had the M.2 slot and some way to access it reasonably easily, I would buy one immediately. Without that, I probably won’t buy one at all.
This thing is a desktop computer. The degree to which the performance is improved by using good storage is huge. Excellent NVMe disks in the M.2 form factor are cheap and widely available. Excellent SD cards are not so easy to find. Excellent USB devices are not as good as their M.2 counterparts, are more expensive, and are sufficiently awkward dangling out the back of an RPi 400/500 that’s it’s barely worth considering.
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.
>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
I hear this repeated over and over again in RPi threads, but nobody ever provides any proof of developing nations using RPis as affordable desktop computers apart from some PR articles every now and then involving partnerships and donations.
This feels more of an opinionated viewpoint or stereotype from clueless westerners from rich countries they have on developing countries. $50+ for a RPi might be affordable computer for you when your average computer at home is $700+, but for people in developing countries even $50 is A LOT of money and they're not gonna spend it buying RPis.
As someone originally from a developing nation, most people there use x86 PCs or laptops from the used market or rescued from e-waste imports and repaired because they're much cheaper (nearly free) and more abundant than a new RPI 5 based computer, not to mention more versatile in what SW they can run.
Or, more recently people started using old Android phones to learn on because they're also cheap and abundant and can be used for coding/tinkering. But RPis, not so much.
The OLPC project intended to provide cheap computers to developing countries also failed in part because, just like a RPI as a computer, westerners don't understand the market of developing countries and do product development from their own privileged perspective.
This isn't meant to denigrate anyone's work or effort, just wanted to share the reality in the field that I encountered.
Oh and BTW, even in the rich west where I live now, a RPi5 is pretty expresive and impractical for a general purpose computer when you can find Core i5 laptops with 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSDs for that money on the used market. And it comes with display and battery to boot and can be used on the go.
>We tend to forget that not everyone on the planet has the same resources or needs we do.
True, but we must also admit that misguided prejudices about resources can lead people to miss out on some very significant opportunities, as well.
By way of anecdotal example: I have a Pi 400 on my desk that I have used as a Linux development workstation for the past couple of years - in which it has performed superlatively, I might add. Its small and light and fast enough, yet works as a perfectly good performance metric/measurement for the projects I've thrown at it.
I used it to develop a scientific instrumentation and sampling product which has gone on to produce >$40million in revenue for the customer. I've used it to develop audio capture tools which have been integrated into the r&d facilities at a major audio hardware vendor.
So, even though it might seem 'underpowered' and 'un-sexy' for most such tasks, this particular embedded developer has been able to squeeze much value out of the limits of the hardware. Not only is it a good performance reference, but it has just enough oomph to allow me to avoid using cross-compiler techniques, and in that sense is a gateway device to so many very powerful embedded Linux development tools and methods.
I would have absolutely loved getting this as my first personal computer. The form factor is so cool, and even living in a first world country, that price tag is incredible.
I really don't understand most of the comments, who cares if it just has micro hdmi ports, no nvme (whatever it is, I don't think I would care if I was 16, and I don't think I care today either) or whatever you think is missing? It costs less than $100 and runs Linux!
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?
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
A raspberry pi 5 is still 2 to 3 times less power hungry than a N100. If one has no need for the power, it makes totally sense to just use a raspberry.
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.
N100 blows it out of the water for anything that just needs uptime, reliable and fast storage, speed and video encoding/decoding.
You can get an N100 16GB ram with 500GB M2 storage for about $200 range, which if you were to spec out a Pi with a case, cooling, proper storage, correct cables you'd be getting close or past that.
Obviously electronics or GPIO projects I'd still go with Pi.
For home (mini) server use cases, cheap/unbranded x86 SBCs are also my favorites, especially because they can be easily expanded (I've put two disks for reliability).
Also, at least until some time ago, ARM compatibility was not always guaranteed by open source projects (I think nowadays it became ubiquitous).
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
sho_hn|1 year ago
- 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|1 year ago
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.
amluto|1 year ago
This thing is a desktop computer. The degree to which the performance is improved by using good storage is huge. Excellent NVMe disks in the M.2 form factor are cheap and widely available. Excellent SD cards are not so easy to find. Excellent USB devices are not as good as their M.2 counterparts, are more expensive, and are sufficiently awkward dangling out the back of an RPi 400/500 that’s it’s barely worth considering.
0xEF|1 year ago
We tend to forget that not everyone on the planet has the same resources or needs we do.
Cumpiler69|1 year ago
I hear this repeated over and over again in RPi threads, but nobody ever provides any proof of developing nations using RPis as affordable desktop computers apart from some PR articles every now and then involving partnerships and donations.
This feels more of an opinionated viewpoint or stereotype from clueless westerners from rich countries they have on developing countries. $50+ for a RPi might be affordable computer for you when your average computer at home is $700+, but for people in developing countries even $50 is A LOT of money and they're not gonna spend it buying RPis.
As someone originally from a developing nation, most people there use x86 PCs or laptops from the used market or rescued from e-waste imports and repaired because they're much cheaper (nearly free) and more abundant than a new RPI 5 based computer, not to mention more versatile in what SW they can run.
Or, more recently people started using old Android phones to learn on because they're also cheap and abundant and can be used for coding/tinkering. But RPis, not so much.
The OLPC project intended to provide cheap computers to developing countries also failed in part because, just like a RPI as a computer, westerners don't understand the market of developing countries and do product development from their own privileged perspective.
This isn't meant to denigrate anyone's work or effort, just wanted to share the reality in the field that I encountered.
Oh and BTW, even in the rich west where I live now, a RPi5 is pretty expresive and impractical for a general purpose computer when you can find Core i5 laptops with 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSDs for that money on the used market. And it comes with display and battery to boot and can be used on the go.
aa-jv|1 year ago
True, but we must also admit that misguided prejudices about resources can lead people to miss out on some very significant opportunities, as well.
By way of anecdotal example: I have a Pi 400 on my desk that I have used as a Linux development workstation for the past couple of years - in which it has performed superlatively, I might add. Its small and light and fast enough, yet works as a perfectly good performance metric/measurement for the projects I've thrown at it.
I used it to develop a scientific instrumentation and sampling product which has gone on to produce >$40million in revenue for the customer. I've used it to develop audio capture tools which have been integrated into the r&d facilities at a major audio hardware vendor.
So, even though it might seem 'underpowered' and 'un-sexy' for most such tasks, this particular embedded developer has been able to squeeze much value out of the limits of the hardware. Not only is it a good performance reference, but it has just enough oomph to allow me to avoid using cross-compiler techniques, and in that sense is a gateway device to so many very powerful embedded Linux development tools and methods.
thiht|1 year ago
I really don't understand most of the comments, who cares if it just has micro hdmi ports, no nvme (whatever it is, I don't think I would care if I was 16, and I don't think I care today either) or whatever you think is missing? It costs less than $100 and runs Linux!
gchadwick|1 year ago
pjmlp|1 year ago
My first computer had 48 KB of memory, folks don't have any idea of how much computing is wasted nowadays in their Electron garbage.
hashishen|1 year ago
kiririn|1 year ago
$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|1 year ago
(It's an odd way of specifying a monitor though, usually manufacturers specify as a fraction of either Adobe RGB or Display P3.)
andridk|1 year ago
The smaller drives are very affordable and the performance difference is huge.
cdt5050|1 year ago
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.
itfossil|1 year ago
New Pi day is the best day!
heresie-dabord|1 year ago
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-rasp...
[1] https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=61566
schappim|1 year ago
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.
floppiplopp|1 year ago
RedNifre|1 year ago
These days, I mainly use it as a Commodore 64: https://imgur.com/Afq9uFq
esskay|1 year ago
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|1 year ago
thiht|1 year ago
elashri|1 year ago
dijit|1 year ago
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
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.
poulpy123|1 year ago
ThatPlayer|1 year ago
whywhywhywhy|1 year ago
You can get an N100 16GB ram with 500GB M2 storage for about $200 range, which if you were to spec out a Pi with a case, cooling, proper storage, correct cables you'd be getting close or past that.
Obviously electronics or GPIO projects I'd still go with Pi.
pizza234|1 year ago
Also, at least until some time ago, ARM compatibility was not always guaranteed by open source projects (I think nowadays it became ubiquitous).
5d41402abc4b|1 year ago
bane|1 year ago
- 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.
ChrisArchitect|1 year ago
geerlingguy|1 year ago
5d41402abc4b|1 year ago
geerlingguy|1 year ago
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-la...
cdt5050|1 year ago
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.
jens-c|1 year ago
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|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
EncomLab|1 year ago
eth0up|1 year ago
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?
supermatt|1 year ago
supermatt|1 year ago
StayTrue|1 year ago
sho_hn|1 year ago
smileybarry|1 year ago
talideon|1 year ago
2809|1 year ago
qwertox|1 year ago
That will hurt sales.
Ekaros|1 year ago
Still, I feel it is pretty reasonably priced as whole unit considering other products from them.
porcoda|1 year ago
jeden|1 year 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?
zeristor|1 year ago
sthlmb|1 year ago
shark1|1 year ago
stiltzkin|1 year ago
[deleted]
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
Jackosas|1 year ago
[deleted]
akho|1 year ago
Not sure what the point the monitor makes.
tsak|1 year ago
Not to mention the GPIO header.
thiht|1 year ago