In the eight years and a little since the launch of the first model, the Raspberry Pi is traditionally sold as a modular computer. You buy the card separately, attach your own peripherals, insert an SD card, and then start working on your own IT project. The Foundation looked on as third parties – including Kano – built their own all-in-one PC solutions around the Raspberry Pi, leading them to create their own desktop kit, which bundled all the technologies needed to deploy a fully functional desktop or coding workstation. Now things get better with the launch of the Raspberry Pi 400 – a full personal computer built into a 78-key keyboard that starts at $ 70.

The Pi 400 is almost the exact dimensions of the official Raspberry Pi keyboard and hub, but with all the extra ports and connectors needed to turn it into a PC. Power is supplied by the same, albeit slightly tuned, Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core processor found in the Raspberry Pi 4, along with 4GB of RAM, dual-band WiFi, Bluetooth 5.1, Gigabit Ethernet, and three USB ports. (two USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0). There are also two micro HDMI ports, a GPIO header, and a microSD card slot for the operating system and data storage.

The $ 70 computer unit is the no-frills option – you literally get the keyboard and will have to add your own power supply and accessories. However, the $ 100 Pi 400 computer kit includes a localized power supply, a mouse, a preformatted 16GB microSD card, a beginner’s guide, and a 1M micro HDMI to HDMI-A cable. It’s very similar to the Desktop Kit but with even fewer parts.

The inspiration behind the Pi 400 came from “challenges for less technical users in setting up a device with a lot of parts, often without practical assistance due to COVID-related restrictions on home visits,” confirmed the Raspberry Pi CEO, Eben Upton.

“The all-in-one form factor aims to simplify setup for people who just want to use their Raspberry Pi as a PC. Fewer components on the desktop mean less clutter, faster setup and teardown times, and fewer chances of misconfiguring the device. In fact, it also saves money, so the kit is significantly cheaper than the Pi 4 4GB Desktop Kit ($ 100 vs. $ 120 RRP).

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Raspberry Pi desktop kits will remain on sale for people who want the flexibility of the original form factor or want to purchase models with different memory capacities. The company does not currently consider offering a 2GB version of the Pi 400, due to the relatively small proportional cost savings, but may decide to offer a more robust model for “large enterprise or educational deployments where the ‘cumulative cost savings are worth it’ further down the road.

To those of a certain age, the Pi 400 may seem familiar; the 1980s were full of all-in-one microcomputers like the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, and Atari 800XL. “I was a kid of the BBC Micro and the Amiga,” Upton said, “without these platforms, I and many others like me would never have found myself in the engineering field. . ” Continuing this push to help young people study computer science has always been at the heart of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s mission, and Upton says “this is just the next phase of this journey.”

The Raspberry Pi 400 is available for purchase today in the US, UK, and France. The official list of resellers can be found here.