Recently, the Raspberry Pi Foundation released the Raspberry Pi 400. This product essentially integrates the Raspberry Pi motherboard into the casing of a keyboard.

Of course, it is not simply a Raspberry Pi 4B wrapped inside; the manufacturer has redesigned the circuit and PCB.

All you need is an HDMI cable, a 5V power adapter, and a mouse. Connect it to a monitor, and the Raspberry Pi 400 becomes a standard desktop computer.

From the front, the Raspberry Pi 400 looks almost identical to the previous official Raspberry Pi keyboard, with the only difference being that the F10 scroll lock key has now become the power key, and the scroll lock indicator light has turned into a power/activity indicator light.

On the side, the Raspberry Pi 400 has more ports. There are two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, two micro HDMI ports that support 4K60 output, one gigabit Ethernet port (now supports PoE), one USB-C for power, and importantly, a 40-pin GPIO header.

The bare Raspberry Pi 400 is priced at $70, and the official kit is specially priced at $100.

The $100 Raspberry Pi 400 kit includes: Raspberry Pi 400 (1.8GHz quad-core CPU, 4GB RAM), a 16GB SanDisk microSD card, official USB-C power supply, official mouse, micro-HDMI to HDMI cable, and the official Raspberry Pi getting started guide.

Teardown

The bottom of the Raspberry Pi 400 has no screws or other fasteners; the difference from a regular keyboard is that it has some ventilation holes and larger rubber feet.

After disconnecting the connector between the keyboard and the motherboard, we first notice the huge heat sink; there is a small conductive pad in the upper left corner connecting the Ethernet port, heat sink, and keyboard.

Next, we remove the four screws that secure the heat sink. This step requires a little wiggling while pulling up, as it is secured with a very strong adhesive thermal pad on the Broadcom SoC chip.

After removing the heat sink, we can see the design differences between the Raspberry Pi 400 and the Raspberry Pi 4B.

The back of the Raspberry Pi 400’s motherboard has very few components, making it quite clean.

The Raspberry Pi 400 uses the same PCB antenna for WiFi as other Raspberry Pis that support WiFi, without external components, making it a pretty good small antenna.

Performance

The Raspberry Pi 400 supports the Raspberry Pi Desktop operating system, as well as third-party Linux distributions such as Debian and Ubuntu.

In terms of specifications, the Raspberry Pi 400 features a quad-core 64-bit @1.8GHz ARM Cortex-A72 processor, paired with 4GB RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.1 (low energy Bluetooth), and gigabit Ethernet.

The parameters of the Raspberry Pi 400 have not changed much, with the frequency increased from 1.5 GHz on the Raspberry Pi 4B to 1.8 GHz. Thanks to the large heat sink, enthusiasts have successfully overclocked it to 2.2 GHz, running stably for several hours.

Conclusion

The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s original intention was indeed to make programmable computers accessible to people at a very low cost. However, the actual situation has diverged from their original intentions, directly exploding the MAKER market… Since the release of the first version of the Raspberry Pi, it has been used in a dazzling array of scenarios, and even in industrial and commercial fields.

With the release of the Raspberry Pi 400, we see many discussions about the “Raspberry Pi 400 has gone off track.” Similar to the conclusion drawn from our previous article “How is the experience of using an 8GB Raspberry Pi for work instead of a MacBook?“:

If you want to completely replace your usual computer with the Raspberry Pi 400, it is still not enough for now. But for some people, the Raspberry Pi 400 has its unique advantages.

The Raspberry Pi 400 has high performance (only requiring a 5V power supply), is compact and convenient. For those who only need to browse the web, edit documents, handle emails, browse social media, or even do some lightweight photo or video editing, it is a great choice.

The Raspberry Pi 400 is also very suitable for educational applications. As the official website states:

The Raspberry Pi 400 is the perfect educational tool for students of all ages. It is low-cost, portable, making it an ideal choice for home learning and an excellent choice for teaching programming, physical computing, and networking concepts.

As your child’s first computer for learning programming or the Linux system, the Raspberry Pi 400 is a very good choice.

via: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-400-teardown-and-review | Jeff, Roy DF Maker Community

The links in the article can be clicked to read the original text at the end

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