Raspberry Pi 400 review

In June 1983 (or was it 1984?) I went up to a friend's house. "Look," they told me. There was a kind of little typewriter connected to a television. One of them was playing a video game called 'Manic Miner'. That keyboard was a computer. One called ZX Spectrum, a wonderful invention that changed (a little bit) the world. Today, 37 (or 36?) Years later I have in front of me another small typewriter connected to a monitor. This keyboard is also a computer, it is also wonderful and it is part of a project that for years has changed the world (a little bit). Welcome to the Raspberry Pi 400 review. Raspberry Pi 400 datasheet In our analysis of the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (launched in June 2019) we already talked at length about the great hardware leap that the Raspberry Pi Foundation had made compared to the previous model.

Both the CPU and the GPU had gained many integers, but the format of the Raspberry Pi 400 allows us to go a little further in the field of power. Although many specifications coincide, the Raspberry Pi 400 tightens the nuts on the Broadcom BCM2711B0 CPU, which here has a clock frequency of 1.8 GHz compared to the 1.5 GHz of the conventional RPi 4 Model B. Broadcom BCM2711B0 processor, quad-core Cortex-A72 @ 1.8 GHz VideoCore VI 500 MHz GPU MEMORY 4 GB LPDDR4-3200 WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY Wi-Fi 802.11.b / g / n / ac, Bluetooth 5.0, BLE Gigabit Ethernet NETWORK CONNECTIVITY 40-pin GPIO PORTS, 2 x Micro HDMI, 1 x USB 2.0, 2 x USB 3.0, Micro SD, USB-C (power) RELEASE DATE 11/02/2020 PRICE 107.75 euros We gain some power points - something that we confirm later with the tests - but we also lose some connectivity options. The number of USB ports drops, but we also lose the composite video connector, the headphone jack (perhaps the only debatable decision), and the DSI (for the camera) and DSI (for the touchscreen) connectors. A toy design for a product that is much more than that It is surprising to see how almost four decades after discovering what a ZX Spectrum was, I saw myself before a team that is in many ways a tribute both to that 8-bit microcomputer and to others that conquered the 80's. I ended up having a C64 —Guess who has managed to sell more units than that mythical computer—, but the essence was the same in all of them: the keyboard was much more than a keyboard.

With the Raspberry Pi 400, exactly that happens: the keyboard is much more than a keyboard, and inside it contains a small Raspberry Pi 4 that does not have the format we know, but has been "stretched" to adapt to that case-keyboard that now surrounds it and that also changes the distribution of its ports. The design of that keyboard is, above all, friendly and cheerful. First of all, its compact size is striking, much smaller than the keyboard that I use in my day to day (a Logitech K800) and that adopts a tenkeyless format in which we forget the traditional numeric keyboard. The regional keyboard layout, by the way, is different depending on the country: keyboard maps are available for the US, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. We have logically tested the Spanish keyboard, which has the usual layout of the keys and a series of special accesses in some of them that are activated with the Fn modifier. It is that modifier that, for example, use the pseudo numeric keyboard by pressing Shift + Fn + [key], but also access a curious option: an on and off button that acts like the traditional physical switch and that we can activate with the Shift + combination. Fn + F10.

Precisely in the upper part where the function keys are located, we find three small LED indicators in which it is quickly visualized if the equipment is on and if the caps lock is activated. There is also an indicator of the number lock, something curious because there is no direct access to that option with keyboard shortcuts and in fact accessing that lock is not trivial. It is also surprising the white color that dominates the entire upper part of the keyboard and that is combined with that raspberry red color (raspberry, of course) of the lower part. All that keyboard case is made of a plastic that has an unmistakable feel and that makes it easy to take the Raspberry Pi 400 for what it is not. Because even if it looks like it, it is not a toy. Or if it is, it's a wonderful one. In that design, we still have a good set of connectivity options at our fingertips. When looking at it from the rear, we find from left to right the GPIO port (with pin 1 at the top right and pin 40 at the bottom left, good to know), the MicroSD card reader (with an SD adapter included in the box) and two micro HDMI ports to connect up to two displays.

A little further to the right is the USB-C port that allows powering the Raspberry Pi 400, in addition to two USB 3.0 ports, a USB 2.0 port, the Gigabit Ethernet connector and a small Kensington lock that is also a pleasant surprise although since plastic is used, the security provided by having it "tied" with one of these closures is rather low. In the Raspberry Pi box there are a few more surprises. Specifically, the small power adapter with the necessary USB-C output to be able to operate the equipment. We also have a Micro HDMI to HDMI cable for connection to a TV or monitor and the official Raspberry Pi mouse, which maintains exactly the same color scheme (white on the top, raspberry on the bottom and the scroll wheel). This mouse is also somewhat compact and flat, thus making it easy to carry along with the RPi 400 anywhere. The last detail is especially noteworthy: with the Raspberry Pi 400 you can choose to include a copy of 'The Official Guide to Raspberry Pi for Beginners', a 250-page softcover book translated into Spanish and that once again seems a tribute to the 8-bit era: then computers used to include some small user manual, and here Gareth Halfacree, author of the same, has made a spectacular effort.

The book is a fantastic way to start with the conventional Raspberry Pi or with this RPi 400, and through its different chapters it makes an introduction not only to the start-up of the computer and the first steps with its operating system, Raspberry Pi OS, It also encourages us to make our first steps with two programming languages ​​(Scratch and Python), to use the GPIO port to start experimenting with electronics and even to take advantage of boards such as Sense HATs and the high-resolution cameras available for the Raspberry Pi (be careful, they are not compatible with the RPi 400). Putting the equipment into operation is very simple, but lovers of minimalism and wireless desks are going to have a problem with this equipment, which requires a cable deployment that is not visually very attractive. It is curious to see, for example, how the micro HDMI and USB-C current cables are white, but the official mouse (which is also not particularly long) is that characteristic raspberry red color.

I wanted to live dangerously and I also connected a purple network cable (I'm afraid I didn't have another one at hand) so the resulting festival was not particularly pretty to watch. The result once again smelled like the computer of yesteryear, for better and for worse. The set, we insist, may seem very toy, but the possibilities go much further, and once again the Raspberry Pi project is prodigious in terms of its approach -anyone can learn to use it in a very short time- and its scope -programming. in Scratch or Python and raising electronics projects is just the beginning of much more-. The entire maker movement has shown how much can be done with Raspberry Pi or similar platforms like Arduino or the many alternatives to RPi. This mini-computer is just a tool to an end, but what a tool, gentlemen. What a tool. Performance - Won't win races, but it's more than enough to finish them One of the doubts that may arise when talking about a team like this is in the performance we can expect from it. The Raspberry Pi have already allowed in past editions (and with their classic format) to give good surprises to users in general and makers in particular.

Projects of all kinds have been feasible and affordable thanks to these small miniPCs, but beyond those projects and very popular areas such as retroemulation or the launch of a small mediacenter with Kodi (for example), can you give of yourself the Raspberry Pi 400 as a desktop computer? This is what we wanted to determine with a series of tests that have allowed us to answer with a forceful answer: yes, it is perfectly possible to use this Raspberry Pi as a desktop PC. Not a super vitaminized one or one that allows us to play all kinds of games, of course, but one with which to perform many of the tasks that any user performs in their day to day. To demonstrate this we wanted to run a series of tests that we have been reeling off with the results. Let's go there. The Phoronix Test Suite tool is already an old acquaintance of the Linux systems test benches, and it is a great way to compare this Raspberry pi with others that we have already analyzed in the past.