Raspberry Pi 500 review with Raspberry Pi Monitor and teardown – CNX Software

The Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC is just out along with the 15.6-inch Raspberry Pi Monitor and received samples from Raspberry Pi for review a few days ago.  I’ve had time to play with both, so in this review, I’ll go through an unboxing of the kit I received and report my experience with both the keyboard PC and monitor.

Unboxing

Let’s start with the keyboard PC. The bottom side of the package has some specs and a logo for the keyboard layout, in this case “UK”.

There’s only the keyboard PC in the package. Here’s the top with the 79-key UK layout. Users can already purchase a model with a US layout, and models with German, Spanish, French, Italian, Nordic, and Japanese layouts are coming. We are left out here since there’s no Raspberry Pi 500 with a Thai keyboard layout. If your language is not covered, I’d recommend the US layout for reasons I’ll explain later.

There’s nothing much to see on the bottom except some ventilation holes just like in the Raspberry Pi 400.

All ports can be found on the rear panel. From left to right: a USB 2.0 port, two USB 3.0 ports, a microSD card slot fitted with a 32GB microSD card, a USB-C port for power, two micro HDMI 2.0 ports, a 40-pin GPIO header, a gigabit Ethernet port and what looks like a Kensington lock slot. It has the same ports as the Raspberry Pi 400 but the ports have a much different arrangement, e.g. the 40-pin GPIO header was on the left in the Pi 400.

While on the subject of the 40-pin GPIO header, it’s protected by a rubber cover since most users won’t do anything with it, and to prevent dust from going in.

I tried to remove it with my fingers, but no luck, so I ended up taking the rubber cover out with a pen.

Let’s switch to the Raspberry Pi Monitor.

It has a stand on the back with a 180° hinge. I really like it since it’s sturdy and can be moved upright giving easy access to the HDMI, audio, and USB-C port. This also makes it easy to carry the display around thanks to its handle. In that respect, it’s much better than other portable displays I’ve used like the CrowView laptop monitor with a flimsy standard or the CrowVi USB-C and HDMI portable display with a stand made of fabric…

Three ports can be found on the back: a 3.5mm audio jack, a USB-C port for power, and a HDMI input port. I wish Raspberry Pi hardware could support USB-C video since power and display can be handled by a single cable that way. It’s neater on the desk and users can carry fewer cables in their bag, which is something I appreciate when I travel and have to move my setup every few days…

We’ll also find the brightness and volume buttons, the power button, and VESA mounting threads on the back of the monitor.

I’ve not had to use the power button during testing since the display will turn on automatically when the Raspberry Pi 500 is powered on, and it will go to sleep when the keyboard PC is turned off.

Raspberry Pi 500 first boot

But the first boot did not exactly go as planned. I was expecting Raspberry Pi OS to boot immediately, but instead, the bootloader asked me whether I wanted to press SHIFT to go through a network install.

This only works with Ethernet, so I went inside, connected an Ethernet cable, and went through the installation process until I realized there was no storage and had that facepalm moment. The microSD card was there, but not fully inserted into the slot. I must have inadvertently taken it out when holding the keyboard PC.

So I pushed the microSD card back into position and moved back outside to carry on with the Raspberry Pi 500 and Pi Monitor review. This time I was greeted with the Raspberry Pi OS setup wizard.

I first selected Thailand for the country since it’s where I reside and went to the next step, but it indeed selected the Thai keyboard without an obvious way to change the layout. So I went back to select “Thailand” and “use English keyboard”. It’s not ideal since I have a UK keyboard, so that’s why I recommend purchasing a Raspberry Pi 500 with a US keyboard layout if there aren’t any models with your country’s default layout.

It took a while until the system could detect wireless networks, but I could eventually connect to my 5 GHz WiFi access point and complete the installation with a working Internet connection.

Raspberry Pi Monitor Tips and Tests

It’s because the monitor limits the brightness to 60% and volume to 50% when the display is powered by a USB port from Raspberry Pi hardware. Once I powered the monitor with its own USB-C power adapter, I could increase the brightness (and volume) to 100%. That’s something else that a USB-C port could fix easily in future Raspberry Pi SBCs.

Since the Raspberry Monitor supports audio with two speakers and a 3.5mm audio jack, I played a YouTube video in Firefox getting audio from HDMI input to the built-in speakers.

It works, but the audio quality could be improved, or using technical terms we can say the built-in speakers are garbage, and most people will not want to listen to music or watch videos with those unless there’s no other choice.  So I switched to a pair of inexpensive USB-powered speakers connected to the monitor’s 3.5mm audio jack, and the audio quality was much better. The switch between the built-in speakers and the 3.5mm audio input is automatic.

Considering some of the new Raspberry Pi products launched recently, I would not be surprised to see Raspberry Pi-branded speakers in 2025!

Raspberry Pi 500 system info, benchmarks, and cooling

Raspberry Pi 500 teardown

Let’s complete this year with a teardown of the Raspberry Pi 500. The mechanical design is the same as the Raspberry Pi 400 so there aren’t any screws holding the two plastic parts of the keyboard PC together. I used a small plastic tool to open the enclosure, but swiping an old credit card would also do.

A large metal plate cools the Broadcom BCM2712 SoC with a design similar to the Pi 400. But one thing that quickly caught my attention was the ability to add an M.2 SSD to the Raspberry Pi 500. Oh, wait… The M.2 socket is not soldered… So while it’s something you could do, you’d have some soldering work to do first…

Let’s disconnect the keyboard flat cable and loosen four screws to remove the metal plate and have a better look at the Raspberry Pi 500 mainboard.

It turns out an M.2 NVMe SSD is not the only feature the Raspberry Pi 500 could potentially support, as the board was also designed with PoE circuitry (left side, unpopulated) and RTC battery support (bottom right). So either those were just ideas that were given up, or some future Raspberry Pi 500 models may integrate an M.2 NVMe SSD, an RTC battery, and/or PoE support.

One key difference compared to the Raspberry Pi 400 is that the company has been busy making its own chips since 2020. So the Holtek HT45R0072 8-bit MCU is now replaced by a Raspberry Pi RP2040 for keyboard control, a Raspberry Pi RP1 southbridge is used instead of a VL805 PCIe to USB controller, and we’ll also find a Raspberry Pi-branded (as opposed to designed) RPI-RM0 wireless module based on Infineon CYW43455 chipset.

Other chips include Broadcom BCM54213PE gigabit Ethernet PHY, an 8GB Micro LPDDR4x chip, and a Renesas DA9091 PMIC, all of which can also be found in the Raspberry Pi 5. One change compared to Pi 5 is the use of a low-profile RJ45 connector along with a BOURNS SM51625L GbE transformer instead of an RJ45 jack with an integrated transformer.

I finally took the board out of the plastic enclosure to check out the bottom side.

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There’s not much to see here except plenty of small passive components.

Conclusion

It uses the same ports as the Raspberry Pi 400, but I wish they would have slightly modified the design to allow for the insertion of an M.2 SSD for storage. For example through a cover on the bottom, but this would have increased the height of the design, and they might have thought it would not be worth it. Alternatively, they could have exposed the PCIe FPC connector allowing people to connect Raspberry Pi HAT+ with PCIe. Finally, since I’m based in Thailand, I would have wished for a Thai keyboard layout, but the small market size probably does not justify it. We can always use a US layout with keyboard stickers…

The Raspberry Pi Monitor is a first good try. I like the handle since it’s much sturdier and convenient to use than other portable display solutions I’ve played with, as well as the bottom opening for cable management. The screen itself is acceptable, but the audio quality from the speakers is rather poor and should probably be improved. I wish the display also had a USB-C input port that supports both video input and power.

I’d like to thank Raspberry Pi for sending the Pi 500 keyboard PC and 15.6-inch Monitor for review. The Raspberry Pi 500 sells for $90 US, and a $120 Raspberry Pi 500 Desktop Kit is also available for a power supply, a mouse, a micro HDMI to HDMI cable, and a beginner’s guide in English. The Raspberry Pi Monitor goes for $100 with a USB-C cable for power and a user manual.

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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