The Ultimate Raspberry Pi Wedge: A Hands-On Review of the Raspberry Pi 500+

The launch of the wedge-style Raspberry Pi 500 microcomputer back in December last year brought a big boost in performance to the Raspberry Pi x00 range — but also a disappointment, as disassembly revealed unpopulated component footprints for what would have been an extremely useful M.2 PCI Express (PCIe) slot.

The Raspberry Pi 500+, launching today, addresses that with a fully-working M.2 slot and bundled 256GB Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) SSD with Raspberry Pi OS-preinstalled — and comes with a programmable and customizable low-profile RGB backlit mechanical keyboard, too.

Is the Raspberry Pi 500+ the ultimate wedge computer, or a too-pricey moonshot? Let's find out.

Hardware

• CPU: Broadcom BCM2712 4-core up-to-2.4GHz Arm Cortex-A76 (16nm)
• GPU: Broadcom Videocore-VII
• Hardware video decode: H.265 4k60
• Hardware video encode: None
• "Southbridge"chip: Raspberry Pi RP1 (40nm)
• RAM: 16GB LPDDR4x at 4,267MHz
• Storage: microSD, M.2 NVMe SSD (256GB included)
• USB: 2× USB 3.0, 1× USB 2.0
• PCI Express: 1× Gen. 2 (used by NVMe SSD)
• Network: Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
• Display outputs: 2× 4k60 micro-HDMI
• Camera inputs: None
• GPIO: 40-pin header (populated)
• Power: USB Type-C 5V 5A (not included)
• Keyboard: 85-key (as-reviewed) with Gateron KS-33 Blue mechanical switches, per-key RGB lighting (Vial/QMK-based firmware)
• Extras: Spudger, keycap-puller
• Cost: $200

The overall layout of the Raspberry Pi 500+ is, unsurprisingly, near-identical to the Raspberry Pi 500, though quite a bit thicker. There's an in-house keyboard design on top, now with full-size arrow keys, and all ports brought around to the rear: two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, a gigabit Ethernet port, a USB Type-C power input, microSD card slot, two micro-HDMI ports, and a 40-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header — covered, as in the Raspberry Pi 500, with a removable rubber bung to prevent accidental shortage.

It's not a direct copy, though. The casing itself has been modified, and now includes five Philips-head screws on the underside — the removal of which allows you to use the included spudger tool and a handy indent at the front of the chassis to split the case in half and access the inner workings. For the security minded, the changes also bring a loss: the Kensington-compatible locking point, for cable locks designed to secure the device to a desk, is nowhere to be found.

There are few surprises inside, either: the PCB, mostly hidden beneath a large aluminum heatsink, is again the same as the Raspberry Pi 500, though with twice the RAM at 16GB — and with one key easily-visible difference: some of the previously-bare component footprints have now been populated, giving the gadget a fully-working single-lane PCI Express Gen. 2 M.2 M-key slot. This is pre-fitted with a 256GB Raspberry Pi-brand NVMe SSD, a 2230-footprint module in the review sample but likely a larger footprint in the retail models — and with space to fit a 2260 or 2280 if you're upgrading, compared to the 2242 size limit of the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ add-on for the Raspberry Pi 5.

Having the footprint for an M.2 slot but without one fitted was one of the biggest disappointments of the Raspberry Pi 500, and it's great to see that the Raspberry Pi 500+ addresses it — though, with the keyboard resting directly above, there's no room to swap the SSD out for bulkier M.2 modules like the growing number of machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) accelerators boasting oversized or actively-cooled heatsinks.

The company has also missed an accessibility trick: a feature common to the wedge-format models in the Commodore Amiga family of home computers from the 1980s and 1990s was a "trapdoor" expansion port, which could be accessed by simply popping a plastic cover off the underside of the case. If the M.2 slot had been fitted on the underside of the PCB, the Raspberry Pi 500+ — like the Commodore Amiga 500 Plus before it — could have provided quick access in the same way. Instead, you'll need to remove all five screws, pop the pressure-clipped casing apart, and finally move the keyboard without damaging the worryingly-thin flat flexible circuit (FFC) that connects it to the mainboard, before doing everything again in reverse to reassemble the unit.

It's interesting to see that the mainboard still has unpopulated component footprints, too — at least some of which are easily explained by a key feature missing from the specs sheet: there's no support for Power over Ethernet (PoE). Instead, you'll be limited to using USB Type-C power supplies capable of negotiating 5A at 5V — of which the official Raspberry Pi 27W USB-C Power Supply is one of the few with full support, but which is not included in the box. As with earlier models, use of 3A supplies is possible providing you're not connecting too many high-drain USB devices or power-hungry Hardware Attached on Top (HAT) accessories.

Keyboard

The biggest external difference between the non-Plus and the Plus model is the keyboard. Gone is the laptop-style and somewhat mushy keyboard of the Raspberry Pi 500, replaced by a low-profile mechanical keyboard — still with laptop-style keycaps, but with a much more pleasant full-size arrow key set and a considerably different feel and sound.

"Sound," because — and this may prove divisive, particularly for anyone planning to deploy a Raspberry Pi 500+ in a shared office or classroom environment — the company has opted for Gateron KS-33 Blue switches, albeit with an aesthetic-only switch to custom grey-colored stems. Like the Cherry MX Blue switches which inspired them, Gateron Blue switches are known as "tactile clicky" — meaning that there's not only a "bump" at the actuation point you can clearly feel through your fingertips but it also makes an audible "click."

At the time of writing, Raspberry Pi had said nothing about any plans to offer other switches - such as a quieter linear option, better-suited to a shared office - and the switches fitted are not hot-swappable, meaning anyone looking to change the finger-feel and typing sound will need to whip out their soldering iron and be prepared to kiss their warranty goodbye.

The switches are fitted to a custom PCB that includes per-key RGB LED lighting, under the control of one of Raspberry Pi's in-house microcontrollers running a QMK-based firmware. Function–F4 cycles through a range of pre-set colors and animations; Function–F5 and Function–F6 increase and decrease the brightness. The keycaps, slightly dished and with a beveled bottom edge, are shine-through and look undeniably crispy in the dark.

For more customization, there's a command-line tool and supporting Python library — though not, at the time of review, any graphical interface — for controlling the keyboard. This allows you to choose from a wider array of animations, control whole-keyboard or per-key lighting, remap the keys using QMK keycodes, lock and unlock the keyboard so that presses are monitored by the microcontroller but not passed to the host, and enter a self-test mode.

The same software also lets you play a game of Flappy Bird, in which everything happens on-keyboard: gapped pillars fly in from the side as columns of blue-lit keys, and the player LED "flaps" at the press of the space bar. At the time of review, this was a little buggy: entering game mode locks the keyboard so your keypresses don't flood the terminal, but you have to unlock the keyboard again in order to play.

Conclusion

If you were hoping for more performance from the Raspberry Pi 500+ compared to its non-Plus predecessor, you may come away disappointed: there's no change in the system-on-chip at its heart, though as with the Raspberry Pi 500 before it you may find you can eke out a little extra speed through overclocking thanks to the beefy passive heatsink. The extra RAM will provide measurable gains for memory-hungry workloads, though, and the SSD provides a big boost to input/output operations compared to the microSD card of the Raspberry Pi 500.

The option to swap the SSD out for another M.2 module in a range of sizes is definitely welcome, as is the fact you can officially take the case apart to do so without invalidating your warranty — though the fragile keyboard cable and array of all-too-snappable plastic clips holding the two halves together mean that frequent disassembly is ill-advised. A Commodore Amiga-style "trapdoor" would have improved things no end, and it's a shame Raspberry Pi didn't learn that near-forty-year-old lesson.

There's an elephant in the room, though: price. At $200 it's by far the most expensive product Raspberry Pi has ever released, and more than double the price of the Raspberry Pi 500. For that, you get twice the RAM, a populated M.2 slot, a 256GB SSD instead of a 32GB microSD card, and the mechanical keyboard — which if you were buying a Raspberry Pi 5 16GB instead would work out at a $40 premium over the 8GB model plus $40 for the Raspberry Pi 256GB SSD Kit, leaving just $30 in your budget for a decent-quality RGB-backlit low-profile programmable mechanical keyboard.

Put that way, the $200 asking price feels entirely reasonable — but remember you'll need to add in the cost of a Raspberry Pi 27W USB-C Power Supply (around $13) and a mouse (around $8 for the Raspberry Pi Optical USB Mouse), and you'll need an HDMI-compatible display too ($100 for the Raspberry Pi 15.6" Monitor). You'll also need a Philips-head screwdriver if you're planning to crack the case open, though if you're reading this it's safe to assume you're probably sorted on that front.

The Raspberry Pi 500+ is available through Raspberry Pi's reseller network from today.