The idea of integrating a complete computer into a keyboard case isn't exactly new. In fact, this approach was even standard in the early 1980s: The Commodore 64, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Amstrad CPC 464, and the BBC Micro were all keyboard computers with their electronic components sitting under the keys. Just connect to a TV set as a monitor, plug in a datasette (remember them?) or a floppy disk drive, and your home computer was ready to go.

These were the formative devices for an entire generation of computer users, laying the foundation for today's IT industry. Many of the engineers and developers who work for technology companies today gained their first programming experience on these machines. The Raspberry Pi Foundation, founded with the aim of making computer science more accessible to young people, consciously continues this tradition.

From Pi 400 to Pi 500+

The Raspberry Pi 400, the first modern keyboard computer from Cambridge, was released at the end of 2020 [1], and it proved particularly popular in the education sector. Its successor, the Pi 500, was launched at the end of 2024, housing the current Raspberry Pi 5 platform in the proven format [2]. Attentive observers noticed at the time that the circuit board had unpopulated areas, in particular an M.2 slot with associated wiring, and it seemed likely that more variants were in the pipeline. The Raspberry Pi 500+ [3] confirms this assumption: The new premium variant presses all the right buttons – a full-sized mechanical keyboard with individual RGB lighting replaces the simple membrane keyboard, RAM size has doubled from 8GB to 16GB, and there is a 256GB NVMe SSD pre-installed with Raspberry Pi OS. But these features come at a price: at $200, the 500+ costs more than twice as much as the regular Pi 500, making it the most expensive Raspberry Pi product ever released.

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