Raspberry Pi 400

Right now, I think the sweet spot is getting a Raspberry Pi 400 for USD$50 ( Microcenter). A Pi400 is a very capable 4GB ram Linux machine, working out of the box. I have a few, each doing a different job. I just ssh to them with a beefier machine plugged on LLMs tools, and it's really fun and exciting. Then Mini pcs, you can get a good deal here and there, for a more capable machine with a little bit more flexibility. ESP32s are also awesome and I have been playing with them but not as a replacement of these light linux servers.

Was at Microcenter, yesterday. Marietta's did not have any Pi400s for sale (I love mine, with its built in keyboard; it is my main Kali hackbox) but did have lots of Pi5 (4gb was ~$100 IIRC; 1gb was ~$40). I've picked up two 7" touchscreens, which seemlessly integrate into any Pi project (mine are both now installed on Pi 3b+ PiHoles, to display realtime DNS traffic 24/7); if you buy the returned/open-box, each screen is less than $50 (no more fumbling for HDMI cables). ---- Unrelated: the RTX5070Ti (purchased May 2026 for $999) is now $1449! The 5060 (purchased July 2026 for $329) is now $459; no 5090 in stock (of course).

I have many varieties of Pi, but my favorite (overall) is the Pi400 (mine has 4gb, but that built-in keyboard! ). The 3b+ is great for one-task projects that don't need [much/any] local input.

I have multiple real Amigas (jesus, that's a lot of amigas meme), but since I installed PiMiga on a rpi400 with its monitor, that's like 99% what you need amiga for. I even prefer it to my commodore 1084s fleet. Even though I need a CRT shot now and then.

I have a raspberry pi 400 on my desk which hosts some stuff on my home internal network. I've recently set up the num lock LED on it as a CPU activity indicator. It is nice to look at it flashing away while it is being utilized.

Which models have you given them? Linux has been my computing best friend for more than a decade and I have also enjoyed using the Raspberry Pi 400. But the Raspberry Pi 500 (keyboard model) is even better and (literally and figuratively) a cool design. You get 8GB RAM, boot from NVME, Debian with Wayland (labwc), and the R.Pi community.

> >Persistent shortages drove the real-world price up (no one was selling them for MSRP) > I see a lot of people say this, but I never saw this happen in the UK. Also UK. There was definitely a time (late 2021, early 2022) lasting some months when most RPi products were only easily available from resellers (I'm using that word charitably) at vastly marked up prices (at least as a home user just wanting a single unit or small number of units, it may have been different as a bigger buyer). I have a Pi400 where a Pi4 (or 3 or older) would do just as well, because at the time I needed it for some reason the Pi400 hadn't yet been affected by the shortages (and resulting scalping) and was far cheaper to buy new (even with the full starter kit which included PSU & mouse) than any Pi4 despite nominally being more expensive. I think the 400 was even on offer below RRP at the time. The Pi400 became hard to find at RRP soon after I bought mine, I have a friend who was looking a short time later. The shortage may have lasted longer than I'm remembering, as I only paid particular attention for a bit longer than the time of my own & my friend's needs.

I bought the 400 on a whim and it came in handy when both my main and space computer broke: If you connect a hard drive through a powered USB hub, you can actually use this for real work, albeit very slowly. These days, I mainly use it as a Commodore 64: https://imgur.com/Afq9uFq

>We tend to forget that not everyone on the planet has the same resources or needs we do. True, but we must also admit that misguided prejudices about resources can lead people to miss out on some very significant opportunities, as well. By way of anecdotal example: I have a Pi 400 on my desk that I have used as a Linux development workstation for the past couple of years - in which it has performed superlatively, I might add. Its small and light and fast enough, yet works as a perfectly good performance metric/measurement for the projects I've thrown at it. I used it to develop a scientific instrumentation and sampling product which has gone on to produce >$40million in revenue for the customer. I've used it to develop audio capture tools which have been integrated into the r&d facilities at a major audio hardware vendor. So, even though it might seem 'underpowered' and 'un-sexy' for most such tasks, this particular embedded developer has been able to squeeze much value out of the limits of the hardware. Not only is it a good performance reference, but it has just enough oomph to allow me to avoid using cross-compiler techniques, and in that sense is a gateway device to so many very powerful embedded Linux development tools and methods.

N100 is inexpensive, has impressive performance, and can support 16+ GB RAM. That said, I do also use an R.Pi 4 and an R.Pi 400. The significant advantages of the R.Pi 4 and R.Pi 5 are = R.Pi is a learning-first platform = current Debian supported "out-of-the-box" with a custom D.E. and Wayland = excellent community for software and hardware = the R.Pi 400 (and the expected R.Pi 500) "keyboard computer" are unique in the marketplace, with all the community and support = R.Pi is not an X86 platform, which may be favourable depending on your project requirements

I think it would be fine. I run a little private analytics service for my own websites. That service isn't as busy but handles ~11k requests per month. It logs to a SQLite database. It does this on a little Raspberry Pi 400 in my home office and it's not too busy. The CPU sits at 1% to 3% on average. Obviously there are a lot of differences in my setup but I would think you could handle 10x the traffic with a small VPS without any trouble at all. You can read a little bit more about my analytics setup here: https://joeldare.com/private-analtyics-and-my-raspberry-pi-4...

This is cute but I figure there will be an official RPi 500 sometime. I have a 400 and mostly like it. I just wish it had a built in pointing device, but even keyboards with those seem to have gone out of style.

I got my kid a raspi 400 a few years ago. She’s enjoyed it tremendously, but I don’t know how it holds up to more recent alternatives. She’s still using it today, though.

I have been happily using my Raspberry Pi 400 as my main home computer for years. The tooling for light software development and hobby embedded hardware development has been great so far.

I use as a daily driver the R.Pi 400 booting from external NVMe. This is not difficult to configure. It's a delight to use.

I have mixed feelings about that. Personally, I found the mini HDMI ports themselves a downgrade. One is forever looking for adapters. However, having two displays is nice! It boils down to whether someone is using the device like a computer. The Pi 400 is a nice, respectable computer and I use one for development. Two displays makes sense and is high value. Now you can absolutely use the device. I have an epaper project in development. I have the epaper setup and attached to a Pi 3. That makes sense and it works well. Code output goes there and I have it all in one place. I use it in two basic ways: One is headless, using VNC to access dev tools and code located right on the Pi. I keep various wi-fi setups handy and can copy a new one onto the SD card if needed. Usually, I am powering the Pi with my laptop in that scenario. The other is via plugged in displays with keyboard and mouse. I do both of those with Pi 3 and 4 devices. The Pi-400 needs the display adapter and though I have not lost or broken one yet, it seems to me simply attaching an adapter permanently to the computer would make a lot of sense. This thread makes me want to 3d print a different case so that I can incorporate the adapters properly and just expose HDMI slots like we see on the earlier devices.

I enjoy using the R.Pi 4 and R.Pi 400 and from the start I've been a supporter of this class of relatively inexpensive Linux-first device. But the R.Pi 4x series is peak R.Pi for me. In the last couple of years, NUC -class SFF devices with Intel-based chipsets have appeared [1] and they offer a much better performance profile (speed, power consumption) than the R.Pi 5. Some of these devices offer dual gigabit Ethernet. [1] Liliputing is one site that I follow for related information.

> on her own initiative My daughter is 3yo so a bit early ^^, but 2 years ago I bought my nephew (then 8, loves to tinker) a Pi 400 plus a couple of kid-oriented introductory programming books (about Scratch and Python, very nicely done I must say, I reviewed them beforehand). Of course he started with playing Minecraft Pi but an hour after he was moving a cat around in Scratch. Now I heard he's tinkering with Python. Pretty sure the GPIO is going to get some heavy use down the road, bridging the digital world to the physical one (where he tinkers with mechanical and electric stuff already). There was zero pushing nor action on my part (except showing him how to operate the mouse), I literally just handed him the device and books over, he plugged it in and went exploring his merry way. Curiosity is a powerful engine.

Raspberry Pi 400 + PICO-8. My 9 year old is in love with this combo. It’s really easy to learn based off YouTube tutorials, and you can instantly share your creations with friends who don’t need to install or have anything other than a browser to play (and even works on mobile browsers well)

It’s totally possible for many of us. I simply own a domain at Namecheap and hit their dynamic IP update endpoint to set the dns to point to my currently assigned IP. Mine only changes with router resets and such. I also forward some ports from my router to my machine’s IP and set my machine to always get the same internal IP. I serve several websites from my home office on a little Raspberry Pi 400. Read more about the Raspberry Pi in my Bedroom at the URL below: https://joeldare.com/private-analtyics-and-my-raspberry-pi-4...

I have a Pi 4 and Pi 400 and boot them from NVMe (via USB). Combined with a portable LCD, it's a low-power dev workstation on a battery. ^_^