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.

What don't you like about the linux cli? is it a UNIX thing or a GNU thing that you don't like? What makes CP/M like systems (CP/M, DOS, OS/2) better in that regard?. Personally I strongly recommend the Pi 400 for a first computer. Of course, that all depends on the child of course but the Pi 400 and 500 desktop kits are really great and the Pi 400 is cheap enough to not care that much about it breaking while still feeling more accessible than just a Pi in a case (or any desktop computer really, I feel like AIOs and Keyboard computers are the most accessible)

One could argue the opposite. There are countless 'computer console' available at various low price ranges. The closest thing today is RaspberryPI, and boot to a linux in text mode, you're basically there. What is more difficult to find is the combo hardware/software, but the Pi 400 includes keyboard and a mouse comes with as a kit. Just like in the old days, find a (~TV) cheap LCD monitor and plug and play. And you have hundreds of games for free, thousands possibly with emulators etc. And you can program in virtually every languages on the planet. If anything, what you have now paralysis by choice. There is just too much you can do with a basic computers, so you wind up on youtube and social medias instead of being bored with 1 compiler and 1 book. ref: I grew up on ZX Spectrum+! :)