Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit Review -

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1 Raspberry Pi

2 Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit

2.1 Pi 400 Computer Features

2.2 Features in a Snapshot

Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi has always focused on its mission of producing affordable, high-performance programmable computers for everyone across the globe. Raspberry Pi 4 us is arguably a mission come true for Raspberry Pi. It is 40 times more powerful than the original Raspberry Pi. The user experience derived from it similar to that derived from legacy PC. It is a functional PC that is compact enough to be tucked into your bag or desk drawer.

Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit

The Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit comprises the following:

Raspberry Pi 400 Computer
USB mouse
USB-C power supply
SD card preinstalled with the Raspberry Pi OS
A micro-HDMI to HDMI cable
Beginner guide

Pi 400 Computer Features

Inside the keyboard is the Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computer. The single-board computer has a quadcore ARM v8 Cortex-A72 processor and 4GB DDR4 RAM. It also incorporates a cooling system that allows the processor to operate at a higher voltage and frequency (1.8GHz).

There are numerous ports at the back of the computer. They include a microSD card slot, a pair of USB 3 ports, one USB2 port, two Mico-HDMI ports, a Giga Ethernet port, and the Pi 400 usual GPIO. There is also a 40-pin connector that can be used to connect to numerous peripherals ranging from sound cards to robotics projects.

Features in a Snapshot

CPU- 64-bit quad-core Arm (Cortex A72 at 1.5GHz), VideoCore
4GB RAM
2 USB 3.0
1USB 2.0
2 HDMI Ports (mini)
Gigabit Ethernet port
MicroSD Port
40-pin GPIO Connector

Raspberry Pi OS

The Raspberry Pi OS is a 32-bit Debian-based Linux distribution. Its repository includes graphics, office, and photo processing suites, games, and emulators. They are easily installed through a graphical interface or command line. For those used to Windows or macOS, you might be at a disadvantage since there is no out-of-the-box support for Widevine streaming media DRM used by Disney and Netflix among others. Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer kit offers great value for money.

You can use other operating systems on the Raspberry Pi. They include Ubuntu, Ubuntu Mate Linux, OpenSUSE, and Gentoo. They provide both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. It is worth noting that there is currently no Microsoft Windows OS for Raspberry Pi.

Performance

The Raspberry Pi may not be as fast as many high-end computers or even match mid-range gaming rigs but the computer performs its tasks well. It offers the same user experience compared to low-power laptops which use entry-level Intel Celerons processors like those found in Chromebooks. It is possible to switch video drivers to get the most out of VideoCore. Enable the GL desktop driver using the raspi-config tool to improve the performance in the HardInfo GPU drawing benchmark to 1602 from 1523.

Summary

In the future, some improvements could come in handy. One of them is the built-in headphone port. The other one would be an easy-to-access chassis. A more obvious power switch would do as well. Despite all that, the Raspberry Pi computer kit offers great value for money.