THE RASPBERRY PI MODEL B has had the same board layout since the Pi B+ arrived in 2014. So, when we received a parcel from Raspberry Pi Trading and opened the box to find a white keyboard, we were somewhat puzzled as to the contents. But not for long. Within this compact and well-designed keyboard is a Raspberry Pi 400, a variant of the Raspberry Pi 4 4GB that’s been designed specifically to make the most of its new surroundings.
The device is sold as a single unit for $70 or as a $100 kit with mouse, power supply, cables, microSD card, and a copy of The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide. Either way, the Pi 400 is an ideal way to introduce the Pi to your home.
If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember when computers were hidden beneath a keyboard. The Pi 400 brings that aesthetic back and it works well. The compact keyboard measures just over 11 x 4.6 x 0.7 inches and is fairly comfortable to type on. We won’t be writing our next thesis with this keyboard, but it’s fine for daily use. At the rear of the keyboard are all of the ports, the largest of which is a 40-pin header for the GPIO. Moving along we find a microSD card slot, two Micro HDMI ports that offer 4K output, two USB 3.0 ports, and a single USB 2.0 port, with a Gigabit Ethernet port rounding off the Raspberry Pi 400’s range of inputs.