Raspberry Pi 500 and Raspberry Pi Monitor on sale now
Just in time for Christmas, we’re delighted to announce the release of two hotly anticipated products that we think will look great under the tree. One of them might even fit in a stocking if you push hard enough. Introducing Raspberry Pi 500, available now at $90, and the Raspberry Pi Monitor, on sale at $100: together, they’re your complete Raspberry Pi desktop setup.
Integral calculus
Our original mission at Raspberry Pi was to put affordable, programmable personal computers in the hands of young people all over the world. And while we’ve taken some detours along the way – becoming one of the world’s largest manufacturers of industrial and embedded computers – this mission remains at the heart of almost everything we do. It drives us to make lower-cost products like the $15 Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, and more powerful products, like our flagship Raspberry Pi 5 SBC. These products provide just the essential processing element of a computer, which can be combined with the family television, and second-hand peripherals, to build a complete and cost-effective system.
But over time we have come to understand the benefits of integration: some people are better served by a system that is ready to use straight out of the box. This need was dramatized during the early days of the COVID pandemic, when we worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to deliver thousands of Raspberry Pi 4 Desktop Kits and monitors to young people studying from home in the UK. Our experiences with that programme informed the development of Raspberry Pi 400, our all-in-one PC, whose form factor (and name) harks back to the great 8-bit and 16-bit computers – the BBC Micro, Sinclair Spectrum, and Commodore Amiga – of the 1980s and 1990s.
Meet Raspberry Pi 500
In the four years since it launched, Raspberry Pi 400 has become a hugely popular choice for enthusiasts and educators. And today, we’re launching its successor, Raspberry Pi 500, bringing the features and performance of the Raspberry Pi 5 platform to our all-in-one form factor:
- 2.4GHz quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 processor
- 8GB LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM
- VideoCore VII GPU, supporting OpenGL ES 3.1 and Vulkan 1.3
- Dual 4Kp60 HDMI® display output
- Dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth 5.0
- 2 × USB 3.0 ports, supporting simultaneous 5Gbps operation
- 1 × USB 2.0 port
- Gigabit Ethernet port
- Horizontal 40-pin Raspberry Pi GPIO connector
Raspberry Pi 500 is priced at $90, including a 32GB Raspberry Pi-branded SD card, and is also available in a $120 Desktop Kit, which adds:
- Raspberry Pi Mouse
- Raspberry Pi 27W USB-C Power Supply
- 2m micro HDMI to HDMI cable
- Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide, 5th Edition
The vision thing – an official Raspberry Pi Monitor
Although it’s highly integrated, Raspberry Pi 500 is only half the story: to build a complete system, you still need a display device. Which is why we’re also launching the Raspberry Pi Monitor, available now at $100. Designed to coordinate perfectly with your Raspberry Pi 500 or cased Raspberry Pi 5, it incorporates a 15.6″ full HD IPS panel with a 45% colour gamut and an 80° viewing angle, together with a pair of 1.2W speakers, in a slender enclosure with a fold-away integrated stand and VESA mounting points.
Power is provided via a USB-C connector. Cost-conscious users can power the monitor directly from their Raspberry Pi via the included USB-A to USB-C cable; in this mode display brightness is limited to 60% of maximum (still quite bright!) and volume to 50% of maximum (still quite loud!). Using a dedicated USB-C supply capable of delivering 5V/3A, like the Raspberry Pi 15W USB-C Power Supply, enables the full brightness and volume ranges.
Faster, better, cheaper: pick two Raspberry Pi 400 price cuts
While we’re incredibly excited about Raspberry Pi 500, we need to remember that cost remains a barrier to access for many people, young and old. So we’re also taking this opportunity to cut the price of Raspberry Pi 400 from $70 to $60, and the Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit from $100 to $80. We’re also bundling a Raspberry Pi-branded SD card with every Raspberry Pi 400, to help you get the best possible performance out of the system.
We know that quite a few of you have been eagerly awaiting both of our new products, and we hope you enjoy them now they’re here. We’ve seen Raspberry Pi 400 everywhere from retro gaming setups to university exam facilities and hospital offices; we’re really looking forward to finding out where Raspberry Pi 500 and our new Raspberry Pi Monitor end up.
30 comments
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rpiMike
Great. Please make them in black.
Naveen
The Pi 500 and the Monitor look fantastic and very appealing!
Anders
Pretty disappointing omission.
Raspberry Pi Staff PhilE
Agreed – comments work better when the subject is clear.
Anders
That’s true being simplistic, but in this case you would have to be pretty detached to not know what this is about. And that is a statement in itself.
khaleel masri
Amazing products !
i will make the first order to our store in jordan now !
A Stevens
Brilliant news – we sensed it was coming, and now it has! We donated a stack of Pi 400s to my son’s primary school 3 years ago, and they’re still in regular use for a code club (that I used to run, before he moved up to big school). The biggest struggle they had was monitors, since they used ancient donated screens with VGA/DVI ports. Those HDMI adapter things proved very troublesome, and the Pi 400s just didn’t like those ancient screens. So I suspect the school may actually be more excited by the new monitor even than the Pi 500, for now, until they want to upgrade the computers as well!
kwh
I have a Pi 400, but it’s pretty limited, due to the lack of an NVME slot, so I haven’t used it as much as I was planning. Was really looking forward to the Pi 500, where I thought this was a no-brainer to include? Am I missing something?
Peter Green
Jeff geerling just did a teardown (on his “level 2 jeff) channel and it seems there is provision on the board for a M.2 slot, but the slot and it’s support components are not populated. He actually soldered down a M.2 connector but then realised that it wasn’t just the slot that needed populating.
I would assume this indicates that the plan to do a model with m.2 later, once the initial rush is cleared.
mrlinux2u
Purchased the Pi 500 just now (early XMAS/Birthday present) – the missing m2 slot is a bit disappointing but hopefully they’ll be a future version with it included. It does mean I can use my existing Pi 5 for experiments (external AMD GPU for starters).
Alastair
Looks great.
Does this have the Pi5’s NVME connectivity lurking somewhere inside?
Rush
The lack of NVME support physically hurts to see- especially knowing the space for it is right there!
A Stevens
Yes, if you could attach an M.2 SSD to this, as with the Pi 5 and M.2 HAT, it would be a properly decent desktop PC for the majority of people. So close – maybe they should launch a 550 model at a slightly higher price point, with this capability!
Anders
It’s great to have a fanless portable PI device available with a portable display that will allow for minimised cable spaghetti, it’s also good to see 8GB common sense. The price is also good if you consider that the SD card and keyboard are included it saves about £16 UK compared to a Pi5 /8.
But many of us are used to NVMe via PCIe performance now and it’s a bit of a setback to lose that. As the teardown review shows there are physical placeholders for more components this does feel like a rush to market for Christmas 2024.
Niallio
Is not aimed at us, though. It’s aimed at kids as a “my first computer” thing, and if they were to sell it with an NVME drive it would be more expensive and less appealing. And if they sold it with a slot and without a drive, that would make it only marginally more expensive, but would make it less appealing as a “fire-and-forget” toy, because most people would never use it.
The board as a unit might seem more expensive, but the describe if a penny they lose for the unused etchings is saved by the fact that they’ll be making a single board that can be either unpopulated (A500) or populated (the obviously planned A500+) and don’t need to maintain two production lines. This was common in analogue TV days — the only difference between a teletext and non-teletext set was whether there was a chip in a socket on the mainboard or not. The existence of the society may have looked wasteful, but it was just more efficient.
Personally I’d be waiting for an A500+, but I stingy suspect they’ll only be selling them with NVMEs with an operating system on them, and I’d personally want to throw an AI card on the NVME slot, so I don’t think I’ll bother….
Anders
Hi Niallio, the original Raspberry Pi and many of their products have found far more uses than what they were originally “aimed” at.
Paul
If it’s aimed at kids then why double the memory to 8GB, the Pi400 at a lower price would meet that need better and cheaper.
It could have been improved with a Nvme slot and drive, but it it ain’t – a bit of an odd decision there.
Helen McCall
Dear Anders,
This RPi 500 is clearly designed for a different set of users from the 5B. The RPi5 design has been nicely pared down to the absolute basics of a high performance, reliable basic computer. This keeps the price low for all those ordinary people who just need a basic computer for all the basic computing tasks made necessary by modern living. For those of us who want to do more adventurous things with our Raspberry Pis, we have the wonderful 5B and CM5 to choose from.
Anders
I agree it is selfish to make it all about my personal requirements, but it’s not just me.
The tangle free solution has been sought for a while and SD cards really are a technology of the past. M.2 NVMe is virtually as cheap GB for GB, whilst being more robust and better performing. It’s disadvantage is that it is less swappable.
As we all now know, the PCB has the placeholders to add M.2 device support over PCIe, just not populated. So there is more to this market than the single use case that you mention.
Helen McCall
Congratulations! This package addresses the modern need that most people have for a simple, inexpensive, reliable, basic computer to fulfill all the basic computing demands of shopping, homework, study, email, keeping up with the news and friends, etc. Keeping it all basic, without unnecessary frills, will make it so easy to use, and affordable, that I suspect this package will bring millions more people into the Raspberry Pi world.
Phil Atkin
Absolutely brilliant! Knocked it out of the park AGAIN.
Rick
Hmm…the unfinished/lack of nvme and still using micro hdmi is pretty disapointing and make the price increase a pretty hard pill to swallow.
Graycrow
It would be an immediate purchase for me if it had a populated M2 PCIe header for NVMe SSD. Now I would wait for a version with it if it ever comes out. I think it’s a bad decision not to include one and it will hurt sales.
xeny
re the lack of NVMe – I wonder if this is part of the reason for the command queue work on A2 SD cards. That’s gives a much better experience than a generic SD card at a lower incremental cost/easier swapping about than a NVMe board.
I’ve also just watched Jeff’s take apart video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omYWRb1dLA4 and that shows some level of provision on the circuitboard. Maybe there will be a Pi 510 with NVMe?
ellip
Great and awaited! ;-)
What about internationalized keyboard layouts!?
Still coming or not planed this time?
Dave
Nice! Now can you make me a “pro” version with an SSD? Thanks :)
Harry Hardjono
As a traveler, I’m interested in external dimensions of these cool devices so I can get a case for them. My last unprotected laptop got spidered screen, unfortunately, so now I’m enclosing everything with hard/heavily padded cases!
Ben
Will these products be available at the Raspberry Pi retail store in Cambridge?
Raspberry Pi Staff Ashley Whittaker
They’re in store now!
Ray Allen
That monitor is what I was mainly waiting for after seeing it a few months ago. Ordered.
What a great Christmas resent for us… well me :)