Raspberry Pi 500 Review: NVMe, 16GB RAM, Mechanical Keys

The Raspberry Pi 500 launched to mixed reactions. The community wanted M.2 storage desperately enough that some modders soldered their own connectors. The Pi 500 Plus delivers that with native NVMe storage, 16GB RAM, and mechanical switches. But does it justify the $200 price tag?

What’s in the Box, Design, and Build Quality

The Pi 500+ does away with the desktop kit option this time around, and the standalone unit is the only SKU on offer.

Packaging remains consistent, as expected, with a solid cardboard containing the Pi 500 Plus and its accessory kit (containing a plastic spudger for removing the cover for getting at the NVMe, and a key switch replacement tool). A paper sleeve covers the inner box, showing off all of the specifications.

Design

The 500+ is a heavier, and slightly wider/taller unit overall. The addressable RGB lighting is a nice touch, but despite what I’ve read online, it did not bring any difference in performance. I have been betrayed.

The keyboard is a big part of the overall design, and it feels like a massive improvement. I’m someone who uses mechanical keyboards everywhere, though, so this feels a lot more natural to me. We’ll go into more depth on the keyboard itself later!

Build Quality

It feels like a much more sturdy piece of hardware when compared to the Pi 500 (and 400) that came before it. There isn’t a great deal of flex in the chassis when twisted, and there are now 5 screws holding everything together rather than just retaining clips. The added heft gives it a much more premium feel, and makes it feel more deserving of the price tag.

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What Changed from the Pi 500

The Pi 500 gets an NVMe SSD!

Whilst the keyboard is the most obvious change when you look at the Pi 500+, it’s what’s inside that will interest people most this time around. If you look at any review of the Pi 500 and its comment section, you’ll see the vast majority mentioning that whilst the PCB has most of what’s needed for an M.2 slot, the necessary components simply weren’t there, and people were rather upset, myself included.

Speculation was rife as to whether they ran out of time to implement it, but they did state at the time that this was their plan all along, and it was a matter of efficiency/optimisation. Designing the PCB to be used in multiple configurations from the get-go saves considerable time and complexity in the long run and lets them spec out configurations as needed to suit demand.

For the Plus variant, a pre-installed 256GB NVMe SSD from their own product range is included, with Raspberry Pi OS (the desktop version) ready to go.

Ladies and gentlemen, we got it.

16GB of RAM? In a keyboard?

The 2nd big change is the doubling of the RAM on the Pi 500+ to 16GB. Speed and other specifications remain the same, but we now have twice as much memory available for our web browsers to chew through. We’ll see just how beneficial that becomes a bit later on.

Rainbow Unicorn Mechanical Keyboard

I didn’t think I’d see the day when I’d be mentioning RGB on a Raspberry Pi product, but here I am, and below the Gateron KS-33 Low Profile key caps, there is an array of bright, addressable LEDs that are driven by the RP2040 microcontroller. Hitting Fn+F4 will cycle through the 6 available presets, or, with the help of the rpi-keyboard-config command, you can customise each LED as you please.

What’s Still Missing?

Despite the additions, there are still some missing features that were highly requested after the 500’s launch. There’s no Power over Ethernet (PoE), which isn’t a massive surprise, as I imagine it would require the PoE circuitry to be pre-installed and would be wasted on 99% of people buying this.

There are no camera/display connectors (beyond mini HDMI), and whilst there’s no RTC pre-installed, there IS a header for it now, but these are also features that I think would be a little bit lost on the 500 user demographic, at least when it comes to the camera/display connections. The best case I can think of is if you want to get someone one of these as their 1st Raspberry Pi and have the option of both tinkering and using it as a desktop.

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Teardown & Internal Analysis

Opening up the original iteration of the Raspberry Pi Computer-in-a-Keyboard was where all of the fun was, so what do we have in store for us this time?

First of all, you’ve got 5 screws going through the back of the casing this time around, and these go through the heatsink and into threaded inserts that are set in posts on the keyboard side of the casing.

I have a new home on the keyboard side now!

Thankfully, Raspberry Pi have made it a bit easier to get into the 500+, which makes sense, with a small “lip” on the front to put the included spudger into to start getting the casing off. A small but welcome touch is the FPC that connects the keyboard to the main PCB. Whilst it’s a little more fiddly, it’s a bit longer, meaning that taking it off is a lot easier. Again, this makes sense given that this iteration is expected to be opened at some point.

The heatsink is slightly modified in size and weighs in 6 grams heavier (I measured mine at 91g vs 85g for the original), and here’s a terrible photo to show the difference. There’s also a protective piece of moulded black plastic that sits above all of the connectors on the 500+, which is a nice touch.

Top: 500+, Bottom: 500

Some of you will have noticed in an earlier photo that the RP2040 microcontroller that powers the keyboard is now on the keyboard side, and the original FPC that connected the main PCB to the membrane keyboard on the 500 is now left painfully bare. They did attempt to freshen things up with an RTC battery connector (the same as the Pi 5) but in my initial attempt to get the PCB out (these clips are made of titanium painted white, I’m sure) I did an oopsie with the spudger and it’s going to need some soldering SOS..

Just to the left of the Raspberry Pi logo, you’ll see the new connector for the keyboard.

Still Unpopulated

As we can see in the photo above, though, there are still unpopulated pads for PoE, which may mean that Raspberry Pi are keeping its options open. I’d like to think that this is more for business-style cases where perhaps a bunch of these would benefit from PoE in a factory. If it’s to release yet another model, that would be a little disappointing, though I can’t think of what else they’d be able to do at this point to differentiate between the models.

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New Feature Testing & Benchmarks

Now, onto the meat and potatoes of any of my reviews, the benchmarks! The Pi 500+ is obviously marketed as a desktop solution with its built-in keyboard, however, I’m still going to put it through my usual benchmark suite and see how it fares.

Since my original Pi 500 review, I’ve obtained a Pi 400, so all of the graphs we see will be comparing the Pi 500+, Pi 500, Pi 400, and I’ve thrown in the 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 so that we can see how things compare when cooling isn’t a factor. The 400/500 results have no additional cooling, they simply utilise the passive heatsink (with an ambient temperature of 25 degrees Celsius). Realistically, most users aren’t going to be hammering their Pi 500 at 100% 24/7, so these will be extremes anyway, and on top of that, everything was measured and tested with the performance CPU governor enabled, so power draw will be a little higher at times as it will not scale the CPU down to lower frequencies when idle.

Anyway, let’s start off with a few of the important bits.

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Storage – NVMe Rules the Roost

The community demanded NVMe storage, or at least were very upset at the absence of it, and Raspberry Pi has (finally) delivered it in the form of a native M-Key M.2 connection that supports 2230, 2242, 2260, and 2280-sized devices.

Pre-installed is Raspberry Pi’s own 256GB NVMe (they’re still using the Samsung drives for these, or at least mine came with one!) that tests as well as you’d expect with a single lane of either PCIe Gen 2 or 3 bandwidth available. All of the testing in this post was done with Gen 3 because I live on the wild side, and since the Pi 5 came out, I’ve not had a single issue with it, so why not?

The raw fio test numbers look good, with an obvious boost from the NVMe storage.

Docker Package Install

While I’m still building out my desktop benchmark suite, I wanted to test at least one real-world scenario that would showcase the NVMe advantage, and that’s to time the installation of all of the necessary Docker packages and then the starting of the hello-world container. For some perverted reason, I have a local Debian mirror, so we could take internet randomness out of the picture.

Device & Boot DeviceDocker Installationhello-world Start

Raspberry Pi 500+ (NVMe)	20.49s	2.63s
Raspberry Pi 500+ (microSD)	39.05s	4.11s
Raspberry Pi 500 (microSD)	38.36s	3.83s

Things were fairly conclusive here in favour of the NVMe (duh), though it’s worth taking into account that these tests were performed with the 32GB Raspberry Pi microSD card, as this is what is supplied with the Pi 500. No microSD is supplied with the 500+.

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The RGB-backlit Mechanical Keyboard

The 2nd big change/addition is the mechanical keyboard that’s been placed on top of the unit (explaining its rather large 50% height increase).

Gateron KS-33 low-profile tactile switches, with low-profile key caps were chosen, likely to give a perfect balance of feel and space, and they don’t feel cheap. The tactile nature of the keys does mean that they’re quite a lot louder than I’m used to, though that may not be a problem for you, but bear it in mind, I don’t want you arguing with anyone over late-night clickety-clacks.

The RGB isn’t too in your face with adjustable brightness, and it can be disabled completely if you’d prefer. By default, you get a nice ripple effect on startup which then transitions to a green LED below the power button whilst on, or red if a power source is connected and the device is shut down.

Raspberry Pi have provided a tool for configuring the LEDs if that’s what you’re into, and this can be installed via apt and then accessed via rpi-keyboard-config.. There’s the CLI, and a Python library available so you can customise it to your heart’s content. How long until someone makes Snake for it?

Finally, I’m not sure if it’s just the material/finish on the key caps, but the printing looks a lot more “crisp” and clean than its predecessor. It genuinely looks like a high-quality keyboard on top, meant for real, heavy use.

Typing Feel & Performance

I’ll get it out at the beginning that I hate keyboards without the number pad, they feel too short, and the arrow keys being all bunched up felt extremely uncomfortable for me as someone used to a giant ass keyboard. I’m also used to linear switches rather than tactile, so this was a wild ride. This is all my own personal preference, however, so if you enjoy the smaller keyboards, you’ll love it.

That said, when I compare it to the Pi 400/500, it’s lightyears ahead in terms of comfort and overall feel/quality.

The unit also comes with a key cap removal tool, as yes, the keys are replaceable and customisable too!

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Raspberry Pi 500+ Benchmarks & Thermals

As you’d expect, the Pi 500+ benches very closely to the 500, and the Pi 5. The 400 trails, but it’s great to have here as a reference, as not everyone reading this will need the power of the BCM2712 SoC sitting within!

CPU / System Benchmarks

There may be a low-powered ARM processor in each of these, but they’re still capable of pumping out a decent amount of heat. Luckily, the 500 and 500+ both use the newer revision of the Broadcom System on Chip which cut out some unwanted silicon, resulting in lower power draw, thus less heat.

Using the Pi 500+, even whilst under heavy synthetic load, didn’t feel uncomfortable. I think having the extra distance between the chassis and keys really helps, as it felt a little more noticeable on the 500. The 80/90 grams of metal heatsink within does a great job of keeping things under control.

Power Consumption

The standard idle/load readings are going to more accurately represent what your day-to-day use would be, albeit remember that these are with the performance CPU governor set, so at idle, it’s running at 2.4GHz on all cores rather than ramping down to save energy.

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WiFi & Networking

WiFi feels like something that a lot of Pi 400/500 users would be interested in, and whilst the 1Gbit RJ45 option is there on each, everything is exactly as you’d expect there. WiFi, on the other hand, can be a bit hit or miss, especially given there’s no external antenna on any of these units.

I tested each of these in a home environment, against a 1Gbit iperf3 endpoint to a Ubiquiti UniFi U6-LR access point sitting around 10m away, with 1 fairly thin wall in the way. The numbers aren’t going to be something you can replicate exactly, but each of these were tested in the same position, 1 at a time, in identical conditions (when everybody else had gone to bed) on the 5GHz band.

It would seem that the new keyboard on the Pi 500+ has caused us to lose a bit of performance here, sadly, though it’s not the complete end of the world, as the numbers are still more than usable for everyday, general use in this situation. Given the keyboard section is much thicker, with more to get through, there’s likely some interference/blocking here.

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Use Cases & Who Should Buy

A Raspberry Pi 500+ is a heavier investment than the Pi 500, at more than twice but it does have some great use-cases.

Students who want a compact platform to work with would benefit from the 16GB of RAM, and if you’re getting to grips with Linux and programming, it’s an incredibly capable system.

You’re not going to be doing any heavy video editing or playing the latest game titles, but as a travel computer that you can put in your backpack, a workbench system, or something a little more flashy and powerful to get someone in your family interested in tinkering with Linux, it’s perfect.

Whether the Plus version is worth it for you will depend on what’s important to you. Whilst the 32GB microSD card supplied with the 500 is noticeably slower than the 64/128/256GB models, if you swap them out, you have all of the compute, and a decent amount of storage potential at around half the cost.

Speaking of cost..

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Pricing & Value Analysis

The Pi 500 retailed for $70, while the Pi 500+ costs $200 – nearly triple the price. There is no power supply, no mouse, and no “getting started” booklet. What you do get is a Pi 500+ Accessories pack (containing the plastic spudger for opening the unit, and a key switching tool), though!

That’s a little cruel and doesn’t tell the whole story, though. With the Pi 500 Plus, we have to factor in that there’s a pre-installed 256GB Raspberry Pi NVMe SSD included in the Pi 500+ package, along with 16GB of RAM. The NVMe SSD retails around $55 USD, and the price difference between the 8 and 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 is around $50 too.

Much like me in the last year, the Pi 500+ got wider

When you take those into account, you could say you’re getting around $105 in additional benefits, and that’s ignoring the change from a membrane chiclet keyboard to the low-profile Gateron KS-33 mechanical option. All of this combined means that the Raspberry Pi 500+ is a rather compelling purchase.

Could you get an N100/N150 mini PC for similar money? Yup, though you’ll likely need to compromise on the keyboard, again, it all depends what you’re in it for.

Is It Worth Upgrading?

• From the Pi 500: Probably not unless you really need the NVMe storage and additional RAM
• From the Pi 400: Definite yes, though depending on your use case, the 500 may be sufficient
• From the Pi 5: Depends on form factor preference

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Wrapping Things Up

In my opinion, the Pi 500+ is what the Pi 500 should have been initially. NVMe storage and 16GB RAM turn this into a very capable system, though I can understand why they did what they did.

That said, whilst it may feel like I’ve been overly negative, I actually really like the product. I wish there were options to buy it without an NVMe to bring the cost down a little for those that don’t care, or those that already have drives lying around, but it makes a lot of sense for these to be ready-to-go systems with no messing about. That’s what they’re all about, and they do it well.

You can find your local distributor by heading to the product page and scrolling to the bottom. Stock (based on previous launches) will likely be with a few core distributors first and then spread out across the world in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out.