Finally someone made a modern day Commodore 64 style computer.

This looks great, but they should have wrapped a wifi antenna cables around the keyboard like it's done in laptops (usually around the screen) to increase the reception area. Built in wifi is still the Achilles's heel of all of the Pis I've used

What I love about the module inside is that all the ports are on the same edge. I can see a few hardware hackers getting these and removing the case and keyboard.

Thank you for this. Really well done review, answers all my questions, looks up chips, etc. Many many small details you do so well for conveying the picture of this device.

Thanks for the run-through. I've been curious about what's inside, but leery about disassembling my shiny new Pi 400. I'm glad we have other people on UKposts to do it for us.

Thanks, Jeff, your video of how to get the keyboard off was very helpful. This work for the Raspberry PI keyboard as well. This comes in handy if you need to switch the keyboard language or have a damaged keyboard. The Pi keyboard and the Pi 400 keyboards are compatible. Also your selection of the tool to pop the seams on the keyboard is spot on. I have not found a better tool.

Have to say, I REALLY want to see one of these with 8G of ram and an integrated M.2 sata port. Perhaps even with a beefed up SOC of 2Ghz+. I love these little low powered computers for running things during power outages, which happen often in my area. While my neighbors are running around with candles I have a powerbank with a led camping light and a ARM Chromebook running Ubuntu tethered to my phone. Priorities I guess ;-) .

6:40 Nope, the 400 number is not an homage to the Amiga 500. It's an homage to the Acorn Archimedes 400 series, which was the power user version of the Archimedes (the low-end version was the 300 series). All the Raspberry Pi names pay homage to early Acorn computers (the BBC Model A, Model B, Archimedes, etc.). The ARM processor was originally the Acorn RISC Machine CPU -- the first 32-bit desktop RISC processor, released with the Acorn Archimedes. The acronym was later renamed to Advanced RISC Machine. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture

Thanks for the video. There were plenty around for the Pi 400 when it first released, but none of them opened it up, which is what I wanted to see.

I did not know this was a thing, glad to see someone already opening it

I noticed this pop up in my Google News feed and I was curious about its innards. Your video sated my curiosity and I liked the cheeky humour / skits mixed into the overall "box opening" video. Good job on making this video Jeff and keep it up! :)

Always wondered what's in my Pi400. Now I know. Thank you.

Definitely buying this for my little brother for Christmas. He’s a littler tinkerer so he’ll love it.

Great to the point tear down, it's the first one I could find on this new release.

This perfect for the average home user. It has been frustrating "arguing" with family about them buying $500-$1000 computers to browse the web, watch videos, use Word and Excel.

Great review Nice to see the teardown Thanks for sharing👍😀

Good, thoughtful teardown. Thanks Jeff.

thank you for opening it!

wow super super slick design, the build pi's 10 minutes from where I live in West UK (Southern Wales). Quality engineering at a great price.

I'm always amazed how powerful already the regular Raspberry Pi4 Model B is. An even better Pi wow!

"Until next time, I'm Jeff Geerling" - so next time you'll be someone else?!

When I first saw this It reminded me of the Comodo C64. Thanks for the teardown.

Fantastic teardown, mate! 😊👍

they have all that space but still went with those crappy tiny HDMI sockets! could be design philosophy? make everything tiny then you notice the gpio header ok maybe not! they probably just did it to save money so they didn't have to stock regular hdmis

GAME CHANGER! For real. Tech only gets more compact and lightweight in time. This could be the first of a new breed of systems geared towards coding professionals and engineers of all kinds. Love it!

Just ordered it. Will have it this week. Happy days.

Love that shaping noise

Good bloopers at the end. Thumbs up. Good video thank you

I love this design!

I wonder why they didn’t use the new compute module. With that, it would be upgradable in the future.

Reminds me of the Acorn Atom... the casing was first used for just holding the keyboard for the Acorn System 1... then Acorn banged together a simple all-in-one microcomputer, which fitted into the same casing to become the Atom.

Hey nice video! Hadn't heard of it till now. Well done.

FYI, if you're looking for a Pi in 2022, the Pi 400 is still available at a non-gouged price point. I just received my Pi 400 kit yesterday (Mar 2022) and I paid $100, same as retail when they were released.

Thanks for this.

First worth watching video about this thing. Thanks 👍

Great video. As always. I've got almost all the answers to my questions regarding this model internals. Just one left and is about it's overclocking capabilities. For example, if this chip model version it's the same as RPI4 but OC by default, or if it will support a higher OC speed than previous model. Anyway, I'll probably not buying this, but if they ever release an AIO kit for current RPI4 owners at a reasonable price, I'll gladly support them.

I use various guitar picks to open such things. Works very well

Looks really neat! I'm surprised they didn't just put a normal Pi 4 in there, I guess they are expecting to sell enough units to make up for the investment of a new PCB design.

Thanks for sharing.

Excellent video. Subscribed. I love how it's built. I would recommend removing the SD card before removing the board. Yes, I think it was a nod to the Amiga 500 too.

Thank you for showing this! Needed to know how to open this thing so I can try and sway the white keyboard for the black one!

I literally just slimmed down my pi4 to fit it under a Psion 5 keyboard and relocated ports to the back like this.. Now I want the board they used in this!

Very happy with my Pi400👍 My next will be Pi400/8G or Pi Notebook😎

i was sort of hoping that it used the computer module, that would of been interesting for future upgrades. but still pretty cool, ty for the vid

The bourns part is the ethernet magnetics (basically a couple of small transformers), on the regular pi they use a jack with integrated magnetics; this board is using a standard 8P8C jack with external magnetics, likely for lower profile.

Great job Jeff. 👍🏻 The Pi 400 laptop will likely be coming soon.

Nice video .... I am going to link this video into my video description as I need a teardown

Good post, i looked at the boxed pi 400 the other day, a wired mouse should be a choice between wired or wireless

I would really prefer my laptop and tablet to have those slots to open the case! I am in agreement about adding thermal pads for a few of the other chips.

Got an email about this today. Looks like an interesting little product. Would've been great for me when I was doing my coursework using a pi and having to lug a full size keyboard around with it.

For prying open the case: iSesamo, iFixit Jimmy, metal spudger, or iFlex in order of thickest to thinnest metal. Also handy for prying open smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

FINALLY, a usable Board with all external Connectors on one side. I got tired trying to Integrate Pi's in Systems and routing the HDMI-Cables with Adapters to the back. All I need now is SMT for external antenna and a internal USB-header.

Great video. Well worth a subscription.

It's a commodore vic-20 replacement, the vic-20 had a connector for a common 44 pin edge connector card of its day, for expansion and experimentation. This version of the raspberry pi seems to capture the essence of the Vic-20 but with modern capability. The commodore 64 was more of a gaming rig back then in the old 8-bit days.

The 400 might be a reference to old Acorn machines like the A4000 or even the A410 and A440. The A4000 was also a keyboard based machine. :¬}

That’s really neat, didn’t know they made one. But I’d never use the power of a pi4 unless I was trying to make it run proper CAD software or whatever, so would probably prefer a cheaper one with a pi3. A trackpoint in the middle of the keyboard would be a nice touch.

If you don't have access to a plastic spudger, a guitar pick or old/unused credit/gift card also work in a pinch. These materials have lower hardness compared to metal pry tools, so they won't mar the finish of the product you're disassembling. Terrific teardown and analysis, by the way. Love the attention to detail and the email exchange (actual journalism) you've put in prior to making this video. Keep up the good work.

more like a hommage to the old Atari 400 and retro home computers in general

nice that all the ports are down one side , would make it easy to design a cluster baseboard for it

Thanks, very useful video. I was hoping there would be an easy way to modify it to use it as a USB keyboard to reduce clutter but I don't think I I'll have much luck trying to solder to a via.

you got yourself a new sub! great vid

by the way it has been put together, it seems like they want you to tinker with it, so i expect lots of accessories and perhaps custom cases for this in the near future so this could be interesting.

Cool stuff man !

When I first saw it, for whatever reason I was sure it will have a compute module 4 inside. New PCB makes more sense though, as it definitely is cheaper than separate I/O board. Can't wait for new Pi-laptop builds with this new form factor!

Thank you for the video, I was really curious to see what was inside. I use guitar picks to open electronics, they work well and you can buy a set of 40 for very little money on amazon. Each set includes picks of different thickness. 🙂

+1 for including the bloopers :-) no seriously, thank you and I would +more if I could!

Thanks for the teardown. I wanted to see the "innerards" as soon as I saw the announcement ! Sure wish it had 8GB.

That heatsink looks much more like an EMC shield that is serving a double purpose.

Thanks to the standard matrix keyboard, you could potentially put the board inside something like an ibm wheelwriter keyboard.

much better! I've seen all of these reviews coming out today but... I KNOW WHAT A PI CAN DO! TAKE THE DERN THING APART! I wanna see what's up that petticoat!

Great content!

OK, after playing with this in the UK for several days doing lots of ffmpeg based h264 / 265 video transcoding I found that the Pi 400 can run up to +20C compared to using an Ice Tower with a regular Pi 4 4GB, e.g 66 C v 47C. Now most people don’t run video transcodes for hours like me. I ran ffmpeg libx265 CRF 20 for 15+hours (0.043x with 41 mins input file). So definitely usable from a temperature if not performance perspective. On the downside I had a boot USB 3 SSD connected and found that like the Sinclair ZX81 from the early 1980s the connector comes out far too easily thereby freezing the Pi 400. It is crying out for an internal storage option. Just move the keyboard and the USB 3 SSD interface link is interrupted. Sticking with MicroSD might be a better option.

Awesome thank you

Something I've NOT noticed at first is that it lacks the CSI and DSI connectors. I guess it makes sense to leave out the DSI in such a design, since it already has two HDMI outputs; but maybe people would want a camera, even if only to use a videoconferencing app. Also, a microphone input would be a great addition. Of course one could add both the camera and the mike with a single USB port, but it would be nice if we could use whatever interface had become available by cutting out the DSI port to add a sound digitizer, and still keep the CSI port for a Pi camera.

When will they use the same SoC on regular RPi 4s... It runs so cool with passive.

Insanely Great !

I just want to see them make another one with a battery power option included... Then add an optional mini "monitor" you can connect to it up top for the full "on the go" pi...

I was hoping there would be an EMMC on this Pi4 variant, I'm hoping someone finds a way to shoehorn a drive in there!

Interesting and well presented thanks. I see a new computer in my future.

Thanks for the tear down. This is now on my Xmas list along with retro pie! I’m wondering how we can get a rechargeable battery solution in there and maybe wireless hdmi? Mmmmmm

Hi Jeff! thanks for your amazing videos. Could you make a video about how to enable the pi camera on a pi 4 with the raspbery os buster 64bit. I having a trouble with this version (cannot use raspistill, raspvid) :( ans even cant use cv2. VideoCapture(0) Do you ever face this issue? Thank you so much!!

I was wondering, can the USB power port also be used as OTG like in the pi4? one of the features I find very useful

Really a great product! I image an application of this new stuff as a Bluetooth keyboard for iPad etc. At once one can have a external keyboard and a Linux environment. If there are any solutions ?

If they put CSI and DSI connectors back, we can get a motherboard for a Pi-based ultra thin laptop. They also would need a GPU driver for a DSI to eDP chip since most laptop displays uses that interface. Also includes should be an internal USB 2.0 hub for a trackpad, USB sound card for implementing internal speakers and the keyboard.

Hey Jeff, my Pi 400 is the computer I could afford right now. When I get something more powerful, is there a way to use the pi 400 as a keyboard for it? (to reduce cost, clutter, and e-waste)

I wish it was CM4 based, for the options and upgradeability. Hitting the price point would be tough, however.

6:43 Also Atari 400/800, basically a number of machines around that era had x00-style model numbers.

I'd been wondering about the formfactor of the actual PI inside the keyboard. I guess I was expecting to find a Raspberry Pi CM4 attached to a backplane providing all the IO ports. I did not expect to see an all new board design.

On a side note: the AmigaOS was a linux based OS! That coupled with real multitasking graphics/sound/memory chips made it way more powerful than the ibm compatabiles at that time, even tho they had higher clock speeds :)

This is exactly the form-factor folks need for making Raspberry Pi 4 ‘blade’ clusters as the key ports are all on one sides for various cluster mainboard configs: - headless network boot config - ethernet (for pxeboot), power, gpio (serial, i2c, gpio to trigger reboots, etc), - boot with storage - ethernet (for pxeboot), power, gpio (serial, i2c, gpio to trigger reboots, etc), sdcard option, and USB drawn out for USB stick, usb3 sata, usb3 m.2 nve, and other peripherals I also see this slim form-factor helpful for projects helpful for those where a “3×5” style board cannot fit. If the Raspberry Pi foundation or licensees do not release this form factor without the “keyboard wrappings”, makers will gut the keyboard which will be landfill plastic eventually. And that would be bad, m’kay. Jeff, please provide the Pi Org some feedback to sell this mainboard form-factor on its own. They could even optionally leave the keyboard ribbon adapter off.There is a demand for this configuration.

Any tempting thoughts of clustering and overclocking the Pi 400 boards?

I had an idea to stick a raspi in an old chyron duet keyboard I picked up at auction a while back, but this is a way easier solution.

I like how they handled the gpio, but with it being moved I would have liked to see a color coding on it to make it more recognizable when relating it to the standard pi's gpio headers. Sad to see no screen or camera connectors directed out the back as well. At the very least one for the camera should have been provided, as projects using the pi cam are pretty popular.

Very nice disassembly

Ok, I didn't expect a completely different motherboard. I thought it was just a pi 4 + breakout board to get to all the IO ports. That explains the missing 3.5 jack and missing camera connector. I was thinking that I would have to drill a hole to get to that. My reason is that I wanted the "RCA" video option for playing on olden TVs. They still exist and are a backup display option when you are out in the wild. I understand why they would ditch the 3.5 jack, but if you ditch the jack then maybe go with standard HDMI connectors.

Is the board still good for other things? I think it would be cool to get that board out of the keyboard and into something else.

Whoever came up with the idea to put the pc inside the keyboard was genious.

The schematics aren't out yet. What chip is between the keyboard connector and the USB controller? Is it something that can be reflashed? (To drive a ThinkPad keyboard matrix.) Is there a trace from it to anything other than the keyboard and USB? (i.e. How does this power button work?) Is it something that can present as a composite device? (To be both keyboard and trackpoint.)

Jeff. Is there any hope for a new pi 400 with a dead space bar?

Thx, that I search for. My idea was to include a pi with 8gb RAM, bring not working.