A few years ago, the Raspberry Pi 500 (and 400) were created for people who use Raspberry Pi as a general-purpose computer rather than a hobby device. Now the developers are taking that concept further with the Raspberry Pi 500+ — a more advanced computer-in-a-keyboard.
The Raspberry Pi 500+ is equipped with 16 GB of RAM instead of 8 GB, as well as a 256 GB NVMe SSD instead of microSD storage. In addition, the keyboard itself is now mechanical and features individually programmable RGB LEDs, and the new model’s dimensions have increased to 286×122×23 mm.
Other specifications are similar to the Pi 5 or Pi 500: a quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 processor at 2.4 GHz, support for 802.11ac Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth 5.0, two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, two micro HDMI ports with 4K 60 Hz support, a microSD slot, and a 40-pin GPIO header.
The new model is already on sale, priced at around US$200 — twice the price of the Pi 500.
Raspberry Pi chief Eben Upton says the Raspberry Pi 500+ has been in development since the release of the regular 500 last year. Even then, testers noted that the motherboard had space for an M.2 slot, but nothing was soldered there. The Pi 500+ features an M.2 2280 NVMe slot with a preinstalled 256 GB SSD, which can be replaced with higher-capacity drives. Upton emphasizes that the system can still boot from microSD and USB drives.
As for the keyboard itself, the Pi 500+ comes with low-profile clicky Gateron Blue KS-33 switches. The device also uses a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller and the open-source QMK firmware. The low-profile keycaps can be replaced with standard ones; however, you won’t be able to easily swap the switches themselves, since the new model lacks hot-swap support.
