Hello and welcome to Mr Tompkins Edtech. I was super-excited to hear about the new Raspberry
Pi 400 released this week, and just had to go buy one for myself. It’s just arrived,
and in this video I’m going to unbox it, give it a quick review and discuss whether
this might just be a super low budget desktop PC suitable for school students needing to
work from home. So if you have kids at home squabbling over
the family laptop, and you’re looking for a super-cheap device that will allow them
all to do their homework or online lessons without breaking the bank , or if you are
just interested in hearing about this latest greatest offering from the Raspberry Pi Foundation
then keep watching...
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Now the Raspberry Pi 400 feels both ground-breaking and hugely retro at the same time.
I bought my first Raspberry Pi in 2012, and in the years since I must admit I’ve bought quite a few more!
Each new generation of the Pi has seen big improvements in the onboard components and its processing power.
But it has kept it’s rather odd-looking small single board form-factor with its sockets and wires heading
off in every direction– well that is until now! In the Raspberry Pi 400, they’ve taken
a souped up version of the latest Raspberry Pi 4 and splooshed it inside a nifty looking
keyboard and the result is this totally awesome, tiny but fierce computer that looks fabulous
and can be plugged straight into your home TV or spare monitor.
Now this might seem odd to youngsters today, but I grew up with these small computers stuffed
inside keyboards. My first home computer was the ZX81, bought for me by my parents for
Christmas when I was 11 years old, and which similarly plugged directly into the TV. They
paid the princely sum of £70 for it, which was probably quite a lot in those days. Spookily,
that is pretty much the same price you can buy the Pi 400 for today! It’s just that
this device has roughly 4 million times more RAM and quite a bit more processing power!
So lets get it out of the box and see what we have here. Now, you can buy the pi 400
on its own for £67 here in the UK, or $70 in the US. I paid a bit more and got
the “personal computer kit” which bundles all the extra bits and bobs you'll need to get
it going. This kit cost £97 here in the UK, or $100 in the US, so an extra £30 or $30
on top of the base unit. For that extra cash you’ll get everything you need to get set up
and running with your new mini-PC. So here is the main unit. Looks great – really
nice feel to the keyboard, and unlike previous versions of the Pi, has all the connectors,
including the GPIO, along this back edge of the unit. So its going to sit a lot more tidily
on your desk than previous Pi models. Also in kit box is a dedicated USB C power
supply unit. The raspberry pi 400 draws quite a lot of power over the USB C cable, and I
do recommend you get the official power supply rather than using one that came with something
else, or it might not run so well. There’s a really cute matching wired mouse,
that follows the colour and design of the keyboard.
Now there’s already a micro sd-card plugged into the unit when you purchase it, and in the box you’ll find
a SD-card adapter, if you want to copy data to and from another device.
There is a lovely full colour book jam packed full of information, projects and other fun things you can do with your new pi.
It really is worth reading through and trying out some of the many great ideas you’ll find inside.
Finally at the bottom of the box you'll also find a micro-hdmi cable to connect the unit to a TV or monitor.
You can actually connect two monitors to the pi, but you’ll need to find yourself another one of these for that.
So unless you have all this extra stuff lying around your house already, I do think that
it’s worth paying a little bit more and getting the personal computer kit, especially
if you are thinking about this as a possible Christmas present for someone. The mouse is
just too cute to pass up and the book is a real treasure trove of ideas and information.
Ok, I’m going to plug this in now and boot it up. If you’ve never used a Raspberry
pi before, you may be surprised to learn that it doesn’t have a hard-drive, but instead
everything runs off this tiny micro-SD card. The beauty of this is that you can just pop
it out and pop in another card with an entirely different operating system on it in about
3 seconds flat. The card supplied with the device comes pre-installed
with the Raspberry Pi OS, formally known as Raspbian – as it’s based on the Debian
distribution of the Linux operating system. If you’ve never used a Linux based system
before, I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how familiar it feels. You’ve got a windows
style desktop with an app launcher that you can access by clicking up here. It comes pre-loaded
with a whole bunch of useful free software, including the libre office suite which is
largely compatible with Microsoft Office. Now this is no powerhouse PC –you’re not
going to be able to run the latest 3D games, and if that’s all you’re interested in
doing, then perhaps the Pi is not for you. It does however make a fantastic retro-game
machine and will happily emulate all the older consoles and handsets.
If you are realistic with your expectations, I think there is so much more potential than
that in this little PC. It will happily do all the day-to-day tasks you normally do with
your laptop or PC, checking mail, surfing the web, watching videos on youtube, typing
up an assignment or essay. But the curious and inquisitive will get heaps
more value than that out of one of these devices. There are loads of different operating systems
you can try out – Ubuntu, Chromium, Risc OS, Kano OS, even Android, and there are many
more available to try for free- just download one, copy it onto an sd-card and pop it into
the pi and boot it up. You’ve also got this GPIO on the back of the Pi, which enables
you to directly connect up all sorts of electronics experiments and projects. You can use one
of the many programming languages that come pre-installed to control your various servos,
sensors and motors. I bought my son one of the first generation pi's when he was 10 years old.
Here it is in the lego case he built for it. He had so much fun making and programming
various gadgets and robots. He’s now off at university studying maths and computing,
and whilst that’s not entirely down to this little guy, it certainly provided heaps of
stimulus and instilled a love of programming that is serving him very well.
Now I’m also a big fan of the Raspberry Pi – I have at least one of each generation
that’s been released and I’ve used them in a whole range of projects. I’ve even
got one permanently hooked up to my TV and music system as a media player. So I didn’t
need a lot of convincing to go out and buy one of these for my own pleasure. But the
question I’m now asking about this Raspberry Pi 400 is could it be used successfully by
school students as an ultra-budget PC to help keep them on top of their online learning
and homework? Now there is currently a big demand for extra
devices in lots of household up and down the country and across the globe, as siblings
need to share screen time on the one home laptop or PC, or make use of a parent’s
phone during lockdowns and self-isolations.
For under a 100 bucks, you can get this delivered to your home, plug it into your tv or spare
monitor, and you’ve got pretty much everything you need for school work straight out of the
box. It boots up really fast, in about 10-15 seconds. You’ve got the Libre Office suite
pre-installed so you can write essays, make powerpoint-style presentations.
YouTube runs well at 1080p, and flawlessly at 720p. so you can keep up with all your
video lessons easily with smooth playback. If your school uses Google Classroom, then
the pre-installed chromium browser will work great with all your google apps, or you can
even go all in and install Chromium OS and turn your Pi into chromebook clone.
The default browser will be equally happy with your school Office 365 account and all
it’s webapps. You can even install the Teams desktop app directly on the pi, which I’ll
show you how to do in a step-by-step follow-up video, and there’s also an unofficial OneNote
desktop app you can install. Unlike a tablet or iPad though, the Raspberry
Pi 400 supports full multitasking and you’re going to be able to have several apps and
multiple browser tabs open concurrently and switch between them fluidly, cutting and pasting
text or images between those apps no problem at all.
So all in all I’d say yes, this device really could be that extra desktop pc you have in
the house that means the kids can all get on with their school work and are not having
to take turns. Who knows, it might even provide the inspiration for your child’s first steps
into the world of programming and electronics like it did for my son.
One thing it doesn’t have is a built in camera/microphone so it’s not going to be
able to make video calls out of the box. Lots of schools don’t allow students to turn
on cameras or microphones anyway during live lessons, so perhaps this is no biggie for
many students. But if you do need a device that allows you to make Teams or zoom calls
where you need to have the camera and microphone turned on, then you could easily add a USB
webcam/microphone to your set-up for around £30. I’ll put a link in the description below.
But even with that extra expense, this kit would work out at less than half the price
of an iPad or chromebook, and a fraction of the cost of a new laptop or PC.
In fact at this price, there is really nothing comparable that you could buy new,
although it’s possible you might be able to get hold of a second hand laptop or desktop from ebay
for around £100, and if you know what you’re looking for, this might give you comparable or even slightly better performance than the Pi.
But personally I know which one I’d rather find under the Christmas tree this year.
I hope you found this video interesting and that it piqued your interest in the Raspberry Pi 400.
If it did, please give it a like and consider subscribing to my channel.
In my next video I’ll give you a step by step guide on how to install Microsoft Teams
on your new Pi. See you on the next video.