Raspberry Pi 4 Computer Desktop Kit

Tickling the fancy of tinkerers, the Raspberry Pi is a tiny circuit board with memory, a CPU, and several I/O connectors. It has long promised to offer anyone access to the building blocks of computer programming—from making an app to controlling a hobbyist robot—for the price of a good dinner. The newest model, the Raspberry Pi 4, still promises all of this, but it adds the tantalizing possibility of serving as a basic desktop PC with minimal setup effort, in the form of the Raspberry Pi 4 Computer Desktop Kit. At $120, the Desktop Kit, which includes an upgraded version of the Pi 4 board, is much pricier than a Pi board on its own. (They start at $35.) It delivers good value, though, and indeed gets Pi first-timers up and running quickly. But persistent Pi quirks mean it’s still not a realistic substitute for an actual PC. Prospective buyers who have used Pi before and own the supporting accoutrements will be better off getting the Pi 4 board by itself.

Same Size and Shape

The Raspberry Pi 4 is the same basic size and shape as all of its Model B predecessors, though significantly bigger than the Model A and Zero versions. It’s a 2.2-by-3.4-inch rectangle, and its various components stick up about 0.6 inch tall. Among those components are a Broadcom quad-core processor running at 1.5GHz, four USB Type-A ports, two micro HDMI video outputs, a gigabit Ethernet port, and radios for 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0.

These are all recognizable specs to people shopping for a new laptop or desktop to use as their main computer. But a few other unique aspects to the Raspberry Pi 4 hint at its true identity as a building block for tinkerers and makers.

The first is the General Purpose Input-Output (GPIO) header, a versatile 40-pin connector that can power and communicate with virtually anything you might want to create, from a DIY weather station to a motor for a small robot. All of its uses require a fair amount of tinkering to both write code and attach hardware like sensors and lights. Taming the GPIO connector is far outside the consumer-PC use case.

The second unique aspect is the microSD card slot on the bottom. It looks like any other microSD card reader you might find on a laptop, but since the Raspberry Pi 4 lacks a hard drive, an SSD, or any other form of onboard non-volatile storage, you must download and install the operating system you want to use onto a microSD card (which you buy separately) using a different computer. You’ll need to insert this OS-readied card into the slot before you can actually turn on your Raspberry Pi.

In the past, this represented a significant barrier to entry for people who just wanted to buy a Raspberry Pi, plug it in, and perform basic computing actions like surfing the web. Sure, you could buy an SD card pre-formatted with Raspbian, the Linux-based operating system designed for the Raspberry Pi, but it was still an additional step that also added to the price.

With the Raspberry Pi 4 Desktop Kit, that’s much simpler, if not cheaper. For a single $120 price, you get everything you need to plug the Raspberry Pi 4 into an HDMI-equipped monitor or TV and start surfing the web. In addition to the Pi 4 itself and a pre-formatted 16GB microSD card, you also get the official Raspberry Pi keyboard and mouse, two micro HDMI cables, a power adapter, an adorable plastic case for the Pi 4, and a hard copy of The Official Raspberry Pi Beginner’s Guide. The book’s subtitle (“How to use your new computer”) suggests that the Desktop Kit could be a rival to any other cheap PC you might find while roaming the aisles of your local electronics shop.

Breaking Down the Bundle Value

The Desktop Kit represents an $85 increase over the cheapest ($35) Raspberry Pi 4…