Instead of a traditional review of a new Pi product, I thought I'd split things up on my blog, and write two separate posts; this one about the Pi 500+'s new mechanical keyboard, and a separate post about hacking in an eGPU on the Pi 500+, for a massive uplift in gaming performance and local LLMs.
The Raspberry Pi 500+ was announced today, sells for $200, and adds on the following over what was present in the regular Pi 500:
Built-in M.2 NVMe SSD (256GB, 2230-size Pi branded drive) in a 2280-size slot
16 GB LPDDR4x RAM (over the Pi 500's 8)
Low-profile RGB-backlit mechanical keyboard with Gateron KS-33 Blue switches
I also have a full video covering the Pi 500+ up on YouTube, and you can watch it below, as well:
A Mechanical Keyboard
Like any modern mechanical keyboard, the Pi 500+'s uses standard keycaps, mounted on top of Gateron KS-33 Low Profile Blue switches.
The keycaps feel nice, the larger keys like Space, left Shift, Enter, and Backspace all have extra bracing, and I had no problem pulling keycaps with a few different key pullers.
Each key has an individually-controllable RGB LED below, and the keyboard comes preprogrammed with a dozen or so lighting effects. More can be configured in Raspberry Pi's keyboard configuration tools (I used a preview version of it in my testing).
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