Raspberry Pi 500+ mechanical keyboard PC review with Raspberry Pi OS “Trixie”

Today, we’ll review the Raspberry Pi 500+ mechanical keyboard PC using the recently released Raspberry Pi OS “Trixie” based on Debian 13.  It’s quite similar to the earlier Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC, but comes with more memory (16GB vs 8GB), a 256GB NVMe SSD, and a proper mechanical keyboard with replaceable caps and RGB LED lighting, so we’ll focus on these aspects during our tests, after going through the usual unboxing and teardown process.

Raspberry Pi 500+ unboxing

We received an early prototype of the Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard PC with a UK layout, white design in a retail package.

The bottom side of the package includes a list of features and confirmation that it’s indeed a UK layout keyboard. Not ideal for Thai users (we usually rely on the US layout), but that was probably the only layout available when Raspberry Pi sent us a sample in mid-September.

The package comes with the mechanical keyboard PC, a spudger tool to open the device, for instance, to replace the SSD, and a keycap puller. There’s nothing else, so you have to bring your own 5V/5A power adapter, mouse, and of course monitor.

All ports can be found on the rear panel. Front left to right: one USB 2.0 port, two USB 3.0 ports, a microSD card slot, a USB-C port for power, two micro HDMI ports, a 40-pin GPIO header covered by a protective rubber cover, and a Gigabit Ethernet port. The Kensington lock slot that was on the earlier Raspberry Pi 500 model is gone.

The underside of the keyboard features a few ventilation holes and five screws that we’ll need to loosen later when tearing down the device.

Raspberry Pi 500+ teardown

Let’s do a teardown now. After removing the five screws, we can slide the spudger tool between the two plastic parts to open the keyboard PC.

Be careful when opening the device since there’s a flat cable between the mainboard and the mechanical keyboard.

We immediately see the 256GB NVMe SSD instead, and a large metal plate to cool the computer. Note that the NVMe drive used in our pre-release sample is physically smaller than the ones found in mass production units, though the capacity is identical.

Let’s check the mainboard in more detail.

and compare it against the board used on the Raspberry Pi 500 model (2024).

It turns out it is the exact same PCB marked “Raspberry Pi 500 R4 (PVT)”, except the Pi 500+ comes with an M.2 socket, and a different (and smaller) connector is used for the mechanical keyboard.  The Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU handling the keyboard was also moved from the green mainboard to the keyboard PCB itself. The PoE section is left unused, pointing to a potential future third version of the Pi 500 with PoE.

Switching from Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm to Trixie

Let’s now reassemble everything and try the Raspberry Pi 500+. We connected an RF dongle for a wireless mouse to the USB 2.0 port, an official 5V/5A Raspberry Pi USB adapter (not provided), and a micro HDMI to HDMI connector to an HDMI display (10.1-inch RPI All-in-One touchscreen display).

Since we received the sample before the Debian 13-based version of Raspberry Pi OS (Trixie) was released, the system boots to the Debian 12 “Bookworm” version, immediately identifiable by its wallpaper.

Since it’s a new installation without modifications, we could likely have upgraded to Raspberry Pi OS Trixie using the command:

However, Debian developers don’t recommend this method, and Raspberry Pi repeated their advice, so we still did a fresh installation instead. Since we did not want to use a microSD card to do the upgrade, we connected an Ethernet cable to the Pi 500+, rebooted the system, and pressed space to enter the bootloader. We then pressed Shift to enable the net installer, and from there it’s the same process as with Raspberry Pi Imager, except no microSD card is needed, and Raspberry Pi OS Trixie was directly installed on the SSD.

Raspberry Pi 500+ system information, benchmarks, and thermal performance

We are now ready to perform a few more tests. The Raspberry Pi 500 and 500+ rely on the same Broadcom BCM2712 SoC, so the features and performance will be very similar. Let’s check the system information with inxi first:

We did a short comparison between Raspberry Pi 500 with Bookworm and Raspberry Pi 500+ with Trixie below:

	Raspberry Pi 500	Raspberry Pi 500+	Remarks
Model Revision	Rev 1.0 (rev: d04190)	Rev 1.0 (rev: e04190)	New revision
Kernel Version	6.6.62+rpt-rpi-2712	6.12.47+rpt-rpi-2712	Updated kernel
OS / Distro	Debian GNU/Linux 12 (Bookworm)	Debian GNU/Linux 13 (Trixie)
Desktop Environment	LabWC (Wayland + XWayland 22.1.9)	LabWC (Wayland + XWayland 24.1.6)	New version of compositor
CPU	Quad-core Cortex-A76, 1.5–2.4 GHz	Quad-core Cortex-A76, 1.5–2.4 GHz	Same frequency reported
CPU Temperature (Idle)	48.5°C	42.1°C	6.4°C cooler
Memory (RAM)	8 GB	16 GB	Double the memory
Storage Device	32GB microSD card (mmcblk0)	256GB NVMe SSD (Samsung MZ9LQ256HBJD)	Faster storage device
Network (Wi-Fi / BT)	Wi-Fi: RP1 (5 GHz) / BT 5.0 (bcm7271)	Wi-Fi: RP1 / BT 5.0 (bcm7271)	Identical wireless module
Bluetooth Version	3.0	5.0	Differences likely due to a firmware update

Most information is as expected, except the lower idle temperature (due to firmware/software improvements?) and the different Bluetooth versions reported by the utility.

Let’s run sbc-bench.sh benchmark to find any potential regressions and improvements in performance, and check the thermal performance:

Comparison of results:

	Raspberry Pi 500	Raspberry Pi 500+	Delta
memset	12,165.9 MB/s	9,715.3 MB/s	-20.1 %
memcpy	5,513.9 MB/s	5,933.6 MB/s	+7.6 %
7-zip	11,050 MIPS	11,740 MIPS	+6.2 %
AES-256 16K	1,368,140.46k	1,367,916.54k	-0.016 %
Max CPU temperature	69.4°C	63.9°C	-5.5°C

Apart from memset, which is quite lower on the Pi 500+ (is that because of the 16GB of RAM?), the results are slightly better or identical (AES) compared to the Pi 500, and the CPU temperature is lower, potentially because of firmware/software improvements since last year, as the hardware design looks to be mostly the same. The main benefit of the Pi 500+ will be for multitasking since it comes with twice the RAM capacity.

Another major change is the M.2 NVMe SSD, so let’s test the built-in SSD with iozone3:

At about 440 MB/s reads and 420 MB/s writes, it works well, although that means the Raspberry Pi 500+ keyboard PC still defaults to PCIe Gen2. Let’s switch to PCIe Gen3 mode by adding the following line to /boot/firmware/config.txt before the [cm4] section:

Let’s see if we’ve effectively doubled the data rate:

865MB/s sequential reads and 812MB/s sequential writes are about as expected. In any case, the most important for the OS are the faster random I/Os from the SSD, which may be why Raspberry Pi still keeps PCIe Gen2 as the default.

We also browsed the web, checked email, played YouTube videos with the Raspberry Pi 500+, and everything is rather snappy for a low-end computer system.

Testing Raspberry Pi 500+’s mechanical keyboard and RGB lighting

Besides the SSD and 16GB of RAM, the most important change in the Raspberry Pi 500+ is its mechanical keyboard. The company offers various layouts, but our review sample features an 85-key UK layout using Gateron KS-33 Blue low-profile Clicky switches.

These switch stems use a cross-shaped format that is compatible with the Cherry MX standard or most keycaps available on the market. However, avoid using overly tall profiles, such as XDA, OEM, or SA, as they may hit the edges or produce excessive noise. DSA or Cherry Profile keycaps are recommended. The provided keycap puller allows the user to easily remove keycaps to change the layout or replace the keycaps.

RGB lights control

The Raspberry Pi 500+ features RGB lights controlled via the Vial QMK firmware. It includes basic lights enabled by default, such as the Power button LED (red/green based on the device’s power status), a rainbow boot animation (which can be disabled), and the Caps Lock indicator. It also comes with 7 preset backlight modes, and the user can press the Fn + F4 shortcut to cycle between them.

Mode	Name	Remarks
0	Off	All lights off, except Power button and Caps Lock
1	Solid White
2	Solid Color	Single color adjustable with Fn + F3
3	Gradient Left Right	Rainbow colors from left to right
4	Cycle Pinwheel	Rainbow colors moving in a spinning pinwheel
5	Typing Heatmap	Frequently used keys glow more red
6	Solid Reactive	Keys light up when pressed, color adjustable

Other lighting control shortcuts

• Change color – Press Fn + F3 to cycle forward through the color set (16 colors total), Fn + Shift + F3 to cycle backward
• Adjust brightness: Press Fn + F5 to decrease brightness, press Fn + Shift + F6 to increase brightness

Alternatively, pressing Fn + Shift + F5 will increase the brightness, while Fn + Shift + F6 will decrease it.

If you want to hear the sound of the keyboard while typing, you can watch the video below. The keyboard is in Cycle Pinwheel mode in the video.

rpi-keyboard-config utility

For more flexibility, you can also use the rpi-keyboard-config command-line utility. The first thing we had to do was to upgrade the firmware to prevent an “old firmware” error:

Let’s run the rpi-keyboard-config without parameters to see all options:

The info command shows the following information about the keyboard:

The utility gives access to a much longer list of RGB lighting effects:

We tried the last effect (44: Pixel Fractal) with the following command:

We can see some parameters with default values, but they can also be modified as needed, so the utility allows for maximum flexibility:

Let’s try other commands, for instance, to set the brightness to 80%:

Key Remapping is also possible. We can list all 575! key codes:

and configure a specific key as follows:

For example, we can reconfigure the Enter key (40) on row 4 and column 1:

This will map the CapsLock key to the Enter key. If you don’t like that, you could type another command like the one above with the CapsLock key (57), or reset the keyboard to default:

Check out the advanced software config section of the Raspberry Pi 500+ documentation for additional details.

Conclusion

The Raspberry Pi 500+ is an upgraded version of the Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC, featuring a mechanical keyboard with RGB lighting, a 256GB NVMe SSD, and 16GB RAM. Other features and benchmark results are nearly identical, but in practice, users will notice a performance boost, especially when multitasking, thanks to the faster SSD and additional memory.

The most noticeable difference for a casual user will be the mechanical keyboard with RGB lighting. This allows the user to change keycaps to update the layout of the keyboard, and RGB lighting is customizable through the function, or even more through the rpi-keyboard-config command line utility. We’re just a bit surprised there’s no graphical utility with the same set of features since it’s pretty common for mechanical keyboards.

The most controversial part of the Pi 500+ mechanical keyboard PC is its price. At $200, it’s the most expensive Raspberry Pi hardware so far, and we think the mechanical keyboard may be a large part of the relatively high price, as similar mechanical keyboard often sells in the $100 range. Suthinee reviewed a few on CNX Software Thailand, such as the Lofree Flow and THIRDREALITY Smart Mechanical Keyboard MK1 (sorry, Thai language only), and the price varies depending on the type of switch used. The Raspberry Pi 500+ also requires somewhat unusual accessories like a micro HDMI to HDMI cable and a 5V/5A power adapter, which add to the cost. That’s probably why the company also sells a full kit with power supply, a mouse, a micro HDMI to HDMI cable, and other accessories for $220.

CNXSoft: This article is a translation – with some additional insights – of the review on CNX Software Thailand by Suthinee Kerdkaew.

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