Raspberry Pi 500+ boasts a high-quality mechanical keyboard with removable keycaps and individually addressable RGB LEDs, an internal M.2 socket pre-fitted with a 256GB Raspberry Pi SSD, and 16GB of RAM.
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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The 500 case (no idea about 400) could accomodate the M2 drive and some people installed their own.
It's also weird that the 500+ comes with a 256GB drive with no 512GB offered (maybe they will offer that later).
Still, for $200 you can get a decent X86 laptop, so this $200 rpi is niche.
400 and 500 case are identical E. It is not the space. But the fact that opening the case is not considered a user task.
The 500plus has bolts to open the case rather then the having to deal with breakable clips. The 400 and 500 case need a little more width and completelly new injection moulding to do that.
As I made clear in my post. What you and I are willing to do. Vs what a corporation is willing to sell as maintainable are different.SSD and storage in general has consumer expected requirement to be replaceable. Hence why every laptop etc has easy covers for upgrade.
Doing that requires a whole new case with now injection moulding machines and factory lines etc.
Oh that is kind of interesting about clips vs bolts. But, they really should have modified the 500 case as needed to add a slot for the SSD. I don't want to spend 2x more just to get that slot. Oh well, if I go this route I'll just get a pi 5. It looks like memory upgrade is a huge pain though, and 16gb upgrade is not known to work. People have upgraded to 8gb though.
If you know anyone with a 3£ printer near by. And some time with a craft knife.
Would be pretty darn easy to cut the slot in the case. And print a plastic cover that clips in.
As you said plenty on line to add your own M2 and the power circuits to support it.
Likely will be more soon with the plus to look at.
Personally. I have a 40p and a 500 so will wait a few months and see what happens. But I will likely go for that keyboard eventually.
You have to do a bunch of SMT soldering to add the circuitry, doesn't seem worth the hassle, especially since I wouldn't use the 500's built-in keyboard anyway. I wish it had included a pointing device like every laptop has. Using a separate mouse means you also need a desk to put it on, which is constraining. So I think I'd get a pi 5 and external keyboard if I wanted to stay with Pi stuff. There isn't that much attraction though.