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The Raspberry Pi, a credit card-sized computer that costs less than a few drinks out in San Francisco has already proven there's still a market for cheap tiny computers aimed at do-it-yourselfers. Now, with the Raspberry Pi 4, the little board that could wants to have a try at becoming your $100 desktop replacement.
The Raspberry Pi 4 changes things somewhat. Gone is the one-size-fits all approach of previous releases. The Raspberry Pi 4 is available with either one, two, or four gigabytes of RAM. Not only are there options, this is the first time it's been possible to get a Pi with more than 1 GB of RAM.
The extra RAM opens a new world of possible uses for the Pi and the Raspberry Pi Foundation calls the Pi 4 good enough to be a "complete desktop computer." For most of us that probably isn't quite the case, but that doesn't stop the Raspberry Pi 4 from being the same great, little DIY machine.
### The Tinkerer's Toy Grows Up
The Raspberry Pi began life as a hacker's dream: a cheap, low-power, high-extendable, hackable PC that shipped as a bare circuit board. Intended as one part educational device, one part tinkering tool, the Pi became a hobbiest phenomenon and has been used to power everything from scaled down Mars rovers to millions of science and hackday experiments in schools around the world.
Along the way the Raspberry Pi spawned countless imitators and today's would-be tinkerers have a wealth of options to choose from. That said, the Raspberry Pi remains the most popular and best known. It also has the largest community around it, which makes it particularly appealing for those just starting out in the world of tiny PCs.
With the Pi4 though bare circuit boards are not the only option. I tested the new "Desktop Kit, which features the 4 GB Pi 4 board, a nice white and red plastic case, keyboard, mouse, two micro HDMI to Standard HDMI cables, a USB-C power supply, and a 16GB MicroSD card with Raspbian Linux installed. As the name implies, in this package the Pi feels more like it's trying to be a desktop computer than a board for tinkering.
As always, the base model, bare board Raspberry Pi is $35, which gets you the board with 1 GB RAM. That part of the Pi 4 remains, remarkably, unchanged. For $10 more you can get the 2GB version, or you can pick up the 4 GB version for $55.
### Desktop Replacement. Or Not.
It might have started with curious tinkerers, but there are bigger ambitions at work here. With two micro HDMI ports, capable in theory of powering two 4K monitors, the Pi 4 is angling to be your $100 desktop PC.
If your computing needs are roughly on par with chip speeds from around 2012 then it might be capable of replacing your desktop. Chips of 2012 is not an arbitrary number, in fact that's roughly analogous to the benchmarks I got testing the Pi 4. I took the results and compared them to other PCs using [Open Benchmark](https://openbenchmarking.org/s/raspberry%20pi%204), the closest x86 match ends up being roughly Intel core chips from around 2012.
While 2012 may not sound that long ago, it's going to feel like it when you're waiting for Chromium to boot or rendering video. Just kidding, you aren't going to be rendering video. I could not even get that benchmark to run on the Pi 4. Even without throwing video in the mix though, in everyday use, for most WIRED readers, the reality is the Raspberry Pi 4 is not going to work as a daily driver. It's too slow compared to, well, everything else you've used lately.
The Raspberry Pi 4 is something of an odd duck in this regard. It wants to be a desktop machine, but it's just not there yet. But it's also become more powerful than you need for many of its traditional uses like as a [media server](https://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Install_Kodi_on_Raspberry_Pi), [network wide ad-blocker](https://pi-hole.net/), [fully automated coffee brewer](http://moccapi.blogspot.com/), or [micro brewing mastermind](https://www.wired.com/2013/02/raspbeery-pi/).
The good news for bare board fans is that this model is much more powerful than the Raspberry Pi 3. The new 1.5 GHz 4-core ARM chip is more than three times faster than the Pi 3. The other big news in this release is true Gigabit Ethernet. Previous Pi models used a single USB 2.0 bridge to handle Ethernet, which hampered network speeds. The Pi 4 ditches that set up for a dedicated link that provides "full throughput," in the words of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. What that means is connecting to the Pi 4 on LAN is going to be much, much faster. Also new in the Pi 4 is USB-C for power.
Among the things that haven't changed much are the ports. You get the Ethernet, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 3 ports and the usual MicroSD card slot for storage. It's an impressive package, especially when you consider that the board alone still sells for $35.
With added computing power comes the need for slightly more electric power. The Raspberry PI 4 needs a 5 volt charger with 3 amps instead of the 2.5 amp of previous models. It's not a huge increase, but it is worth noting, especially considering the Pi made its name as a very low-power way to run an always-on machine.
After about a week of using the Pi 4 as a desktop, I unhooked everything, put the monitor and keyboard away, and connected it directly to my router. I went back to connecting to the Pi via SSH in a terminal. Perhaps I am too much of a Raspberry Pi traditionalist, but I much prefer—and think the Pi 4 excels at—this use case.
Connected to the network, sipping power, staying out of the way until you need it is what a Pi 4 still seems best designed to do. Will the Raspberry Pi 5 be up to replacing your desktop? Perhaps, but in my experience the reason you should get a Raspberry Pi is to tinker, not replace your existing system.
One thing worth mentioning here is the case and board of the 4 GB model. Running benchmarks, which is admittedly designed to stress the board, the provided case became quite hot and filled the room with an unpleasant plastic smell. This never happened otherwise, but if you're going to pick up a Pi 4, my suggestion would be to get a bare board and third-party case like the excellent [Flirc Raspberry Pi 4 Case](https://flirc.tv/more/raspberry-pi-4-case){: rel=nofollow}, which doubles as a heat sink and keeps the Pi from overheating.
I also want to point out what I consider one of the best parts of the Raspberry Pi, the included beginners guide. This is not the flimsy stapled together paper guide, but a nicely bound, full-color, lavishly-illustrated 250 page guide to the Raspberry Pi. It covers everything from setting up your Pi, to using the Raspian operating system (which is based on Debian Linux), to programming your Pi, and even goes through a number of projects. It's the nicest documentation I've seen with any hardware, well, ever.
If you've been thinking of diving into the Raspberry Pi world, the Raspberry Pi 4 is a great time to do it. The faster chip and larger RAM options open up a new world of possibilities that the community is just beginning to tinker with. Indeed the greatest challenge about the Raspberry Pi 4 right now is just finding one. To say there's a market for the Raspberry Pi 4 would be a significant understatement. The 4 GB Desktop Kit has been consistently sold out since it went on sale a month ago.
Currently CanaKit appears to be about the only store with the [Desktop Kit ($119)](https://www.canakit.com/official-raspberry-pi-4-desktop-kit.html){: rel=nofollow} in stock. If you don't need the extra RAM or the Desktop Kit there are more purchasing options. You can pick up, what I would call the best option for most uses, the [2 GB board and USB-C power charger for $55](https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-4-model-b-2gb/){: rel=nofollow} at PiShop.
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