Raspberry Pi 500+ vs. Raspberry Pi 500: NVMe Storage, 16GB RAM, and the Mechanical Keyboard
This site's Raspberry Pi 500 guide covers the original keyboard-computer: a Pi 5 board built into a keyboard shell, aimed at the same desktop-replacement niche the Pi 400 occupied for the Pi 4 generation. The Raspberry Pi 500+ is a separate, higher-tier product in the same shell family, not a running firmware update to the 500 — it changes the RAM, adds onboard NVMe storage, and swaps the membrane keyboard for a mechanical one with per-key RGB. Here's what actually changed and who it's for.
Spec Comparison
SpecRaspberry Pi 500Raspberry Pi 500+ RAM8GB LPDDR4X16GB LPDDR4X Primary storagemicroSD only (a 32GB card is included)Pre-installed 256GB NVMe SSD (single PCIe lane) — plus a microSD slot with no card included M.2 slotNoneM-Key, supports 2230/2242/2280 sizes KeyboardMembrane chicletGateron Blue KS-33 low-profile tactile switches, replaceable keycaps, included switch-replacement tool Keyboard lightingNonePer-key addressable RGB, driven by an onboard RP2040, with presets cycled via Fn+F4 and customizable through the rpi-keyboard-config tool RTC battery headerNoYes (matches the Pi 5's RTC connector) Size / weight286 × 122 × 23mm, 370g312 × 123.06 × 35.76mm, 605g Launch price$70$200Prices on both have drifted upward since launch amid broader DRAM price increases through 2026 — worth checking current retailer pricing rather than treating the launch figures above as current, since street prices on the 500+ in particular have been reported well above the original $200.
Does the Extra Money Buy Real Performance?
Both boards use the same Broadcom BCM2712 SoC family as the Raspberry Pi 5, and independent benchmarking has found the 500+ performs within a few percent of a 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 in general compute tasks — this isn't a faster chip, it's the same chip with more RAM, faster primary storage, and a nicer keyboard bolted around it. The NVMe SSD is where the practical difference actually shows up day to day: boot times and application load times benefit from PCIe-attached storage over microSD the same way they do on a bare Pi 5 with a NVMe HAT added, just without you having to add the hardware or configure boot order yourself.
Setting Up NVMe Boot
The 500+ ships with its NVMe drive as the default boot device already configured — there's no separate boot-order step the way there is when retrofitting an NVMe HAT onto a standard Pi 5. If you add a larger or different M.2 drive later, the same rpi-eeprom-config boot-order principles from this site's general Pi 5 NVMe guide apply: you can set NVMe as primary with microSD as fallback, which is worth doing if you want a recovery path that doesn't depend on re-flashing the NVMe drive from another machine.
Who Should Actually Buy the Plus
- Get the 500+ if you want a genuinely snappy, SD-card-free desktop Linux box in a keyboard shell and the NVMe speed and 16GB of headroom matter for what you're running — local LLM experimentation, multiple containers, or just not wanting to think about SD card wear and corruption ever again.
- Get the regular 500 (or a bare Pi 5 in a case) if you're budget-conscious; at current street pricing the 500+ premium is substantial for what amounts to a storage and RAM upgrade plus a keyboard feature, and reviewers have been split on whether that premium is worth it for most users.
- Get a bare Pi 5 board with your own NVMe HAT and mechanical keyboard if you want to pick your own storage capacity and keyboard feel independently rather than taking the 500+'s fixed bundle.
Closing Thoughts
The 500+ is a legitimate, meaningfully upgraded version of the keyboard-computer concept rather than a cosmetic refresh, but it's priced as a premium product now, not an impulse buy the way the original 500 still roughly is. If NVMe speed and RGB mechanical keys are genuinely useful to you rather than just nice to have, it earns its keep; if you're mainly after "Pi 5 in a keyboard," the regular 500 or this site's Pi 500 setup guide is still the more sensible starting point.