For $35 dollars, this little computer is incredible. My model did not come with an operating system out of the box (and they typically don't, unless you purchase a kit with an OS pre-installed on a MicroSD card), but installation of NOOBS and then Raspbian went very well. Make sure to format your MicroSD card BEFORE putting any installation files on it!
The Raspberry Pi 3 b+ comes with four USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, an Ethernet port, audio out port, a RPi camera port, a MicroUSB port for power purposes (you power the Pi with a 2.5A or 3A 5v power supply and a microUSB cord, like what you'd use to charge an Android phone), and a GPIO pin board for all sorts of things. Each of these ports is quite rigid, especially the audio port, which I really got scared for when I was plugging in headphones for the first time to test my audio capability, but so far, the board has held up very well and all plugins have stayed in and remained stable throughout all operation and any maneuvering I had to make with the board. The GPIO pins are very sturdy and seem well built. The Wifi and Bluetooth that comes natively with the Raspberry Pi 3b+ works very well and seems reliable.
My model is the 1 GB RAM version, and so far, the single GB of RAM has done a great job of juggling different programs, and I've had no major issues with bottlenecking while running programs like Chromium (Raspbian's native lightweight Chrome-based web browser), a few terminals, htop ( a resource monitoring utility that sits in a terminal window), and a Python IDE for programming purposes.
As a test, the first night I received this product, I fired up some updates while running two Youtube videos (at 360p, which is what Chromium's codec allows for on the Raspberry Pi 3 b+, alongside htop, a python IDE, and a couple of terminal windows, and fired up a temperature monitor I programmed to check for temps. The Pi was sitting around 50 degrees Celsius in a room that was about 25 degrees Celsius, which I thought was pretty good considering I had no heatsinks or fans installed on it, and it was just sitting on my desk. So, it can handle stuff pretty well without turning into an oven so far.
At this point, I definitely highly recommend this product. I can think of no device that can be purchased for this amount of money that has the sheer amount of utility, potential, and geek-factor. Nothing even comes close. The Raspberry Pi and variations of it have infinite usability, and they are the PERFECT gift for an aspiring programmer, kid tinkerer, novice engineer, or for anyone wanting to take a dive into the world of Linux-based operating systems and programming. The Raspberry Pi can do it all, and I'm incredibly impressed.
| Standing screen display size | 0.01 |
|---|---|
| Processor | a_series |
| RAM | 1 GB DDR3 |
| Memory Speed | 1.4 GHz |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 1 |
| Wireless Type | 802.11bgn, 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 4 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 3 |
