“Meet your new desktop computer! With up to 4GB RAM, USB 3.0, true Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11ac dual-band wifi, at last comes a Raspberry Pi with the grunt and I/O capability to meet 99% of day-to-day desktop needs. I'm writing this review on it, from a full-fat KDE Plasma desktop. Not even with the 3B+ was this advisable except for pure masochists.
I'd like to say it does all this without breaking a sweat, but it does get hot and will rapidly throttle-down its CPU speed (and kiss goodbye to a bearable desktop experience) unless you add a cooling solution. Discrete heatsinks alone will not prevent this; those all-metal cases designed as one massive heatsink might suffice, but my chosen solution was a Pimoroni Fan SHIM, a temperature-controlled fan that is quiet and infrequently active. With that, I haven't seen the Thermometer Of Doom(TM) icon once.
As to the connectivity upgrades, USB 3.0 will probably please the most people. At last an external HDD/SSD can be added without the painful bottleneck of (contended) USB2.0 speeds. I plan to add an external HDD for my system partition, to give my SD card a rest. Some may grumble at the power hookup moving to USB-C, but this is not a bleeding-edge standard any more so it's hard to argue. I'm not sure many people were pleading for 2x HDMI ports (and the shrinkage to MicroHDMI means another new cable that we've avoided until now), but I know it will delight some power-users so mustn't be churlish ;)
All in all this is probably the biggest step-change in Pi evolution to date.”
“I've been looking forward to the release of the pi 4 for a while and I am glad that I was able to find it for sale here, as so many other retailers were out of stock or charging $15 for shipping and handling.”
