“For anyone starting off on their Pi journey, this is a comprehensive introductory kit. Everything you need in one handy box. Personally we could have got away without the keyboard and mouse but handy to have nevertheless. The power supply, the case and cooling fan, and HDMI leads are handy to get as part of the kit, without having to order them separately. Not sure why there are two HDMI leads included though? Most newbies will definitely need the micro SD card with the operating system installed, and the very comprehensive introductory book is a real bonus.
Sadly our Desktop Kit, when it arrived on Christmas Eve and opened on Christmas Day, had one essential item missing - the actual Raspberry Pi 5 itself! We could have got around most of the other bits and pieces but no Pi 5 was a little bit too much of get around! Pi Hut Support quickly corrected matters after the Christmas break and the missing item duly arrived on Hogmanay (New Year's Eve for non Scots).
We set things up and tested everything using the included micro SD card and OS but later downloaded specialist firmware and OS to a large micro SD card (250GB), which again worked fine. The Pi 5 is going to be used to monitor and control a camera scanning the sky for meteors. Managed to access the Pi 5 remotely from my Linux Desktop no problem at all, so once set up it will be operated headless (ie no monitor or keyboard etc attached).
A couple of small details that are not in the introductory manual:-
1. The SD card came as a full sized card. I knew to pull out the micro card from it but anyone not familiar with these would be puzzled how it could fit into the tiny card slot underneath the Pi board.
2. There is a tiny, unlabelled bag included that contains four rubber feet for the Pi case - it is pretty obvious where they go but some may not realise these are feet for the case.
3. In the same bag, more importantly, there is a small heatsink, with adhesive backing, that needs to be positioned on top of the main computer chip - there are no instructions about this at all in the manual. A definite strange omission that could easily lead to early failure.
These few details aside, and the small matter of our Desktop Kit arriving Pi-free, this is a great piece of kit for those starting their Pi journey. To start off, you'll want most of what is included anyway. Think the Pi 5 case and power supply are best acquired with the Pi 5 board anyway, as they, or a possibly less compatible alternative, will always be needed.
Excellent kit. The 8GB Raspberry Pi 5, once a large micro SD card or USB drive is added, is actually more powerful than my wife's current laptop. How things have progressed - the last "kit" computer I acquired, some 45 years ago, was a Sinclair ZX81, with the astounding 1 KB of RAM (I did buy the hugely expensive 16 KB plug-in accessory to go with it) and a cheap cassette recorder on which to save files and programs. It still works! Wonder if the Raspberry Pi 5 will still be working in 45 years time?”
“Very happy with the item. It is a gift for my son and it has come with everything you could need to use the raspberry pi. It has been clearly laid out in the box. And the instruction manual looks ideal for a beginner. Im really pleased.”
“The kit gives you everything you need to get started. And is packed nicely, it's a gift for my 8 year old son so it was important that is looked like it came as a package.”
