I have been meaning to get a raspberry pi for sometime now. With their intentions on keeping the model 3 around for a while, I figured I would jump in at a relatively low price point.
There are many different kits on Amazon and went with this kit for several reasons:
-It's made by the company themselves (they have to know what they are doing, right?)
-It has all the basic parts I needed at a great price point*
-It has NOOBS (New Out Of Box Software) pre-installed on the SD card to make the start up process easy for beginners
Now, what you use your Pi3 for is what you will need to consider for your needs. The CPU for the Pi3 does run hot and will restrict its performance by throttling itself, making it sluggish. The case this kit comes with does not have good airflow and will heat this guy up. Depending on what you use with it, it will throttle itself. I currently use my Pi3 in conjunction with Parsec to host a cloud gaming PC in my apartment. As a result, this guy gets put through the ringer, and I bought a different a different case that came with heat sinks and an active fan. My Pi3 runs cool and performs incredibly well for what I need it to.
Other considerations:
-This has onboard WiFi but it is SLOW. If you want fast wireless, use a wireless card. I have mine with a wired connection and it works fantastic.
-I tried both raspbian, raspbian lite, and retropi on this guy. Full raspbian, a linux based OS, needs active cooling to perform on par with other consumer grade products. You will notice the difference on difficult web pages and general snappiness.
Overall, I am extremely happy with my purchase and highly recommend it. It packs a lot of power for such a little package, permitting on how cool you keep your unit. Your Pi3 can be a wonderful project that can do anything you put your mind and imagination towards.
*PLEASE NOTE: you will need an HDMI cord and monitor, mouse, and keyboard to get this guy up and running
| RAM | 1 GB DDR4 |
|---|---|
| Wireless Type | Bluetooth |
