Starter Kit for Raspberry Pi 5 8GB, with Raspberry Pi 5 & Armor Lite V5 Active Cooler, ABS Case, 128GB Card, Card Reader, 2pcs 4K HDMI Cables and 27W USB C Power Supply

I bought this as I wanted something to get up Home Assistant on. Firstly, the case and fan are very nice quality and it was all very easy to assemble into the case, with clear instructions provided.It was supplied with a USB adapter for the SD Card (not used) and a 128GB Samsung branded Micro SD card and adapter. I'm not sure if this card is genuine or not, but it works fine.So far everything is working great so I would recommend this kit.

Rocking little bit of kit. I'm using it to run my Tesla.

All works nice

The kit is good apart from not pre iinstalled software. Took me a while to figure that part out. There's some software in github.com for the mini tower kit I have. Will investigate shortly. Otherwise ok but the price could include more such as a downloadable book to get you started with videos for guidance etc.

Really disappointed with this. Included in the package was a USB stick, which doesn’t work and is the flimsiest and cheapest piece of junk I’ve ever seen. The SD card supplied is a dud as well. The fan assembly doesn’t work either, and I’m doubtful if the Pi 5 is genuine. The instructions are worthless, and the small crosshead screwdriver supplied seems to have been made out of butter, totally incapable of tightening any of the supplied screws.Given the price, I can only advise to look elsewhere, this is a box of rubbish.

good quality

A bit disappointed that after getting it all ready and buying what I thought was the correct HDMI lead it uses a micro connection not Mini to HDMI lead. All I can do at present is look admiringly at the Pi. Fitting the heat sink and all the pads was fiddly with my clunky fingers but the little screw driver seemed to be magnetised that made it easy screwing the board to the base of the case by holding the tiny screws. The case is in three parts, the base and the middle section snap together as does the top that can be left off for access to the GP10 pins. Very smart looking when all assembled a pity no HDMI adapter to use it at present.

I've intermittently thought of getting a Raspberry Pi to play about with but despite the early ones being very low in price, I never did. When able to obtain a Pi 5 via Amazon Vine, I ordered one immediately.It comes with everything you need to make it work though little or no instructions except for the simple assembly. The website is however helpful. There's almost nothing to assemble, just carefully (a little fiddly) mount the heat sink & cooling fan on the board, put on the lid and stick on the adhesive feet.The cooling fan/heatsink unit is a plastic rather than metal but works almost silently when required and it has never got hot. The adhesive feet, which may be important to raise it up for air circulation, are larger in diameter than the raised circles into which they are meant to fit, so all fell off as they were only adhering to the thin rim of plastic. I trimmed them down to fit and re-glued them using double-sided tape.The Pi operating system works well on the supplied Samsung 128GB micro-SD card and having used Ubuntu for years on an old laptop, I'm familiar with using the terminal though it's a bit different and there are fewer user-friendly options than on Ubuntu.Downloaded Ubuntu for Pi 5 from the Pi website and it works well, though a little less smartly than the Pi OS does, even on a faster SD card. There are programs that won’t instal, apparently due to the ARM processor being incompatible, including the Opera browser for Ubuntu, but the default Firefox is fine. On the Pi OS there's the choice of Firefox and Chrome.This latest Raspberry Pi is good enough to use as a mini-PC provided that the limitation of program availability is accepted. I think it would struggle with video editing but haven't tried to instal any relevant software, if any is indeed available.Having used this quite a bit for 3 weeks using a large screen TV as a monitor and a Bluetooth mini keyboard with trackpad, the only problem I've come across is the loss of Bluetooth connection when restarted. No loss of connection during use. Same with a different keyboard. It remains paired but won't connect until you 'forget' the device and re-add. No problem with with a 2.4GHz keyboard.The thing that surprised me was the price tag of £160. You can get other better specified mini PCs for less but obviously without the option of relatively easily (if you know how) adapting them for specific purposes, which is/was the original reason for the Raspberry Pi. The circuit board itself can be obtained for under £80 (£54 for the 4GB version) but the extra £80 seems a lot for the power supply, fan, SD card and HDMI cable.Overall, I like this device but at £160 it’s a bit overpriced, so 4 stars.