CanaKit Raspberry Pi 5 Starter Kit MAX - Turbine White (256 GB Edition) (8GB RAM)

Good product with all the essentials packed up properly

This is my first foray in the Raspberry Pi domain. I have to say this is a very nice kit to get started with. Includes everything needed and requires no tools to assemble, although I did need to use tweezers to remove dust cap from the fan plug in. Super easy to set up. I spent more time figuring out how the included USB MicroSD reader worked. I am surprised at how small this Pi actually is. The included power adapter box is bigger than the mini computer/case. Everything works and it's super quiet. I'm using this Pi for a network music server/streamer, trying various pieces of software. So far so good.

Super easy to put together, boot up and play with. Surprisingly fast too. The photo is of the 128 GB version, I have the 256GB version in white, looks the same. If you drop it, the cooling fins will come off the chips, don't drop it. I tripped over the power cord in a tight area and it was pulled off the table. It works anyway, I just stuck the fins back on and put it back together. No harm done. So far I've loaded Ham Clock on it, a sort of world clock with an image of the world with light and dark areas continuously shown. I also used it to do some ham logging on the internet, and played with the internet application. It works very well.

I used this kit for building out a Home Assistant (HA) home automation/security system. This kit seemed that it would work well for this purpose. It assembled easily and worked as expected in the testing phase of my build out. I had two concerns with the kit. First, it comes with a passive cooler; however, it has a case fan. I was concerned that if I wanted to use some HAT on this kit some day, I wouldn't have adequate cooling. Second, as I assembled the kit, and afterward, I noticed that the plastic case seemed to come apart easily. I personally like metal cases. After I built out my HA system and started implementing displays with historical data graphics, such as power monitoring/usage, I started to see the slowdowns I had read about. The more sensor recording I added, the worse it became. This is due to the fact that the main disk is a SD card. I had also read warnings concerning the frequent, small data writes to the SD card and the "wear" it causes. My power monitoring system has some sensors that update every few seconds. Since I already had a spare 1TB NVME SSD hanging around, I decided to upgrade the HA data disk to a NVME SSD. This basically leaves the original SD card as a boot device, and makes an add on NVME SSD the drive for all else. I decided to go with an NVME HAT implementation. For this, I chose: "GeeekPi Metal Case with N04 PCIe M.2 Key-M NVMe SSD PCIe Peripheral Board for Raspberry Pi 5, with Raspberry Pi 5 Official Active Cooler", which I bought on Amazon (ASIN B0CYP791N3). (I reviewed this separately.) This NVME kit has an active cooler and a metal case. This finished implementation works great. In the end, I wish I would have started with a kit that had the metal case and active cooler; however, I wasn't sure I would use the NVME SSD route. The worst part was that I had to dig out my heating gun to remove the current passive cooler and clean the old adhesive from the chips in order to install the new active cooler. This Cana kit, as sold, is perfectly adequate for many applications., but not for a system that will have heavier data traffic to/from the SD card.

Good quick way to get up and running with a Raspberry Pi. Second order from Cana. Like the updated power button on the five and the improved speed. Great inexpensive way to fiddle with various technologies. Running docker containers for home automation. Case is nothing to show off with but gets the job done.