my advice is:
1) buy from an official reseller. (see the PI hardware page, list of sellers at the bottom of each product)
2) buy the official power supply, and the official HDMI cable.
3) depending on your budget, i'd buy either a PI4 or a PI5. I'd buy it with 8gigs RAM. (i own both... both are quite capable)
- or a PI400/PI500 (all builtin to a keyboard) (pi400 only has 4G of ram.... not sure about the PI500)
- pi4 is cheaper, pi5 is the latest & greatest (about 2x speed of a pi4)
4) if you buy a PI5, buy the active cooler.
the kit should come with a case. recommend cooling for the PI. (fan in the case for the pi4, active cooler for the pi5)
- how old is your son?
- what languages will he learn?
- you will use PI-imager to make the SD card... buy a microSD to usb adapter to set up the card. (PI-imager will run on Windows, MAC, Linux and a PI)
i'm sure others will weigh in with their opinion. This forum is quite active!
1) buy from an official reseller. (see the PI hardware page, list of sellers at the bottom of each product)
2) buy the official power supply, and the official HDMI cable.
3) depending on your budget, i'd buy either a PI4 or a PI5. I'd buy it with 8gigs RAM. (i own both... both are quite capable)
- or a PI400/PI500 (all builtin to a keyboard) (pi400 only has 4G of ram.... not sure about the PI500)
- pi4 is cheaper, pi5 is the latest & greatest (about 2x speed of a pi4)
4) if you buy a PI5, buy the active cooler.
the kit should come with a case. recommend cooling for the PI. (fan in the case for the pi4, active cooler for the pi5)
- how old is your son?
- what languages will he learn?
- you will use PI-imager to make the SD card... buy a microSD to usb adapter to set up the card. (PI-imager will run on Windows, MAC, Linux and a PI)
i'm sure others will weigh in with their opinion. This forum is quite active!
Statistics: Posted by terribleted — Sun Jan 25, 2026 11:10 pm