Initially designed to awaken the spirit of tinkering in students, the Raspberry Pi series has dominated the SBC lineup for well over a decade. While it’s not nearly as powerful as its rival, the RPi ecosystem is blessed with tons of accessories, extensive documentation, and a creative user base. As such, you’ll find a ton of cool use cases for your Raspberry Pi, ranging from practical projects to obscure ideas bordering on lunacy.

A Raspberry Pi-powered laptop falls in the latter category, though it’s pretty serviceable with the right OS. But can it really replace your normal laptop? Long story short: no, but there are certain situations where it becomes a viable option.

Cost-wise, the Raspberry Pi laptop falls flat

Even off-brand laptops and Chromebooks are more cost-effective

Before we discuss the apps your Raspberry Pi can (and can’t) run, let’s go over the price logistics for a bit. For the best performance and compatibility with the laptop chassis, we’ll go with the Raspberry Pi 5 for this project. To avoid memory bottlenecks, you’d want to ditch the 2GB and 4GB models and go for at least the 8GB variant. Assuming there isn’t a supply shortage, you’ll end up spending around $80 on the Raspberry Pi.

For the laptop chassis, you could try 3D printing everything besides the screen, battery, keyboard, and trackpad. While that would cut down the cost, you’ll still have to buy the rest of the components and could end up with a clunky-looking system. To keep things simple, let’s go with the Elecrow CrowView Note 14 laptop chassis, which retails for $190 ($170 on Elecrow’s website). Throw in a 256GB microSD card, active cooler, and the bridge-board accessory for the laptop chassis, and you have to spend around $290 for the whole setup.

• Raspberry Pi 5

  CPU

  Arm Cortex-A76 (quad-core, 2.4GHz)

  Memory

  Up to 8GB LPDDR4X SDRAM

  Operating System

  Raspberry Pi OS (official)

  Ports

  2× USB 3.0, 2× USB 2.0, Ethernet, 2x micro HDMI, 2× 4-lane MIPI transceivers, PCIe Gen 2.0 interface, USB-C, 40-pin GPIO header

  GPU

  VideoCore VII

  Starting Price

  $60

  $80 at CanaKit $89 at Amazon (8GB)

• Raspberry Pi Active Cooler for Raspberry Pi 5

  $12 at Amazon

• SanDisk 256GB Extreme microSDXC UHS-I Memory Card

  $25 at Amazon

• Elecrow CrowView Note 14

  Brand

  Elecrow

  Ports

  2 x USB-C (one only supports 5V/5A output) 2 x USB-A 1 x mini-HDMI 1 x 3.5mm headphone

  Display (Size, Resolution)

  14-inch IPS (1920x1080)

  Dimensions

  13.2 x 8.7 x 0.67 inches (335 x 220 x 17mm)

  Weight

  2.54 lbs (1.15kg)

  Battery

  5,000mAh

  $170 at Elecrow $190 at Amazon

The thing is, you’ll find several laptops in the sub $300 price range that outperform the Raspberry Pi 5. Many lesser-known brands like Chuwi offer the Intel N100 and 8GB (or even 16GB) memory for nearly the same price tag as the RPi laptop. As someone who has three devices with the same processor, I can confirm that the x86-based N100 is better than the RPi’s ARM CPU, both in terms of performance and compatibility. And if you’re willing to spend another $100, you can grab an N305, which beats both processors handily.

But it's still a decent option for tinkerers

If you equip it with the right OS, that is

Although a normal $300 laptop will easily surpass its Raspberry Pi-based replica, it does have some utility for tinkerers. If you already have a Raspberry Pi 5, building a laptop with your own parts or the CrowView Note 14 will be a fairly cheap investment. Plus, the Raspberry Pi series is compatible with a host of operating systems, ranging from general-purpose distros like Debian and Ubuntu to Batocera, LibreELEC, YunoHost, and other OSes that fulfill certain niches.

Speaking of, you can easily switch between the different distributions by flashing them onto separate microSD cards and sliding them into the Raspberry Pi laptop. For folks who want to work with sensors and circuitry projects, an RPi-based laptop is a decent investment, especially since you can program everything without connecting extra peripherals or working over a remote connection.

Personally, I often use my Raspberry Pi as a regular laptop to manage my home lab, practice Python coding, and write articles here on XDA. That said, I recommend pairing it with a lightweight OS for the best results. FydeOS remains my top recommendation, as this Chromium-based distro can run most tasks that are thrown at it with ease. In my tests, FydeOS was able to handle 1080p video streaming, running Chromium with tons of open tabs, and emulating Android as well as console games.

SBC-powered laptop: To Pi or not to Pi?

Let’s face it: If you want to replace your daily driver with a budget-friendly option that can run Windows 11 apps, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Sure, the Raspberry Pi 5 could run Microsoft’s flagship OS, but your experience will be marred with stutters and compatibility issues. On the flip side, a Raspberry Pi laptop is definitely worth building if you already own the SBC and are looking for a fun way to put it to good use.