All Raspberry Pi 400 units are tested before they leave the factory in Wales, so a faulty Raspberry Pi 400 is quite rare!
Below are the most common reasons for a Raspberry Pi 400 not to work as expected.
- Wrong HDMI port - The Raspberry Pi 400 has two Micro-HDMI ports. When looking at the rear of the keyboard, the connector on the left is the primary display, so you'll need to ensure this one is always plugged in if using just one screen.
- Old/Wrong Operating System - Only the latest Raspberry Pi OS operating system release will (officially) work on the new Raspberry Pi 400. This will also need to be a fresh install, not one used with a previous model of Raspberry Pi. Your options are:
- Grab a pre-installed MicroSD card from our store
- Download the latest operating system from the Raspberry Pi website
- Power Supply - The Raspberry Pi 400 uses the same power supply as the Raspberry Pi 4 - a 5.1V 3A power supply. You cannot use computer USB ports, and using a lower spec power supply may cause performance or stability issues. We recommend the official 5.1V 3A power supply
- Re-seat SD card - The Raspberry Pi 400 needs a Micro-SD card (with Raspberry Pi OS or NOOBS installed) to work properly. Make sure you have your Micro-SD card fitted in the slot at the rear of the keyboard. It's a click-in-click-out type, so we'd suggest removing it and fitting again just to be sure of a good connection.
- SD Card quality - Unfortunately cheap and 'No name' SD cards are a false economy. The Raspberry Pi forums show many posts with troubled users having issues with their poor quality SD cards. We recommend Panasonic or Sandisk micro-SD cards for the Raspberry Pi 400 - other cards can cause endless issues.
- Corrupted SD Card - Sometimes SD cards corrupt no matter how careful you are. You might spot this if your Pi400 doesn't boot but you see 8 flashes on the LEDs.
If you have a micro-SD card reader it takes just a few clicks to reflash the card using Raspberry Pi's imager software on a PC/laptop: https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/
- Check the Indication LEDs - the Raspberry Pi 400 indication LEDs can tell you a lot about what is happening. There's a comprehensive Raspberry Pi forum post on this subject which may assist you.
Still no signs of life? Please send us a message with as much information as possible.