Announced today, the HP EliteBoard G1a is a Windows computer built into a working membrane keyboard, offering a more approachable option than other keyboard-PCs.
The Commodore 64 popularized the keyboard-PC in the 1980s, but the category has since been led by the Raspberry Pi. In 2019, the single-board computer (SBC) maker introduced the Raspberry Pi 400, essentially a Raspberry Pi 4 board housed in a case that also serves as the system’s keyboard. USB, HDMI, and Ethernet ports, along with a GPIO header and the native Raspberry Pi OS Linux distribution, combine to provide an inexpensive desktop experience costing about $100. Later came the Raspberry Pi 500 powered by a Pi 5 with a quad-core, 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76, and the Pi 500+, which replaces microSD with NVMe SSD storage and is built into a low-profile mechanical keyboard (it also costs about $200, roughly double the earlier model).
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Raspberry Pi
Pi 500+ keyboard-PC shown with RGB lighting.
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Raspberry Pi
However, Raspberry Pis tend to appeal mainly to tinkerers, hobbyists, and Linux devotees, so using a Pi as a desktop remains a niche option with a steep learning curve for beginners.
By contrast, HP’s EliteBoard brings Windows and a stronger x86 platform to the keyboard-PC format. HP says the EliteBoard will support Windows 11 Pro for Business and offer an AMD Ryzen AI 300-series processor with up to a 50 TOPs NPU. The device will ship with a 32 W internal battery and is part of Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC program.
