The Raspi I bought here is now already my third, two Raspi Model B I have long been in use. And I've purchased the components separately once times in a Starter Kit - therefore I can also say something about this kit compared to other kits or for individual purchase.
First: I was the Starter Kit from Vilros delivered, it may well be that you get slightly different components. This is quite normal: Amazon holds very similar products from different suppliers into a composite. What you ultimately get is random.
The "Complete Starter Kit" consists of the following components:
- Raspberry Pi Model B +
- Transparent housing with all necessary cut-outs, as well as those for hobbyists (ie including GPIO, camera and display.), Worn in with "Vilros"
- 3 Heatsink for CPU / GPU, USB controller and voltage transformers
- Wireless USB Adapter 802.11b / g / n; Size: nano (approximately 0.5 cm in length); Chip: Realtek RTL8188CUS; Worn in with "Vilros"
- Power supply with 5V, 2.000 mA
- 8GB Kingston Micro SDHC Memory Card (Class 10)
- 1.5 meter HDMI cable
My conclusion - for lazy to read before the details:
The Raspi itself is excellent as always, a star trigger receives the kit but the imprecise processed housing. Various little things lead to another star deduction, but by the unexpected brands Memory Card (Class 10) is partly made up for it. Result: 3 star plus.
Those looking for a low-priced kit for Raspi will be satisfied with the "Complete Starter Kit" in the core. It is on a similar level as other kits, completely wrong so that you can not do anything. Who the components will prefer buying individually pay 5-10 euros more, who simultaneously wants better or more powerful components, will have drauflegen 10-20 Euro up. The imprecise processing of the case is a pity and whose appearance more for hobbyists or those who want to hide their Raspi anyway. Anyone wishing to use the Raspi as presentable HTPC is included with the enclosure but probably not very happy. The remaining components are standard products.
# Raspberry Pi:
The Raspi comes in standard carton and anti-static bag. As initially declared, I would say not much to Raspi itself - also in "Complete Starter Kit" it is properly as always. Delivered is a model B +. A little tip: In the housing and with heatsinks Overclocking is not a problem on "Medium" (900 MHz ARM, 333 MHz core, 450 MHz SDRAM and Over-voltage of 2), the temperature of the board will remain under full load under the general as well respected limit of 70 ° C.
# Housing:
The housing is the major flaw of this kit and deserves unfortunately at least one star deduction, rather more. Housing for Raspi are always crisp and tight the board must be transported by force to the housing - this is quite normal. In this case, unfortunately, but you can tell immediately that during the production not the necessary precision was respected.
The necessary distance to the housing base is accomplished with small plastic pins that are narrower in the upper region. Obviously, this should fit exactly into the holes and fix the Raspi the board so again. Unfortunately, you do not work accurately enough: Two of the four pins are shifted by a fraction of a millimeter, so this simply does not fit into the holes of Raspi. Thus, the board is sitting a little too high in the case, is under tension and is slightly curved, making it difficult to assemble again.
The housing cover is hinged on one side and pressed together under tension. The recess of the journal I had to use a screwdriver bit wide, otherwise that would not have fit. The opening for the phone jack (analog audio & video) is shifted by about 1 mm too far towards the LAN jack - thus the connector is under stress in the housing. The cut-out for the power supply via micro-USB is too small - the connection fits under tension just so into it, but has no air. I have some further ground out both recesses that was me then too much pressure on the board ...
Apart from these problems of accuracy, the housing looks well made and sturdy. Sharp edges, "blind spots" or inclusion of dirt, there is no. Only the "Vilros" Branding via USB and LAN socket lets the Raspi act something like a freebie ... The recesses for GPIO / camera / display are handy for hobbyists, but who operate the Raspi eg as HTPC and this is not behind want to hide the television, is the optics rather not happy. On the other hand, the recesses together with the ventilation slots located on the ground excellent for a good ventilation of the board in the housing.
# Heatsink:
The heatsinks are classic no-name items worth a few cents. The heatsink for CPU / GPU and USB controllers fit well (they are, as usual, a little too big; Take heed when sticking out that no other components are touched), the heatsink for the voltage converter is the same as for the Universal Serial Bus controllers and unfortunately far too big. The voltage converter is still become slightly smaller in model B + B compared to the model - it was previously a bit too large, it is now finally too big. After the contact surface is so small that the heat sink keeps not even properly, I left him. See him as a substitute ... The heatsinks are glued, as with this no-name heatsinks usual, is not a special heat conductive adhesive but just double-sided tape on the back. The effect of the heat sink is thereby quite low. You also but not hurt. For 1/4 star deduction.
# Wireless USB Adapter:
The included wireless USB adapter is a nano-stick, so tiny as desired and only just over 0.5 cm long. The drivers for the built Realtek RTL8188CUS contained quite some time in the kernel, making the wireless out-of-the-box should work (tested with OpenELEC and Raspbian). 1/2 star I prefer to the effect that the WLAN stick is no contact on channels 12 and 13 - just in the city but they are usually still the most powerful channels in the 2.4 GHz spectrum, since routers often for reasons of compatibility to this refrain in their car channel mechanisms.
But who wants a Nano stick should also require no miracles. Through the tiny antennas performance is severely limited. Under very good conditions (OpenELEC with XBMC in idle, Raspi next to the wireless router) I s reading reached with a 100 MB file (download using scp) data transfer rates of 1,112 KB /. Between a wall and under load, the output drops again substantially - as I said, do not expect miracles. I do not believe that it creates from a nano-WLAN stick benchmarks - therefore no longer on the performance ... It works, but whoever powerful wireless needs may simply not use nano-WLAN stick.
# Power supply:
The power supply is pure standard in Raspi World: 2,000 mA range for a Raspi model B + perfect, power hungry USB devices should operate as usual but via a USB hub with a separate power supply. For the supplied WLAN stick, keyboard, mouse and a USB flash drive, the power supply is sufficient. The fact that the power supply in some warmed concern I could not watch - even under full load.
# Memory card:
The memory card has pleasantly surprised me. 1/4 star deduction there but for now that only the Micro-SDHC card is delivered without adapter - the model B + While working with the Micro format, but the built-in PC / notebook card reader you need usually an adapter. That makes it an unnecessarily difficult. I still had home adapter, in which one or the other can something during initial commissioning but already cause unnecessary trouble.
But I said yes, that the memory card has me pleasantly surprised. But I was expecting a no-name memory card of Class 4 or similar, then plugged actually a 8 GB Class 10 memory card from Kingston in the package. Super! But there's again 1/2 star on top! The verification tool H2testw v1.4 c't has found no errors (9.07 MB / s writing, 18.3 MB / s read) CrystalDiskMark (5x 1,000 MB random data) measures 11,04 / 0,83 / 0.08 / 0.07 MB / s write and 20.18 / 19.78 / 3.34 / 3.52 MB / s reading (seq / 512K / 4K / 4K QD32).
# HDMI cable:
What can you say to an HDMI cable already ... It is 1.5 meters long and transmits both audio and 1080p video. What more do you want? ;)
