CanaKit Pi Zero W (Wireless) Complete Starter Kit - 16 GB Edition

Yes, you're definitely paying for convenience with this little set, but it is worth it if you value time over a few dollars.Everything is ready to go and I was glad to see the NOOBS OS already on the microSD card. You can assemble everything in 5 minutes and be up and running in less than 10. All adapters are included - just connect everything, power it on, choose your OS, and.... walk away. This thing is SLOW if you're using to a modern computing device. After awhile, the installation process will complete and then it's time to play around.This is much slower than a Raspberry Pi 4 (or 3 for that matter) so perhaps a graphical OS wasn't the best choice... after playing around with it for a bit (and letting the kids see some of the games running in stop-motion), I installed Raspberry Pi OS Lite and installed PiHole to have a network-wide adblocker. For this, purpose the Zero W is perfect! It's small, efficient, and has plenty of power to run this task.The official case is annoying if you want to change microSD cards often, but since that's not the situation here, it's not a problem.Again, this is a great solution for a cheap, reliable device that can work some magic in terms of adblocking on your home network. There are tons of other fun projects of course, but that's why I need a second one!

The kit had everything I needed to get going ASAP, and you can be fully setup in only a few minutes. The biggest issue you might have out-of-box is the fact that there is only one USB port, so you might be stuck not being able to use the keyboard and mouse at the same time if you don't have a USB hub.Since this is a Pi Zero, you aren't really likely to be using this in a desktop configuration too much beyond setting things up, but you'll really want both the keyboard and mouse at once during that process.I kinda think having the full desktop Pi OS image on the SD card isn't the best idea here, since it's astonishingly slow on the Pi Zero, but it's fairly easy to just flash a minimal install image to the card with the official Raspberry Pi flashing tools and use raspi-config from the terminal to set things up after (and you don't need a mouse attached in the one USB port).Currently, the machine works pretty well for me as a headless system on my home network. The built-in wifi connection is quick enough and stable, much better vs using the plain non-W Pi Zero with a dongle, where I had all manner of connection stability issues (and it used up the USB port).I can use VNC to get to a desktop to make a few little management tasks easier, but it's VERY slow,. Most things should be done over SSH, which is plenty nimble.Overall, if you need a tiny machine that has wireless network access, this kit is great.

I determined that the Raspberry Pi Zero was going to be the best option to add a computer to my TV. At first, I was going to order from another company to get just the Raspberry Pi and the parts I needed as add ons, because it looked cheeper. And then I realized that shipping was going to be $10. All together, the price with shipping was about the same price as this kit. So I opted for this kit because I'd get it a lot faster with prime shipping.I'm glad I did, as I hadn't realized I'd need a micro SD card loaded with an OS. I have neither a micro SD card or a micro SD card reader to put an OS on a micro SD card.Anyway, it came today. It took me 5 minutes to set up the hardware and right now, I'm waiting for the Raspberry Pi OS to download.The only other component I needed for my project was the Mini i24T mini wireless keyboard mouse combo.Update: I've had it running for a few days now. I can't do much on it, but it comes preloaded with a lot of little python games, and I've added some more. I may need to get a larger keyboard so that I can try some coding on it. I can code using the small keyboard, but I can't type super quickly.

This is a great little device that gets rid of annoying commercials from almost every device on your network. Or, you can set it up only for certain devices if you'd like.Does not work for YouTube simply because they tend to often serve ads through their own servers, so if you are trying to end those good luck to you because they are smarter than most at making you watch ads. It does seem like there are fewer ads on YouTube, but there are still some that seem to come through. That's what really got me going to do this as I was being overwhelmed with YouTube ads!For everything else it seems to do the trick! So long to most ads!!! Commercials and ads are gone from almost every website and portal. Even the ads on the Roku home screen are gone.The only reason it's not a 5-star for me is that set up still requires a lot of work. Not for the faint of heart, as you need to know a little bit about networking and I needed to follow direction from several different websites in order to set it up correctly. If you are reading this review that means you probably have the patience to set it up yourself.This bundle is great though, as it includes everything you need except for a keyboard, mouse and monitor. It's pretty amazing that this cheap little device can run programs as well as it does.I highly recommend to anyone wanting to take the time to figure this out.