How to Build an Inexpensive Raspberry Pi Mini Laptop

The incredible popularity of the Raspberry Pi series of single-board computers has ensured that you can find them powering every computer form factor imaginable. There are Raspberry Pi tablets, smartphones, handheld game consoles, set-top boxes, and much more. But, as computer sales have proven, the most useful — or at least desirable — form factor is probably the laptop, and this guide from Creativity Buzz shows you how to turn your Raspberry Pi into one.

This guide uses the Raspberry Pi 3, but any of the full-size Pi models will work. The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ is the flagship, and will give you the best performance, but you can use an older model if you want to save some money. In addition the Pi itself, you’ll also need a 7" LCD and adapter (or an HDMI model), a Bluetooth USB keyboard, a 5600mAh USB power bank, an SD card, speakers and switches, and a plastic box to put it all in.

The only difficult part of building the Raspberry Pi laptop is figuring out how to mount the components inside of the plastic box. Hot glue will go a long way towards accomplishing that, but you may need to get creative to keep everything mounted securely. After that, it’s as easy as installing Raspbian like you normally would. With the 5600mAh battery bank, you should be able to get about two hours of run time with this setup.