SunFounder RasPad 3.0 – an All-in-One Tablet with 10.1″ Touchscreen and Built-in Battery for IoT, Programming, Gaming, and 3D Printing Projects

I just want to say right off the bat that I love the scree and the porability of the RasPad3 the battery life is great and you get what you pay for.
That being said its strong, durable and a great addition to my setup. Since I run multiple Raspberry Pi’s and wanted a machine to be able to test out other operating systems this fit the bill it was a self contained unit that I could take where I needed. Being able to program and just even play some games when bored was great and enjoyable. The construction of the unit feels good I was very happy with the design since rotating and even having it laying on a table flat was enjoyable and views were always good on the unit. I installed a pi4 4gb into the unit and the temps kept cooler then some other products on the market so that was a great bonus which the fan is a bit noisy but with a bit of tweaking this is fixable. I did do a full unboxing and setup video on YouTube on this unit so make sure to search for “RasPad 3 Unboxing, Setup and First Use”
I would certainly buy another unit for my setup to make a dev unit with a breadboard attached to it full time as I think I wouldn’t want to constantly undo the case to unplug the gpio adapter. I would have like to have seen a a female to male adapter on the outside of the case with a dust cover to add quicker connection and disconnection of the gpio ribbon cable.
As you can see the first picture that it lives under my monitor and is easy to disconnect and move around. Which is great because I have vnc on all my pi’s around the shop so now I can go anywhere and be able to connect to them or my windows computer on the fly and control them with no issues.
I have only tried a few operating systems on the RasPad 3 but want to try a few more soon the only issue I can see having is on random os builds is not being able to have the screen rotation available but most should have the ability to adjust your screen orientation in the preferences.
The speakers are good they are good enough to be using for general use like playing retro games and listening to videos and so on.
For the price its great, sturdy and portable which in the end is the main thing for me. I even have bashed it up a bit and no marks on the screen or the casing as of yet.
But like any product check out reviews and videos on the stuff you want to buy and make sure its right for you. Who knows you might have a dock all setup and all you need is a external sunfounder display which I assume would be just as good which I will have to check out at some point since I have my demo pi unit that is mounted to a sunfounder plate with an arduino and raspberry pi and breadboard. But like I said I do vnc into it so its not need right away but could be useful in the future for me.
If you are thinking about getting this unit and it checks off a lot of the boxes on your list then don’t wait grab one I am enjoying it way more then I expected to.

I liked the product but it came with a broken fan which didn’t turn. The tablet was hot when used over 15 minutes now. I sent the message to the vendor and finally get a replacement.

The SunFounder RasPad3 was a great day project. It was well packaged, the manual that comes with it is well laid out and explained each step quite nicely. You can quite easily assemble this pad in about an hour if you are familiar with your ports and cabling included, but, I would take your time and ensure all of the cables are seated properly. The cables are well made and just the right length, as long as you don’t screw the raspberry pi in first, you should have no trouble assembling the pad, leave it loose until the last. Assembly of the case is by 5 screws and it makes it easy to take apart if you wish to connect the GPIO 40 pin cable later on for projects. Don’t forget to remove the sd card for assembly and disassembly. From start to finish everything went together well. You will most likely have to charge the unit before using it, as mine had to be. Before charging though, i would make sure the indicator light is on, if not you may have a loose connector inside, so double check your work first.
The speed of the RasPad 3 is good, refresh rate when flipping the pad is fairly smoothe however it does blank out when you flip it end for end, and your sound will also blank out for a second while it is transitioning, but comes right back on.
The touch screen works well, and is quick to refresh when going from menu to menu..
The RasPad 3 works well with generic camera for video conference, just connect it to a USB port.
Speakers attached to the RasPad 3 work well, plug and play.
External keyboard mouse is also plug and play.
All drivers are installed when the .img is installed.
All of the services you enjoyed with the bare raspberry pi 4, works seamlessly with the RasPad 3, VNC, GPIO, Keyboard, mouse, vid cam, external speakers, HDMI all run well.
I would suggest using the raspberry pi 4 4GB, as anything less may interfere with refresh rates.
I would like to see a larger fan in the pad for cooling as the CPU temp runs around 55 – 58 deg C i would like to see that under 50. A second fan or larger one would be nice. Extra heat sinks are included for the raspberry pi, i would suggest using them.
Touchpad screen works well and is very quick and responsive, brightness is not an issue, but you will sacrifice battery time for a bright screen
Buttons for sound, brightness and power work together very well, external inputs are arranged nicely i like it that all inputs are on one side of the pad.
I would recommend the SunFounder RasPad 3 and commend SunFounder for how they have put this together. For anybody looking to enhance their use of the GPIO pins for experiments, this would be a great tool, as it attaches easily and is run out the back of the pad for easy access.
I would like to see the price come down slightly, as with the purchase of the raspberry pi, it is a little pricey if you are only looking for a pad, however if you are an experimenter, its great value.

Well done SunFounder

Paul Furlong
Electronics Technician