The name was changed to the Plus 4 and all the applications were added at the factory. The Plus 4 was redesigned with a new look and feel. Unlike the C-16 , which is a stripped down version of the Plus 4, uses the same case and keyboard styling as the VIC/C64 line. The Plus 4 can still use the same serial peripherals as the C-64 but comes with its own peripherals. One in particular stands out, the SFS-481, a parallel floppy drive using the new parallel port on the rear of the machine allowing greater speed accessing programs. The Plus 4's cassette and joystick ports are not compatible with the C-64 line.

      The Plus 4 is lacking a few significant feature found on its older sibling the C-64. Although it improved on the color capabilities, increasing them from 16 to 128 possible colors and adding 12 more sound and graphics commands in BASIC, it is missing the 8 sprites and sophisticated SID chip found on the C-64. The reason for the lack of sophisticated gaming capabilities was probably the Plus 4 was targeting a segment of the home market interested in more serious applications programming. The Plus 4 was not a very good seller mainly due to its incompatibility with the C-64 and the price drop of the C-64 made the 64, which could do basically every thing the Plus 4 could do cheaper, an exceptional value dooming the Plus 4.