Introduced in 1976, the Pet 2001 featured the then new 6502 microprocessor, running at 1MHz. Commodore International would later buy the company that produced the 6502, MOS Technology. The pet was one of the first computers to feature a built in display.

Along with its black and green monitor, other peripherals included a dedicated cassette unit and a floppy drive with an IEE488 interface. In its base configuration, it featured 4K of RAM (expandable to 32K) and 8K BASIC in ROM. Programs could be stored on cassette.