Raspberry Pi is getting a new touchscreen display – and I love the upgrades

While there’s a lot you can do with a Raspberry Pi without ever needing a display, there are some applications where a screen, specifically a touchscreen, is a must. Raspberry Pi first released a 7-inch LCD panel in 2015, and while that’s been good, not only is 800×480-pixel resolution a little miserable nowadays, but the display wasn’t compatible with the new Raspberry Pi 5 board. 

Fear not — Raspberry Pi has been busy with more than AI-related hardware and high-performance SSDs. On Monday, the company released a new display: the Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2.

Also: The Raspberry Pi 5 gets an AI upgrade

While the size and price remain the same — a 7-inch display for a very reasonable $60 — there’s a decent resolution bump up to 720×1280-pixel, and the screen is packed into a slimmer form factor, thanks to the display driver PCB being built into the display enclosure. 

Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 tech specs

• 7-inch diagonal display
• 88 × 155mm active area
• 720 × 1280 RGB pixels
• True multi-touch capacitive panel, supporting five-finger touch
• Fully supported by Raspberry Pi OS
• Powered from the host Raspberry Pi

The new display is compatible with Raspberry Pi boards from the Raspberry Pi 1B+, except for the Raspberry Pi Zero boards. 

The Raspberry Pi board fits onto the display using four screws, and it comes with all the power and data cables required. Drivers for the display support a five-finger touch and an on-screen keyboard.

Also: How to add AI superpowers to your Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is committed to keeping the display until 2030 at the earliest, so industrial customers can use the display confidently in commercial settings. 

If you want to try one, CanaKit and SparkFun have stock.