Raspberry Pi Display shield comparison
Published: 2014/02/17
I have been working for about a year now to make it easy to use small graphical displays on the Raspberry Pi.
I'm happy to see that these displays are now starting to be more common and easy to use.
As far as I know Texy was the one who first started selling display shields for the Raspberry Pi with his 1.8" shield back in April 2013.
In July 2013 he announced his 2.8" Touch shield and sales really picked up.
All these shields uses the SPI bus for communication.
I have put together a brief comparison of the display shields as I see them.
| Name | Size | Resolution | Touch | DMA | GPIO passthrough | Custom kernel | Custom image | Assembled | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LCD-PI50* | 5.0" | 480x272 | yes | no | yes | yes | no | yes |
|
| LCD-PI43* | 4.3" | 480x272 | yes | no | yes | yes | no | yes |
|
| Texy 3.5" | 3.5" | 480x320 | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | £30 (~$50) |
| LCD-PI33 | 3.3" | 320x480 | yes | no | no | yes | no | yes | €40 (~$55) |
| LCD-PI32 | 3.2" | 320x240 | yes | no | no | yes | no | yes | €39 (~$53) |
| PiTFT | 2.8" | 320x240 | yes | no | yes | yes | no | no | $35 |
| RPi-Display | 2.8" | 320x240 | yes | yes* | no | yes | yes | yes | €30 (~$41) |
| Texy 2.8" | 2.8" | 320x240 | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | £25 (~$41) |
| Texy 2.8" + RTC | 2.8" | 320x240 | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | £28 (~$47) |
| PiOLED | 1.5" | 128x128 | no | yes* | no | yes | no | no | £40 (~$67) |
*) LCD-PI50 and LCD-PI43 will be available by the end of the month
*) The RPi-Display has to be reconfigured to benefit from FBTFT DMA support (8-bit + RS)
*) PiOLED is not tested with DMA, but it should work in theory
Table explanation
- Table sort order: size, price
-
DMA is important when the display is updated continuously, like when showing a movie or cloning /dev/fb0 on /dev/fb1 with fbcp.
A 320x240 display cloned with fbcp uses ~10% CPU with DMA, and ~60% without.
DMA is not so important for plain X-windows and console use. - GPIO passthrough The shield occupies the P1 header, but this provides a P1 connector on the shield for easy GPIO access.
- Custom kernel is a kernel that has the drivers that is needed to use the display as a Linux framebuffer
- Custom image is an image that can be downloaded and put on a SD-card. The image is preconfigured for the display shield. Plug'n Play.
- Price is converted to dollars using Google.
Note: I have only tried the RPi-Display, Texy 2.8" and PiOLED myself.
This page has pictures of the shields: LCD-Shields
| Name | Launch month |
|---|---|
| LCD-PI50 | not yet |
| LCD-PI43 | not yet |
| LCD-PI33 | February 2014 |
| Texy 2.8" + RTC | February 2014 |
| Texy 3.5" | January 2014 |
| RPi-Display | January 2014 |
| PiTFT | November 2013 |
| LCD-PI32 | September 2013 |
| Texy 2.8" | July 2013 |
| PiOLED | July 2013 |
| Texy 1.8" | April 2013 (discontinued) |