Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 launches for $60

Nine years after launching an official touchscreen display accessory for Raspberry Pi computer, the Raspberry Pi team is back with a new model. The new Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 has the same $60 price tag as the original, but it features a higher resolution display and a slimmer design.

The Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 is available now from select retailers.

The new model has a 720p display, while the original had a 480p screen. And since the display driver circuit for the Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 is integrated with the display enclosure, the new model is a little slimmer.

But there is one area where the new model feels like a step down: while both are capacitive touchscreen displays with support for multipoint touch, the 2015 model supported 10-finger multi-touch, while the new model tops out at 5 fingers. Most users will probably never notice the difference though.

Both displays will remain in production through at least January, 2030.

The new touchscreen display is compatible with almost the entire line of Raspberry Pi computers. It doesn’t work with Raspberry Pi Zero series models, but should support nearly every Raspberry Pi Model B or Compute Module from the Raspberry Pi 1B+ through the Raspberry Pi 5.

While there are plenty of third-party displays that can be used with a Raspberry Pi computer, these official displays are “fully supported by Raspberry Pi OS,” which means that you don’t have to hunt around for drivers in order to enable touchscreen input.

The Raspberry Pi team recently released a major update to Raspberry Pi OS that, among other things, includes the Squeekboard virtual keyboard, which should make it easier to use a Raspberry Pi computer with a touchscreen display when you don’t have a physical keyboard. When you’re using supported hardware like the official touch displays, Squeekboard automatically pops up when you tap on most text input boxes and disappears when you tap somewhere else.

Raspberry Pi notes that while the new screen is designed for native portrait orientation, it supports rotation, allowing you to use it as a landscape display.

via Raspberry Pi