Raspberry Pi has a new Touch Display ready for inexpensive interactive projects

The Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 offers better features at the same price as the original

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In a nutshell: Raspberry Pi released its first official display nine years ago. The company is now providing a mild upgrade to the original accessory, with better specs and a high level of compatibility with different Pi generations. Best of all, it remains at the same low price.

The recently introduced Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 is a new LCD panel designed to provide multi-point capacitive touch controls to Pi-powered projects. The original Touch Display is still one of the most popular Pi accessories, almost a decade after its debut. The newer version should see similar results, especially at the same $60 price point.

The Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 has a higher resolution than the original – 720x1280 pixels versus 800x480px. The 7-inch display has a multi-touch capacitive panel with support for five points of contact. It has a significantly slimmer form factor and does not require a separate power supply as it borrows from the host device.

The screen installs with just four screws and is fully compatible with Raspberry Pi OS, with specific drivers for touch controls and an on-screen keyboard. The Raspberry Pi Foundation says the Display 2 is fully functional without a separate keyboard or mouse. The screen supports rotation, but portrait format is the default, which explains why Pi lists its resolution as 720x1280 instead of 1280x720.

The Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 is consistent with the company's commitment to long-term product availability. The original Touch Display will remain in production for the foreseeable future. However, RPF will no longer recommend it for new Pi projects. The new Touch Display 2 will be Pi's goto screen component until at least 2030. So that Raspberry Pi industrial customers can benefit from a more extended support period.

Touch Display 2 is compatible with all the main single-board computer designs developed by the UK company, starting from Raspberry Pi 1B+ onwards. The Raspberry Pi Zero is the only exception, as the system-in-a-package board does not include the required DSI port.

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Raspberry claims it spent nine years refreshing the original Touch Display to get the new design right. Developers can now use Touch Display 2 to create new interactive projects such as tablets, entertainment systems, or information dashboards. Your LCARS-themed, wall-mounted smart home controller is just a DIY project away.