Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 now comes in two sizes: 7 inches and 5 inches

Raspberry Pi’s single-board computers are full-fledged PCs that can work with a wide variety of accessories. But every now and then the folks that make the little PCs introduce first-party hardware that’s designed specifically for the platform.

Last year the team launched the official Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2, an optional $60 accessory designed to make it easy to add a 7 inch, 720p touchscreen display to a Raspberry Pi. Now there’s also a smaller, cheaper option that sells for just $40.

The new 5 inch version of the Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 has nearly identical specifications to its larger sibling. It’s just smaller.

Both screens are 1280 x 720 pixel LCD displays with support for 5-finger capacitive multitouch input. And both are designed as plug-and-play solution that attaches to a MIPI-DSI connector on the Raspberry Pi with FFC cable while drawing power from the computer’s standard 5V GPIO pins. In other words, you don’t lose access to any HDMI or USB ports after connecting the 5 or 7 inch display kits to a Raspberry Pi.

You should be able to use either display with pretty much any Raspberry Pi Model B computer released in the past decade or so, and Raspberry Pi says they’re both fully Linux compatible, so you shouldn’t have to install or adjust any drivers.

Aside from the screen size there is one difference between the 7 inch and 5 inch models: the 7 inch has a 85 degree viewing angle, while the 5 inch version only supports viewing angles up to 80 degrees.

Neither comes close to the 178 degree viewing angles you’d expect from a higher-quality IPS LCD or AMOLED display, so it’s pretty clear that these aren’t necessarily screens you’d use to build your own tablet. Instead they could come in handy if you’re making a smart home display and controller or for other projects where you might want touch input or a basic display without the need to connect a larger monitor.

The new Touch Display 2 (5″) is available from Raspberry Pi-approved resellers including CanaKit, PiShop, and Vilros. Unfortunately at time of publications two of those stores are charging $51 for the Touch Display 2 (5″), while the only store charging $40 shows the display as out of stock.