Raspberry Pi's Touch 2 Display Just Got Smaller & More Affordable For AI Projects

Raspberry Pi Foundation is rolling out a smaller and more deliciously affordable version of its Touch Display 2. The new model is a 5-inch variant with similar specifications to the refreshed 7-inch Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 that it launched last year, but priced at $40 instead of $60. Despite being $20 less, it boats the same 720x1280 resolution, just in a more compact package.

The larger 7-inch Touch Display 2 was basically a refresh of the original Touch Display that launched back in 2015. Raspberry Pi's new 5-inch model offers up the same features that make it an enticing addition to single-board computer (SBC) projects, including a true multi-touch capacitive panel supporting five-finger touch gestures and drawing power from the host Raspberry Pi's GPIO port.

"What makes Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 particularly appealing is its seamless integration with the rest of the Raspberry Pi product ecosystem. Its capacitive touch screen works out of the box with full Linux driver support – no manual calibration required, no hunting through device trees, and no wrestling with incompatible touch controllers," Raspberry Pi foundations states in a blog post.

A ribbon cable connects the Touch Display 2 to the DSI port on virtually all Raspberry Pi computers, save for the Raspberry Pi Zero models, like the one we used to build a Commodore 64. Then it's just a matter of connecting the GPIO power cable and firing it up. According to the handy installation guide, it can take up to a minute for Raspberry Pi OS to start displaying an output.

One of the pitches for the new display is that it can benefit tinkerers who want to develop code with AI. In the aforementioned blog post, Raspberry Pi Foundation's Gordon Hollingworth shared an example of he easily and quickly created a simple slideshow application for the 5-inch display model.

The initial result from a text-prompt given to Cursor (using the Claude Sonnet 4 model) was slightly buggy, in that zooming and panning didn't work. But a quick follow-up tweak resolved the issue. It's a cool demo that you can try out for yourself.

For those interested, the 5-inch Touch Display 2 is available to purchase now. It measures 110.4mm x 62.1mm, versus 154.56mm x 86.94mm for the 7-inch variant, which is also still available. Both are LCD TFT displays with an anti-glare surface.