“Having previously bought the other sizes of display packs, I knew what to expect, and unsurprisingly, that's what I got. A great quality display in a compact format that is convenient.
I give it five stars because although I do have a couple of 'issues' with it from a personal point of view, I still think it's a great piece of kit.
On the plus side:
Really easy to connect up any of the Pico family, providing they have male headers installed.
Display quality is good, with relatively wide viewing angles, and colours are reasonable (although in the interests of complete disclosure, I am colour-blind, but not completely, and I drive the display in RGB332 mode)
Compact. No bulky connectors on one end.
RGB LED and buttons baked in
On the negative side:
No easy way to access unused GPIO pins.
Tactile buttons are compact, so can be a little bit fiddly
No case available - like so much of the Pico range.
To be fair, I can see why cases are impossible to get right. Bearing in mind the price difference between a Pi 4/5 and a Pico, does it make commercial sense to supply a case that most people wouldn't use anyway? Unlike the Pibow and similar cases, where you are protecting a relatively more expensive board, the Pico range is approaching the 'cheaper to replace' point.
However, I did find the lack of GPIO access frustrating, particularly when I look at the RGB keypad, which offers a solution by allowing you to solder headers/sockets parallel to the socket for the Pico.
If I'd had that option, I could have fitted larger buttons (possibly in a 1x4 arrangement) which would make live a bit easier.
All that said, I still think it's a 5 star product. Not just because of the build quality , but because like an awful lot of Pimoroni's own products, there is supporting software too - and NOT just for micropython users. Most of my work on the Pico range is done using the C/C++ SDK, and of course, the excellent drivers and libraries for the Pimoroni hardware, like the display packs and the aforementioned rgb keypad, and it is a lot easier than some other hardware add-ons.
I did have a little trouble getting it all to work with a Pico Lipo shim, mainly due to my inability to solder nicely now that I've hit the age where my eyesight and fine motor skills have started to degrade, but I managed in the end.
All in all, an excellent bit of kit, with some great supporting software.”
“Great display. But note that you probably should install Pimoroni's uf2 file. I found that it would take me a very long time to develop any useful low-level software otherwise. But do note 2 important things, 1) You do not get access to most of the pico's pins. There are 2 connectors, I use the one with the serial /uart connections (I have a second pico that runs the actual programs and uses the Display Pack as an intelligent display with a serial input). Also 2), I highly recommend using a Pico 2 (or Pico W 2) because it has twice the ram of the original Pico. I found that when using the hi-res mode, there's was only about 40k available with a Pico (1), but in my case with a Pico 2 there is 445k available! (the Pico 1 has 264 kB ram and the Pico 2 has 520 kB).”
“Lovely little device.
I also bought a Pico2-wh and a bme690 breakout.
By the end of the evening, just using the example codes on github I had the screen displaying temperature, humidity, pressure and "gas".
The ease of use far surpassed my expectations.”
