LILYGO Refreshes the Circular T-RGB with a New, More Compact T-Display-S3 AMOLED Variant

Embedded and hobbyist electronics specialist LILYGO has launched a new development board built around a round touchscreen display, powered by an Espressif ESP32-S3 microcontroller — and ditching earlier efforts' TFT panels in favor of AMOLED technology.

The LILYGO T-Display-S3 AMOLED 1.43 is, to break down the mouthful of a name, an Espressif ESP32-S3 development board designed to fit in the footprint of a 1.43" AMOLED color capacitive touchscreen display. That gives the device, brought to our attention by CNX Software, two Tensilica Xtensa LX7 microcontroller cores running at up to 240MHz, 512kB of static RAM (SRAM) and 8MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM), and 16MB of flash storage, plus radios for Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 Low Energy (BLE) connectivity.

The module is, effectively, an update to the company's earlier T-RGB, launched two years ago as LILYGO's first round touchscreen development board. Based on an ESP32-S3R8 module, the same as in the new T-Display-S3 AMOLED, the original model offered a larger and marginally higher-resoltuion 2.1" TFT panel based on a Leadtek ST7701S controller — offering a 480×480 native resolution to the new model's 466×466.

While the panel uses a square-format aspect ratio, it shows only a circular section — making it ideal for clock and watch projects, among others. There's a USB Type-C connector for power and data, a Qwiic-compatible connector for solderless expansion, female pin headers bringing out a range of general-purpose input/output (GPIO) connectivity, and support for an optional battery — with an analog to digital converter (ADC) input used to keep an eye on its charge. If the 16MB of off-die flash isn't enough, there's also a microSD Card slot — and, in-keeping with the clock theme, a real-time clock.

LILYGO has listed the T-Display-S3 AMOLED 1.43 on its official AliExpress store at $29.98; the part has not yet made it to the company's own website.