LILYGO's T5 E-Paper S3 Pro Pairs Espressif's ESP32-S3 with 4.7" Display — and Wireless Charging

Embedded and hobbyist hardware specialist LILYGO has launched a new model in its growing range of Espressif ESP32-powered ePaper smart display systems — this time offering an all-in-one smartphone-like design with integrated MagSafe-compatible wireless charging: the T5 E-Paper S3 Pro.

The latest in a string of ePaper devices from LILYGO, in which the LCD or OLED panels traditionally found on compact all-in-one development boards are replaced by an electrophoretic display that draws energy only when changing states and is fully readable in direct sunlight, the T5 E-Paper S3 Pro is clearly inspired by smartphone technology — though with a screen measured at just 4.7" diagonal its dimensions are a throwback to a time of much more pocketable phones.

That 4.7" display, brought to our attention by Linux Gizmos, uses ePaper technology to show 16 levels of grey at a 960×540 resolution, or around 234 pixels per inch (PPI). Lacking the multiple layers of color ePaper displays, the panel's refresh rate should be reasonable — though LILYGO hasn't offered any performance figures — and the display includes a capacitive touchscreen layer good for two simultaneous points of touch.

Behind the display is an Espressif ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 module, which includes the ESP32-S3 Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) wireless system-on-chip with its dual 32-bit Tensilica Xtensa LX7 cores running at up to 240MHz and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth 5 Low Energy (BLE) 2.4GHz radio with 8MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM) and 16MB of flash, expandable via microSD Card.

Also to be found behind the display is a Semtech SX1262 LoRa transceiver, supporting the 433MHz, 868MHz, and 915MHz bands, a real-time clock, and a battery management chip — linked, for the first time in LILYGO's ePaper smart display range, to a MagSafe-compatible wireless charging system. The phone-like case includes physical power, reset, and boot buttons, a user-definable button, and a USB Type-C port for data and wired charging.

LILYGO has listed the T5 E-Paper S3 Pro on its webstore at $76.87, with an "early bird" discount of five per cent bringing it down to $73.06 — but at the time of writing the device had not yet been stocked. Additional information, including example programs, is available on LILYGO's GitHub repository.