this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2026
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Electronics

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Looking for an Affordable 7.5-Inch USB-Powered E-Ink HDMI Monitor for Raspberry Pi (thelemmy.club)
submitted 2 months ago by Ingwerperium@thelemmy.club to c/electronics@discuss.tchncs.de
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I am looking for an affordable E-Ink or e-paper display of around 7.5 inches for my Raspberry Pi 5. It should be as easy as possible to connect and ideally be recognized by the Raspberry Pi as a normal monitor via HDMI. I do not want to need any additional programming, SPI configuration, or separate driver board. The display should consume as little power as possible and, if possible, be powered directly by the Raspberry Pi, so that I only need to connect the Raspberry Pi itself to a power supply.

I mainly write text documents in LibreOffice on the Raspberry Pi, read Wikipedia articles and other text-based content on the internet, and sometimes use the Raspberry Pi for Python programming. I use everything in white mode. However, the current screen consumes far too much power for my power bank. The Raspberry Pi itself would just about be manageable, but the additional power consumption of a conventional screen is too high.

Now I have a few questions: Is there an affordable display that can do all of this? Would it be better to buy one used? Should I build one myself instead? I am not very good at building things, and I only have a budget of around €50. Is everything I am asking for realistic? Could you recommend a suitable model?

I have been researching this for quite some time, but there always seems to be some kind of catch. I would not mind if the image were updated only once every second.

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[–] Flaqueman@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 months ago

E-ink screens aren't good at daily computer use. They have a refresh rate that's way too slow for mouse mouvement. They excel at still image displaying with an update every several minutes or so. Even an update every second would kill the power saving advantage they have over LCD/LED screens.