Waveshare has introduced a distinctive new smart home-style touchscreen aimed at makers, developers, and anyone building custom interfaces: a round 7-inch display designed for creative UI projects rather than traditional desktop use.
Officially named the 7inch 1080×1080 LCD, it uses a 1080 x 1080 IPS panel with wide 160-degree viewing angles and a peak brightness rated at 800 nits, making it easier to see in bright rooms and a better fit for dashboards, control panels, and always-on status screens. Touch input comes from a capacitive mesh layer, and the front is protected by 6H toughened glass. Waveshare also uses optical bonding, which can help improve durability and dust resistance while boosting perceived clarity by reducing reflections.
On the back, a built-in PCB includes standoffs designed to mount a Raspberry Pi, turning the display into a compact all-in-one module for projects. For connectivity, it offers standard HDMI for video along with dual USB-C connections for touch and power. There’s also a 3.5 mm audio output jack, a 4-pin speaker header, two physical buttons (one for power and another for rotating the screen), plus software controls for adjusting brightness.
Compatibility is positioned as simple and flexible. Waveshare says the screen supports driver-free plug-and-play with Raspberry Pi boards, Jetson platforms, Windows PCs, and laptops. However, there’s an important limitation to note: Ubuntu, Kali, Windows 10 IoT, and the Jetson series are listed as supporting single-point touch only, rather than full 10-point multi-touch.
Before buying, it’s worth considering how this circular 1080 x 1080 format fits into your software setup. Many common devices—including Raspberry Pi systems, other development boards, and Windows PCs—typically output rectangular aspect ratios. That mismatch can cause scaling challenges or clipped corners unless you build a custom interface that’s designed for a round screen. Waveshare generally provides software resources through its documentation, but for this particular display, the company notes that software support is still in development. In practice, this model makes the most sense for custom UI builds—think smart home controllers, media dials, sensor dashboards, clocks, or dedicated control surfaces—rather than a standard desktop experience.
The Waveshare 7-inch round touchscreen display is currently listed at $159.99 through Waveshare’s official store.
