HiLetgo ILI9341 2.8" SPI TFT LCD Display Touch Panel 240X320 with PCB 5V/3.3V STM32

This is fully functional. Works exactly how it was intended to. For the price, I will probably buy more of these. Super easy to set up. Pins are clearly labeled. Definitely a great value. It is however slower than other higher end expensive units but you get what you pay for.

I needed a simple SPI screen for a project I am working on and this one was quick delivery and looked good, plus the seller has proven themselves to me on past orders. It arrive, I plugged it in in place of the 1.8 inch I was using, changed a few settings to accommodate the higher result ion, different rotation and different color order and all was fine. Not quite a bright as the 1.8 inch but I am running it on 3.3V from a TI Tiva TM4C123 processor. I did have a minor issue with the Tiva sending data just a little too fast but that was easily solved. Most of these SPI screens are pretty easy to use with any modern microcontroller. I feel like when I order from HiLetgo, I know what I am getting and the product always matches the photos.

The display is bright and the colors are well defined. The model I received has a transistor to control the back light LED which is handy if you want to control it from code. It also has the touch screen overlay oriented so the X, Y coordinates align with the LCD display coordinates. It came with a handy white stylus. I bought a similar ILI9341 and it lacked the stylus, the transistor and the overlay orientation was reversed.The SPI pins are broken out separately for the touchscreen and the LCD which is useful because they run at very different speeds. The LCD works well at 50 MHz which is great for fast drawing, but the touchscreen produced errors at speeds exceeding 1 MHz.The touchscreen overlay is resistive. Unlike a modern phone, it requires a very firm press such as with a stylus or your finger tip to get accuracy.

Let me state, it works, it works as expected and I like the display.Let me get you over a couple of gotchas. First off, no joke on the 3.3V logic. You can't use an UNO for testing, it just doesn't work. I can think of a chipset I haven't been able to cheat it but 5V = doesn't function (worked fine after I switched processors, I didn't cook mine).I got mine working on an Arduino MKR. I tied reset to the MKRs VCC, I plugged the display VCC into the 5V pin. I used the Adafruit ILI9341 library and the display test ran after I look the "LED" pin and tied it to pin 6 and did the told digitalWrite(6, HIGH); on the top line of setup();.I then tested the touch screen with the XPT2046 library, there is only one out there from memory. One note... the MISO/MOSI lines are NOT connected as some online walkthroughs state... so you'll need to switch wires over for bench testing. I used the example with IRQ and put my CS on pin 5 and IRQ on pin 4. The sensitivity of the display matched my expectations for a resistive touch screen (vs capacitive).For the hassle I prefer the Adafruit version but with a little extra effort it's worth the lower cost.

I love the ILI9341 so my review is biased because this product uses that controller. With touch it has everything I need to do most of my prototyping. I don't use the SD reader on it - who does? But it doesn't get in the way. It's rated for like 10Mhz, but it will work at 40Mhz for writes and 20Mhz for reads which is plenty fast. The build quality of the breakout is what you can usually expect from hiletgo - which is decent, but not stellar. However, it's a knockoff of a great product, so it's put together really well. The touch is easy to wire and if you're sharing the bus with the screen it only requires one additional pin.This is the display I recommend if someone just asks me "what display should I use for Arduino?"