Seeed Studio has a new family of small display boards built around its XIAO modules: six models that pair one of three IPS colour screens with either a XIAO ESP32-S3 Plus or a XIAO nRF52840 Plus. CNX Software covered the series on 17 October 2026. According to CNX, the Seeed Studio store sells them for $15.90 to $19.90 and AliExpress for $11.99 to $20.33. On Seeed's own product page, the 1.47-inch nRF52840 version is listed at $19.90.
Three screens, two controllers
The smallest screen is 0.96 inches with 80 × 160 pixels, the middle one 1.14 inches with 135 × 240. Both use an ST7789 controller and have no touch. The 1.47-inch model has 172 × 320 pixels, a JD9853A controller, capacitive touch and a microSD slot, which the smaller two lack. All three screens connect over SPI.
The rest of the hardware is shared. Every board has an LSM6DS3 six-axis motion sensor, a PDM microphone, a slide power switch and a 2-pin JST connector for a 3.7 V LiPo cell. The 1.14-inch model gets three buttons and a Grove I2C connector, while the other two have two buttons each. Seeed's wiki says the display hardware is identical across both controller versions and only the XIAO module differs.
That module decides what the board is good for. The ESP32-S3 Plus has an ESP32-S3R8 with 8 MB of PSRAM, 16 MB of flash, 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE 5.0. The nRF52840 Plus has 256 KB of RAM, 1 MB of internal flash plus 2 MB on the board, and Bluetooth LE 5.4. Both versions can measure battery voltage, but only the nRF52840 boards also report charging status.
The current draw tells you which one to buy
Seeed measured the average current at 3.7 V over 60 seconds while each board ran its factory dashboard firmware. These are figures for a running board, not deep sleep:
| Screen | ESP32-S3 | nRF52840 |
|---|---|---|
| 0.96 inch | 159.76 mA | 28.69 mA |
| 1.14 inch | 160.05 mA | 39.07 mA |
| 1.47 inch | 130.53 mA | 83.32 mA |
On the two smaller screens the nRF52840 version draws a quarter of the ESP32-S3's current or less. If you want a small Wi-Fi status display or a desk controller that talks to Home Assistant, the ESP32-S3 boards are the ones with the radio for it, but plan for USB power or frequent charging. The nRF52840 boards make more sense for Bluetooth badges, wearables and sensor displays that run on a battery. Seeed itself lists portable dashboards, smart home controllers, wearables and sensor monitoring as targets.
Software
Seeed's documentation centres on the Arduino IDE, with getting-started guides and examples for the screen, microphone, motion sensor, buttons, battery monitoring and microSD card. The ESP32-S3 versions use Seeed's Seeed_GFX2 graphics library. The wiki also has schematics, KiCad files, 3D models and the factory firmware, and a community member has published a free 3D-printable case for the 1.47-inch model on Printables.