Most wall switches with a colour screen need a neutral wire, because the display has to be powered all the time. Xiaomi's new Smart Display Switch 2, listed in China on 28 October 2026, tries to get round that. It works with or without a neutral, and in single-wire installations it runs the screen from a built-in energy store. Crowdfunding opens on 4 November at 10:00 China time (03:00 in Poland), with prices from 159 yuan. There is no word on a launch outside China.
Four buttons, two kinds
The layout splits the panel in two. The bottom two buttons are ordinary relays for two real lighting circuits, so the switch still works like a normal wall switch. The top two buttons are wireless: single press, double press and long press can each start a scene set up in the Mi Home app, such as "leaving home" or "coming back".
Every button can get its own name, shown on the screen. That screen is an information display rather than a touchscreen. It shows the time, the date and the weather, and Xiaomi ships more than ten themes. It can also switch preset brightness and colour temperature modes on Xiaomi smart lamps.
Radar and light sensor
A 24 GHz mmWave radar with a 90-degree field of view wakes the screen when someone walks up, and a light sensor adjusts its brightness to the room. The front panel is 7.9 mm thick and the switch matches the look of Xiaomi's earlier Smart Switch 2, so the two can sit side by side in a multi-gang frame.
The single-wire catch
Without a neutral, the switch can only draw power through the connected lamp. Xiaomi solves this with an energy storage module, but IT之家 (IT Home) reports a condition: the lights have to be on for more than 10 minutes a day for the screen to wake reliably, and the screen cannot stay on permanently. With a neutral wire neither limit applies.
Network and hardware
The switch uses Xiaomi Mesh 2.0, which Xiaomi says responds 50 percent faster and builds the network in half the time of the previous generation. Time and weather on the screen depend on a Bluetooth Mesh gateway, and so do the wireless scene buttons. It supports wireless two-way switching without new cabling and remote firmware updates. Xiaomi quotes 1 million switching cycles, a housing rated to resist 650 °C and an over-temperature cut-off.
For anyone outside Xiaomi's ecosystem, the gateway requirement matters more than the screen. Neither source mentions Matter, Zigbee or a local API, so integration with other platforms would depend on Xiaomi's cloud or community work.