Continuing our series of reviews on SBCs and SBC accessories, we stumble upon yet another screen from a well-known brand in the field – Elecrow. While for most applications, SBC programming and setup is done via a command-line interface, but most end-use applications still require a GUI of some sort. This is why the market for purpose-built SBC monitors is so large -offering many options for different use cases and price points.
The screen we’re taking a look at today is on the budget end -retailing for around $70 – but offering proper capacitive touch and an IPS panel, as well as low energy consumption needs which can be easily be met with even USB power.
The resolution of this panel is 1024 x 600, which is a bit on the low side even with the relatively small screen size. While a full HD screen would be ideal for high quality content, lowering the load on SBC GPUs by using lower-resolution screens is always beneficial for performance.
We loved the simple connectivity provided by the screen – with a single USB cable used for both power and touch control – and an HDMI port used for signal. The main video codec is a Realtek-branded chip which should deliver reliable performance. There’s an odd hardware backlight switch, which is odd given that the screen isn’t transflective.
While the screen can’t hold an SBC on its back, it has simple mounting holes which allow for it to be fixed inside a functional device securely. This is great, especially given the low and compact profile of the unit.
In the box, aside from the screen, is a USB cable and a high-quality HDMI cable. There’s also a dongle for adapting the micro-HDMI found on some SBCs to the full-sized variant. Finally, there’s a CD packed full of useful tutorials for screen setup, drivers, pre-built OS images with all the drivers installed and even basic software utilities used for SBC management. This, in our opinion, greatly increases the value of a product as a whole. It’s just a lovely touch.
Let’s move onto the display performance itself. There’s no hardware brightness or contrast adjustment buttons – so everything has to be done in software. The screen isn’t suited for critical viewing applications – the contrast is somewhat lacklustre. Factory colour profiles, though, usually aren’t the greatest – so using our standard test rig and a Spyder calibrator, we calibrated the screen properly. This got accurate colours out of it -but still presented some contrast issues. We’ve attached the links to our profiles at the end of the article.
ICC profil by magazinMehatronika: download
Some details about the calibration: the default profile is heavily leaning into the blue range, with yellows leaning into the red. Greens look a bit yellowish, however. This does give a more vivid look, good for a wall-mounted user panel. However – the colors in this profile aren’t suitable for any critical viewing. After calibration, we managed to get the display tinted more naturally (white balance went from 10 000K to 6620K), but the overall brightness decreased somewhat. Contrast, nevertheless, improved, and details were much better rendered this time around.
For the intended application of end-user UIs and general system use, however, the display quality is more than enough. For the price of $70 – similar to the official Raspberry Pi Display (which itself does not wow with image quality, and an 800 x 480 resolution), the Elecrow RC070 unit offers better connectivity -thanks to a standard connector – and sharper image quality. While some higher-end displays might offer better image quality, for the price, this model is almost unmatched. A worthy replacement to the official Raspberry Pi display.
With a background in electrical engineering and extensive history in publishing, he focuses on providing Mehatronika's key content and is behind many of our projects and initiatives.
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