Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.85inch Round LCD Development Board, 360×360, Supports Wi-Fi & Bluetooth BLE 5, AI Speech, Smart Speaker Box, ESP32 with Display, with Speaker Box

Updated review, recommend again – see detailed review
Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.85inch Round LCD Development BoardUpdated review as of 12/3/2025 – good support from waveshare team, they gave me a new version of the source code for ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-1.85C and had me load that, comment out Wireless_Init() and guess what, worked very well!! Finally. Back to 5 stars. WOuld recommend this board – just remember, wireless and all the functions together won’t work!! Guess that rules out wakeword + screen + wifi + playing songs etc? Think may switch back to Raspberry, esp32 has its advantages such as NVS encrypted ram for storing keys, very low pricing (1/10th of raspberry). but quite limited due to its cpu and memory, only useful for limited usecases I guess. Thank you to waveshare though for standing behind this and fixing the software/firmware code.Old review below:Terrible experience overall:1) SD Card Reader corrupts the SD card – verified multiple times2) Demo on waveshare wiki does not even compile with latest ESP-IDF (v6.x), compiles clean on 5.3.23) Demo does not even run properly – nothing works on it – LCD display puts garbage, Audio Microphone in – doesn’t seem to work at all, only records silence! Speaker – was able to play tone after fixing demo program as it was running out of DMA memory etc.4) Even examples on their wiki – there is no demo corresponding to it, check out their wiki at wiki/ESP32-S3-LCD-1.85, download the demo and unzip it. You will NOT find the demo mentioned in ESP-IDF5) Extremely slow – the smallest change will require you to compile, build, flash the entire thing and then run monitor (flash mean write the various partitions / image to the esp32s3 which goes over a max 1 MB link, but often much slower).Was very keen on getting this to work as it had promised Wifi, BLE, Audio Speaker and Microphone, but nothing works other than tone!6) Tried with 2 different waveshare boards – don’t think they even test anything, probably messed up wiring inside and may short out your entire USB circuit or worse fry your ports – so use with care.7) The GPIO PIN sheet is NOT documented – the wiki is a mess – it is basically cut and paste of same content for each variation of the board that they make with no attempts to customize, why even bother creating separate versions, I wonder?8) They should keep a firmware bin with source for it that has proper demos for each function and make sure to document clearly what versions they used to compile/build/flash9) The espressif environment keeps changing e.g. esptool – older versions do not support –silent, keep changing syntax and options for read/write flash with no regard to people using it, continuity of usage10) idf.py menuconfig is a mess – has over hundreds of menus of choices with no documentationBest to stick with raspberry pi zero 2 or some other cleaner solution that will last longer.This is an exercise in futility – buy it for your worst enemy or to torture someone!(tech person writing this who knows C language well).Bulky, slow connectivity even with USB-C, not a good value. Thank god for Amazon, fast shipping, will setup for return. If you purchase from some other site, then you would be stuck.

Broke after flashing YAML
Was kinda nice when it was working, but I flashed a yaml to it and it broke the screen. Bunch of lines in it now. Not sure what happened. But I’m using the ESP-32-S3 development board. Works much better for what I need.

Amazon said it would tell me a joke if I gave 7 reviews.
But it doesn’t.Don’t believe them.Product is great but also it implies there’s a battery: there isn’t. The battery that fits is a 1000mah model 803040. Anything else will not work.

After purchasing I opened the box to find a broken LCD, I’ve used waveshare before though so highly suspected this was during shipping as there quality control is usually pretty good, after contacting support for just an LCD replacement that I would fit myself they sent a full replacement and where very friendly and understanding of the situation.I would highly recommend waveshare if you want to get into making your own devices or mess about with code and have a company that provide valued support and fast response times.The only nitpick I could have with the device is I’d prefer a smaller speaker to lower the footprint but that’s just personal preference!

Bon matériel, mais documentation/code pas au niveauLa carte a l’air de bonne qualité côté hardware, mais impossible de trouver un exemple de code source complet et documenté pour l’utiliser facilement (et encore moins pour une intégration Home Assistant).Pour un produit basé sur ESP32-S3, je m’attendais à un repo clair (GPIO mapping, exemples ESPHome/Arduino/PlatformIO, schémas, etc.).Résultat : carte potentiellement intéressante, mais perte de temps si on n’est pas prêt à reverse/chercher partout. Dommage, parce que le hardware est prometteur.

Das Board funktioniert ohne Probleme und bietet eine hohe Verarbeitungsqualität. Das integrierte Display ist scharf und reagiert präzise auf Touch-Befehle, ideal für GUI-Programme wie LVGL.Die Ausstattung ist beeindruckend: Dual-Core-Prozessor, 8 MB PStatic RAM, 16 MB Flash, Audio-Decoder, TF-Kartenslot und vielseitige Schnittstellen machen das Board sehr flexibel für HMI- und andere ESP32-S3-Projekte. Installation und Nutzung sind unkompliziert, das Preis-Leistungs-Verhältnis stimmt. Sehr empfehlenswert für Hobbyisten und Entwickler.