$1 ESP32 Dev Board with Screen Is a Great AliExpress Bargain Find

AliExpress is a wild place full of both total junk and absolute bargains. Most of it comes straight from China, which means shipping costs and time are often a concern. That makes it hard to justify rolling the dice. But Volos took the gamble for us and found this pretty incredible deal: a tiny ESP32 dev board complete with a 0.42” OLED screen.

Volos states that this board cost him $3. But I’m actually seeing it for $1 right now (with welcome discount) and that includes free shipping. My total, with sales tax, is just $1.08. The listing says that includes import charges. How is that possible when a bare ESP32 from DigiKey costs more than $2 (plus tax and shipping)? I have no idea. But we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

This is a very small board based around the ESP32-C3 and it has 11 GPIO pins (several already used), plus TX and RX. It has an itty bitty 0.42” monochrome OLED screen built into the top (connected via I2C) and a USB-C port.

Some of you may have seen coverage about cheap AliExpress dev boards that use a version of the ESP32-C3 that lacks flash, effectively making them useless for hobbyists. But this isn’t that. This has 4MB of flash and has either an “N4” or a “FH4” ESP32-C3. AliExpress reviewers report being able to use the boards, as does Volos.

To demonstrate that, Volos even put his on a miniature breadboard with some basic components and a flashed game. He also shows and provides some testing code.

This dev board does have drawbacks when compared to more fully featured ESP32 dev boards. In particular, the fact that only five of the GPIO pins are unused could be problematic. But if you need a dirt-cheap board with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for a simple project, I can’t imagine it is possible to beat this deal.