perch vs trmnl
A TRMNL alternative for people who do not actually want e-ink.
TRMNL is a good device and its whole design rests on one decision: e-ink, so it runs for months on a battery. That decision is worth it on a shelf, in a bag, on a wall with no outlet. On a desk you sit at all day, the power is already there — and you are then paying for e-ink without using what it buys, while giving up colour, touch, and a refresh faster than minutes. Perch takes the other trade, and adds one TRMNL has no answer to. A button you press to talk to whatever AI you already own — OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, an Ollama model running on the Pi itself with nothing leaving the house, or the coding agent already open in your terminal.
side by side
| Perch | TRMNL | |
|---|---|---|
| Screen | 7-inch colour, capacitive touch | E-ink, monochrome, no touch |
| Power | Wall. It is plugged in and bright | Months on a battery |
| Refresh | Live, over a WebSocket | Minutes |
| Voice to your own AI | Yes — any endpoint, cloud or fully local | No |
| Hardware cost | A Pi you may own, plus a ~$60 panel | $139 for the device |
| Software | MIT, free, self-hosted, no account | Open framework, hosted service, BYOS available |
| Adding your own | One folder, about forty lines | Plugin framework, large plugin library |
| Where it belongs | The desk you sit at | A shelf, a wall, a bag |
When TRMNL is the better buy
- You want it somewhere without an outlet. This is the whole point of the thing and Perch has no answer to it.
- You want to buy a finished product rather than build one. TRMNL arrives working; Perch is a clone, an installer, and an evening.
- You find e-ink genuinely easier on the eyes, or you want something that will not glow at you in a bedroom.
- You do not want to maintain anything. Self-hosting is a commitment, however small.
When Perch is the better answer
- The display is going on a powered desk, where battery life buys you nothing.
- You want colour, and you want to touch it to toggle a lamp rather than watch a number.
- You want to ask it a question out loud and have your own model answer — including one running on the Pi with nothing leaving the house.
- You already own a Raspberry Pi, and $139 for a second device is hard to justify when the board is in a drawer.
- You want the data to stay on your LAN with no account anywhere.
while you are deciding
Is the TRMNL touchscreen?
No. It is an e-ink panel without touch, which is a consequence of the battery-life decision rather than an oversight. Perch is a capacitive touchscreen: tapping a Home Assistant tile toggles the light, and dragging across a lamp tile sets its brightness.
Can you turn a Raspberry Pi into a TRMNL?
You can — TRMNL publish a BYOS path and their framework is open, so a Pi can drive their layouts. That gets you TRMNL-style content on your own hardware. It does not get you colour, touch, live refresh, or a voice button, because those are not what TRMNL is for. Perch is a different program aimed at a different spot on the desk.
What does Perch cost compared to a TRMNL?
The software is free and MIT licensed, with no tier and no account. The hardware is a Raspberry Pi at $60–80, which many people already own, and a 7-inch DSI touchscreen at about $60. A microphone and speaker for the talk button add $15–25 and are optional. A TRMNL is $139 as a finished device, which is a fair price for something that arrives working.
Does Perch need the internet or an account?
No account, ever, because there is no service behind it. The clock, calendar and machine stats work with no network at all, and the talk button works offline if the model runs on the Pi. Weather and news reach out, because that is where weather and news are.