IIRC, my £5 Chinese display used a non-ST7735 driver. It also required four 1K inline resistors on certain pins, I've forgotten which ones. Documentation was non-existent, not for the resistors and not for all the other features, so I had to painstakingly collect all the info from various tech blogs. I did get it to work and display graphics, but the overall quality was disappointing compared to that of the Adafruit which I bought a while later.
The reason why I need a small-footprint display is that it will be mounted inside a 52mm center console gauge. I've held my Chinese 1.8'' display up against it, and the display screen itself will just about fit, but there isn't much room to fit a larger circuit board.
To show you what I'm talking about, these are my center console gauges inside my car:
The display will be mounted in lieu of the clock, using a spare oil temp gauge housing, as the clock itself has a hole in the center for the adjustment wheel, as you can see. I really don't have much room to spare, and that's why the SainSmart, due to its smaller circuit board size, seems more adequate.
I think the ESP32 runs on 3.3V anyway, so powering it will not be a problem; I'm going to have to put in a 3.3V power regulator down from the car's 12V either way.
With the vast flash memory of the ESP32, I think it's a good idea to keep all the graphics on-board and not use the SD slot. Not sure if this is still an issue, but I had a bad experience with an early smartphone and its micoSDHC card slot. I kept getting read fails, even after buying a new card, so I had to have it replaced on warranty. Hence my tendendcy to not want to use the SD slot. I'm also not sure how time-durable an SD card will be, considering that in a car environment, you can have -20°C in winter (this being continental Europe), as well as humidity and moisture, and heat in summer.