I don't know about the RP2040 or micropython, but I have a question. In those examples are you using threads for the LCD driver or is everything running from the main thread?
If everything is being executed from the main thread, it would make it much faster to execute the LCD driver from another thread.
I see. I ran into a similar problem recently for project14's photography project to drive a 4x7 segment display and I solved it using an SPI port and the 8-bit shift register SN74HC595NSN74HC595N. I think the raspberry pi pico has two SPI ports and something similar could be done.
