I also finally tested how the displayio-based Pew library works on the SAMD51, and it's much better than on the SAMD21, though you can still see a lot of tearing. I still need to try with direct SPI writes, and if that doesn't work better, a C module. But it might as well be unnecessary, because there is going to be a change to how display is refreshed in CircuitPython 5.x, and that might as well resolve this problem.

I also tested connecting a small piezo speaker to the DAC pin and playing some sounds, and while it is relatively quiet, as expected, it's unexpectedly good, even without an amplifier. I might add that to the next version, or make an audio shield for it.