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Comment by noja | Hacker News Reader

Why the ReMarkable doesn't have a backlight I do not understand.

AFAIK adding backlight means that the distance between the display and the pen tip needs to increase, so you end up with a small parallax effect and writing doesn't feel as natural anymore.

Also, paradoxically, the added light layer reduces screen contrast when the light itself is off.

(Have an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi with Frontlight. The display is good in strong light, but even under fairly-brightly-lit indoor conditions, the Frontlight is useful.)

Pure speculation, but could be a combination of keeping the thickness down (it's only 4.7mm thick), and the purism of recreating the pen-on-paper feel.

That being said I wouldn't be bothered at all about a thickness increase, or breaking out of the pen-on-paper "immersion"... Perhaps there's a more technical reason.

Same here. I'm so used to reading with the backlight at night for years (kindle paper white and Oasis) that going back to clip-on external light (I haven't used one since the paperwhite came out, do then even sell those still???) is a non-starter for me.

I'm going to guess it is to keep it slim. And while I normally think this fad to make everything thin is stupid, in this one case I feel it makes sense. You want the thing you're writing on to protrude from the table as little as possible.

Thin (and especially light) tablets are not stupid.

I have the fact that especially "pro" tablets are becoming heavier. They're not comfortable to hold.

In my opinion the "perfect" tablet should not weigh more than 250-300 grams, we just don't have the tech for a flagship tablet that can weigh that much, yet.

You are right of course. I was primarily thinking of phones, where the battery life is sacrificed for half a millimeter and laptops, where ports are eliminated for a millimeter or two.

From what I've read, consumers will not admit it, but thinness is one of the biggest factors that influences their purchasing decisions

I find weight particularly important for reading in bed or when lying down on the couch.

Experimentally, I've found that my Kindle (320 grams including case) hurts a lot less than my iPad (470 grams) which hurts a lot less than my Surface Pro 4 (790 grams) when dropped on my face.

I would probably buy it if it had one, but I want to read in the dark often without turning the lights on and bothering others.

Boox Note Air has a front light built in.

There are probably cases with small leds.

Buy a book light?

Still too bright

I made a dimmer for mine and works great. I Just put a few layers of tissue paper over it but really anything you find around the house.

The new Kobo Elipsa has lighting. I'm wondering if the writing experience will suffer on it.

The whole purpose of E-Ink is to use "passive" displays which are more comfortable to the eye. Adding a backlight would remove that.

I have an Onyx Boox Max Lumi [1], there are 2 reasons why the "backlight" is very useful.

First off it's not really a backlight like you see in most LCD displays, it's a front-light, or edge-light that projects directly on to and is reflected by the e-ink display (the transparent top layer of the display acts as a wave guide for the edge lighting, and it's really quite an impressive engineering feat that they got it to apply so evenly on a 13.3" display area).

Obviously this will be useful when ambient lighting is too dim to even read paper, but the fact is current e-ink technology is just not as reflective, or high contrast as regular printed text on copy paper. The front-light illumination at low to mid levels (at least on the Onyx series) goes a long way towards making the screen background look almost as white as real paper. Granted if you are outside in the sun you will not notice the frontlight even at max brightness. But in dim indoor lighting, it's the difference between looking at greenish-grey kinda washed out image, and something that might fool a casual passer by into thinking it really is paper & ink.

1: https://onyxboox.com/boox_maxlumi

IMO lighting on an E-Ink display does not increase the strain any more than illuminating a paper with reading lamp does.

Most e ink doesn't use a true backlight, but an array of lights along the inside of the bezel that light up the screen reflectively. It's still very good for battery life. Both the kindle Paperwhite and the onyx tablets have this feature. Onyx even let's you tune the warmth of the light.

The Kindle Oasis also does this

You can turn off the backlight

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