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Comment by nivenkos | Hacker News Reader

It's monochrome though right?

I can't imagine using a monochrome computer screen nowadays.

There are color touchscreens (Boox has one, there are phones that have those), but yeah I work in monochrome when there is sun or when I run out of battery; it works very well for me. But obviously YMMV! It beats sitting inside or squinting into my Macbook screen by a large stretch.

What about the refresh/redraw speed? I suppose e-ink has evolved past Kindle Paperwhite standards, because otherwise I can't see how you can use it for coding. Turning a page has a terrible redraw speed, it would drive me mad -- it looks like it was with LCD screens when they were first introduced: terrible.

It doesn't matter for reading books, of course.

I'm sure you don't have to wait for each letter to appear before typing the next, I would expect some slowdown but I don't think it would be as bad as you seem to imagine

Depends on how sensitive you are. For Kindle/book reading the image is static for long periods of time. For "interactive" screens (like when coding) it would drive me mad.

I was one of those people who could notice poor refresh rates in CRT (clicking teeth made it worse) and it drove me crazy.

This tech is not for me then.

A whole-screen refresh is slow, but typing does not require refreshing the entire screen. You can update small regions of the screen very quickly (which is what devices like e.g. the Remarkable do for writing).

Yes, this is not as fast, but I got used to it quite quickly. I think you need ten finger typing or you might get very frustrated.

Ghosting drove me crazy with CRTs and older LCDs, so I guess this is not for me.

I do not think so no; I am from a CRT generation and I never noticed even with burnt in amber or monochromes(green). If you cannot stand that, eInk won't work for you I guess.

> Ghosting ... I guess

You should try. E-Ink displays refresh their areas using algorithms involving "waveforms", normally at a layer which hides the details, but giving the vendor and user options about how the display will work. The amount of ghosting depends on the "waveform".

I have no issues with ghosting using an Onyx Boox Max2 as a tablet for word processing - which is quite an achievement.

In addition to using older technology, it's also possible that the Kindle makes different tradeoffs in terms of speed/contrast/ghosting/resolution. Personally, when reading, refresh speed is the property that I care least about among those four. I'd be surprised if engineers couldn't improve refresh speed when designing a panel for a laptop instead of an ebook reader.

Check out review videos of Boox tablets (speed/X mode) or Dasung E-ink monitors. The refresh rate is pretty good.

There are different refresh settings. Its a trade-off between refresh and quality. At the fastest its artifacty but a YouTube video is watchable in real time. Probably 10-15fps. Speed mode is a decent compromise between quality and well speed for typing.

On an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi with four refresh rates, "Normal" (highest quality, lowest refresh), "Speed", "A2", "X-Mode", I find "Speed Mode" entirely suitable for terminal-based work (Termux or SSH sessions).

Of course, colour-based syntax highlighting is unavailable, though a colour-eink device should be able to deliver a workable interpretation.

The "Normal Mode" is best suited to paginated books without any animation, and is virtually indistinguishable from printed paper (B&W/greyscale). Animation of any sort results in very annoying screen flash.

The "Speed Mode" effectively halftones images. I find that this often gives better results on photographs or shaded images, which otherwise appear slightly posterised in "Normal" mode. Most website animations are only grossly annoying (as per usual) rather than disrupting the display. (I really wish there were a toggle to disable animations entirely across web browsers.)

"A2" is mostly indistinguishable from "Speed" in my experience, though the refresh is slightly faster / ghosting slightly higher. Use when scrolling rapidly through materials. (Paginated navigation is much preferred for e-ink generally.)

"X Mode" is really only suitable for video. I actually watch many of those in "A-2", though in truth, this is more an "it's amazing it can be done" than "it works well". Yes, you can get a general impression of a video, but it's not a high-fidelity experience. That said, I don't watch much video in general.

Most E-ink devices are B&W, usually multi-shade greyscale, with higher-end devices being 16-shade. Dithering or halftoning gives quite good results on images.

There are some colour devices, though more usually ebook readers. Colour is muted -- more pastel than saturated, but gives some distinction for manga or color-differentiated graphics.

Video review of the Onyx BOOX Nova3 Colour: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=aSUcnkQCa-s

Oh, do books print the text in color now?

I think they were more talking about how modern code editors use color for syntax highlighting.

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