Imagine thinking that the consumer market is only for media consumers. There is a whole market of enterprise products out there, and there is certainly a use case for a _work_ laptop which needs no multimedia support.
I wouldn't argue that someone buying this machine would only use only this machine. But I know I am not alone in saying that this would be my daily driver when focus is required.
You think in 2021, when I'd argue the majority of folks that own a laptop are working remote, there's huge demand for a laptop that can't display a video feed from a zoom or WebEx meeting? That sounds extremely unlikely to me. I'd wager the demand for such a device would measure in the thousands and would never be cheap enough to sell more than a couple hundred.
You'd be far, far better off just making a Bluetooth keyboard case (like the old clamcase or brydge cases) for a boox and calling it good. You'd have an ssh terminal and basic office apps as supported by Android.
Actually, those displays do. They may work fairly well for the purpose. When I tested those capabilities years ago, the chief issue was with ghosting; the second with choosing either high definition with strong artefacts or fast, cleaner low definition; the third was with having algorithms that minimize dot switching (which is energy costly). But there is a possibility that newer refresh algorithms fixed most of that.
Even at the state of a few years ago, to just see talking heads and presentations the video capabilities of EPD were already more than adequate. It makes little sense energy wise (wrong instrument), but it is doable. Those who want the EPD properties for production may see little loss in the lower video quality - provided the issues I listed above have been mitigated, foremostly the ghosting.
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Edit:
I checked on YT and, look, it seems to me that video quality on EPD has boosted to incredible levels. See my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29430696
or directly the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KqASRsIWVw
Surely such laptop would be able to «display a video feed». Suboptimally. (Yet, in a way, amazingly.)
I.e. try setting your mouse or keyboard to have even 50-100ms of lag, a lot of people would find that very distracting to use even for just using a terminal Emacs/Vim & for writing plain-text.
There's a reason these things are being marketed as "secondary displays", which makes perfect sense.
In terms of cost I really don't see why anyone would want to do it differently anyway. A 20" LCD is dirt-cheap these days, so if you're already spending 5x or 10x that on the same size of E-Ink display why not get both?
Except that Remarkable 2 has 20ms latency, same as iPad's. [1]
That makes pencil behave like a real one; that is a user cannot perceive the difference between writing on eink tablet vs writing on paper.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/17/remarkables-redesigned-e-p...
(Not that that's a good thing...)
Which I remember vividly because it's when latency on the Pencil subjectively "went away" for me. Especially for tight loops in cursive, on iOS 12 the line would 'catch up' with the stylus, but at 9ms I don't perceive that.
Edit: crosshatching is an even better example of a technique which feels completely different at 9ms rather than 20ms.
For the uninitiated, the training I'm referring to covers everything from sexual harassment to infosec to insider trading to "why you don't really need unions".
The other cases are videoconferencing, where someone is basically showing a fairly static powerpoint, sprint planning board, or other, text-heavy content.
If the crux is that even you, clearly a passionate eink advocate, wouldn't be able to use it as a sole device then that essentially makes the market tiny. In fact, a secondary eink display sounds like exactly what you need.
When the refresh is more capable it'll be more of an option, and I cannot wait for that to be the case. But it's just not feasible to sell a laptop with an eink display as yet.
No Zoom calls? No online learning videos? I think most workers today would hit a brick wall pretty quick if this was their only display.