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Comment by shrikant | Hacker News Reader

[2014]

Also, it was shockingly hard to find [for me], but the "light emitting ereader" referred to in the title was an Apple iPad. It's not specified what kind of iPad they used, and the study focussed solely on reading from the iPad vs reading from a printed book.

The authors do note (in Table S1, in the Supporting Information) that they don't consider a Kindle e-reader to be light-emitting.

(I'm not throwing shade (heh) at the study, just adding some pertinent information that I thought would be useful to know.)

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We should change the title to reflect this. I came in here expecting to read about the dangers of e-ink displays at night and that is not what the study is about

Shade throwing would be justified in my opinion. "E-reader" isn't normally used to describe tablets. The light profile of a dynamic LED screen is probably very different from the ambient steady backlight on a Kindle.

Or even a Kobo (at least my old one) where the light is under the frame at the top, and projects down onto the screen so you're getting reflected light similar to an external source.

Kindles have a backlight? Then I expect it to be LED as well. I'm not sure then you can be so dismissive of a back-lit Kindle and its effect on evening reading.

They have a frontlight rather than a backlight. And there's quite a bit of evidence that colour temperature and brightness both have a big effect. But I broadly agree that it will still have an effect. I use my kindle without the backlight and with a warm coloured lamp.

I'm not dismissing it having an effect. But isn't it probable that the light profile would be somewhat different for an actual monitor and a back/sidelit eInk dislay? If so, the effect may differ as well.

Front light, I agree, would probably have a different spectral profile.

Technically it’s a front-light, shining on the front of the screen from the side. But the nature of the eInk is such that you don’t have to use the built in light, you could just turn in your normal lamp.

Also,

"Third, in the present study, the LE-eBook was set to maximum brightness throughout the 4-h reading session"

Christ. Can you imagine reading on a max brightness iPad in a dark room? I put my ereader (an actual ereader with an e-ink screen, not “ereader as in electronic thing you read on with a laptop screen” as in the article) on the lowest brightness setting with natural orange-tinted light. And I still feel like it’s pretty bright!

Same, and I can say at least for me, it unquestionably helps sleep, because I start to feel tired and go to sleep about 10 minutes after I start reading, whereas if I were to stay engaged with my desktop, I could easily stay up hours longer. I go to sleep earlier, and fall asleep faster, since adding my Kobo Forma to my evening routine.

Same, I often find my iphone in a dark room on lowest brightness to be too bright if the page doesn't support dark mode.

There's an accessibility setting which you can use to further darken the screen. I have it set to toggle on a triple click of the home button.

Reduce Whitepoint? Seems to have that effect but not sure if that's the one you are thinking.

I think they're talking about the accesibility filters: https://9to5mac.com/2016/03/18/how-to-reduce-iphone-screen-b...

I used to use it daily just before going to sleep, but then found the app I read with has a white text on black background that I prefer. Using both at the same time makes it too dark for my eyes, which is a good problem to have.

Also, the control group is not someone reading a book with a lamp, but someone reading a book in a dark room without a lamp. So really it boils down to 'light' or 'no light'.

So sleeping? Not sure how you read in complete dark…

The control group was allowed to use reading lamps and adjust lights and seating position to their liking.

Can you point me where that is described? All I find is "(ii) reading a printed book in the same very dim room light for ∼4 h before bedtime for five consecutive evenings", highlight mine.

"very dim room"...

I think at the time, no Kindles had back-lights. That's since changed so I'd be curious which side they'd be on in the study then.

I hate to nitpick, but Kindles still don't really have "backlights"; they're called "frontlights". Basically it's a "light-conducting" layer on top of the screen that's illuminated by LEDs at the top, bottom, or both. It's hard to describe, but the effect is very different from backlit tablets, and much more gentle. It's like this for all e-Readers AFAIK.

It would be interesting to see a study especially since the tech is so different.

That is some weird miscommunication. Did someone in Texas get afraid of calling out Apple? Why else would people choose to call an iPad (or tablet computer for that matter) an LE-eReader?

I'm too lazy to find it now but I read research that showed it did not have the same impact (lacking the high amount of blue light) which is why I read on a kindle paperwhite.

I love my note-taking and drawing on my iPad, but have found significant benefits from switching over to an old 3rd gen kindle for any kind of extended reading.

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