Paperlike Color: Color E-Ink Monitor | Hacker News Reader

Paperlike Color: Color E-Ink Monitor

indiegogo.com

211 pointsjahfer194 comments

I have their 13in grayscale e-ink device. I assume the underlying tech is similar. What they carefully filter out is the significant ghosting of the device that builds up immediately and needs to be cleared with a button on the monitor. The contrast is also poor and blends with ghosted content so you need more time to tell what’s real or junk pixels. The front light on the device is still required in most lighting situations unless you are in sunlight. Glare from non overhead lighting is very bad and worsened by the lack of a backlight. Content on significant portions of the page will flicker as you move your mouse and corrupt content already displayed unless you press the clear button. Content will flicker on many settings even without any movement. Even on the lowest refresh rate the device is still not really usable. I originally bought this to help with eye strain, but the poor visibility of content, flickering, and clearing action make it substantially worse than a regular monitor.

Edit: I’d also add that the device emits a coil whine when the display is updating like when moving mouse. Its audible enough to hear over my wall AC unit.

Just wanted to point out as a alternative datapoint thay i havr both 13: and 25" greyscale. And 25 is a much better experience. 13" is just to small. Im happy with 25" and will buy this new with color. I do not have flicker, at least not like you. but you need strong lighting on the screen.

Very valuable feedback, thank you. Coil whine would drive me bananas. Username checks out.

To be noted that EPD displays are in general completely silent. This exception...

Of course, there's more to a monitor than just the display. It could be the power supply, driver board, etc. that's the cause for coil whine. I've had it on one laptop that I owned; whenever there was I/O with the SSD I'd get a little bit of whine.

I owned lots of E-ink devices. I got a Boox Mira 13 inch screen and it works well on both Mac/Windows. On Windows I can even have some touchscreen interaction. But I have to warn you!!!! that your mouse is not going to work as it feels very different. So I use it only to read news, reply emails and messages. Coding, video, and gaming would be impossible!

The same thing would 100% go to this new display.

I have also got a Boox X 13 inch tablet. I was choosing between this and Boox Ultra C which is a coloured one. But then I decide the screen size is more important than the color, the the Boox X 13 inch is much lighter! It's fantastic to read HN news and PDF every day with it.

I once ordered ReMarkable 2 but the experience was a disaster. The PDF is rendered as picture. I couldn't believe it! Basically unusable even if it's free to get one.

> your mouse ... feels very different

Latency.

It will work anyway, practically, through the right system, if you want to get used to it.

> ... I can even have some touchscreen interaction

An all systems, if you use remote desktop technologies (e.g. VNC).

windows seems to have some optimisation for touchscreen

RM2 ex-pat club member here too! Beautiful design, bizarrely crippled user experience. They put a wifi+bt chip on the board, but didn't connect the bluetooth signals, so you couldn't use a bluetooth keyboard with it like any other tablet. And a zillion other frustrations.

I sold it to a friend after making super sure he was okay with the limitations and wouldn't blame me for selling him a lemon.

I've written about this on HN before, but the RM2 people don't make the device show up as a standard USB device, which makes file manipulations hard. I think this is an effort to sell their "cloud" server stuff for a few dollars a month. That's not been the effect on me; instead, I barely use mine, and complain about it on the Internet.

True but what you can do is SSH to the device and install a custom launcher for apps that can read standard epubs, play chess, or expose the linux terminal on device.

Not great for basic users but I've had significantly more use out of it with some advanced setup.

I always check for cloud server bullshit before a purchase. I lost all interest when proprietary cloud appeared to be the only thing set up for syncing.

To make this simpler I made Regittable[0] for personal use. As only an occasional RM2 user (a weekend a month), I activate the python script on my desktop, pack my RM2 and go to a cafe, and when I'm back my files are all in Dropbox or in the project git repo, depending on if they're new or old respectively. I had plans to add more features to Regittable (like have it submit PRs instead of committing as you) but never needed them myself so didn't bother.

I will add as a user who dealt with it I will add that there is a ( paid ) solution that works well for my RM2[1]. It can be done on your own, but the amount of work made it worth the money Davis is asking.

After that.. all of a sudden I started using it a lot more.

http://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/

Attention all device manufacturers: I don’t want your f-ing cloud. When I buy a physical thing, having to keep paying you every month is a dealbreaker. I don’t care that you want a constant subscription revenue stream, buying a piece of hardware is about me, not you.

They also don't support USB OTG on the main port, so you can't even use a wired keyboard. They only just recently released a keyboard case that uses the Pogo pins on the side, but it's $200!!

There was an abandoned(?) attempt to enable OTG. The hardware supported acting as USB host, but couldn't supply 5v so you needed a powered hub as well as a wired keyboard.

But, the software support for text input is absolutely horrendous. It inserts a text block into the center of the current page and you can't move it. Hell, until the 3.0 update, you couldn't even delete notebooks on the device.

The RM2 is beautiful hardware that's about 90% developed with some truly awful software. Fortunately, you get root out of the box and the homebrew scene is active enough to give you most of the features that RM2 left out

all these designs prove that rm2 is the worst product I have ever seen

It's a pretty good product with some mediocre software.

At the end of the day, it's extremely useful and usable for a lot of people doing a wide variety of tasks.

The hardware has some issues, but I'd say it's like 90% there. The software features that work well are rather limited, but that's an intentional design decision.

It has some limitations, but I consider it a rather good product.

Have been thinking about one of these for writing. Is it something you recommend for that express purpose?

Note: I can't just use an e-ink screen w/keyboard and a simple text editor, I used a handful of specialized writing programs like Scrivener and FinalDraft and often collaborate in Gdocs, so I need something that mirrors the screen of a personal computer unfortunately. My goal is to be able to spend more time outdoors writing in the sun, which I can't do without a clunky laptop hood or other hacky solution...

You can, but satisfactory text editors on Android can be hard to find.

No issue with a large enough EPD tablet, a BT keyboard, a good text editor, good configuration and your ability to adapt to the system (latency etc.)

Thanks – I probably should have been clearer: I work in a variety of programs (FinalDraft, Highland 2, Gdocs, Scrivener, Notion) so I need to emulate what I see on my regular screen (OSX). My goal with the e-ink display is to be able to do more writing outside.

Then you could use Remote Desktop connection from your original laptop to a good EPD tablet, presumably Android based (to install the needed software on it). Or, of course, a monitor like that of the submission.

But the biggest colour EPD tablet I see after a brief search is only 10.3'' big, see nearby https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mdp2021

You will also have to be prepared to the different technology: latency, for example, will be implied; ghosting; good lighting dependence...

Thanks a ton for the advice!

Sorry, wrong link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36944258

If you install termux you can use micro or vim.

If you install Termux there is a chance that you can install a full Desktop Manager and windowed applications (accessible through local VNC).

I can only say that Boox Tab X 13.3 works for me. With Android you can do a lot of things. Also the Mira works fine to be a Windows screen but it might not be the best if you wanna a minimal outdoor setup.

The grayscale displays also have higher contrast (still low overall) compared to the color displays.

I have a remarkable 2 and use it to read PDF and e-books. e-pub was slow, so I use PDF.

It doesn't have to phone home or use the cloud, which is sort of refreshing. I have never hooked it into any network or even bothered updating the software.

I use USB which becomes a network interface, then connect to http://10.11.99.1/ and drag/drop files. This is all local.

No built-in lighting, but it works great with a reading lamp or in sunlight.

It replaces a book in my lap and is just for reading books. Sometimes I use it while exercising on treadmill, and with the big screen and large type it works great.

only nit, is sometimes swipe when turning pages is ignored and I have to do it a couple of times. (Maybe it is sleeping and needs to be woken?)

I would suggest either updating the software or installing KoReader.

The most recent official firmware has a much nicer UI, but is incompatible with homebrew at the moment.

KoReader is much, much nicer to use, as it's designed specifically for e-readers. It has no annotation or pen support, but the reading features are so much better than the stock software. I typically have it set to dual-column in landscape mode, I find it more comfortable to read with the gigantic screen.

Plus KoReader works with Calibre to manage your library over the network. It's really quite pleasant once you get it working

> remarkable 2

Fun fact, you can hook this up to your computer and use it as a drawing tablet, maybe I should open-source my plugin for this :)

> only nit, is sometimes swipe when turning pages is ignored and I have to do it a couple of times. (Maybe it is sleeping and needs to be woken?)

It's an issue with how you do the gesture, I have the most luck doing it around 60% down the screen, from one edge to the other, and waiting for the screen to finish refreshing before doing anything else.

Your comment about the gesture made me laugh. It reminded me of when Jobs said that people were holding the iPhone incorrectly for antenna gate

I mean it's sort of true! I'm not sure exactly which heuristics reMarkable is using but they seem not to work super well. I have the same issue on the rM2 unless I do like a Perfect High-Quality Swipe, so it's apparently important. Though, IMHO, waiting for the screen to finish refreshing is the most important part.

Epub is basically just html, so it being slow on remarkable is pretty damning for the device.

It really depends on how large the book is. I believe that when you first open the book the remarkable has to render all the pages, that way the page content doesn't drift as you navigate between pages like on a normal e reader, but you can't do that with something that you annotate based on pages and location on the page.

I believe it converts ePubs to PDF and so doing things like adjusting the font size requires rerendering the whole document.

I have the original reMarkable device and I love it. My father has the rM2 and also enjoys it, but I haven't felt the need to upgrade. I'd happy take a free one though :)

If you're willing to hack around with a reMarkable, koreader or plato have far better reading support if you don't need annotation.

I have the boox nova 3 color that I bought on impulse and immediately thought I should return but ended up liking it and a big part of that was how good the PDF reader was and the fact its stylus is not powered yet works perfectly. The color feels more or less like a gimmick, I think I'd have liked the same device with no color e-ink just fine.

Do not miss an important detail: it is Kaleido.

It means, it uses an overlaid colour filter matrix (RGBW, if I remember correctly). This allows for the comparatively high refresh rates of B/W EPD, but it is B/W EPD with a semi-transparent multi-tinted layer on top, which obviously impacts the brightness.

(The alternative would be multi-pigmented EPD cells - "Advanced Color E-Paper"... Which suffers from dramatically low refresh rate.)

Dramatically low basically equals the single color refresh rate multiplied by the number of base colors used to form color images.

You seem to be suggesting "a collection of pigmented subcells similar to the traditional B/W cell".

ACeP works differently: the pigments are in a single cell, and it is a matter of different densities, size, speed, electrical sensitivity per material (per pigment) that determines the procedure ("waveform") to obtain the wanted colour in a pixel.

So, it does not seem linear at all.

That was based on my tests with color displays from Waveshare, and as we have seen in the comments here, advances have been made.

I still see multiple refresh cycles being needed for colors. The metrics are shorter, smaller on the very latest displays, and in my view fall short of motion capable in color.

We do have, and have had, motion capable monochrome for a while now, given users accept a few trade-offs.

No. Much worse. Think 30 seconds for a 7-color display. (B&w can do under one second)

This is outdated and only true for older ACeP displays. The Gallery 3 screen can refresh fast enough (~1.5sec) to be usable in an e-note with color:

https://youtu.be/V3jmmo23J5w?t=1202

And since it's true multi-color, it can refresh even faster by simply disabling the colors and refreshing in B&W (very slightly slower than monochrome screens though).

This is no longer true - Gallery 3 screens are ACEP that can refresh in a second and a half. For instance the Bigme Galy is an e-reader based on the Gallery 3, and [as you can see](https://youtu.be/V3jmmo23J5w?t=1202) is perfectly functional for interactive use.

It's still slightly higher than monochrome, but only by milliseconds. IMO, fast-ACeP is the future and will eventually kill CFA/Kaleido.

Seems to me it remains largely true, just with much smaller numbers.

That screen is nice! Real progress being made there.

Oh, interesting detail. I was looking towards the rumored Fujitsu Quaderno A4 Gen 3, which is supposed to have a Kaleido 3 color panel.

Here's a diagram to help explain your point: https://etulipa.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/lightreflexti...

The one on the right is Kaleido (CFA tech). See how you lose 2/3 of the light? Monochrome (and ACEP etc) doesn't have that problem. Just CFA.

(This diagram is from Etulipa, and is meant to explain a benefit of their billboard-sized passive displays compared to CFA tech; Etulipa tech is really cool but it's not suitable for e-readers or desktop monitors, as they found out the hard way back in ~2010.)

(CFA = Color Filter Array)

That refresh rate is pretty awesome. ...if that's real, and I'm a little skeptical, I kinda want a remarkable with one of these screens. That would be amazing. The poor refresh rate is one of the few things I don't love about my remarkable.

One of my coworkers has the grayscale version of that. The refresh rate goes up to maybe 20Hz on "fast mode" which sacrifices quality for speed. It looks pretty good regardless, but IMO the real benefit of these screens is in consuming long-form text content.

My ReMarkable 2 has a perfectly fine refresh rate, especially for writing/drawing. Is yours the first gen maybe?

I have a remarkable 1. The refresh rate certainly keeps up with writing. It's just a bit slow if you want to hit next page a bunch of times in a row.

Yeah, paging can be a little slow. I use mine for reading through PDFs and it's fine for the most part. I think it might partially be poorly optimized software, not necessarily the screen, but who knows.

I definitely wonder, the build is quite slim, I don't think the tech inside is that impressive.

> impressive

If electrophoretic displays were trivial to make, we would not be still developing the technology.

> IMO the real benefit of these screens is in consuming long-form text content.

Hard disagree. E-readers already do this and are 2 orders of magnitude cheaper. Long-form text content barely need 1 Hz refresh rates.

The real benefit of these screens is being able to use a computer without the associated eye-strain. Most jobs that involve looking at a screen all-day don't really require high refresh rate screens. The main exceptions are any folks doing design or editing work. This is a huge game changer for the vast majority of folks on HN that are looking at a terminal, text editor, or docs for 90% of their day.

> This is a huge game changer for the vast majority of folks on HN that are looking at a terminal, text editor, or docs for 90% of their day.

Hard disagree. Unless you're not typing all that much and particularly insensitive to input latency, you're not going to want to do too much typing on these. I know I couldn't stand it.

Input latency is really bad even at 24hz. My typing speed slows down dramatically and typos feel so painful to correct compared to 60hz and above.

Some of us suspended the habit to look at the text while typing (on systems with latency), and look at the typed only periodically (off, on, off, on).

I get that you're talking about situations like typing into a remote terminal, but this technique still causes eye strain which brings us back to square one with slow eink displays which are like this all day long.

I was talking chiefly about typing on EPD :) (Soooo many keystrokes, so many hours.) I personally felt no eye strain - it may depend on your ability to adapt into the process.

Way back in the day I remember using a terminal (TeleVideo maybe?) where the characters just sort of faded in as you typed. The latency was really bad. But I got used to it pretty quickly and didn't find it really bothersome.

> Long-form text content barely need 1 Hz refresh rates.

The problem with such low refresh rates is that your eyes may have to work much harder to locate where you're at after you've scrolled the page.

Not all content is formatted to never break sentences or paragraphs, and not all software even supports pagination as an alternative to scrolling.

> The real benefit of these screens is being able to use a computer without the associated eye-strain.

Depends on your eyes. For my aging eyes e-ink is much too low-contrast. A high-DPI OLED screen on the other hand…

I think it does depend a lot because my aging eyes, even high-DPI OLED screens tire me right out. E-Ink, on the other hand, requires much less strain as my eyes only have to take in the ambient light and not be staring directly into a high-nit source.

I normally set the brightness of displays so that they are similar to the brightness of the environment (which is the general recommendation for ergonomics). Similar to how bright a piece of white paper would appear in that environment. I’m thus usually not “staring directly into a high-nit source”, regardless of the display technology.

The problem with e-ink is that their “white” is light gray instead of white, and their “black” is gray instead of black.

I've got a Remarkable 2. I use it primarily for note taking and planning. Sometimes I need to move large chunks of notes around on the screen and reorganize things. The refresh rate becomes a real problem there. Also I often use the infinite vertical scroll, and scrolling up and down is a pain in the ass. Because of the refresh rate (I assume?) scrolling is limited to half pages and it's very slow.

> My ReMarkable 2 has a perfectly fine refresh rate, especially for writing/drawing. Is yours the first gen maybe?

That's because it does not refresh the display when drawing - it transitions the pixels directly (it's called a direct update, or DU mode). I worked on the third-party SDK for this device (hi!) and the DU modes do suffer from ghosting (similar to e-ink monitors) until the display is properly refreshed to correct the charges in each pixel, but this ghosting is typically not too bad when drawing, especially since there is typically a full refresh whenever you zoom, pan, or switch pages.

Not sure if this is the same product, but in my job I've met one of the researchers working on this tech. The screens they were able to produce had refresh rates high enough to watch a movie.

We have had 12.5Hz with "A2 mode" since a long time.

And that display is a traditional B/W EPD with a colour filter on top, so it can use similar (fast and imprecise) "EPD waveforms" and yet have an effect of colour.

My unsolicited advice: turn on a lamp in your workspace, and turn down your monitor brightness. An app like twinkle tray makes adjusting screen brightness as easy as adjusting speaker volume. Your eyes really don't care about emissive or reflected light.

I do anecdotally find that the better ambient light causes less eye strain.

When your pupils are smaller, the image that hits your retina is sharper, just like with a pinhole camera.

Sharper images lead to less eyestrain because you don't need to keep your eye still for as long.

I use light color themes for this reason. Although I always add the caveat to "do what works for you", because everyone's body is different.

As a dark mode user, this makes me want to reconsider. It seems to make sense, but is it supported by evidence or by personal experience? I have not noticed such a difference in eye strain myself.

The strain on my eyes is majorly caused by the lights shining into it. Dark mode helps, lower light emission helps. My eyes don't seem to strain so much keeping still...

thanks for the prompt, i didnt realize i wanted a screen brightness ap. twinkle tray seems to be windows only so i googled and found quickshade for mac.

Thanks for the recommendation, I didn't know such a thing existed

One advantage here is for well-lit areas, like if you have a window seat. More light makes the kaleido display sharper, rather than making it frustrating. It can change how you lay out your office, and make things like adjusting blinds less necessary.

I found the product page [1] [EDIT: older grayscale version] and this article [2] from June last year slightly more informative.

[1] https://shop.dasung.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink-monitor-p...

[2] https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/first-look-a...

For an e-ink monitor, I was expecting it to cost much more.

so you don’t have to click through, it’s $1,748.00 USD

That page is for the black and white version. They released that product a couple of years ago.

I think that this is a greyscale predecessor to the one in the indiegogo link.

I have a not-eReader 078 (back then it was just called not-eReader before the 10" sibling came to be) and it's an incredible device for a super small niche: secondary screen for an emergency laptop. https://imgur.com/a/xmRmYSn especially https://i.imgur.com/eV7qq8Y.jpg .

Notably there has not been a successor to the One Mix Yoga 2S. Later devices are larger, the current crop of handhelds are gaming handhelds with appropriate controls without a keyboard. Even the Ayaneo Air 1S which only has a 5.5" screen is 224mm wide where the Yoga 2S was 182mm. It's a little narrower though. I might buy it and use it with the ancient Samsung NP-Q1 keyboard.

I'm curious about the refresh rate. From the video, it appears to be fast for an e-ink display. However, it still seems to be slower than what I'd be comfortable watching a video with.

The other thing I'm curious about is the manufacturer. They seem to have a black-and-white version already available. Has anyone ever tried it?

I don't think eInk will ever be capable of video-like refresh rates. It's had plenty of benefits, but refresh rates may never catch up.

I have a secondary monitor dedicated to Slack, Teams, and Outlook. That would be perfect for this as it doesn't update often and the content is mostly static.

I don’t know that there is any technical reason why e-ink can’t develop a better refresh rate to match what we are used to, at least theoretically. I don’t think its refresh rates are capped in that way.

The real problem is cost of course. Part of that is e-ink is still governed under a patent you must license and pay royalties to if I recall correctly

The ink has to actually move; all sorts of physics sets hard caps to the refresh rate. Not saying they won't improve from what we have; but compared to the switch time of an OLED this isn't just lack of investment.

Whats the theoretical cap? Gen pop likely can live with 30fps if we eventually get there.

Eink works by physically moving bits of material around in a viscous liquid. You can refine that (use stronger electric field, stronger reacting pigments, less-viscous fluid, thinner layer for smaller travel distance) but never get around it.

That is true, but this doesn't pose a theoretical limit to a 30 fps monitor.

I suspect that the current technology works by "setting" in place whole regions of the screen at once, and that this kind of process is inherently slow. Maybe in a (not so distant) future it'll be possible to have individual pixels changing, in a similar way as an mp4 doesn't update all the image when not necessary.

Or not. So many technologies just embank somewhere and find their niche.

They do that already, and it results in ghosting and leftover artifacts.

It's all tradeoffs, improving one number only to a limited extent and only at the expense of other numbers. Ie, faster action at the expense of worse image. No free lunch or getting around it by handwaving 'advancement'.

If the update was truly pixel based there should be no ghosting/artifact whatsoever. Looks like global refreshes or cleanup are still relevant, while ideally each pixel could be completely independent.

Trade-offs are a problem, but in this case i don't see any physical reason for this to be a theoretical trade-off. More like a limit of the current technology.

It is pixel based logically, which comes out only imperfectly physically. Believe what you will.

Yeah, the other replies were pretty convincing about that point.

> If the update was truly pixel based there should be no

Why? Nobody said that the cell is "reset". The cell is modified. The resulting state depends on the former state. This causes ghosting.

To achieve what you are suggesting, the procedure would be e.g. to first set the pixel black, then white (reset to a base state), then the greyscale value of the intended content. This would slow down rendering dramatically, and make regions flicker.

And, note, this may be something that some "EPD waveforms" do - but there are tradeoffs... E.g. Fast? Ok, lose the greyscales. Detailed? Ok, get lots of flashing at update. Mid-way? Ok get some degree of ghosting.

That's a fair point, well made. In that case --- yeah, we just have to wait and hope for better solutions/materials for our screens!

It is pixel-based, it just doesn't result in perfect updates. I'm not entirely sure why this is the case: maybe the power is too low (as a trade-off between speed and accuracy), maybe clear a cell affects neighbouring cells, or maybe something else.

E-ink displays are hardly new and lots of people have been thinking about/working on the slow refresh rates for over 2 decades. Do you really think that anything you can come up with on HN in 5 minutes without any knowledge of the tech is something people hadn't thought of before?

There's a big difference between having a solution and point out that there is no theoretical hard trade-off. ^^"

> it'll be possible to have individual pixels changing

EPD displays already have that capability.

When you modify the dots you use a modality that is sensitive to former states. What happens in full-screen refresh is a cleanup to redraw on the best former state for the cleanest output.

Even local refreshes however are somehow rectangle-based, no?

Which means that the resetting operation kinda works globally anyways, masking out everything between the xmin, xmax and ymin, ymax.

I'm really speculating here, but this was my impression every time I saw individual areas changing without a gobal refresh.

I wonder if it would be possible to layer screens to double refresh rate.

>The real problem is cost of course. Part of that is e-ink is still governed under a patent you must license and pay royalties to if I recall correctly

This is a common myth that's echoed without a source. It's not patent, it's scale - there are literally 6 billion (LCD) smartphone users out in the world (it might be up to 7B by now), with lots of those users owning multiple smartphones. And of course, there are loads of other devices with LCDs: laptops, desktop monitors, TVs, self-checkout kiosks at supermarkets, smartwatches, tablets, LCDs on a fridge for some reason, etc etc etc.

E-ink is orders of magnitude lower in production scale, without a clear way of expanding the market beyond just ereaders/enotes (which are a luxury; you can read ebooks on a smartphone/tablet and most people own one of those already), and possibly supermarket smart-pricetags.

So, does that mean E-ink faces zero competition? No! DES screens are competing against e-ink with their cofferdam tech (where instead of sprinkling on microcapsules, they capsule structure is built directly onto the substrate; it reduces thickness and theoretically increases pixel density, but loses the "grain" effect of E-Ink's MED in favor of a less-aesthetic regular grid shape).

If E-Ink could improve refresh rates then they absolutely would - it's the most visible feature they could possibly add, and is directly applicable to e-readers, which are currently their biggest market. And their biggest buyer is Amazon, who have poured a whole lot of money into the tech (and who sell Kindles at-cost or below) and if it really were patents blocking faster-refreshing screens then Amazon would just buy E-Ink, outright. It's not new - look up LiquaVista; they were bought up by Amazon, Amazon's not afraid to buy up companies. Plus, E-Ink still have to compete against second-hand e-readers they've already sold; there are E-readers from 2012 that will read a .epub just fine, and that's all you really need for an e-reader.

If you're wondering why Amazon killed LiquaVista, BTW, apparently it's because shrinking the pixels horizontally causes a chromatic aberration effect when the vertical color-layers are viewed from an angle, so shrinking the pixels horizontally also requires shrinking them vertically, which makes it extremely difficult to manufacture the pixels without them leaking and causing a terribly low yield rate. Also it didn't help that a bunch of the original company's VC raising was done just before 2008.

> e-ink is still governed under a patent you must license and pay royalties to if I recall correctly

Recall correctly meaning you were involved and have direct knowledge or meaning you read it as an unsubstantiated comment somewhere here?

This monochrome output claims to have a 60hz refresh rate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds38T8wVuDg

Fascinating, this led to this projects which is pretty interesting. https://www.modos.tech/blog/modos-paper-monitor Seems like a very exciting effort and product but I'm not sure if it's still active.

I cannot understand the fascination behind seeing e-ink displays play video. The tech is a "display once, use forever" kind of display.

Otoh, video needs bright vivid screens, gaming level quality. Quite the opposite of what a "display once use forever" tech would be suitable for.

Because you want to see content for its effect.

Others may want to use content for its information.

And different video effects are optimal for different environments (e.g. lightning).

> lightning

(This is what happens when you say to yourself, "You mean lighting, do not write lightning".)

While I agree it's a poor fit and pretty much just a crappy but flashy tech demo... the display is what it is, it doesn't have mandated suitable uses.

Other reflective display tech exists. For the most part they suffer from screen-dooring, extremely bad visibility angles, much worse contrast in bright light, or complete unavailability in the size or resolution that you want.

Eink may not have many options, but it is an option, in a market with few or zero competitors depending on what you want (largely because it's niche), and refresh rate is often a thing you can bend on. I would love to see more, but many of the companies I've seen trying to do this in the past no longer exist, or they're selling even more niche ruggedized laptops and nothing else (and they still look much worse than eink, though they have color and refresh rate). It seems to be slowly ramping back up though, so hopefully within the next few years we'll see more.

Dasung have managed watchable video on their monochrome devices (unlike most of their competitors). The fast modes loose effective resolution, and contrast, and build up artifacts that need clearing. These compromises are very hard to bare at the sticker price.

Yes, i have the gray-scale version of this. Its really really good. You do not want to watch a movie on it.but if you need to see a 30 sec movie to understand something it ok. The biggest problem with the greyscale is how much color has to say on everything. Its so hard to see terminal errors etc. Yes you can customize a lot. And I do have use custom vs code themes and terminal themes. Buti need to switch each day when i work. Because of some website where darkmode is default or similar. Darkmode is a disaster for a greyscale eink monitor.

Im def going to buy this device. Have a rm2 and the 13" dasung screen also. I would def recommend the manufacturer

> darkmode

You need a contrast enhancing browser, or a shortcut for colour inversion (e.g. `xcalib -a -i` )

Thanks. Will try that. It's not that much stress to switch. But def a shortcut will be even lower barrier to use.

Honestly looks awesome and Dasung is pretty consistent with their product delivery. Having color would be a game changer for coding. But the monochrome one is already an eye watering price ($1800 USD). This is probably going to be north of $2500.

Why make this for a desktop? E-ink is mostly useful for wireless applications and anywhere power is limited or there's a need for always on, static display.

To relieve eye strain. Reading on an e-ink screen is so much more comfortable than on any emissive monitor. With current tech the downside is of course reduced refresh rate as well as low color contrast.

Depending on the workload, that might be a worthy trade off. I tried coding on a grayscale eink display for a while and noticed a big difference in eye strain and overall concentration levels after a long session. But the display I had was too small and I didn't like living without syntax highlighting, so I went back to a normal screen. This product would solve those issues.

Authors and writers in general might be another target audience for this product. It's niche for sure, but eink has a lot of applications beyond price displays in a store.

> To relieve eye strain.

I think this will expose another, possibly larger, problem. My room is too poorly lit other than the screen.

If there is no light coming from the screen, I am forced to turn on a light to read the screen. Maybe that's a good thing, I am not sure.

Some people have an inverse problem - it is difficult to position a monitor so that it doesn't reflect a window. This technology sounds perfect for that.

EPD displays aren't magically paper-like; in fact they are far from looking like actual paper. There's either plastic or glass in front, and they give the same glare as any other matte or glossy display. If anything, active lighting (either backlight or frontlight) helps mitigate glares, shadows, and other external lighting non-uniformities.

> Maybe that's a good thing, I am not sure.

If you are young or if you are old with eyestrain issues it may be worth your while to learn about things like bias lighting, blue filters, PWM dimming, etc.

If you are old with good vision then I guess just keep doing what works :)

> Reading on an e-ink screen is so much more comfortable than on any emissive monitor.

E-ink vendors tout this, but the jury's still out. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22762257/

Cuz eye strain.

I have a Dasung e-ink monitor (by the power of grayscale). I find a lot of interesting reading on my work computer, but getting those links onto e-ink devices like my Boox has been irksome. Reading on the e-ink monitor was _almost_ worth the price. Ultimately, however, I retired it because the desktop real-estate, macOS's limited multi-monitor capabilities, and if I'm going to buckle down and read something long form I need to get away from my desk anyway.

Many folks in my office have an ancillary monitor or two to the side of their main monitors, often in portrait mode, just for keeping docs, diagrams, and other reference material. But having so many backlit monitors in your field of view can become a little fatiguing.

An e-ink display with sharp text and without a backlight could be useful for such a use case.

But agreed that mobile contexts seem more broadly useful.

It's also easier on the eyes and can be used in sunny conditions.

With that being said, I would love to see one in a smart phone or laptop.

There are many "smartphones" available with EPD display, and some of them use colour EPD displays.

Check e.g. the Hisense.

I print everything to read it (if it's more than a couple of pages) because I have a hard time reading with a backlight, so I'm seriously considering backing this, if for nothing else than to reduce my paper consumption (even though I do religiously recycle).

Mate, why don't you "print" on an EPD tablet - an advanced "E-Reader"?

There are already plenty around. If you need to read a long document, transfer it to the tablet in its best format (PDF, markup etc). If you need to browse a lot of documents, create a VNC connection and use the tablet as a display.

There's likely a market for office workers since there's a significant reduction of stress on the eyes.

You'd save about 0.5 kwh a day in electricity, more if the AC is running. So I could see them becoming popular once the price comes down. People who run 2 monitors might be interested as well.

> There's likely a market for office workers since there's a significant reduction of stress on the eyes.

There may be, but some studies have shown there's little difference.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22762257/

Methods: Participants read for several hours on either e-Ink or LCD, and different measures of reading behaviour and visual strain were regularly recorded. These dependent measures included subjective (visual) fatigue, a letter search task, reading speed, oculomotor behaviour and the pupillary light reflex.

Results: Results suggested that reading on the two display types is very similar in terms of both subjective and objective measures.

There is a significant reduction in color depth and refresh rate, plus a need to provide external lighting to make up for the lack of built-in lighting, which, depending on the office environment may cancel out any power savings.

> lack of built-in lighting

That depends on the environment. Natural light fights against the functioning of light-emitting displays. Reflective displays cooperate with natural light.

You in the dark? Use OLED. Under the sun? Use EPD.

As kindle devices have shown though, you can backlight an e-ink display too

> you can backlight an e-ink display too

And you could read OLED at noon in the tropics under an umbrella (I know I did) - but I was exactly talking about optimal use.

A good scientist can file with a saw and saw with a file

~~~ Ben Franklin

A wise guy does not, unless necessary

~~~ We, here and now

This is technically a frontlight. The panel contains a diffuser and has LEDs at all edges of the display.

I don't know too many people operating desktop computers under the sun. They are usually situated indoors, often distant from any window access. Anyways the point stands that additional lighting discounts any power savings from using e-ink in a desktop environment. I get the use case for e-ink in the field. This product is not for in-field use.

> usually

HN is nth standard deviation sensitive. There is always market for some.

> additional lighting discounts any power savings

Not necessarily. Lighting today can cost fractions of watts, and on the other hands EPD can be energy costly - it depends on how many cell updates you are causing. So, the matter is probably less with energy consumption, and more about getting a better effect based on user and environment.

> This product is not for in-field use

Sure, it does not seem specific. But it can have its places. Be it some production site - maybe a quarry near the tropics -, be it personal - maybe you want to do some work in your garden...

Well it is arguably easier on the eyes for reading so it'd me great for terminals or for browsing documentation, content with little movement but lots of reading. I'd like to see this on a netbook to get better battery life and still be able to use emacs and remotely logging into systems. Just to carry around in a backpack while being on call.

Yeah netbooks and tablets I totally get the use case for e-ink in those cases.

speaking of passive screens on indiegogo, this launched recently:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-first-color-rlcd-...

in theory this should be much more interesting than e-ink (lcd refresh rates, similar to sharp mip displays in pebble/garmin/playdate, frontlight), but not so sure about the android tablet chassis.

Unfortunately, with these technologies, it is the effect revealed by direct experience to determine whether "you would use it or not".

Cpr. Mirasol, etc.

Mirasol is such a neat technology. As far as I've seen though it's kinda awful at off-angle color/contrast/etc. I'm not sure if that's a product maturity thing or a fundamental tech limitation... but I kinda suspect tech limitation.

0:28 of the promo video, "EVOLUTION OF HULK PREGNANT" is in the Youtube search results...

During the first year of Covid, i tried using a Boox Max Lumi 13.3" with HDMI in as an external monitor for working at home on the terrace. It didn't work: Too much ghosting.

The video looks promising. But i'll wait until there are some reviews.

This is really cool. It does make me miss the Pebble watch though as they dove into color e-ink for certain models as well. They seemed way ahead of the time and it's such a shame they couldn't make it through.

It looks like it's under 30fps though to me... not sure if videos would be that watchable?

The Pebble wasn't e-ink, it used a transflective memory LCD which they branded as "e-paper". Garmin still makes smartwatches using that technology.

> memory LCD

Interesting: ~5μW .. ~100μW.

https://displaylogic.com/products-and-services/memory-lcd/

Pebble did not use e-ink screens, it used a reflective memory in pixel LCD (I believe made by Sharp), refresh rates were never a problem using that technology, because it's just a LCD that has some tweaks for lower standby power usage. More on it: https://www.sharpsde.com/technologies-for/memory-in-pixels/m... It still requires a very small amount of power to keep the screen functioning.

E-Ink uses a completely different technology that does not require energy to continue displaying an image on the screen. Only requires it to change it. Operates by moving charged polymers to make them go to the surface or fall away, similar to etch-a-sketch (edit: I was thinking magna doodle) toy, but charge/not magnetism.

Exactly. I recently retired my Pebble, after the battery life was reduced to 1-2 days. I wish there were more watches out there like this. I found the Garmins to be much dimmer, and the Fossil to be poorly laid out for displaying much text (and the UI/UX was awful). I would pay AWU prices for a next-generation Pebble Time Steel, even if only added HR and a few other updates.

This product would make sense as a portable secondary monitor for your laptop rig. The demo video is weird. Watching youtube isn't a good use case for a color e-ink.

They aren't watching videos, they are just lifelessly scrolling slowly a YouTube search results page with embarrassing search results.

> Watching youtube isn't a good use case for a color e-ink

You may have not thought that part of the idea is using displays for education (video is an important format for educational material nowadays) in times where Countries are noting epidemics of eye difficulties (e.g. myopia) among students.

This said, use of video (frequent refresh) on EPD is strongly inefficient - EPD is energy-optimal as bistable, and consumes a lot upon state updates. And, those EPD cells are not eternal, they have a lifespan of state switches.

I'm laughing that the demo video features an adult in a suit sitting down at the computer to browse computer generated nursery rhymes on youtube.

Very impressive tech demo, but in practice, the lack of contrast and the slow (but impressive for e-ink) refresh rate would be a dealbreaker.

Also, as others have said, what's the benefit of e-ink on the desktop where mains power is readily available?

E-Ink can achieve “real color” better than LED / LCD for design that is used in non electronic mediums.

Also glare. The eye strain on e-ink is much less than that of LED / LCD displays.

Subjectively I like the realism color aspect

Would love to know more on the color accuracy of e-ink displays.

TechCrunch has a nice break down of the possibilities around this[0]

I am not sure how the color e-ink performs in this particular scenario with the monitor advertised compared to something like P3 enabled displays, but the tech has advanced that Gallery 3 panels[1] can produce 50K CMYK scaled colors are 300 DPI which is great for color accuracy, esp. in regards to physical materials (brochures, T-Shirts etc).

That said, they're likely using Kaledio displays here, Good Reads has a nice breakdown of them[2]

[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/12/e-ink-color-tech-epaper-ma...

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/25/23041407/e-ink-color-gall...

[2]: https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/e-ink-kaleid...

> E-Ink can achieve “real color” better than LED / LCD for design that is used in non electronic mediums.

Can it, though? What makes it able to, and what is the real color? When I hold a physical Pantone patch against my calibrated IPS display in proper viewing conditions, I fail to see any difference.

> Also glare.

My experience is that E-Ink readers have the same issues with glare as any other display, compared to paper which doesn't have it.

> the same issues with glare

True, but that is a property of the products, not of the technology. (It seems that they are not using external layers of the highest quality.)

So it may be possible to find an EPD display with a decent anti-glare finish. (It may also depend on the production batch.)

It absolutely is the property of technology. You fundamentally need the see-through layer, and there's not a lot of materials that meet all requirements (optical transparency, durability, finish, coatings, etc); essentially it's plastics and glasses. In that sense, EPD isn't any different from other display tech.

Why would EPD be different from LCD natively shipped with anti-glare coating, or selected good matte films for our glass-based displays (e.g. "smartphones")?

It isn't, that's my point. Both fundamentally have the same issues with glare, contrary to the OP claim that EPD is somehow glare-free. It can be mitigated a bit but getting to the glare level of actual paper (essentially zero) is probably not possible without major tradeoffs.

Ok - yes, you said that literally on your original - but then you interpreted as "property of technology" the parallel issue I was proposing.

What I intended to propose was, there may be unexpected glare issue with EPD display instances: you buy an LCD monitor and make sure that the matte coating is satisfactory; you buy a pocket computer and have a selected matte film applied to it; you buy an EPD display and go "it should be more anti-glare".

I said that this is inherent to the outmost layer that the producer chose for the product. To be that glare susceptible is not inherent in EPD as a technology. The product could be shipped at the quality level of good matte products or good matte films, or you could probably fix it with the best matte film available as you do with displays with front glass.

A good matte display (via coating in-factory or via film aftermarket) is not as glare free as paper, but it can come pretty close.

E-inks do not require a glass screen; it's there for durability. See https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/blogs/2022/is-an-e-ink-disp....

Thus, the see-through layer is not a fundamental property of the technology; it is a property of the specific use cases of the device in which durability is required or expected.

You could put it outside and enjoy glare-free outdoor computer work?

I would love this for a laptop but I feel like the tech is too new to be that compact

Dasung actually make a 13" version of this, which I own and have used outside in Egypt a lot while I lived there. It's a VERY sunny country, and normal laptop screens are almost unusable outside.

My model is a few years older and things have probably improved since then (quality, refresh rate, interop with the OS to trigger things like full refreshes), but it was already fairly workable back then.

I also use a phone with an e-ink screen (Hisense A9) as my daily driver and it's quite nice, some software issues notwithstanding.

Being able to work with daylight without having to put the monitor brightness at an uncomfortable level is something I'd appreciate a lot.

If they can get them well calibrated then the is a market for prepress designers who wouldn't even look at the price.

I’m confused about this page, is it just to sign up for updates for when the monitor ships? I don’t see any information on how much it costs or when it’s available.

I don't think I could ever see seriously using this as a general computing monitor.

But I have been long wanting to replace a couple of screens I have mounted to the wall with e-ink variants (hooked up to raspberry pi's) but the existing solutions were.... not great.

If the price is right for this, I might actually be into this.

> e-ink variants (hooked up to raspberry pi's) ... If the price is right for this, I might actually be into this

At that point, you could just get the display and controller from E-Ink. The Kaleido of this monitor does not appear for me in the E-Ink shop, but there is the 13.3'' full AcEP on sale, 1600x1200, as-if 60,000 colours through pigments, for ~800$, «Hands-on experiment with Raspberry Pi #3».

https://shopkits.eink.com/en/product/detail/AtelierWith13.3'...

That is still a lot more than I would want to spend given I have working solutions with larger monitors.

Plus I would need to figure out the mount for that, I currently just use a 3D printed VESA wall mount for what I have.

But given that what you linked is $800 for a screen 10 inches smaller than what is being advertised here... this monitor is likely not going to be cheap.

> not going to be cheap

Sure, that was part of the point I was making (get the part¹, not the 3rd party build). I thought you had an idea of the range: the B/W original costs 1,748 USD (links are in the page), this one has a few reasons to cost more...

¹(incidentally, technologically better in this case)

If some Remarkable 2 person is watching I would buy in a pinch a 2-color version. No need for the whole RGB experience but having, say, red and black available when I take notes would make a big difference.

Can they just license the tech already and let someone make a laptop.

Outside working in the sun is the killer app for color e-ink

Is it me, or are they hiding the price unless you sign up for their email list?

Hm, I still couldn't find the price after signing up for the newsletter.

Yeah, I suspected it was a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement. Probably pricing will be determined based in part on how many people show interest (and how their manufacturing process evolves).

But I've never seen a crowdfunding campaign that had no advertised price — very strange!

The contrast looks terrible.

What am I missing?

It is a reflective display: you have to put it in proper ambient light. Like paper, it needs external light - but it can be much less contrasted than paper, so you will need in the direction of a "glorious day lightflood".

Looks... servicable. Is eink finally happening?

Work from Beach

Awesome, though I need this in a laptop.

I think you would be better off having it in a portable monitor.

Boox makes a portable 13" e-ink monitor but it's tough to swallow at $800

https://shop.boox.com/products/mira

e-ink prices still shoot into the stratosphere if you want anything larger than 10"

Do you need colour, and is 10'' enough for you?

I just checked the current products from Onyx, and you can have e.g. a "Kaleido 3" 10.3'', 2480x1860 300 DPI (1240x930 150 DPI per tint) in the "Tab Ultra C", for ~600 coins.

https://onyxboox.com/boox_tabultrac

Very probably VNC or better Remote Desktop tech will work on it.

Bring your laptop and your tablet, make the use you need.

The problem: if you keep them cable connected, you'd be straining the laptop battery...

Or, Linux on the tablet (maybe via Termux, you can also get a desktop environment).

Or, Android directly, with a BT keyboard...

Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Twist[0] has been announced a while ago already. It should have a 12-inch color e-ink display in addition to a regular display.

It was supposed to become available in June 2023, but there's only silence.

[0]: https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/thinkbook-p...

I'm trying to remember the last time I actually received anything I paid for on Indiegogo. Caveat Emptor.

I already ordered product from DASUNG before, it was technically working, just useless because of the Windows-specific drivers that were needed and the poor refresh-rate (it was the B&W 13"-ish version of the monitor).

However, the team in China was cool to interact with and seemed reliable.

wireless display? no HDMI?

> Support HDMI, DP [and] Type-C input

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