Hacker News Reader

Comment by cbeach | Hacker News Reader

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?

View on HN

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

> 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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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.

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com