I have seen such claims for many years but don't remember ever seeing any research quoted, and couldn't find any myself in my previous search. As much as I would like to believe e-ink is better (as a long time Kindle user), I hope to see something more concrete.
But e-ink screens can certainly be comfortably read in bright sunlight, where even the best OLED screens are practically unusable.
I guess they went away because their color fidelity wasn't so great in the dark, but they look absolutely amazing in sunlight.
There are two iterations of Sun Vision Display's 32 inch monitor, and Eyemoo recently released an Android tablet with an RLCD sceen.
I have the Eyemoo Epaper S1, and an very happy with it, despite a manufacturing flaw that caused a few sparkly dust specs to be between the screen layers. I use it with the built-in frontlight at 10-20% strength which is a good compromise between brightness and comfort.
The comparable Epix has an AMOLED display and has to turn it off to achieve the same duration (always on turns it into ~1w)
I think what happened was super-bright white LEDs replacing early LEDs and CCFL(Cold-Cathode Fluorescent Light) backlights. iPhone up to 3GS used transflectives, but LCD on 4 and later were transmissive. That was probably the point when cheap sunlight readable backlight became viable.
But that's specifically the claim, and it's hogwash. "Straining your eyes" doesn't damage them. Using your eyes in the dark doesn't damage them. Not using them enough in the light may damage them, according to the article you linked.
It's not hogwash. The issue is focusing to read in dim light causes the cilary muscle to contract to change the shape of the lens. For children, who are still developing, this can cause the shape of the eye to change while growing and lead to myopia- so the claim is not hogwash or unscientific myth as you previously stated.
Maybe it's irrelevant for eye health, but that's enough reason to prefer e-ink.
The Sun casting changing light/shadows during the day can be a source of eye strain.
Switching back to a regular OLED phone (because of OS/firmware security), I noticed eye strain again, after just a few days of use.
Usability in sunlight and battery endurance are real advantages I miss.
Waiting for a big manufacturer to design and market a secure eInk phone, targetting the people who prioritize messaging/reading/navigation over TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and the like.
I have my own problems with LCD: even modern displays have issues with uniformity and off-axis color rendition, but e-ink’s solution to those comes at a much greater cost of contrast and refresh rate.
Did you forget the entire industry of ebooks and -readers?
I’m pretty sure 90-plus percent of the market has no preference for the tech over the LCDs of their tablets other than that they go for a long time on a single charge and the display never goes to sleep.
I highly doubt that what you say is true. When I go the homepage of e.g. Kobo e-readers, two of their four sales-points are that the reader is confortable on the eyes. Same for the kindle, where the first two points are "crisp..." and "comfortable on the eyes".
I'm not saying marketing is always right, but if all e-readers are selling their devises on the merits of "being easy on the eyes", you can't just say that's not a thing for people buying them.
Sometime to simplify, sit and ponder and save oneself from constant visual interruption is my main preference for e-ink displays.
'Modern' computing has become pretty much intolerable for work for me.
Any display that does not abuse my eyesight and can be passive like paper, is basically my go-to answer.
I do not tolerate having to re-read the sentence I'm looking at because the display looks smooth, but can't hold a static representation to save it's life. My sister's macbook is gorgeous, but impossible to read text. She doesn't read as much anymore.. because of this phenomenon.
Something about the display makes you stop seeing the line above and the line below the one you are currently reading, making it hard to hold a whole paragraph in your head, cause you're constantly re-scanning the same lines you didn't expect to drop. Like you're reading through a pinprick sized hole.
They don't talk about eyestrain, fatigue, sleep disruption, headaches or eye diseases. These are objectively measurable and would take scientific studies, and I think the evidence of e-ink being better from a medical standpoint is limited.
http://doi.org/10.1111/cts.12933 "Effects on the Ocular Surface from Reading on Different Smartphone Screens", Yuan, K. et al, 2020
A few other studies found differing effects on blink rate and visual fatigue from different screens.
http://doi.org/10.1097/OPX.0000000000001616 "How do Different Digital Displays Affect the Ocular Surface", Talens-Estarelles, C. et al, 2020
In this case, screen size was also associated with detrimental effects, with larger screens generally performing worse, and smartphones similar in effect to the e-reader. This may partially account for some hitherto unexplained preference for smartphones over computers among some users. The e-reader was better than the tablet, but not better than the smartphone.
The earliest study to show any effect was Benedetto et al, focusing on visual fatigue, which has been widely cited:
http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0083676 "E-Readers and Visual Fatigue", Benedetto, S. et al, 2013.
At least one study found statistically insignificant effects, though the e-reader showed mostly improved (but insignificant) test results, which does not weigh against the existence of an effect:
http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-1313.2012.00928.x "Reading on LCD vs e-Ink displays: effects on fatigue and visual strain", Siegenthaler, E. et al, 2012.
Siegenthaler et al do not measure effects on the ocular surface; such effects seem to have reached scientific interest only in the late 2010s. Also, the difference between e-Ink and LCD peak luminance in Siegenthaler was only 10%; the ratio of ambient to screen luminance has been observed to mediate the relationship between screen usage and eye strain:
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.displa.2020.101943 "Influence of ambient-tablet PC luminance ratio on visual fatigue", Yu, H. and Akita, T. 2020.
While I attempted to find any high-quality studies, positive or negative, available looking at the relationship between screen type and eye strain, my interpretation of the data likely reflects (hah!) my strong intuition that shining a light directly into your eyes is bad.