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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Products like these make me realize that a standard e-reader has the perfect general purpose e-ink display. The Kindle for example is about the same size as this but much sleeker, is backlit, multi-tone, has a battery, wifi, bluetooth, all for less than half the price. I wish there were more mainstream jailbreaking projects and alternative operating systems to really unlock their potential.

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Yea, when you make like a million of these you have different economies of scale, plus an ability to negotiate with suppliers.

This is the power of making a product at huge scale.

The amount of technology I can buy in a $90 Android phone is mind boggling.

Also consider that the devices you mention are probably heavily subsidised.

The kindle is a gateway drug into the rest of the Amazon ecosystem, and you probably need some form of subscription to get full use out of it, or at the least you need to buy ebooks on Amazon for it.

The $90 phone probably comes with facebook and other social apps + bloatware pre-installed, that no doubt ended up there because of some commercial deal.

Outside a handful of providers (Amazon, Barn & Noble's Nook, possibly Kobo), e-ink devices tend to not be subsidised.

You can look at pricing for, e.g., Onyx's product line to get a good sense of what the cost of a given mass-market device at a given e-ink size (and capabilities, e.g., Wacom, frontlight, touch interface) are.

Smaller e-ink devices are quite affordable. At 10" and above, you start seeing a pretty significant price premium, though IMO the benefits are worth it.

(I own a 13" Onyx device, for three years now.)

The (eink) kindle is a fabulous device and in absolutely no way requires you to buy ebooks from Amazon. you can just plug it in and put Mobi files on it.

Very few non tech people realize that. I’d wager the overwhelming majority buy a kindle and then get 100% of their books off BezosBazaar.

The convenience factor of the BezosBazaar can't be underestimated. I have no interest in maintaining a digital library these days, and the walls of the Kindle garden just aren't that impactful when you read maybe a dozen books a year.

They kinda are though, it’s creating a monopoly. Never mind enriching the already richest psychopath on the planet.

Amazon also gives you an @kindle.com address you can email documents to (epub, pdf, docx, plain text…) and they’ll show up seconds later on your kindle.

More like a 100 million, from a quick Google search. It seems highly unfair to complain that a small company can't match Amazon's pricing.

I dont have the link handy, but there's a company that sells 6-8 inch eink screens that are just recycled kindle parts with a more hobbyist-friendly interface attached

Sounds interesting! I found the following (below); was it that?

https://soldered.com/product/soldered-inkplate-6plus-with-en...

> What is especially interesting is that Inkplate uses recycled screens taken from old e-book readers (...)

I think so! Unfortunately they're actually more expensive than buying a Kindle, but I guess that's the price you pay for something that's conviently hackable

Are there any touch screen/sensitive e-inks - such that you could have one as usb WACOM tablet with a pen?

Yes.

E.g.: <https://onyxboox.com/boox_tabx>

(See the specs section.)

Touch + Wacom/stylus interface.

The main reason there isn't is because e-ink tech is controlled by a company with a strict and expensive licensing arrangement. Until the patent expires, we're unlikely to realize the technology's full potential.

This is a myth, endlessly repeated without a source. Not only have the original patents expired, but there's a competing tech called Display Electronic Slurry (DES, or the cofferdam tech).

The real reason e-ink hasn't seen much innovation is that it's a tiny niche market, because e-ink is useful for e-readers and not much else. In contrast, LCDs are produced at a rate of billions per quarter, which gives room for lots of companies to compete furiously.

E ink would be great for almost any tiny device that currently uses 1" OLEDs or 7segment displays, if it could be made cheap enough.

> The main reason there isn't is because e-ink tech is controlled by a company with a strict and expensive licensing arrangement

When? Where? How? Is this based on your direct experience? Please share some evidence so that your claims can be verified.

You can also flash electronic shelf labels and display your own content on it. They work over ZigBee

https://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/2167906 (in Dutch)

You're comparing a product from one of the largest companies on earth with an upstart. and even the cheapest ad-supported Kindle is only 2/3 the price of this in US?

The cheapest Kindle is routinely on sale for $60-70. And spec wise there is really no comparison. The Kindle has a backlight. 1448x1072 resolution (compared to this one's 800x480). Battery that can last a month. USB-C. 16GB storage. Bluetooth. It's a very capable device. The fact that this one is made by an "upstart" means nothing. You have to compete on price and quality to be successful. Plus if this company goes out of business and shuts their servers you are left with a $150 paperweight.

> if this company goes out of business and shuts their servers you are left with a $150 paperweight

Wait, this doesn't work offline or just in a local network? Why does this has to phone home?

Tracking on keepa lowest price is 95$ (https://keepa.com/#!product/1-B0B92489PD) and it's the 6inch. The 6.8inch has not been under 120$.

Anyway yes the Kindle has better spec but as you mentionned in your first post the fact that it's locked is the whole point. Amazon is not making money on the device ...

Keepa doesn’t always tell the whole story as it can’t track coupons and in-cart discounts, which Amazon regularly uses especially for their own products to hide the real lowest price from price trackers and scrapers.

The largest company you mentioned outsourced the manufacture to factories like Foxconn. A common pattern of those "upstart" is they are just a different thin wrapper around some other factories, with a crappier spec but able to sell the BOM with higher prices.

Kobos are pretty trivially jailbroken if you're looking for a similar competitive device.

Old Kobos were awesome, I had one for years running Kohreader. Sadly I lost it. Then when I researched new Kobos, about two years ago, it seemed like the quality has gone down a lot as the company has been sold several times. Is that still the case?

I use a Kobo Libra 2 and I find it great. It replaced my Paperwhite. It's easy enough to side load apps if you want too (but I find that I don't - I just need it to read books and it does that well)

I have two Clara HD and they’re pretty good. They just work. I use Calibre with them.

Inside is a micro SD card so if I ever need more storage I can just clone the original SD and extend the partition to upgrade the storage.

The Kobo are so much better than the kindle imho: more open, not locked down, and the typesetting engine is Mike’s ahead: no ragged edges or page long rivers unlike I was getting on the kindle.

I picked up a Libra H2O a while back, I've had no issues whatsoever. I used the default software without issue before discovering KOReader, installation was easy. The hardware is very solid, have not noticed any problems with the outside casing, screen, or issues related to power.

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