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Comment by colesantiago | Hacker News Reader

I would have gotten the Playdate if it had a color e-ink display, hoping the next one would have one if there are plans for Panic to do this.

The benefits of color and also the benefits of low powered, long battery life with possibly the chance to change the color to black and white like original playdates shipped with.

Doom on Playdate looks awesome though!

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Unfortunately I assume it’s pretty cost prohibitive for an e ink display with a decent refresh rate. At least one good enough to play games on.

Isn't the whole point of the playdate to create a distinct format which removes a lot of noise from indie game dev? In my experience with game dev it was very easy to slip into fixating on pixel art color schemes, shading, etc

If you want colour it's already there in everything else

How does e eink screen work on a game console? The playdate screen is at least 30fps (and can actually refresh faster), even the fastest eink screens can't work at this speed without ghosting, and I don't want slower full refreshes while I'm playing a game.

It’s not E ink, it’s a Sharp Memory LCD https://sharpdevices.com/memory-lcd/

Memory LCDs have fast refresh rates while also being persistent like E ink. They’re also more expensive.

Exactly, they're not asking how the playdate works with an eInk screen (because it doesn't have one). They're asking how colesantiago expects to use a game console with a 5hz screen.

It plays the following games

- Crossword

- Chess

they aren't really bistable like epaper; the playdate display requires 50 microwatts to maintain the display. when i unplug mine from the breadboard it retains its image for about 30 seconds before fading just on the screen capacitance

a broken epaper screen, by contrast, retains its image for at least several years

Have you seen the Playdate IRL? Its screen is very nice.

The screen is amazing. Backlight would be nice but the screen itself is great.

I would love a backlight in my play date. The main thing stopping me playing it as much is whenever I pick it up, I feel I have to move to get light to see the screen at least 50% of the time.

Backlight is not possible on this type of display. Frontlit screens exist, but are substantially thicker and require a new front plate.

the sharp memory-in-pixel display on the playdate uses roughly 1000 times less power than epaper displays do, assuming at least a few screen updates per minute. epaper only uses less power in applications like electronic pricetags

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