E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space | Hacker News Reader

E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space

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145 pointspmontra91 comments

Readers might be interested in this:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006647598296.html

never used it, but am considering getting it to lay on top of my laptop screen for outdoor coding.

One of the reviewers seems to suggest it is made out of the CPU etc from an old bitcoin miner which is no longer economic to run, but with an extra circuit board added, which is a neat way to get value out of old electronics!

Uses a XC7Z010 SoC which also contains a FPGA.

https://docs.amd.com/v/u/en-US/ds190-Zynq-7000-Overview

Searching the board name "EBAZ4205" brings some interesting results.

https://github.com/xjtuecho/EBAZ4205

https://theokelo.co.ke/getting-starting-with-ebaz4205-zynq-7...

https://github.com/XyleMora/EBAZ4205

https://hackaday.io/project/187351-cheap-35-and-powerful-fpg...

http://cholla.mmto.org/ebaz4205/

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/fpga/ebaz4205-(zynq-7000-based...

https://www.reddit.com/r/FPGA/comments/kmk9f9/ebaz4205_recyc...

...etc.

About €30 on Aliexpress, so it's cheap.

Edit: corrected the €10 mistake.

now it's 110€ for me, did we splashdot-effect it?

Quite possible in many cases as some sellers monitor well known places for links and raise their prices as soon as there's interest, but it doesn't seem the case here as I still see the same prices. Have you clicked to the actual board? Asking because many prices aren't unrelated to the photo returned by a search and point to either a much cheaper product sold either bundled or alone (a programming cable for example) or a more pricey complete kit. This is what misled me to the €10 initial price because I saw the main board while if memory serves the actual product was a smaller accessory card. By the way, I still see it around €30 plus 3 to 10 shipping on Ebay from several sellers in China. not publishing links for the above reasons.

It would be nice to see somebody do a device that isn't crippled in terms of hardware and software. In my experience, most hardware companies aren't very good at software and vice versa. Apple seems a rare exception to this rule.

I'd love a laptop that I can use outside. Even my current macbook pro isn't that good outside. It kind of works but it's not that comfortable on the eyes. And that's supposed to be a screen that is suitable for this.

My kindle on the other hand I can use sitting in the sun wearing sun glasses. Not a problem. Not that I do that a lot, I stick to the shadows. But we've had some nice warm temperatures here in the last few weeks and it sucks having to sit indoors to be able to do work. I'd much rather be in some nice garden or park.

I'd probably buy anything with a decent amount of hardware power and a good screen like this. I'm OK installing linux on it. Not a problem. I can deal with external batteries and extension cords if needed. But I need my laptop to be fast and have decent keyboards and touch pads.

But it seems all the companies in this space fall in the trap of trying to be Apple and then failing miserably on both the hardware and software front. Slow/outdated CPUs, crippled by anemic amounts of memory, paired with somebody's take on how to do Android, etc. When the screen is just about the only thing about a device that isn't shit, it's still a shit product overall.

> It would be nice to see somebody do a device that isn't crippled in terms of hardware and software.

Have a look at PineNote.

> Powered by a powerful and efficient RK3566 SoC with four A55 cores, and backed by 4GBs of RAM and 128GBs of eMMC storage

Exactly what I mean by anemic. The only likable thing in that device is the screen.

Likely not the reply you were looking for, but in theory a PineNote would be a great "donor" device for modification. For example - get your favorite SBC (Raspberry 5?), figure out how to connect it (likely eDP, documentation shouldn't be hard), make a new shell/body and you're done!

...If you have the technical know-how, time, space, tools and motivation of course.

It's not that no one does such stuff (see r/cyberdeck), but yeah admittedly if you're not an engineer it likely isn't the easiest.

It has been sold out since years, and the Pine folks said most probably will never make another batch (they complain that it was their worst selling device ever, and they don't want to make any more before full software support).

I tried to get one since years for fun. The only one that I found that was also shipped to my place was in China, and the seller asked for $1000 (+shipping) for it. I passed. And slowly giving up on buying one.

(Also, with it's RPi3-ish SoC it is not really a laptop replacement)

If we're talking about E ink, it happened to study with a guy who had a boox something and it was really cool, however he mainly used it for notes and for writing, and not for coding. I think they offer a lot of products for various needs, perhaps some of them are backlighted. Boox ultra pro c has an underclocked snapdragon 855 so it shouldn't suck too much, just a little. However, they're not cheap

onyx is know for flagrant disregard of GPL terms around the kernel

Oh, I didn't know that

I use a big boox for sheet music. It works well and supports a rather good app for the purpose (mobile sheets)

I’m hopeful that the ‘working outdoors’ issue may be solved within a couple of generations of AR glasses.

Something that can project one or two virtual monitors at a workable resolution, without totally cutting off the outside world, and while looking roughly like a pair of glasses.

One problem is going to be selectively darkening pixels within the glass itself to get a decent contrast.

Your best solution right now is the 13 inch Onyx Boox Tab X. Put it in front of your MacBook screen and connect through VNC, or leave the Mac at home. They can't connect through wire. Or wait and see if they release a color version of the same size soon.

I have a color Boox tablet, and I am very very disappointed about the colors. Very hard to distinguish many colors and shades. Black and white though is really good.

I have also seen the color eink tablets, and the colors are so dull that you at first glance can take it for grayscale. Even so, I think colors would be very good to have for work and functional purposes, only to distinguish between colors. Certainly not for enjoying them.

You could connect your laptop to an e-ink monitor. That's what I do.

I've been using a 13.3" Dasung Paperlike HD-FT e-ink monitor since 2020. The refresh rate is fine for reading and writing code, and most websites are easily usable in black and white. I normally use a terminal-based text editor in light-mode with syntax colouring turned off. It's not great for detailed videos, but sometimes it's good enough.

Dasung have since released 25.3" monochrome and color e-ink monitors, and a more portable 12" color e-ink monitor.

https://shop.dasung.com/

Wish it were cheaper. $1600 (closer to 1800 with taxes for most people): https://shop.dasung.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink-monitor-p...

> most hardware companies aren't very good at software and vice versa

This has also been my experience.

[SOURCE] Software engineer for hardware companies, for over 30 years.

> Even my current macbook pro isn't that good outside

Shiny screens are notoriously bad outdoors.

This company out of Vancouver Canada is doing some interesting stuff, their V1 device isn't quite what you're looking for, but I'd keep an eye on them, my understanding is what you're looking for is where they are going: https://daylightcomputer.com/

They are explicitly mentioned in the article. Where they are headed is definitely compelling, but to echo so many other comments, it’s just not quite what I want, yet.

The Kobo tablet seems to be a straightforward Linux instance running on an arm chip. I think it's going to run arbitrary userspace code just fine.

> Even my current macbook pro isn't that good outside.

There's a hack for that. Involves running a full screen transparent overlay which tricks the OS into letting you turn the screen brightness all the way up. Silly that it's necessary but works very well. I don't remember the name of the program.

Trying to outbright the sun on a battery powered device just results in displays w/ burnt-in screen elements and a dead battery.

Leaving the charger connected while doing this is a good idea, yes. Presumably the screen will die eventually, but maybe not if Apple spec'ed it sufficiently well. No hardware lasts forever anyway.

I think you're referring to the Vivid app, which I find works very well for this purpose with recent Macbook Pros: www.getvivid.app

I really miss, and worry that I will never be able to replace my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110 which had a transflective display (which allowed using it in full-bright, direct sunlight, even at the beach) and a stylus --- closest I came was a Samsung Galaxy Book 12 (which I wasn't able to replace).

The problem is, trying to out-bright the sun on a battery-powered device is exactly as stupid as it sounds, and solutions such as transflective displays don't showroom well (someone should build a showroom w/ a light booth which simulates a bright sunny day and invite folks to try to use devices in it w/o shading them).

At this point in time, I'm seriously considering switching to a Raspberry Pi 5 as a daily driver (paired w/ a Wacom One 13 gen2 display w/ touch) --- if that display could be supplemented by (or swapped out for) an e-ink or similar daylight viewable pen-enabled display, it would probably push me over the edge (and yes, I've considered just pointing my Kindle Scribe's web browser at a page on the rPi --- if someone has a tool which would allow this to capture stylus input, please let me know).

There's a new company whose name I forget making a transflective display tablet.

I would be very interested in this, esp. if it runs Linux.

This one might be interesting for you: https://daylightcomputer.com/ it has a fast e-ink-type of display. Unfortunately it is expensive and not available.

Any first-hand experiences with the Nxtpaper devices? There's a lot of press coverage of the release official material, especially on the 14 inch model, but few actual reviews. Availability or even infos on availability is an issue, at least in Europe as well.

I just ordered the nxtpaper 11 arrives next week so will post back later.

I was torn between the HannsNote2 and Nxtpaper 11 but the battery life for the HannsNote2 is apparently less than 3 hours which I think is not going to cut it for a device which is meant to take me away from my phone

I ordered the nxtpaper from TechInn - I think they ship global

I’m very close to getting a HannsNote 2. The battery life is disappointing, but it is very thin (maybe unnecessarily so). It’s no hardship to carry around a battery in a bag.

I have a crazy idea about VNC or SSH in which case a host laptop might not be very far away anyway.

The HannsNote2 is such an interesting piece of tech I am extremely interested it's one of those situations where its just one or two features away from being a killer product IMO.

Having a back/frontlight, bigger battery and faster CPU could turn it into the ultimate tablet for what I'm looking for.

I can settle for weaker CPU, I'd need to try it in person to test whether I can live without a light (hard to know just how much ambient light you need to use it indoors at night comfortably) but the battery I think is too short especially if you factor in natural degradation too. For me it means I'll always be worried about charging it or tethered to a cable and spontaneous usage always requires diligent charging. Stuff like train journeys and plane rides are all then also dependent on the power bank

What's the idea about SSH?

I planned to use the tablet to connect to a tmux session and mirror a shell session on my laptop. I could then type on the laptop but use the RLCD display.

Not a crazy idea, but might look a little weird.

I’ve had a reMarkable 1 for a few years, and even had fun hacking it [0] but ultimately it’s too restrictive and slow for what I ended up using for, which was reading and annotating PDFs away from my desk.

[0] https://blog.afandian.com/2020/10/pipes-and-paper-remarkable...

I believe the HannsNote can serve as a monitor as its running android or am I mistaken? What's the benefit of tmux over it behaving as a regular monitor?

That would be better, I’m sure. I’ve not looked at what’s available. I’d prefer to avoid using a Google account, so limiting myself to F-Droid.

For anyone that was interested my Nxtpaper 11 finally arrived.

I am annoyed because I realised the Nxtpaper 11 is available on amazon.de the product listing was just buried because it hadn't bubbled up the search and its name isn't great for search.

Have only used it a few hours so some initial thoughts:

- this is my first ever real tablet but its heavier than I thought, its a bit awkward to read one handed especially without anything to grip, I might get one of those hand bands to get a lightweight grip

- the tablet is noticeably slow, you can see some slight frame choppiness when scrolling in Substack for example, but obviously way better than an eink reader

- the Nxtvision settings for reading mode and eye comfort mode are quite nice. Images and figures in documents look pleasingly "flat"

- the resolution is noticeably low, I do notice the DPI is not that crisp when reading PDFs

- I like the matte screen texture it is quite pleasing

- reading code on it via Github was quite fun/pleasant

All things considered for 250 Euros its probably worth a try if you're not too fussy. I can live with the shortcomings, this is a sufficiently niche space that it'll take a while for the perfect product to drop out.

I'd love to get my hands on a Hannsnote 2 to compare

MKBHD did a review of a TCL phone with an NXTPAPER display and the screen looks like just a normal LCD with a matte screen protector. It has some extra layers physically to limit the amount of blue light, but it 100% looked like any other phone screen with a "paper-like" screen protector on top. The only other thing were the screen modes that would wash out colors (partially or completely) to imitate the "paper look", but it's still pretty much glowing like any other regular display

The other thing I saw that was remarked was the image felt very close to the top of the screen which improves the paper-like feel

There are surprisingly few reviews of any nxtpaper devices outdoors. Chalid Raqami did a comparison with two generations of eink displays, stating that the nxtpaper 10s appears hard to read and washed out outdoors but the accompanying video clip hardly demonstrates that.

Overlooking complaints of lack of backlighting, the Panic Playdate's screen IMHO is its stand out feature.

It's a "Sharp Memory LCD" which has the appearance of e-ink and shares it's ability to continue to display an image when unpowered, but has the active refresh rate of a more standard LCD.

It's frankly stunning to see in real life, and it's hard to describe how crisp it looks. Videos do not do it justice. It's truly unlike any other display I have seen.

I would absolutely adore a kindle sized e-reader with the technology, and am hopeful the future brings one.

The Daylight tablet is the closest to Playdate display among the tablets listed in the article.

Some people on Reddit speculate the Daylight Computer is also a Sharp screen. Unsure whether memory LCD and IGZO are related as I'm very new to this space (and trying not to fall too deep into the rabbit hole)

The play date screen is beautiful. So is the daylight computer but no colour is just a deal breaker for me unfortunately.

Some charts/diagrams use colours and being unable to understand how the colour is being used is probably going to end up being too annoying in the end for my intended usage even tho I am predominantly looking to read (pdfs and blogs)

For books I still prefer the real thing whenever possible

EDIT source - https://old.reddit.com/r/eink/comments/1dw9a7g/daylight_comp...

I ran some Daylight Computer photos from a trip to their factory through Google Lens and it was the Sharp factory in Japan. No doubt.

It seems that they took a certain Sharp screen and simply took off the colour layer. Citation needed.

So Sharp Memory LCD isn't quite unpowered, but it is measured in hundreds of microwatts of power.... Nearly power free. And this is while updating the screen.

EInk is truly 0 energy to hold an image.... but each refresh uses a lot of energy. IIRC, the breakeven vs Sharps memory LCD was like 15-minute refreshes.

----------

Many battery packs have internal leakage in the ~50 microwatts region just a magnitude below to the power needed for Memory LCD.

So Sharp Memory LCD is close to the point where we stop caring about power consumption at all. But not QUITE zero or otherwise ignored. Still very impressive how low they got.

> EInk is truly 0 energy to hold an image.... but each refresh uses a lot of energy. IIRC, the breakeven vs Sharps memory LCD was like 15-minute refreshes.

IIRC the previous gen Kindles used to switch the cover art every 15 minutes or so.

I love eink displays, I also love the MIP display on my Garmin.

I'm excited for where these technologies go.

Yes, I loved MIP models too. I'm really annoyed that the last Gramin Forerunner watch with an MIP display was 955, and it's now discontinued and was recently removed from Garmin's website. All their new models have OLED, and I kind of understand as it looks better indoors but wastes a huge amount of battery when used outside.

I would have preferred they investigate some of these newer LCD screens that can work reflectively and optionally with backlights on.

I'm a long distance runner. So my requirements are slightly different than the average person. But that said. It seems to me Garmin's strategy is clear, the Forerunner and even the Fenix lines are going to be OLED. Where as the Enduro is the MIP line.

Sure there's a MIP Fenix 8, but I feel like that might be something that eventually goes as more people who are newer to sports watches, the people transitioning over from Apple or Google watches.. those people who see 7 days battery life and think "wow" where as we look at the GPS always on time and think "more please".

The absolute pick of this generation is the Enduro 3 now. It's cheaper, lasts waaaaay longer, and does everything we want. Fenix 8? Dive computer, and the ability to take calls? No thanks. I just want more battery life, and better solar thanks.

I have no idea how Garmin markets outdoor activity watches with OLED screens.

Yeah my forerunner 955 MIP was the sweet spot of size and battery life. Sadly the battery lifespan is fairly short on those too.

I went for the Instinct 2 next purely to avoid the OLED infestation.

Yep, I had a cheaper MIP garmin watch that I was very happy with until it spontaneously bricked itself one day. It was just barely in warranty, and they replaced it, but refused to give me an equivalent replacement and instead sent the newer OLED model in the same lineup. It's... fine, but the battery life is abysmal with the always-on display and just OK without.

Anyone using large e-ink monitor for programming? I cautious about trying one because I wouldn't want to wait 1 full second every time I scroll yhe sources

You can get 60 Hz refresh rate these days.

I tried Onyx Boox Tab X e-reader (13"). It cannot be used directly as a screen, but it runs Android, so it's either some sort of screen sharing or SSH client. Onyx Boox series has its own custom refresh technology that does smart partial refreshes and thus is quite fast.

So I tried actual coding once with SSH+Mosh option, just to see if it's viable, but nothing serious yet. I remember that typing was okay, but more interaction (like copilot autocompletion and tooltips in nvim) wasn't comfortable. But gonna give it more tries for sure.

I converted an old kindle to a second monitor. The refresh rate for typing console commands isn't super important, since you tend to read a command before you finally press enter.

Dasung have since released 25.3" monochrome and color e-ink monitors, and a more portable 12" color e-ink monitor.

https://shop.dasung.com/

Already widely-available e-ink devices have been capable of far better than 1 Hz refresh for years. The idea that this isn't possible has entered into the Land of HN Tropes That Will Not Die.

I use an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi, now three years old, with locally-installed Termux (Linux environment for Android) and remote SSH fairly frequently. It can run highly-interactive text apps, with slight ghosting, and could probably handle an X11 display as well though I've not tried that.

Even at high-quality display, B&W e-ink offers 2--4 Hz refresh, and can offer ~16 Hz or better in "X-Mode" display. I won't pretend that's great video quality, but it is possible to view animations or videos using it.

For a now-several-years-old demo of what e-ink device capabilities are, with the fastest saved for last, see: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=KdrMjnYAap4>

There are higher-refresh displays as well. This one advertises 60 Hz refresh and colour (it's not clear whether colour can drive at 60 Hz).

<https://www.tomshardware.com/monitors/new-open-source-high-r...>

<https://www.modos.tech/blog/modos-paper-monitor-pre-launch-o...>

Video demo: <https://yewtu.be/embed/pXn-bAwzNv4>

It's true that some colour displays currently run slower.

There's also an "e-paper" technology, based on LCD, which offers far higher refresh and AFAIU no ghosting.

(I've been using an e-ink tablet for the past 3+ years, and frankly love it.)

Instead of reflecting ambient light, why not measure it and then emit the same amount? It should be indistinguishable (as long as you reconstruct the RGB colors properly), so you can use a regular OLED display.

I like the idea for indoor devices, but the illusion will be immediately broken as soon as you pick up and move around the device unless the ambient light sensor is polling at a high rate

Battery life is still affected with emissive displays.

I dunno, I can barely see my OLED phone's screen when I'm using it on full brightness in the sun.

It's not about chroma, its' about luma. You would need pretty powerful backlight to match ambient on a sunny day. It will burn battery pretty quickly and require unrealistic cooling.

Because a sunny day at the equator is about a kilowatt per square metre. A typical mobile phone display is about 100 cm^2 (0.01 m^2), so you would need to emit 10 watts to match sunlight.

As far as I can tell OLEDs are 20% efficient or less so you would need an input power of 50 W. Even at 60 deg. N where I live we get over 300 W/m^2 in August so would still need about 15 W of input power to the display.

Just aim the light at the user's face and those power requirements reduce by 99% :)

How so? Diffuse and reflected sunlight is still orders of magnitude brighter than you can feasibly generate in a mobile phone.

Perhaps the solution is eye tracking and steerable lasers lighting up the retina directly. That should cut the power requirements by a factor of a few thousand!

Outdoors, the phone would melt your hand with the best light emitting tech that exists today.

Front lighting isn't always ideal because it increases the distance between the screen and the user and makes it feel less paperlike, which is why Remarkable isn't front lit.

It also uses power. Both types of displays don't need power for light, which is a huge advantage. The power advantage e-ink has is not needing power to retain an image. While that's a requirement for some use cases, they should both have very low power consumption compared to backlit lcd screens.

the main bernefit of eink for me is that battery life is so much better.

That's not as relevant as it used to be though.

My android tablet lasts for a week of reading and charges from 30% to 60% in 5 minutes.

At what weight though. Eink devices are super light.

Not really. My Lenovo Y700 tablet is 375g, and my Kobo Aura One is 230g

The Y700 has a bigger screen and is 100x better at everything though.

as if being 1.6 heavier does not matter? Or 1/3rd of price? I can hold kobo libra 2 with one hand, the battery lasts long, PPI is high, what to not like?

The Y700 came with a rubber case which makes it significantly easier to hold than the plastic Kobo. The metal body and minimal bezels also look much more premium.

It's also _extremely_ better at everything, including for reading books, so the higher weight and (2x, not 3x) cost are well worth it.

The Kobo battery doesn't even last that long with the backlight and wifi on, and at least mine wipes its storage and OS when the battery runs down completely. The screen and UI are also the worst thing imaginable. Using eink devices is basically equivalent to torture.

You come across as biased and angry, which makes your statements unconvincing. In what universe 375g device is easier to hold (with 1 hand) than 215g I have no idea, esp. keeping in mind that kobo has buttons for easy scrolling with one hand.

You also miss the point, that limited functionality of readers is feature not bug. It massively reduces impulse to start browsing youtube etc.

All together, price, weight, battery time and limited functionality is what makes the whole proposition attractive. I personaly do not need yet another androd tab even for free.

The Kobo has a thinner side and harder and sharper edges than the Y700 with the rubber case.

Personally I'm not overly distracted by android apps when I'm reading a good book, but YMMV.

My Kobo doesn't have any buttons.

It also forces me to go on wifi and make a Kobo account to use the device at all (even if I'm just interested in copying epubs).

In short and honestly after 5 years of ownership: fuck Kobo and and fuck ereaders in general.

For the main purpose that they are used for, displays that don't need to be updated frequently, like e-reader or "smart" price tag display.

However updating the display is more costly in terms of power than lcd.

We can also factor in that most e-reader also include backlight.

As a caveat, I appreciate e-ink technology, and the innovation that it brought us. I would also love to get my hand on one of those color e-ink android tablet. But I am not hoping to have a huge difference in battery usage from it, e-reader are very specialized device and can afford optimization that more versatile device cannot.

I loved the reflective LCD screen on my pebble time. Glad folks are rediscovering it.

I had a e-reader, it's just to slow to run anything except reading books. Not sure if the new color screen will improve the experience.

E-ink is special because it has basically no downsides when compared to paper. This makes it perfect for reading regular black and white books and for the vast majority of readers it's all they need. As soon as you try to do more, there are tradeoffs, like with anything else. I've never found a screen to be anywhere near as good as paper for writing (unless it comes with a keyboard, but even then it's not as good for drawing pictures etc). So it's just another device that might work for you, but might not. I can't see it replacing eink unless it has literally no downsides (including cost).

It has some downsides compared to paper:

1. White paper is significantly whiter than white e-ink 2. Black ink is significantly darker than black e-ink 3. Large A4-size e-ink displays are expensive 4. Large e-ink displays are sensitive and can break, you have to handle with a lot of care

But otherwise there are tremendous advantages over paper. And with a textured screen cover, writing on e-ink is just as comfortable as writing on paper.

I should have been more specific. I think it has (virtually) no downsides compared to a standard paperback book. I very much enjoy high quality and larger scale printing that is certainly not achievable on any screen, including e-ink. Also, when it comes to textbooks and references, books are simply a better technology than screens, in my opinion. But, again, this isn't specific to e-ink.

I haven't tried writing on e-ink. Is it better than the most expensive Apple tablets? Any time I've tried the lag is noticeable and I can't stand it.

Writing on recent e-ink tablets is like writing on paper. The lag is difficult to notice. I don't know how it compares to Apple tablets.

Which device(s) in particular? I'll try to find one to try it. Most electronics retailers tend to be displaying the Apple type stuff and the copycats. I assumed it was representative of screens in general.

Try the Onyx Boox X or Tab. But you will probably only find them to buy online.

eink display with 8 colors should be perfect for coding. Just good enough colors to highlight terminal or code editor. The refresh rate is fine for cursor based UIs.

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