TCL's bet on screens that look like paper | Hacker News Reader

TCL's bet on screens that look like paper

notes.ghed.in

117 pointsrpgbr91 comments

Article says 550 nits “doesn’t compare” to traditional screens, but that’s not true. Most desktop displays are 300-400 nits. HDR displays get up to 1000ish nits but not for the whole screen.

Phone screens are brighter because of outdoor use, but 550 is more than enough for indoor monitors.

(Not to… nit pick)

You are right, but in Summmer, if you sit in close to the window, more nits is very nice.

If you want to be able to fully present the full range of HDR you need at least 1,000 but more like 10,000 nits.

Phone screens aren't just a bit brighter. Modern phone screens reach 1000 nits baseline and peak above 2000. Top-of-the-line models are now quoting 4600 (OnePlus 12) and 6000 (realme GT Neo 6 SE).

Other competitors in this space:

- Daylight Computer (mentioned in the article) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40456834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40754445

- Onyx Boox https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27513521

- Kobo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40015429

- Amazon Kindle Scribe (also mentioned) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33009715

FWIW, I still haven't managed to fully replace my Newton MessagePad with a single device --- the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ comes close, but I don't like to read books on it, and it's a bit small, so makes sketching fussy.

The Kindle Scribe is great, for reading books, but no immediacy in handwriting recognition/shape conversion, so I only use it for note-taking and sketching, but not for writing first drafts or editing texts.

The Wacom One 13 (gen one screen) attached to my MacBook is a nice fallback, and makes it convenient when I'm both taking notes or referring to a text (on my Scribe) and drawing/annotating/working on a project on my Mac.

The Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 is awesome, but a bit large and cumbersome when folded into tablet mode --- really wish Samsung had made a replacement for my Galaxy Book 12 (the perfect thing would be a dual-screen 12" device w/ Wacom EMR, competing against the Lenovo Yogabook 9i (which I'd buy if it had Wacom EMR)).

A dual-fold 3-panel device where the outside panel was e-ink would be perfect.

On an aside i have a newton i bring out to “show the kids” and it’s amazing how good it still is. Really ahead of its time.

Nice!

Unfortunately, mine was left on a desk which got buried under stuff when my kids were young and the batteries corroded.

I keep considering buying an MP2100, but it's hard to justify given the number of devices around the house which seldom see use.

Same! If I could convince myself that it would be a calm computing alternative or some other such nonsense to another device I phase out, maybe. Or I could foist the eMate on a kid who has a Chromebook at school, good luck.

What holds me back from any of these less capable devices is that the type of screen is not going to make a difference. I just need to be off the net.

I watched For All Mankind, which is an alternative history (branching in 1969, when the Russians beat us to the moon).

They don't have iPhone-like smartphones (They haven't even reached 2015, yet -and we've got a major base on Mars), but everyone is FaceTiming on these gizmos that look a hell of a lot like Newtons.

The Hannsnote 2 is another one, and (at least has been) available in the EU.

I have one. And a couple of Newtons. The Hannsnote 2 looks great outdoors but it is hard to get the lighting right to make it usable indoors.

I would add the nano-texture display option on the M4 iPad Pros (1TB+ SKUs only) and the newest MacBook Pros. I recently bought an iPad Pro with the option and it’s been really nice. I can read outside in direct sunlight with it. The downside is a slight loss in contrast and very small loss in crispness but frankly for my use cases it still looks really good. My next MBP I’ll be getting this option.

Similar - Minimal Phone

https://www.minimalcompany.com

That would be a lot more interesting to me if it had a stylus and handwriting recognition.

onyx boox is worth avoiding for violating the GPL

Why? I don't care, and neither does anybody else except a few people on this forum who always bring it up.

Would you steal a book?

That's TCL, not Tcl.

It's an auto-formatting thing that HN does to submitted titles. If you catch it soon enough you can edit the title and it will be allowed as you specify, at least that was true the last time I tried.

Yes, that continues to work: (1) submit your post, (2) it's modified by HN based on rules such as multiple uppercases on a word, (3) edit the post title.

Thanks, I was curious what a programming language had to do with anything.

It’s become self aware! Everybody run!

I thought both would be all caps but it seems that the language uses an initialism rather than an acronym. All my life I’ve been rarely typing out all caps Tcl like I’m one of the folk who use all caps MAC for the line of Apple computers.

TCL Technology Group Corp. (originally an abbreviation for Telephone Communication Limited) is a Chinese partially state-owned electronics company headquartered in Huizhou, Guangdong province.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCL_Technology

Tcl (pronounced "tickle" or as an initialism[8]; originally Tool Command Language) is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcl

I have the Daylight Computer mentioned in this article.

I like it quite a lot (though the price is still high enough that it’s really an indulgence only justified if you can buy gadgets through an employer or your own company).

The physical design is the opposite of the Apple aesthetic. Instead of metal and glass and vibrant colors, it’s a dull gray rectangle with a soft-touch plastic backside and a sort of paperish texture on the display. In fact it looks and feels like a prop from Apple TV’s “Silo”. It gets a nice lived-in quality after a few months.

The display is sharp and fast and monochrome — a unique combination these days. It reminds me of the original NeXT in that sense, which is great. But the brightness and viewing angles take some getting used to. It’s really good in daylight, as the company’s name suggests. The backlight has an adjustable amber tone which goes with the retro/“Silo” vibe and is also nice in the evening.

It’s good for reading articles and books, but the monochrome display is also a surprisingly effective distraction remover filter for websites and even videos. I generally hate watching YouTube videos, but if that’s the only option to learn something, I’ll rather watch the video on the Daylight Computer.

It comes with a stylus and the display has a nice texture, but I haven’t yet got into note-taking or drawing.

When I go to their site I only see something about pre-ordering and putting down a $100 deposit. What's the price and will Libby (Library app) work on it?

I paid 680 euros + shipping for an early batch last summer.

It has Android and the Play Store, so all those apps work.

(The original NeXT was not very fast, due to the MO drive. Imagine VM thrashing on that thing.)

I meant the display. The Daylight Computer has a monochrome LCD which updates very fast compared to e-ink screens.

I really want to like the more recent devices from Boox. The display tech is just about there with their "Super Refresh." It works well enough for most apps where you are scrolling. Problem is that the software is pretty buggy and can become randomly unresponsive to touch input, which can be pretty frustrating. This has been true on the Tab Ultra, the Tab Mini C, and the Palma 2.

Still, Boox tablets are the closest to what I've been looking for: an eInk device with enough flexibility that I can read more than just books on it.

Avoid Boox. Their displays are very fragile and have a reputation for cracking even if you're careful. That happened to my Air 3 C about 3 months after I bought it. I was very careful with it - never traveled with it, only used it at home. One day after charging it I turned it on and the screen was ruined. I contacted Boox about warranty repair and they said it was my fault and I would have to pay $300+ plus shipping both ways to get it fixed. They have a reputation for blaming the customer first. I'll never buy one of their products again.

What exactly is paper-like about this? It sounds like it is still transmissive (they talk about brightness rather than contrast), which is just the same as any other screen no? E-ink is paper-like because it's reflective.

It sounds like it is dual-mode / transflective, based on the description of the button that “turns the display into an e-ink format” with ”a huge increase in battery life, up to 7 days of reading.”

I have an older NXTPAPER Tcl tablet, its just a regular tft lcd screen, with a textured coating making it feel more paperlike and giving it a abti-glare coating. Its quite nice, but nowhere near epaper, so it does 60fps, but uses just as much power as regular tft displays, at the cost of some brightness

So they just moved away from the annoying shiny screen to a matte surface? That's good; the shiny glass screen is a marketing thing with negative usability value. My big displays are all matte.

Can you use it in direct sunlight? That'd be the main advantage for me. I enjoy lounging outdoors with a laptop. My macbook screen is completely unusable in the sun.

Before Steve Jobs shut down the Advanced Technology Group (ATG) at Apple (in the late 1990's?), some coworkers reported having had a mini-tour of ATG and were blown away by a display they saw that "looked like paper!". If my memory is correct it was a 200 DPI LCD panel. No doubt that kind of DPI back in the 90's looked like paper. ;-)

I would love to see in person what over two decades has produced.

High DPI CRTs existed back then. That is a more likely explanation.

"High" being relative and constantly changing, of course. The SGI 1600SW from 1998 was 1600x1024 at 17.3 inches, so 110dpi. A beautiful thing, but not really like paper IMHO. https://bytecellar.com/2008/02/13/the_sgi_1600sw/ && https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_1600SW

I think Apple and other people maintained that 150 DPI is around where you start perceiving a monitor to be similar to a printed page.

Considering the IBM "Big Bertha" LCD was an obtainable product in 2001, it doesn't seem too far-fetched that high resolution LCDs existed in some R&D labs years earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors

It's not quite a 4K monitor, but I'll tell you it was pretty amazing to those of us who saw it demonstrated back then. This was a qualitatively different thing than we were familiar with. And, as I recall, it took 2 or 4 DVI inputs to drive it from typical graphics cards of the era. A single display output could not drive these kinds of pixel counts.

They started that project as Roentgen as I recall, and while they did exist there were eye-watering of expensive.

Around the time Apple started delivering HiDPI displays there was still a bit of scrambling by everyone to get software to play nice on OSX and Windows. Always fun when a game doesn’t realize you’re on a 270 DPI screen and makes the main menu so small you can barely read it to change the settings.

IBM had a CRT version of this before then. It worked the same by splitting the display into four quadrants. A Windows desktop only showed on one quadrant and you needed special software to use the whole display. The one we had at work was monochrome grayscale so it lacked the issues of dealing with a fine shadow mask.

LCD panels in that era were still being hand buffed and the defect rate would be high when attempting higher resolutions.

What was the purpose of a high resolution greyscale monitor at the time?

High resolution greyscale monitors were used for medical imaging.

You could be right.

I don’t remember exactly when you joined up, or what the information flow would have looked like to the graphics group, but the OS team was certainly aware in the mid 90’s that high DPI displays were on the horizon.

I think it actually took much longer for them to become mainstream than Apple was expecting back then. Pre-NeXT takeover, this was one of the big impetuses behind moving to QuickDraw GX.

I was on the Quickdraw GX team just before it was blown up. But I think it was when I was on the ColorSync team that a few engineers popped over to ATG.

I recently got a Boox Go Color 7 (I know I know, the GPL violations suck but the options are limited). I was blown away how usable the Kaleidoscope screens are. All the reviews online made them sound absolutely terrible. But having color makes the users experience much richer and enjoyable. My spouse has a Kobo Libra Color and she loves it equally as much.

If you're looking for an eink device, Avoid Boox devices. I bought an Air 3C and the display was borked 3 months after I bought it. Knowing that their displays are fragile, I never traveled with it. Only used it at home and left it on a shelf on top of a stack of books (no books on top of it). One day after charging it overnight I turned it on an found the display ruined - internally cracked, it would seem. When I wrote boox to inquire about warranty service they told me it was my fault and it was going to cost me $300+ to get it repaired (plus shipping each way).

Boox devices are very fragile and the blame the customer when the display breaks.

Vast majority of eInk devices are equally fragile. It's not unique to Boox. They use a glass substrate that's suspectible to cracking. A handful of devices use plastic like the Kobo Forma but they're a rarity. While Boox's response to you was bad, personally I've had no issues with my Boox screens despite traveling with them and having them for years.

My boox note has lasted years, been to the beach and on hikes, visited multiple countries, and commuted with me most work days. No sign of fragility. In that time I've had two kindles and one kobo break.

Is it a color boox? Mine was color. I think those are more fragile.

Colour ones weren't around when I bought it. I had been considering an upgrade but it sounds like maybe I should wait.

FWIW, I have had a Nova 2 for years. I dropped it on stone once, a piece of the frame glass chipped out, but the display is fine.

I wouldn’t recommend it for other reasons (it’s not really good for notes, which I had hoped to get out of it).

Put this in the reviews to be aggregated into an X out of 5 score I can logically base decisions on. It seems irrational to let one strange experience (screen cracked for no reason sitting on a shelf) that occured to 1 out of what, 100,000? customers affect my shopping decisions. Most of the boox reviews I've come across love it for years. Sorry yours broke. When a warranty isn't honored, I've always had luck with Visa Signature or Amex doing a full refund within the first 2-3 years under their "extended warranty" benefit.

I definitely ran into others on Reddit who had a similar experience with both screen breakage and terrible customer support response. Hopefully your boox will continue to function as advertised and you won't have to deal with boox customer support.

Maybe Amazon will elevate its kindle game now. I just want a large-enough ePaper display for PDFs that’s just as comfortable to hold, has light so I can read it in the dark, and is waterproof. The lack of serious smartphone-like capabilities is a feature, not a bug, but the awkwardness with PDFs is a bug.

I want this but not for this price: https://shop.dasung.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink-monitor-p...

Interesting that Mac is not supported.

Might be the temporal dithering that can’t be disabled.

Not the color variant of the same monitor? https://shop.dasung.com/products/dasung-paperlike-color-worl...

If it was gallery 3 and half the price I'd order one today.

There are a few products like this already like the Boox Tab X which is 13.3". Roughly A4 sized, so it's very good for reading papers. However, if you're willing to go with a more conventional screen, there are convertible laptops that will a very good job in reading papers in full color.

I appreciate the recommendations. If Book Tab X has a waterproof rating, unfortunately I'm not finding much about it.

There is remarkable paper pro, but it's expensive. And i would want a browser at the very least to download stuff for my reading. (mostly pdfs)

reMarkable however is not very pleasant to use as a reading device, because the screen is just not light enough.

Weight or brightness?

Having played with one for 60 seconds, I assume the author meant weight. It is definitely a bit hefty for something on which you might want to do long form reading.

I have one and I don't think so, at all, to the point it seemed unreasonable.

But it is not unreasonable: you've used one too, and are reasoning.

So I'm thinking...how can I dispel my perception that Remarkable is definitely less than a paperback book?

googles

Ah, a printer's book weight calculator! (https://www.bookmobile.com/book-weight-calculator/)

Let's do cheapest & lightest paper possible. Hmm how many pages for long form...600 pages seems open to questions still, lets do 400.

Use the default size for a paperback in the calculator, 6.25" x 9", sounds reasonable.

Results:

Paperback is 595g. Remarkable Pro is 525g. Remarkable is 404g.

This aside, my prior was light-as-in-display, the background is more towards midgray than white

I don't have the very latest one, mine is the one before the current one so perhaps I am no longer correct, but my issue was brightness.

The screen is big enough and the text is big enough by itself that I should not need my reading glasses, if the contrast was great enough, but it isn't great enough. That by itself is extremely irritating to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4feBmyySDQk

Physical toggle switch really sells it.

Goddamn, if that’s how smooth eInk is now maybe it’s time for me to finally buy a reader.

I dont think this is e-ink and that the point of this article.

Hmm, no you’re right. This does sound an awful lot like the One Laptop Per Child tech.

"It will be released first in Canada..."

Filing this under things we don't see very often (or at least since RIM went underwater).

Does anyone know where I can see one of these screens in person? I'm interested in potentially owning one for reading comics, graphic novels, etc., but I'd really like to see what it looks like in person before spending money on one.

> In addition to the tablet (still without price or release date)

That's the thing... I saw a discussion on reddit the other day in which people were asking about TCL NXTPaper products announced at last year's (2024) CES that still weren't available. I'm interested in one of these NXTPaper Tablet 11 Plus devices for an ereader as my Boox Air 3C's color eink display died about 3 months after buying it (now I know they have a reputation for being extremely fragile). But I wonder if it will ever actually be available in the US.

At least for last year, TCL has been partnering with mobile providers for distribution.

TCL Tab 10 NXTPAPER at Verizon: https://www.verizon.com/tablets/tcl-tab-10-nxtpaper-5g/

I've seen that. I don't want to buy a tablet from a mobile provider. I'm not going to make calls on a tablet. I hope they sell a version of the 11 plus that's not tied to a mobile provider.

Hm. Looks like it is available already? https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/tcl-nxtpaper-11

I believe that is the previous generation. Their naming is confusing.

They claim they have a phone with a 7 day on, 26 day standby battery, and are charging $199 for it.

Something’s fishy.

it’s probably a very basic phone

It only needs to be able to make/receive calls to be called a phone, right? Why would it be more expensive?

It has an alternate low-power mode that only provides a few basic functions (presumably phone, text, maybe a basic web browser?). When running in "regular" Android mode it won't reach those numbers (although I believe it still claims to do better than most phones in that mode).

I mean, a classic old Nokia easily ticks all those boxes, what's fishy about it?

You can get a Garmin inReach emergency "phone" that gives calls + text over satellite and has a 25 day battery life.

And here I thought this was about the programming language!

I honestly would love one of those "paperlike" tablets for reading and browsing the web. I have always liked kindles as well but I just prefer physically owning/reading books. Really cool tech though.

Not to mention that tablets are way more versatile than Kindle-like e-readers. I'm slowly replacing an aging iPad for printed articles (easier on my eyes), but I'd be tempted to get the newer TCL's NXTPAPER tablet once it arrives where I live.

The extra versatility is a con in my opinion. I want a dedicated e-reader that does one thing and does it well. Every design decision should be made with the goal of improving the reading experience.

The (discontinued) Kindle Oasis is close to perfect IMHO.

hell yeah

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