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Comment by CommieBobDole | Hacker News Reader

What exactly is the target market for a very expensive monitor with 4096 colors and an unspecified but almost certainly very slow refresh rate? I could see if they were marketing it as some sort of static display for advertising or similar, but it seems to be intended as a desktop monitor.

Is there some application that e-ink is so good at that it makes up for the multiple extremely serious disadvantages?

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I have migraines that can be triggered by eye strain. Using an eink monitor helps IMMENSELY.

Beat me to it -- completely relate, man. I wrote an entire Visual Studio extension just to let me set my monitor to extremely low brightness/contrast and still be able to read the text.

I've since discovered medication that has eliminated the brunt of Migraine, for me, but this would have been an easy purchase to make, for me.

Mine have gotten significantly better since I purchased the monitor as well, but I think part of that was stepping back from grad school and being more retired.

Hoping to reengage and continue my pursuit of a grad degree but we shall see.

FWIW, the Next color machines had 12bit (4096) color and in practice it didn't make much of a difference. I was using one fairly extensively in the late 90s (by which time 24bit was the norm -- albeit not yet ubiquitous) and for anything other that photo/video work it was perfectly reasonable. It's amazing how far a good dithering algorithm can get you.

The refresh rate is, of course, a different issue

It's much easier on your eyes to read an e-ink display, I would buy this for the right price as a second monitor but if they ever put ads on it even only when its turned off that would be an instant dealbreaker.

Ok, 'second monitor for reading lots of text' makes sense. Shame about the price, though.

Being able to work while in the sun might be nice. Transflective LCDs would be better for this if they were as widely available and didn't likely suffer from lower pixel density.

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