22 ms·

Dasung just released a 25 inch eInk monitor

725 points by tyler109 6y ago

anotheryou 6y ago
I want to see an LCD with really good light sensors and a low brightness setting and see how it looks any different in uniform light.
- tyler109 6y ago
  you can't compare eink with lcd - one requires backlight one not at all - toally different technology
  - anotheryou 6y ago
    Well firstly you can literally compare anything ;) But to be more precise: both "emit" light depending on the ambient light. Of course it's comparable. The only thing really throwing off the LCD would be the white balance, but with the right sensor that too could be fixed (e.g. a camera with fixed wight balance behind milk-glass).
    - tyler109 6y ago
      What about the the blue light emissons?
      - anotheryou 6y ago
        What about them? (E-)Paper reflects blue light, LCD backlight emits it. The only difference is that the color balance and brightness don't change with the sunset on your screen unless you install a tool like flux. Light is light. Looks the same = probably is the same. Bands are just a bit narrower with LEDs, but I wonder if that makes any difference biologically if it looks the same.
        itronitron 6y ago
        With a backlit monitor (or projection screen) your visual system is doing extra work to reconcile two different lighting conditions. eink/epaper is reflecting ambient light just like every other object in the environment so your vision won't need to adjust when glancing back and forth
        anotheryou 6y ago
        Yes, e-paper auto-adjusts. But so do phones if they are set right (best done with a matte screen).
        Stratoscope 6y ago
        This sounds like your monitor is set too bright. (Or less likely, not bright enough.) If you set your monitor to the same brightness that paper or a non-backlit screen would have in your room, then your vision doesn't have to adjust to the different brightness levels. Same for TV. Don't watch TV in a dark room! When I had a modest home theater with a projection TV (the old bulky kind, not a separate projector and screen), one of the best things I did was to light the white wall behind it with a soft neutral gray light. The technique at the time was to use a small fluorescent desk lamp on a small table behind the TV, with the fluorescent tube wrapped in a specific color of lighting "gel" to make it a neutral gray. The lamp was aimed up at the wall behind the TV. This made everything much easier on the eyes.
  - zeta0134 6y ago
    You can't compare eInk with backlit LCD, but front-lit LCD panels totally exist; see any pocket calculator. For a dot-matrix display, the original Gameboy Color is the best example I personally own, but I'm sure countless others exist. The main trouble I think is that very few (any?) manufacturers are making front-lit LCD panels at typical monitor sizes and resolutions. I guess there's not really a market for it? But if such a thing exists I'd compare the heck out of it and eInk.
    - anotheryou 6y ago
      I certainly meant backlit. Viewing angle would be another pain point with them, but that also came a long way and you could chose one with good angles if needed.
    - tyler109 6y ago
      There is also really interesting development happening in the frontlight tech sector. Check out FLEx Lighting, they raiselnd raised 9mln USD to Launch LCD 2.0: https://forum.ei2030.org/t/flex-lighting-raises-9m-in-funding-to-launch-lcd-2-0-display-technology/60 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/flex-lighting-raises-9m-in-fundin...
      - baybal2 6y ago
        Original EEE Note came with such display. People still chose Eink despite the price, and slow refresh.
    - tyler109 6y ago
      There is for an example an interesting market in medical radiology imaging. This is a profession like many other who is always looking for ways to reduce eye strain. they see it as an occupational hazard: http://europepmc.org/article/PMC/5449879 http://europepmc.org/article/PMC/5449879 This is relevant for pretty much any knowledge worker job as well.
  - mojomark 6y ago
    Not all LCD screens require a backlight. Reflective and Transparent LCD's can operate without backlights (1, 2), and the hybrid transflective LCD's can use ambient light and/or backlight to illuminate the image. Transflective LCDs improve sunlight readability without the need for an intense backlight. All LCD's essentially use a similar liquid crystal pixel that serves as a variable light shutter for polarized light. It's the back- and front-planes (e.g. addition or omission of RGB color filters, different types of backlights, fully or partially reflective layers, etc.) that differentiate different types of LCDs. If you have an old LCD laying around, with many of them you can actually take the different layers apart to access the active or passive matrix LCD panel (you'll end up with a transparent LCD). I did it once with a tiny LCD, it's pretty cool. Then you can play around with adding your own layers/lighting effects. 1.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-crystal_display https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-crystal... 2.) https://www.winstar.com.tw/products/tft-lcd/transflective-tft.html https://www.winstar.com.tw/products/tft-lcd/transflective-tf...
    - floatboth 6y ago
      I really like the transflective screen of the Pebble Time watch. I wish I could get a transflective monitor :D
- mortenjorck 6y ago
  I would like to see the same comparison with a reflective LCD display, which is much closer in practice to an e-paper display. My guess is the main drawback would be viewing angles, but I’d also imagine the same screen size would be about a fifth of the price.
  - ddingus 6y ago
    I agree with you. I have an old Seiko watch with something paper like behind the display. At some viewing angles, it looks great. Frankly, I could use either tech for similar reasons. E-ink would be superior for overall viewing and eye strain, however both have merit. The LCD would likely be faster, with a much narrower sweet spot for viewing. And I wonder about these Vanta Black type pigmemts too. E-ink I have seen is really good, but could potentially be crazy good. Maybe that cannot be used, or is too expensive. But yeah, I wonder.
- fpgaminer 6y ago
  You're right. People seem to have this misconception that the light from reflective displays like eInk is somehow different from that of emissive displays like LCD or OLED. Light is light. An LCD with _perfect_ calibration to the local lighting conditions would look indistinguishable from an eInk display, and thus we would expect it to have the same eye-strain reducing properties. Put a different way: when light falls on an eInk "pixel" it gets absorbed and then re-emitted, modulo intensity. That's how we see the vast majority of surfaces in the world: they absorb light and then re-emit it, possibly changing its intensity and color (frequency). Technologies like OLED directly emit light; not reacting significantly to the ambient light that falls on them. But if one we able to measure the light falling on each individual pixel of an OLED, one could adjust each pixel to mimic the behavior of a physical object. It could "simulate" eInk, so to speak. If the mimicry is close enough, then there's no fundamental difference between the two. They'd both be emitting the same frequency and intensity of light. In fact I recall a post, mostly likely here on HN: Someone took a high quality Apple display and rigged it with an array of ambient light sensors, put it in a decorative art frame and hung it on the wall. With some software and calibration they were able to get it to look convincingly like a real piece of art, fooling many of their guests. eInk has been around for decades now and has remained an obscure niche. It's possible we'll see a renaissance for it, with the patents hopefully expiring? But there's no reason we shouldn't also be pursuing better ambient light calibration for our existing displays. P.S. It's not accurate to say that eInk is a "reflective" display, as it does not primarily reflect light. Otherwise it would look like a mirror. But saying "emissive" versus "reflective" is common parlance for differentiating technologies like eInk from technologies like LCDs and OLEDs. Nitpicking the terminology is not particularly helpful though.
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    > "An LCD with _perfect_ calibration to the local lighting conditions would look indistinguishable from an eInk display" Too bad nobody actually makes one. There's no way to buy a hypothetical, so e-ink it is.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      Perfect isn't the goal, it's just a word used to make the proof more obvious. The relevant question is whether you can buy an LCD that calibrates well enough, and the answer is not "obviously no".
tyler109 6y ago
More infos: https://forum.ei2030.org/t/big-news-from-dasung-in-december-2020/48/11 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/big-news-from-dasung-in-december-...
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Another Discourse forum in the wild. Really have to hand it to Jeff Atwood, Sam Saffron, and the team. How many of us (incl myself) thought that the world wasn't looking for a refresh of forum software? Now I realize I haven't even seen phpbb used on a forum made since 2010—everyone just uses Discourse.
  - tyler109 6y ago
    It's perfect medium for so many niche communities and for everything that needs to be a bit more sophisticated than reddit
brimstedt 6y ago
Isn't that a very good frame rate for an einc display?
- carlmr 6y ago
  I can't find the frame rate, what is it?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - IshKebab 6y ago
    looks about 10 FPS to me which is indeed very good for e-ink.
- worldsayshi 6y ago
  I don't understand why there's not more investment into transreflective LCD technology like pixel qi since no one seems to be able to bring down e ink prices. Pixel qi allows passive lighting in grey scale while also allowing colour with active lighting. And higher frame rate than e ink while still having low power consumption thanks to passive lighting ability. Edit: Found an interesting article on the fate of pixel qi and some other alternatives to e-ink: https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/the-rise-and-fall-of-pixel-qi-how-it-shaped-the-e-reader-revolution https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/the-rise-and...
tyler109 6y ago
Here is a video where Dasung presents their product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  Thanks, none of those Chinese links were working for me. The refresh rate is better than I expected but I kinda like color. We’re a few years out for me it seems :/
  - bserge 6y ago
    Try to refresh/reload after opening them, they don't seem to like external referers. Or copy the link to a new tab, that's a more reliable way on any browser.
  - simias 6y ago
    I think I could deal with monochrome for coding. But these monitors are still way too expensive for me, if they retailed for less than ~1k$ I'd consider it.
    - tyler109 6y ago
      Then you need to go for the "13 inch one
      - simias 6y ago
        I considered it but it's a little too small for my taste.
    - hh3k0 6y ago
      > But these monitors are still way too expensive for me I will never be an early adopter for that precise reason. I _do_ think the monitors look quite lovely but I am not interested in a product with such a hefty price tag while being made in China. (Full disclosure, I will go out of my way to avoid Chinese products even if the price tag is more reasonable.) That being said, I would pay $1k for a 13" monitor made in Germany, Europe, Japan or USA.
jbverschoor 6y ago
Wow that's some really fast response if it can even play a video. Excellent for productivity!
ggm 6y ago
How low power in 'on mode'? its a given its low power in off-mode. For coding, flicker free would be lovely.
- Synaesthesia 6y ago
  They're passive screens right, the power consumption is tiny and probably literally zero when not updating.
DSingularity 6y ago
Is this good for people with dry eyes?
- tyler109 6y ago
  Yes eink is a very effective way to reduce eye strain especially for thos who work long hours in front of the PC. That's also one of the reasons why some people use it for coding: https://forum.ei2030.org/t/coding-with-an-eink-monitor/46/2 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/coding-with-an-eink-monitor/46/2
  - z3t4 6y ago
    as someone who only use minimal code highlighting and !"zen mode" coding it seems interesting. I wonder what the latency will be though. eg. time between key press and letter showing up on the screen. Although we can tolerate quite high latency. Can't wait for big eInk displays with color support.
    - tyler109 6y ago
      I'm working with an Dasung 13" , it's actually in real time. You don't notice a lag between key press and display appearance.
chx 6y ago
I could use this for coding and my current 1920x1200 monitor for video and games... mmm.... so yummy. I already have a Dasung product, the not-eReader which doubles as a 7" eInk monitor and I love it. It's part of my tech EDC kit which I posted to https://imgur.com/a/xmRmYSn https://imgur.com/a/xmRmYSn To get back on topic, a 25.3" 3200 * 1800 eInk panel is mentioned at https://www.beck-elektronik.de/en/products/displays/e-paper-display-epd/active-matrix-epd/ac253qt1/ https://www.beck-elektronik.de/en/products/displays/e-paper-... and I doubt there is more than one but all details are "tbd".
- tra3 6y ago
  Neat. What kind of laptop is it?
  - protoman3000 6y ago
    That’s a GPD Pocket. Neat little devices.
    - chx 6y ago
      Nope, it's a One Mix Yoga 2S, the similar gen GPD Pocket was eMMC, this is NVMe, quite a bit faster. And I believe later GPD Pockets were bigger.
- foldor 6y ago
  For coding, I'm not sure I could go back to greyscale IDE colours. I love syntax highlighting helping me quickly identify different parts of code at a glance. I would love to try though, might see what the price is first.
  - tyler109 6y ago
    There is mods and hacks to have syntax highlighting on b/w https://forum.ei2030.org/t/best-dasung-eink-monitor-setup/42/4 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/best-dasung-eink-monitor-setup/42...
  - 6y ago
ddingus 6y ago
I want this. Plenty fast enough! So relaxing. For many things, e-ink is amazing tech. Had given up on it generally. This is good news.
StavrosK 6y ago
2000 USD is a bit pricy for a monitor for me, but it's great to see e-ink making it to other form factors.
- the_only_law 6y ago
  That’s about the price of the 30-inch from e-ink. I wonder if Dasung makes it’s a little less of a pain in the ass to purchase one.
axegon_ 6y ago
The awesome thing about eink displays and monitors is the low power consumption. The bad thing is the price. Somehow I doubt this will be any less than 1.5-2k eur.
- city41 6y ago
  From the reddit thread > No exact pricing yet, but a teaser in form of "1xxx9", so it could be anything from 10009¥ to 19999¥, so about 1500$ and 3000$ or 1250€ to 2500€ respectively.
  - h4tch 6y ago
    For $2.8K you could get a 31" e-ink color display and driver board. https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%cb%9d-color-epaper-display-ec312tt2/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%cb%9d-color-epaper-di...
    - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
      > "For $2.8K you could get a 31" e-ink color display and driver board." Which isn't a monitor. It's a barebones devkit that doesn't accept video input and takes a couple dozen seconds to refresh.
  - axegon_ 6y ago
    So I pretty much nailed it.
mortenjorck 6y ago
It looks like the breakthrough here is in making a large (bigger than e-reader-sized) e-paper display available as a self-contained, HDMI-compatible monitor instead of just a display assembly for OEMs and experienced DIYers. While I don’t expect this to also be a breakthrough in terms of pricing, hopefully it starts driving the volume that will eventually make this type of display more accessible.
- nextos 6y ago
  A slightly more accessible option right now is an AMOLED screen. If you work on applications with a black background, like a terminal or a text editor, it has some of the same benefits. Namely, there's no backlight as individual pixels get lighted on their own. Sadly, AMOLED hasn't progressed as quickly as we expected and big screens are both rare and expensive. Besides, eInk has some advantages like lower energy consumption.
  - carlmr 6y ago
    If you don't care too much about the vibrant colors and viewing angles of IPS and OLED, I can recommend VA screens. They have far better contrast than IPS. The black is indeed black. I find it great for working in dark mode on text. However the colors and viewing angles are a trade-off. Although I find the viewing angles are still better than TN and can be somewhat mitigated with a curved screen. I personally use a curved 32" 4K VA screen. The resolution, text size and contrast make this great for text heavy work.
    - pastrami_panda 6y ago
      I agree about what you said, I've been on ultra wide 21:9 VA with 1500R curve for a couple of years and it's been really good. I am curious about the new 1000R displays though, at first it seemed like a gimmick - but it totally makes sense curving the screen so much in order to diminish or even radicate the need to refocus your eyes as they look across the panel. But I haven't had a chance to try it out in person yet due to the current times. Anyone here on ultra wide 1000R?
  - 6y ago
jldugger 6y ago
Whats the refresh rate? 4fps?
- tyler109 6y ago
  15 fps and upwards
- reificator 6y ago
  Full motion video shown here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY
mynameishere 6y ago
Is there anywhere where you could actually try one of these out? If they worked as desired, I'd get one. A kindle updates so slowly I'm a little skeptical of the demonstration...
- tyler109 6y ago
  You can check some youtube test videos. But it's actually really that fast, I own Dasung monitors myself.
- toyg 6y ago
  Kindles are not cutting-edge tech, they never were. They are robust and cheap, so they can enable Amazon’s strategy to flog at-cost low-end hardware that makes it easy for consumers to buy higher-margin digital goods. The likes of Dasung and reMarkable actually advance the field.
ohlookabird 6y ago
I have their not-eReader (a tablet sized e-ink display) and it's really nice. I usually have it connected as secondary monitor to my laptop and placed in a small arm/stand next to it. Often, I read docs like man pages or API docs on it while coding. This generally works really well with the included HDMI+USB cable. Sometimes I also read news websites on it and use it as an eReader for "regular" books. It has a sort of custom Android on it and one can install quite a few apps on it as well (e.g. to watch YouTube---yes, not perfect, but surprisingly well). The refresh rate is indeed really nice.
- cordite 6y ago
  I have one of those, I have not determined how to effectively use it. As well as one of the USB dasung paperlike screens. Unfortunately accessing the software and use on modern windows and mac os seems impossible.
- curiousgal 6y ago
  How well does it handle PDFs?
  - tyler109 6y ago
    Very well. PDF is the easiest task.
layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
Modern software have so much input latency that an e-ink monitor no longer sounds ridiculous.
xwdv 6y ago
Wow vim would be heavenly to use on this.
- tyler109 6y ago
  Imagine this device on eink: * DevTerm - An Open Source Portable Terminal 4
johnchristopher 6y ago
How funny we are in awe of cyberpunk gibsonian minority report holo interface but what we want is the closest thing to paper possible. I want a second generation screen :).
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Then again, paper that can be updated is an ancient sci-fi trope, so perhaps it's not so ironic.
  - tyler109 6y ago
    To even get more sci-fi: Eink x Crypto | The merge of two industries https://forum.ei2030.org/t/eink-x-crypto-the-merge-of-two-industries/69 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/eink-x-crypto-the-merge-of-two-in...
- treeman79 6y ago
  Retention is better with paper.
  - delecti 6y ago
    But does that translate to eink? Based on my experience with studying and notetaking, I think retention is better with paper because it's an object you're interacting with. The fact that text (whether I'm reading or writing it) is on a static location relative to the world seems to give it some extra anchor in my memory. Assuming I'm not completely imagining that effect, then an eink monitor wouldn't have any of those benefits.
kzrdude 6y ago
As a kid I was so excited when dad would bring home a color monitor. We could finally play sim city 2000, too. And now people are excited many years later for a new kind of grayscale monitor :P
- benjarrell 6y ago
  I always heard everything old will be new again growing up, but as I age is interesting to see it actually happen.
  - sunshinerag 6y ago
    why? was there a epaper kind of display whenever you were younger? or are you comparing this to monochrome light emitting displays?
    - tom_ 6y ago
      The Atari ST's late 80s monochrome CRT looked a bit like an eink display, with no discernible flicker even at 72 Hz. It certainly looked very different from a 72 Hz colour CRT displaying a monochrome image. I think it used a different type of phosphor.
      - icedchai 6y ago
        You’d need much lower than 72 hz for you to notice flicker. Regular VGA was 60 hz. Amiga interlace had noticeable flicker with an effective rate of 25 to 30 hz.
        steffan 6y ago
        This is biology-dependent. With CRTs, I could detect flicker all the way up to 85Hz* (where it vanished for me). Made it a real pain to find a good monitor. * Hitachi 21" CRT which seemed enormous at the time
        6y ago
redisman 6y ago
I’m still waiting for a eink small phone + reader. Is there anything interesting in that space out yet?
- tyler109 6y ago
  Yes https://forum.ei2030.org/t/hisense-a7-5g-first-e-ink-smartphone-with-5g-to-be-launched-on-december-22/68 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/hisense-a7-5g-first-e-ink-smartph...
  - redisman 6y ago
    Where do you get it though? Seems like only a few on eBay
    - 50 6y ago
      On the Good e-Reader Store, I presume: https://goodereader.com/blog/product-category/smartphones https://goodereader.com/blog/product-category/smartphones Debating on whether I should go for the A7 (https://goodereader.com/blog/product/hisense-a7-5g-e-ink-smartphone https://goodereader.com/blog/product/hisense-a7-5g-e-ink-sma...) or the Light Phone II (https://www.thelightphone.com/products https://www.thelightphone.com/products) - both having e-ink displays, as far as I know - as an upgrade from my SE (2016). Although, both phones do have different use-cases of course.
- b0rsuk 6y ago
  There are a couple. https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/the-best-e-ink-smartphones-of-2020 https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/the-best-e-ink-smartpho...
batrat 6y ago
Now make a color eInk display (it could be at least 256 colors) and you have my money.
- tyler109 6y ago
  It's only a matter of time. Here is a glimpse on how it could look like: https://youtu.be/AvLbGDDUI3I https://youtu.be/AvLbGDDUI3I
- rvz 6y ago
  Well just tell Dasung to fit this [0] thing in a new monitor and they can have your money. [0] https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%CB%9D-color-epaper-display-ec312tt2/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%CB%9D-color-epaper-di...
forgotmypw17 6y ago
accessible link: https://teddit.net/r/eink/comments/kjvsoj/dasung_just_released_a_25_inch_eink_monitor/ https://teddit.net/r/eink/comments/kjvsoj/dasung_just_releas...
DennisP 6y ago
I think my ideal laptop would have a 16" screen like this one, a mech keyboard, and a nice long battery life. Just work outside all day.
- pmontra 6y ago
  And a lamp. For all they shortcomings emissive screens carry their own lighting. A reflective screen has the same problems a book page has. We would need a lamp to read it well in a dark room or inside in a cloudy day. Maybe more than one lamp (left and right) especially for a large screen.
  - worldsayshi 6y ago
    Not the case with pixel qi screens as they can be used with both passive and active lighting.
    - globular-toast 6y ago
      I think he means an external lamp, like a reading lamp, not a backlight.
  - meowster 6y ago
    Or just something like what Amazon does with their Kindle. Though I think there is an old Thinkpad model that had a light on the lid that lit the keyboard. Maybe something like that would work nicely.
krm01 6y ago
Any ideas where to get cheap e-ink displays to hack some hardware projects with? The prices on these things don’t seem to get any better as time progresses.
- tyler109 6y ago
  Yes check here the inkplate https://forum.ei2030.org/t/inkplate-6-an-open-source-hardware-e-paper-display-project/55 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/inkplate-6-an-open-source-hardwar...
sergiotapia 6y ago
Why would I want an e-ink monitor? I get it's good for ereaders but what kind of workflows are you expecting to do on this monitor?
- tyler109 6y ago
  Highly foccused tasks that only require text: -E-mail -Coding -Research -Writing Benefits: Zero distraction Zero eyestrain No Bluelight
  - zajio1am 6y ago
    > Benefits: Zero distraction Zero eyestrain No Bluelight Why should there be difference? 'Distraction' is a question of applications, not monitor type. Eyestrain is a result of long-term near focus and insufficient blinking leading to dryness, no reason why eink monitor help with this. Bluelight - regular LCD has LED backlight that passes through LCD, with eink there is an external LED light, reflected by eink back. The source of light is the same (well, depends on specific type of dides in LED backlight vs LED light).
    - reificator 6y ago
      > Why should there be difference? 'Distraction' is a question of applications, not monitor type. Distraction is a question of colors and rate of change. While it's a copout way to address black and white displays, most people who turn their backlit monitors black and white report a noticeable difference in focus. At least for the first week or so. > Bluelight - regular LCD has LED backlight that passes through LCD, with eink there is an external LED light, reflected by eink back. The source of light is the same (well, depends on specific type of dides in LED backlight vs LED light). By external LED light you mean the lightbulbs in your home? This is not backlit or frontlit or any kind of lit if you put it in a dark room.
      - zajio1am 6y ago
        > By external LED light you mean the lightbulbs in your home? Yes
syntaxing 6y ago
Love the idea but 2K is a bit steep. I wouldn’t mind if this thing can last a decade. A dual monitor setup with this vertical sounds like a dream setup. Seems like a trans reflective display? I always thought this type of screen had issues over 10” because of the inner membrane.
bertmuthalaly 6y ago
What's the refresh rate?
- bertmuthalaly 6y ago
  Not a precise answer, but they show video of a figure skater in the product reveal video and it looks usable! Link with timestamp: https://youtu.be/A9qrURPAtnY?t=109 https://youtu.be/A9qrURPAtnY?t=109
  - ConcreteGidget 6y ago
    I'd like to add that we are watching a 24fps video of a monitor so the actual performance is probably even better. Meanwhile my kindle oasis has like 1fps.
jonplackett 6y ago
What's the deal with refresh rate on eInk these days?
- ConcreteGidget 6y ago
  If you watch the video the display seems to be around 10fps which is the best I've ever seen for eInk.
lifeisstillgood 6y ago
So next week I expect to see the wall-mounted, mahogany bezeled version that refreshes the front page of the NYT or the Times of India each hour. Perfect gift for that person who has everything. (From a thread a month or so ago, where someone did this as a maker, now it's much more commercially viable)
- BillinghamJ 6y ago
  The Visionect one is around the same price as this but substantially larger - https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/ https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/ - I think this is what the person used the other day It's essentially plug-and-play - no major technical skill required to use it
  - louwrentius 6y ago
    Refresh rate: 750 ms (4 bit full screen) / 100 ms (1 bit partial) Doesn't seem to be in the same league if we factor in refresh rates. Doesn't seem to be usable as a monitor. But it would perfectly work for refreshing a newspaper every hour. :)
    - tyler109 6y ago
      Yes but the Dasung monitor is much faster
      - bbarnett 6y ago
        I bought a current model on Amazon, about 6 months ago, but was really disappointed. I have a rooted Nook Glowlight, years old, yet I find it much better. The Dasung had several 'modes' you could choose, but none worked well. Worse, their software is closed source, is fairly buggy, and requires root for zero reason. I felt very uncomfortable about installing it, and didn't. https://www.reddit.com/r/Paperlike/comments/au0yuc/dasung_on_linux/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Paperlike/comments/au0yuc/dasung_on... Without the software installed, you have to manually hit the 'refresh' button. This is done to clear up errant pixels aka a screen flash. Yet the refresh process was slow, so to test, rather than let their questionable software do it, I hit the manual button on the monitor. The flash on/off was highly annoying, and I couldn't imagine reading text, coding, working this way once the software was installed. Customer service from dasung was non-existent. I had to return it. I so much want an e-ink display.
SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
Question for someone familiar with this technology: how far are we from the holy grail of fully-wireless flexible color ePaper displays with embedded batteries? I had a project idea and was disappointed to learn that everything currently on the market requires a separate power source and a wired connection to whatever hardware is driving the display.
- tyler109 6y ago
  Not far sir: https://forum.ei2030.org/t/flexible-electronic-paper-is-being-launched-for-wearables/34 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/flexible-electronic-paper-is-bein...
- Brakenshire 6y ago
  You might be interested in this: https://www.pcmag.com/news/waveshares-e-paper-displays-work-without-a-battery https://www.pcmag.com/news/waveshares-e-paper-displays-work-...
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  Perhaps one of the existing color e-ink readers can be hacked to meet your needs: https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/these-are-all-of-the-color-e-ink-e-readers-from-2020 https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/these-are-al...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ConcreteGidget 6y ago
Is this company publicly traded? I've never heard of this company before.
- tyler109 6y ago
  They use screens from eink holdings which is publicly traded. Dasung is private. More on eink stock investing:https://forum.ei2030.org/t/investing-to-eink-epaper-stocks/67/3 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/investing-to-eink-epaper-stocks/6...
  - ConcreteGidget 6y ago
    Thanks
  - tomcam 6y ago
    OK I really wish you didn’t post that. It looks absolutely amazing and my desk is already too full of monitors.
  - ant6n 6y ago
    If the theory is that everybody is just waiting for e-ink patents to expire to open up the market, wouldn't it be a bad idea to invest in the company holding those patents?
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  They've been around for a while. They ran successful crowdfunding campaigns for several generations of their previous 13" e-ink monitors (https://www.indiegogo.com/individuals/13653865/campaigns https://www.indiegogo.com/individuals/13653865/campaigns) and a Kickstarter for their e-ink tablet.
louwrentius 6y ago
It's funnny, I wrote an article about a relatively cheap 12.48 inch (1304x984) 3-color (red/white/black) display a few days ago. It has a refresh time of 16 seconds.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25522966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25522966
deleted 6y ago
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SMAAART 6y ago
ELI5: what's the big deal? It's B&W!
- mellosouls 6y ago
  Same reason you would prefer a Kindle (or other hardware e-reader) for reading normal books over a tablet. The eyestrain thing apparently doesn't affect everyone, but for those it does it makes staring at a screen for hours a non-issue. Also, although it probably isn't such a useful function with a monitor (except in warm climates), this sort of screen will be fine to read outside compared to - say - a laptop screen.
deleted 6y ago
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intricatedetail 6y ago
One day we will have cash made of eink. You'll transfer BTC to the "paper" and pay.
- tyler109 6y ago
  How could this look like ? Can you elaborate ?
  - intricatedetail 6y ago
    Almost like regular plastic cash note. Maybe a bit thicker. For example it could assume US dollar look. Note is blank until you "upload" BTC to it, then it will look like e.g. $100 note. You could only "cash" the cash by downloading it back to your wallet. Then it becomes blank again. It could also split if you wanted to "cash" only half.
seltzered_ 6y ago
I wish they just revised the 13" version they already make so everything (power, display xfer) worked over a single usb-c cable. Bonus if it also doubles as an android tablet.
- levpopov 6y ago
  The nice thing about the current version is that it's just a straight-up HDMI peripheral so you don't have to worry about any security issues (Dasung's software is not exactly confidence inspiring, and I definitely would not touch any Android device shipped by them). USB-C would make it a lot more convenient for quickly plugging in though.
ohazi 6y ago
E Ink is a great example of how the patent system stifles innovation. One company developed a small, expensive, newspaper-quality electrophoretic display with a refresh rate so terrible it was only suitable for books, decided that that was good enough, and 15 years later every comment in this thread is looking forward to finally seeing some innovation in this space "once the patents expire." That is some first class bullshit. We could have had large form, glossy brochure quality displays with video refresh rates by now, but nobody outside of China wanted to get anywhere near this patent minefield.
- 0x00000000 6y ago
  Their sales/marketing philosophy was disappointing too. Zero interest in supporting the hobbyist community.
- deadbunny 6y ago
  Exactly the same thing happened in the 3D printing space.
  - HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by that, there are new & improved models of 3d printers coming out all the time and decent hobbyist printers are becoming available for progressively lower prices.
    - balfirevic 6y ago
      Yes, that started to happen once the key patents expired.
    - jcfrei 6y ago
      Parent is probably talking about SLS (selective laser sintering). Patents expired in 2014.
    - jjeaff 6y ago
      I believe the major fdm patents were filed decades ago and little was done until recently when they expired.
dheera 6y ago
Non-blogspam link: https://m.weibo.cn/u/5061214872#&video https://m.weibo.cn/u/5061214872#&video
scioxo 6y ago
I've been waiting for something like this for years, but goddamn it, why does it have to be 16:9? I thought eink was the last market that saw the sense in 4:3. It should be an instant buy, but maybe now I'll see what else comes out.
- toyg 6y ago
  Personally, to me a 16:9 vertical layout makes more sense than 4:3 for a device that will likely specialize on text.
erhk 6y ago
Please link directly to the source rather than to Reddit. It does not display on most mobile browsers
Diggsey 6y ago
From the video it looks like they haven't completely solved the ghosting problem which occurs when the screen is updated without going through a full-refresh cycle. They seem to be trying to hide it too, given how they cut away so quickly from moving content on the screen... That said, E-Ink displays are cool, and this still appears to be a huge advancement.
deleted 6y ago
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PIKAL 6y ago
Patents holding things back is a feature. It encourages innovation because patents give a lot of security to innovators. Even if you found a way to incentivize innovators while simultaneously subjecting them to the ruthless meat grinder called the free market, it would just result in everything changing all the time. There’s no hurry. Technological progress isn’t always neutral, either. A new technology, even medical technology, could change the equation irreversibly in a very negative way. We’ve just been lucky recently.
gcampos 6y ago
I would gladly pay the premium price if it is a better monitor for long hours of coding. However, I wonder if the ghosting and the low refresh rate would negate any benefits it would have over a 4K monitor
Funes- 6y ago
I have a 13.3-inch Dasung e-ink monitor, and use it daily for three to six hours (basically, whenever I use my PC). Some days ago the HDMI cable it came with broke, so before I had the opportunity to replace it, I had to switch back to an LED monitor for the time being. Well, surely anyone can already guess what happened... After just a couple of days, I came upon a long forgotten enemy: eye fatigue. Blurry vision, trouble focusing it, and a light headache. Like many others here, I wish the technology could have advanced faster and been made more accessible for everyone. Without the obstacles it still faces, I'm sure we would already have color screens with a good refresh rate. C'est la vie.
- tyler109 6y ago
  I hope color eink monitors become a reality soon. For those who suffer from eye strain through conventional LED this would be a game changer.
- InvOfSmallC 6y ago
  Can I ask you how is the feedback when you write on your keyboard? Isn't there a delay?
  - Funes- 6y ago
    The refresh rate is really good for an e-ink screen. There's no significant delay when typing. It's not blazing fast, but it never gets noticeable enough to be annoying. I even watch videos on this thing, although I account for the lag by adding a 200 ms A-V delay on mpv (Ctrl++).
    - exikyut 6y ago
      To be completely clear, do you mean that there's a median of ~200ms of latency? That's kind of my "oww, server is too far away" point with SSH...
      - Funes- 6y ago
        It's closer to 150 ms. mpv only lets you increase or decrease delay in intervals of a hundred milliseconds, as far as I know.
deleted 6y ago
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foman 6y ago
Direct video link here https://weibo.com/tv/show/1034:4586028745293852 https://weibo.com/tv/show/1034:4586028745293852
achow 6y ago
Reddit demo links are down. The alternate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY
garfieldnate 6y ago
The refresh rate is much better than it used to be! Can hobbyists buy smaller e-ink screens (think iPad mini size) with refresh rate this good?
univalent 6y ago
I'm going to spring for this one. I'm still using an old TFT CCFL LCD display here because anything else gives me a pounding headache and face twitching.
- tyler109 6y ago
  Can you share the exact model?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
plaidfuji 6y ago
A few years back there was a promising Dutch startup called Liquavista working on “electro wetting” - a kind of next-gen full-color low-latency reflective display tech that functioned a lot like LCD, but instead of modulating LC orientation, they would quickly tune the hydrophilicity of pixel-size glass cells that would cause an ink droplet to either bead up in the corner (become transparent) or wet the entire pixel. Sounded really cool. They got bought by Amazon and haven’t heard anything since. https://lookgadgets.com/liquavista/ https://lookgadgets.com/liquavista/
koolk3ychain 6y ago
This is the kind of bleeding edge device I wish a service like Drop (formerly MassDrop) would pick up. If anyone is interested I'd definitely be interested in facilitating a group buy for this device!
homakov 6y ago
any estimation when is it out? should i wait or get 13 inch version now?

725 points by tyler109 6y ago

I want to see an LCD with really good light sensors and a low brightness setting and see how it looks any different in uniform light.

tyler109 6y ago
you can't compare eink with lcd - one requires backlight one not at all - toally different technology
- anotheryou 6y ago
  Well firstly you can literally compare anything ;) But to be more precise: both "emit" light depending on the ambient light. Of course it's comparable. The only thing really throwing off the LCD would be the white balance, but with the right sensor that too could be fixed (e.g. a camera with fixed wight balance behind milk-glass).
  - tyler109 6y ago
    What about the the blue light emissons?
    - anotheryou 6y ago
      What about them? (E-)Paper reflects blue light, LCD backlight emits it. The only difference is that the color balance and brightness don't change with the sunset on your screen unless you install a tool like flux. Light is light. Looks the same = probably is the same. Bands are just a bit narrower with LEDs, but I wonder if that makes any difference biologically if it looks the same.
      - itronitron 6y ago
        With a backlit monitor (or projection screen) your visual system is doing extra work to reconcile two different lighting conditions. eink/epaper is reflecting ambient light just like every other object in the environment so your vision won't need to adjust when glancing back and forth
        anotheryou 6y ago
        Yes, e-paper auto-adjusts. But so do phones if they are set right (best done with a matte screen).
        Stratoscope 6y ago
        This sounds like your monitor is set too bright. (Or less likely, not bright enough.) If you set your monitor to the same brightness that paper or a non-backlit screen would have in your room, then your vision doesn't have to adjust to the different brightness levels. Same for TV. Don't watch TV in a dark room! When I had a modest home theater with a projection TV (the old bulky kind, not a separate projector and screen), one of the best things I did was to light the white wall behind it with a soft neutral gray light. The technique at the time was to use a small fluorescent desk lamp on a small table behind the TV, with the fluorescent tube wrapped in a specific color of lighting "gel" to make it a neutral gray. The lamp was aimed up at the wall behind the TV. This made everything much easier on the eyes.
- zeta0134 6y ago
  You can't compare eInk with backlit LCD, but front-lit LCD panels totally exist; see any pocket calculator. For a dot-matrix display, the original Gameboy Color is the best example I personally own, but I'm sure countless others exist. The main trouble I think is that very few (any?) manufacturers are making front-lit LCD panels at typical monitor sizes and resolutions. I guess there's not really a market for it? But if such a thing exists I'd compare the heck out of it and eInk.
  - anotheryou 6y ago
    I certainly meant backlit. Viewing angle would be another pain point with them, but that also came a long way and you could chose one with good angles if needed.
  - tyler109 6y ago
    There is also really interesting development happening in the frontlight tech sector. Check out FLEx Lighting, they raiselnd raised 9mln USD to Launch LCD 2.0: https://forum.ei2030.org/t/flex-lighting-raises-9m-in-funding-to-launch-lcd-2-0-display-technology/60 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/flex-lighting-raises-9m-in-fundin...
    - baybal2 6y ago
      Original EEE Note came with such display. People still chose Eink despite the price, and slow refresh.
  - tyler109 6y ago
    There is for an example an interesting market in medical radiology imaging. This is a profession like many other who is always looking for ways to reduce eye strain. they see it as an occupational hazard: http://europepmc.org/article/PMC/5449879 http://europepmc.org/article/PMC/5449879 This is relevant for pretty much any knowledge worker job as well.
- mojomark 6y ago
  Not all LCD screens require a backlight. Reflective and Transparent LCD's can operate without backlights (1, 2), and the hybrid transflective LCD's can use ambient light and/or backlight to illuminate the image. Transflective LCDs improve sunlight readability without the need for an intense backlight. All LCD's essentially use a similar liquid crystal pixel that serves as a variable light shutter for polarized light. It's the back- and front-planes (e.g. addition or omission of RGB color filters, different types of backlights, fully or partially reflective layers, etc.) that differentiate different types of LCDs. If you have an old LCD laying around, with many of them you can actually take the different layers apart to access the active or passive matrix LCD panel (you'll end up with a transparent LCD). I did it once with a tiny LCD, it's pretty cool. Then you can play around with adding your own layers/lighting effects. 1.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-crystal_display https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-crystal... 2.) https://www.winstar.com.tw/products/tft-lcd/transflective-tft.html https://www.winstar.com.tw/products/tft-lcd/transflective-tf...
  - floatboth 6y ago
    I really like the transflective screen of the Pebble Time watch. I wish I could get a transflective monitor :D
mortenjorck 6y ago
I would like to see the same comparison with a reflective LCD display, which is much closer in practice to an e-paper display. My guess is the main drawback would be viewing angles, but I’d also imagine the same screen size would be about a fifth of the price.
- ddingus 6y ago
  I agree with you. I have an old Seiko watch with something paper like behind the display. At some viewing angles, it looks great. Frankly, I could use either tech for similar reasons. E-ink would be superior for overall viewing and eye strain, however both have merit. The LCD would likely be faster, with a much narrower sweet spot for viewing. And I wonder about these Vanta Black type pigmemts too. E-ink I have seen is really good, but could potentially be crazy good. Maybe that cannot be used, or is too expensive. But yeah, I wonder.
fpgaminer 6y ago
You're right. People seem to have this misconception that the light from reflective displays like eInk is somehow different from that of emissive displays like LCD or OLED. Light is light. An LCD with _perfect_ calibration to the local lighting conditions would look indistinguishable from an eInk display, and thus we would expect it to have the same eye-strain reducing properties. Put a different way: when light falls on an eInk "pixel" it gets absorbed and then re-emitted, modulo intensity. That's how we see the vast majority of surfaces in the world: they absorb light and then re-emit it, possibly changing its intensity and color (frequency). Technologies like OLED directly emit light; not reacting significantly to the ambient light that falls on them. But if one we able to measure the light falling on each individual pixel of an OLED, one could adjust each pixel to mimic the behavior of a physical object. It could "simulate" eInk, so to speak. If the mimicry is close enough, then there's no fundamental difference between the two. They'd both be emitting the same frequency and intensity of light. In fact I recall a post, mostly likely here on HN: Someone took a high quality Apple display and rigged it with an array of ambient light sensors, put it in a decorative art frame and hung it on the wall. With some software and calibration they were able to get it to look convincingly like a real piece of art, fooling many of their guests. eInk has been around for decades now and has remained an obscure niche. It's possible we'll see a renaissance for it, with the patents hopefully expiring? But there's no reason we shouldn't also be pursuing better ambient light calibration for our existing displays. P.S. It's not accurate to say that eInk is a "reflective" display, as it does not primarily reflect light. Otherwise it would look like a mirror. But saying "emissive" versus "reflective" is common parlance for differentiating technologies like eInk from technologies like LCDs and OLEDs. Nitpicking the terminology is not particularly helpful though.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "An LCD with _perfect_ calibration to the local lighting conditions would look indistinguishable from an eInk display" Too bad nobody actually makes one. There's no way to buy a hypothetical, so e-ink it is.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Perfect isn't the goal, it's just a word used to make the proof more obvious. The relevant question is whether you can buy an LCD that calibrates well enough, and the answer is not "obviously no".

tyler109 6y ago

More infos: https://forum.ei2030.org/t/big-news-from-dasung-in-december-2020/48/11 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/big-news-from-dasung-in-december-...

hombre_fatal 6y ago
Another Discourse forum in the wild. Really have to hand it to Jeff Atwood, Sam Saffron, and the team. How many of us (incl myself) thought that the world wasn't looking for a refresh of forum software? Now I realize I haven't even seen phpbb used on a forum made since 2010—everyone just uses Discourse.
- tyler109 6y ago
  It's perfect medium for so many niche communities and for everything that needs to be a bit more sophisticated than reddit

brimstedt 6y ago

Isn't that a very good frame rate for an einc display?

carlmr 6y ago
I can't find the frame rate, what is it?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- IshKebab 6y ago
  looks about 10 FPS to me which is indeed very good for e-ink.
worldsayshi 6y ago
I don't understand why there's not more investment into transreflective LCD technology like pixel qi since no one seems to be able to bring down e ink prices. Pixel qi allows passive lighting in grey scale while also allowing colour with active lighting. And higher frame rate than e ink while still having low power consumption thanks to passive lighting ability. Edit: Found an interesting article on the fate of pixel qi and some other alternatives to e-ink: https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/the-rise-and-fall-of-pixel-qi-how-it-shaped-the-e-reader-revolution https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/the-rise-and...

tyler109 6y ago

Here is a video where Dasung presents their product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY

SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
Thanks, none of those Chinese links were working for me. The refresh rate is better than I expected but I kinda like color. We’re a few years out for me it seems :/
- bserge 6y ago
  Try to refresh/reload after opening them, they don't seem to like external referers. Or copy the link to a new tab, that's a more reliable way on any browser.
- simias 6y ago
  I think I could deal with monochrome for coding. But these monitors are still way too expensive for me, if they retailed for less than ~1k$ I'd consider it.
  - tyler109 6y ago
    Then you need to go for the "13 inch one
    - simias 6y ago
      I considered it but it's a little too small for my taste.
  - hh3k0 6y ago
    > But these monitors are still way too expensive for me I will never be an early adopter for that precise reason. I _do_ think the monitors look quite lovely but I am not interested in a product with such a hefty price tag while being made in China. (Full disclosure, I will go out of my way to avoid Chinese products even if the price tag is more reasonable.) That being said, I would pay $1k for a 13" monitor made in Germany, Europe, Japan or USA.

jbverschoor 6y ago

Wow that's some really fast response if it can even play a video. Excellent for productivity!

ggm 6y ago

How low power in 'on mode'? its a given its low power in off-mode. For coding, flicker free would be lovely.

Synaesthesia 6y ago
They're passive screens right, the power consumption is tiny and probably literally zero when not updating.

DSingularity 6y ago

Is this good for people with dry eyes?

tyler109 6y ago
Yes eink is a very effective way to reduce eye strain especially for thos who work long hours in front of the PC. That's also one of the reasons why some people use it for coding: https://forum.ei2030.org/t/coding-with-an-eink-monitor/46/2 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/coding-with-an-eink-monitor/46/2
- z3t4 6y ago
  as someone who only use minimal code highlighting and !"zen mode" coding it seems interesting. I wonder what the latency will be though. eg. time between key press and letter showing up on the screen. Although we can tolerate quite high latency. Can't wait for big eInk displays with color support.
  - tyler109 6y ago
    I'm working with an Dasung 13" , it's actually in real time. You don't notice a lag between key press and display appearance.

chx 6y ago

I could use this for coding and my current 1920x1200 monitor for video and games... mmm.... so yummy. I already have a Dasung product, the not-eReader which doubles as a 7" eInk monitor and I love it. It's part of my tech EDC kit which I posted to https://imgur.com/a/xmRmYSn https://imgur.com/a/xmRmYSn To get back on topic, a 25.3" 3200 * 1800 eInk panel is mentioned at https://www.beck-elektronik.de/en/products/displays/e-paper-display-epd/active-matrix-epd/ac253qt1/ https://www.beck-elektronik.de/en/products/displays/e-paper-... and I doubt there is more than one but all details are "tbd".

tra3 6y ago
Neat. What kind of laptop is it?
- protoman3000 6y ago
  That’s a GPD Pocket. Neat little devices.
  - chx 6y ago
    Nope, it's a One Mix Yoga 2S, the similar gen GPD Pocket was eMMC, this is NVMe, quite a bit faster. And I believe later GPD Pockets were bigger.
foldor 6y ago
For coding, I'm not sure I could go back to greyscale IDE colours. I love syntax highlighting helping me quickly identify different parts of code at a glance. I would love to try though, might see what the price is first.
- tyler109 6y ago
  There is mods and hacks to have syntax highlighting on b/w https://forum.ei2030.org/t/best-dasung-eink-monitor-setup/42/4 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/best-dasung-eink-monitor-setup/42...
- 6y ago

ddingus 6y ago

I want this. Plenty fast enough! So relaxing. For many things, e-ink is amazing tech. Had given up on it generally. This is good news.

StavrosK 6y ago

2000 USD is a bit pricy for a monitor for me, but it's great to see e-ink making it to other form factors.

the_only_law 6y ago
That’s about the price of the 30-inch from e-ink. I wonder if Dasung makes it’s a little less of a pain in the ass to purchase one.

axegon_ 6y ago

The awesome thing about eink displays and monitors is the low power consumption. The bad thing is the price. Somehow I doubt this will be any less than 1.5-2k eur.

city41 6y ago
From the reddit thread > No exact pricing yet, but a teaser in form of "1xxx9", so it could be anything from 10009¥ to 19999¥, so about 1500$ and 3000$ or 1250€ to 2500€ respectively.
- h4tch 6y ago
  For $2.8K you could get a 31" e-ink color display and driver board. https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%cb%9d-color-epaper-display-ec312tt2/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%cb%9d-color-epaper-di...
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    > "For $2.8K you could get a 31" e-ink color display and driver board." Which isn't a monitor. It's a barebones devkit that doesn't accept video input and takes a couple dozen seconds to refresh.
- axegon_ 6y ago
  So I pretty much nailed it.

mortenjorck 6y ago

It looks like the breakthrough here is in making a large (bigger than e-reader-sized) e-paper display available as a self-contained, HDMI-compatible monitor instead of just a display assembly for OEMs and experienced DIYers. While I don’t expect this to also be a breakthrough in terms of pricing, hopefully it starts driving the volume that will eventually make this type of display more accessible.

nextos 6y ago
A slightly more accessible option right now is an AMOLED screen. If you work on applications with a black background, like a terminal or a text editor, it has some of the same benefits. Namely, there's no backlight as individual pixels get lighted on their own. Sadly, AMOLED hasn't progressed as quickly as we expected and big screens are both rare and expensive. Besides, eInk has some advantages like lower energy consumption.
- carlmr 6y ago
  If you don't care too much about the vibrant colors and viewing angles of IPS and OLED, I can recommend VA screens. They have far better contrast than IPS. The black is indeed black. I find it great for working in dark mode on text. However the colors and viewing angles are a trade-off. Although I find the viewing angles are still better than TN and can be somewhat mitigated with a curved screen. I personally use a curved 32" 4K VA screen. The resolution, text size and contrast make this great for text heavy work.
  - pastrami_panda 6y ago
    I agree about what you said, I've been on ultra wide 21:9 VA with 1500R curve for a couple of years and it's been really good. I am curious about the new 1000R displays though, at first it seemed like a gimmick - but it totally makes sense curving the screen so much in order to diminish or even radicate the need to refocus your eyes as they look across the panel. But I haven't had a chance to try it out in person yet due to the current times. Anyone here on ultra wide 1000R?
- 6y ago

jldugger 6y ago

Whats the refresh rate? 4fps?

tyler109 6y ago
15 fps and upwards
reificator 6y ago
Full motion video shown here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY

mynameishere 6y ago

Is there anywhere where you could actually try one of these out? If they worked as desired, I'd get one. A kindle updates so slowly I'm a little skeptical of the demonstration...

tyler109 6y ago
You can check some youtube test videos. But it's actually really that fast, I own Dasung monitors myself.
toyg 6y ago
Kindles are not cutting-edge tech, they never were. They are robust and cheap, so they can enable Amazon’s strategy to flog at-cost low-end hardware that makes it easy for consumers to buy higher-margin digital goods. The likes of Dasung and reMarkable actually advance the field.

ohlookabird 6y ago

I have their not-eReader (a tablet sized e-ink display) and it's really nice. I usually have it connected as secondary monitor to my laptop and placed in a small arm/stand next to it. Often, I read docs like man pages or API docs on it while coding. This generally works really well with the included HDMI+USB cable. Sometimes I also read news websites on it and use it as an eReader for "regular" books. It has a sort of custom Android on it and one can install quite a few apps on it as well (e.g. to watch YouTube---yes, not perfect, but surprisingly well). The refresh rate is indeed really nice.

cordite 6y ago
I have one of those, I have not determined how to effectively use it. As well as one of the USB dasung paperlike screens. Unfortunately accessing the software and use on modern windows and mac os seems impossible.
curiousgal 6y ago
How well does it handle PDFs?
- tyler109 6y ago
  Very well. PDF is the easiest task.

layoutIfNeeded 6y ago

Modern software have so much input latency that an e-ink monitor no longer sounds ridiculous.

xwdv 6y ago

Wow vim would be heavenly to use on this.

tyler109 6y ago
Imagine this device on eink: * DevTerm - An Open Source Portable Terminal 4

johnchristopher 6y ago

How funny we are in awe of cyberpunk gibsonian minority report holo interface but what we want is the closest thing to paper possible. I want a second generation screen :).

hombre_fatal 6y ago
Then again, paper that can be updated is an ancient sci-fi trope, so perhaps it's not so ironic.
- tyler109 6y ago
  To even get more sci-fi: Eink x Crypto | The merge of two industries https://forum.ei2030.org/t/eink-x-crypto-the-merge-of-two-industries/69 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/eink-x-crypto-the-merge-of-two-in...
treeman79 6y ago
Retention is better with paper.
- delecti 6y ago
  But does that translate to eink? Based on my experience with studying and notetaking, I think retention is better with paper because it's an object you're interacting with. The fact that text (whether I'm reading or writing it) is on a static location relative to the world seems to give it some extra anchor in my memory. Assuming I'm not completely imagining that effect, then an eink monitor wouldn't have any of those benefits.

kzrdude 6y ago

As a kid I was so excited when dad would bring home a color monitor. We could finally play sim city 2000, too. And now people are excited many years later for a new kind of grayscale monitor :P

benjarrell 6y ago
I always heard everything old will be new again growing up, but as I age is interesting to see it actually happen.
- sunshinerag 6y ago
  why? was there a epaper kind of display whenever you were younger? or are you comparing this to monochrome light emitting displays?
  - tom_ 6y ago
    The Atari ST's late 80s monochrome CRT looked a bit like an eink display, with no discernible flicker even at 72 Hz. It certainly looked very different from a 72 Hz colour CRT displaying a monochrome image. I think it used a different type of phosphor.
    - icedchai 6y ago
      You’d need much lower than 72 hz for you to notice flicker. Regular VGA was 60 hz. Amiga interlace had noticeable flicker with an effective rate of 25 to 30 hz.
      - steffan 6y ago
        This is biology-dependent. With CRTs, I could detect flicker all the way up to 85Hz* (where it vanished for me). Made it a real pain to find a good monitor. * Hitachi 21" CRT which seemed enormous at the time
        6y ago

redisman 6y ago

I’m still waiting for a eink small phone + reader. Is there anything interesting in that space out yet?

tyler109 6y ago
Yes https://forum.ei2030.org/t/hisense-a7-5g-first-e-ink-smartphone-with-5g-to-be-launched-on-december-22/68 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/hisense-a7-5g-first-e-ink-smartph...
- redisman 6y ago
  Where do you get it though? Seems like only a few on eBay
  - 50 6y ago
    On the Good e-Reader Store, I presume: https://goodereader.com/blog/product-category/smartphones https://goodereader.com/blog/product-category/smartphones Debating on whether I should go for the A7 (https://goodereader.com/blog/product/hisense-a7-5g-e-ink-smartphone https://goodereader.com/blog/product/hisense-a7-5g-e-ink-sma...) or the Light Phone II (https://www.thelightphone.com/products https://www.thelightphone.com/products) - both having e-ink displays, as far as I know - as an upgrade from my SE (2016). Although, both phones do have different use-cases of course.
b0rsuk 6y ago
There are a couple. https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/the-best-e-ink-smartphones-of-2020 https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/the-best-e-ink-smartpho...

batrat 6y ago

Now make a color eInk display (it could be at least 256 colors) and you have my money.

tyler109 6y ago
It's only a matter of time. Here is a glimpse on how it could look like: https://youtu.be/AvLbGDDUI3I https://youtu.be/AvLbGDDUI3I
rvz 6y ago
Well just tell Dasung to fit this [0] thing in a new monitor and they can have your money. [0] https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%CB%9D-color-epaper-display-ec312tt2/ https://shopkits.eink.com/product/31-2%CB%9D-color-epaper-di...

forgotmypw17 6y ago

accessible link: https://teddit.net/r/eink/comments/kjvsoj/dasung_just_released_a_25_inch_eink_monitor/ https://teddit.net/r/eink/comments/kjvsoj/dasung_just_releas...

DennisP 6y ago

I think my ideal laptop would have a 16" screen like this one, a mech keyboard, and a nice long battery life. Just work outside all day.

pmontra 6y ago
And a lamp. For all they shortcomings emissive screens carry their own lighting. A reflective screen has the same problems a book page has. We would need a lamp to read it well in a dark room or inside in a cloudy day. Maybe more than one lamp (left and right) especially for a large screen.
- worldsayshi 6y ago
  Not the case with pixel qi screens as they can be used with both passive and active lighting.
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    I think he means an external lamp, like a reading lamp, not a backlight.
- meowster 6y ago
  Or just something like what Amazon does with their Kindle. Though I think there is an old Thinkpad model that had a light on the lid that lit the keyboard. Maybe something like that would work nicely.

krm01 6y ago

Any ideas where to get cheap e-ink displays to hack some hardware projects with? The prices on these things don’t seem to get any better as time progresses.

tyler109 6y ago
Yes check here the inkplate https://forum.ei2030.org/t/inkplate-6-an-open-source-hardware-e-paper-display-project/55 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/inkplate-6-an-open-source-hardwar...

sergiotapia 6y ago

Why would I want an e-ink monitor? I get it's good for ereaders but what kind of workflows are you expecting to do on this monitor?

tyler109 6y ago
Highly foccused tasks that only require text: -E-mail -Coding -Research -Writing Benefits: Zero distraction Zero eyestrain No Bluelight
- zajio1am 6y ago
  > Benefits: Zero distraction Zero eyestrain No Bluelight Why should there be difference? 'Distraction' is a question of applications, not monitor type. Eyestrain is a result of long-term near focus and insufficient blinking leading to dryness, no reason why eink monitor help with this. Bluelight - regular LCD has LED backlight that passes through LCD, with eink there is an external LED light, reflected by eink back. The source of light is the same (well, depends on specific type of dides in LED backlight vs LED light).
  - reificator 6y ago
    > Why should there be difference? 'Distraction' is a question of applications, not monitor type. Distraction is a question of colors and rate of change. While it's a copout way to address black and white displays, most people who turn their backlit monitors black and white report a noticeable difference in focus. At least for the first week or so. > Bluelight - regular LCD has LED backlight that passes through LCD, with eink there is an external LED light, reflected by eink back. The source of light is the same (well, depends on specific type of dides in LED backlight vs LED light). By external LED light you mean the lightbulbs in your home? This is not backlit or frontlit or any kind of lit if you put it in a dark room.
    - zajio1am 6y ago
      > By external LED light you mean the lightbulbs in your home? Yes

syntaxing 6y ago

Love the idea but 2K is a bit steep. I wouldn’t mind if this thing can last a decade. A dual monitor setup with this vertical sounds like a dream setup. Seems like a trans reflective display? I always thought this type of screen had issues over 10” because of the inner membrane.

bertmuthalaly 6y ago

What's the refresh rate?

bertmuthalaly 6y ago
Not a precise answer, but they show video of a figure skater in the product reveal video and it looks usable! Link with timestamp: https://youtu.be/A9qrURPAtnY?t=109 https://youtu.be/A9qrURPAtnY?t=109
- ConcreteGidget 6y ago
  I'd like to add that we are watching a 24fps video of a monitor so the actual performance is probably even better. Meanwhile my kindle oasis has like 1fps.

jonplackett 6y ago

What's the deal with refresh rate on eInk these days?

ConcreteGidget 6y ago
If you watch the video the display seems to be around 10fps which is the best I've ever seen for eInk.

lifeisstillgood 6y ago

So next week I expect to see the wall-mounted, mahogany bezeled version that refreshes the front page of the NYT or the Times of India each hour. Perfect gift for that person who has everything. (From a thread a month or so ago, where someone did this as a maker, now it's much more commercially viable)

BillinghamJ 6y ago
The Visionect one is around the same price as this but substantially larger - https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/ https://www.visionect.com/product/place-and-play-32/ - I think this is what the person used the other day It's essentially plug-and-play - no major technical skill required to use it
- louwrentius 6y ago
  Refresh rate: 750 ms (4 bit full screen) / 100 ms (1 bit partial) Doesn't seem to be in the same league if we factor in refresh rates. Doesn't seem to be usable as a monitor. But it would perfectly work for refreshing a newspaper every hour. :)
  - tyler109 6y ago
    Yes but the Dasung monitor is much faster
    - bbarnett 6y ago
      I bought a current model on Amazon, about 6 months ago, but was really disappointed. I have a rooted Nook Glowlight, years old, yet I find it much better. The Dasung had several 'modes' you could choose, but none worked well. Worse, their software is closed source, is fairly buggy, and requires root for zero reason. I felt very uncomfortable about installing it, and didn't. https://www.reddit.com/r/Paperlike/comments/au0yuc/dasung_on_linux/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Paperlike/comments/au0yuc/dasung_on... Without the software installed, you have to manually hit the 'refresh' button. This is done to clear up errant pixels aka a screen flash. Yet the refresh process was slow, so to test, rather than let their questionable software do it, I hit the manual button on the monitor. The flash on/off was highly annoying, and I couldn't imagine reading text, coding, working this way once the software was installed. Customer service from dasung was non-existent. I had to return it. I so much want an e-ink display.

SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago

Question for someone familiar with this technology: how far are we from the holy grail of fully-wireless flexible color ePaper displays with embedded batteries? I had a project idea and was disappointed to learn that everything currently on the market requires a separate power source and a wired connection to whatever hardware is driving the display.

tyler109 6y ago
Not far sir: https://forum.ei2030.org/t/flexible-electronic-paper-is-being-launched-for-wearables/34 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/flexible-electronic-paper-is-bein...
Brakenshire 6y ago
You might be interested in this: https://www.pcmag.com/news/waveshares-e-paper-displays-work-without-a-battery https://www.pcmag.com/news/waveshares-e-paper-displays-work-...
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
Perhaps one of the existing color e-ink readers can be hacked to meet your needs: https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/these-are-all-of-the-color-e-ink-e-readers-from-2020 https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/these-are-al...
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ConcreteGidget 6y ago

Is this company publicly traded? I've never heard of this company before.

tyler109 6y ago
They use screens from eink holdings which is publicly traded. Dasung is private. More on eink stock investing:https://forum.ei2030.org/t/investing-to-eink-epaper-stocks/67/3 https://forum.ei2030.org/t/investing-to-eink-epaper-stocks/6...
- ConcreteGidget 6y ago
  Thanks
- tomcam 6y ago
  OK I really wish you didn’t post that. It looks absolutely amazing and my desk is already too full of monitors.
- ant6n 6y ago
  If the theory is that everybody is just waiting for e-ink patents to expire to open up the market, wouldn't it be a bad idea to invest in the company holding those patents?
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
They've been around for a while. They ran successful crowdfunding campaigns for several generations of their previous 13" e-ink monitors (https://www.indiegogo.com/individuals/13653865/campaigns https://www.indiegogo.com/individuals/13653865/campaigns) and a Kickstarter for their e-ink tablet.

louwrentius 6y ago

It's funnny, I wrote an article about a relatively cheap 12.48 inch (1304x984) 3-color (red/white/black) display a few days ago. It has a refresh time of 16 seconds.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25522966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25522966

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SMAAART 6y ago

ELI5: what's the big deal? It's B&W!

mellosouls 6y ago
Same reason you would prefer a Kindle (or other hardware e-reader) for reading normal books over a tablet. The eyestrain thing apparently doesn't affect everyone, but for those it does it makes staring at a screen for hours a non-issue. Also, although it probably isn't such a useful function with a monitor (except in warm climates), this sort of screen will be fine to read outside compared to - say - a laptop screen.

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intricatedetail 6y ago

One day we will have cash made of eink. You'll transfer BTC to the "paper" and pay.

tyler109 6y ago
How could this look like ? Can you elaborate ?
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  Almost like regular plastic cash note. Maybe a bit thicker. For example it could assume US dollar look. Note is blank until you "upload" BTC to it, then it will look like e.g. $100 note. You could only "cash" the cash by downloading it back to your wallet. Then it becomes blank again. It could also split if you wanted to "cash" only half.

seltzered_ 6y ago

I wish they just revised the 13" version they already make so everything (power, display xfer) worked over a single usb-c cable. Bonus if it also doubles as an android tablet.

levpopov 6y ago
The nice thing about the current version is that it's just a straight-up HDMI peripheral so you don't have to worry about any security issues (Dasung's software is not exactly confidence inspiring, and I definitely would not touch any Android device shipped by them). USB-C would make it a lot more convenient for quickly plugging in though.

ohazi 6y ago

E Ink is a great example of how the patent system stifles innovation. One company developed a small, expensive, newspaper-quality electrophoretic display with a refresh rate so terrible it was only suitable for books, decided that that was good enough, and 15 years later every comment in this thread is looking forward to finally seeing some innovation in this space "once the patents expire." That is some first class bullshit. We could have had large form, glossy brochure quality displays with video refresh rates by now, but nobody outside of China wanted to get anywhere near this patent minefield.

0x00000000 6y ago
Their sales/marketing philosophy was disappointing too. Zero interest in supporting the hobbyist community.
deadbunny 6y ago
Exactly the same thing happened in the 3D printing space.
- HeadsUpHigh 6y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by that, there are new & improved models of 3d printers coming out all the time and decent hobbyist printers are becoming available for progressively lower prices.
  - balfirevic 6y ago
    Yes, that started to happen once the key patents expired.
  - jcfrei 6y ago
    Parent is probably talking about SLS (selective laser sintering). Patents expired in 2014.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    I believe the major fdm patents were filed decades ago and little was done until recently when they expired.

dheera 6y ago

Non-blogspam link: https://m.weibo.cn/u/5061214872#&video https://m.weibo.cn/u/5061214872#&video

scioxo 6y ago

I've been waiting for something like this for years, but goddamn it, why does it have to be 16:9? I thought eink was the last market that saw the sense in 4:3. It should be an instant buy, but maybe now I'll see what else comes out.

toyg 6y ago
Personally, to me a 16:9 vertical layout makes more sense than 4:3 for a device that will likely specialize on text.

erhk 6y ago

Please link directly to the source rather than to Reddit. It does not display on most mobile browsers

Diggsey 6y ago

From the video it looks like they haven't completely solved the ghosting problem which occurs when the screen is updated without going through a full-refresh cycle. They seem to be trying to hide it too, given how they cut away so quickly from moving content on the screen... That said, E-Ink displays are cool, and this still appears to be a huge advancement.

deleted 6y ago

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PIKAL 6y ago

Patents holding things back is a feature. It encourages innovation because patents give a lot of security to innovators. Even if you found a way to incentivize innovators while simultaneously subjecting them to the ruthless meat grinder called the free market, it would just result in everything changing all the time. There’s no hurry. Technological progress isn’t always neutral, either. A new technology, even medical technology, could change the equation irreversibly in a very negative way. We’ve just been lucky recently.

gcampos 6y ago

I would gladly pay the premium price if it is a better monitor for long hours of coding. However, I wonder if the ghosting and the low refresh rate would negate any benefits it would have over a 4K monitor

Funes- 6y ago

I have a 13.3-inch Dasung e-ink monitor, and use it daily for three to six hours (basically, whenever I use my PC). Some days ago the HDMI cable it came with broke, so before I had the opportunity to replace it, I had to switch back to an LED monitor for the time being. Well, surely anyone can already guess what happened... After just a couple of days, I came upon a long forgotten enemy: eye fatigue. Blurry vision, trouble focusing it, and a light headache. Like many others here, I wish the technology could have advanced faster and been made more accessible for everyone. Without the obstacles it still faces, I'm sure we would already have color screens with a good refresh rate. C'est la vie.

tyler109 6y ago
I hope color eink monitors become a reality soon. For those who suffer from eye strain through conventional LED this would be a game changer.
InvOfSmallC 6y ago
Can I ask you how is the feedback when you write on your keyboard? Isn't there a delay?
- Funes- 6y ago
  The refresh rate is really good for an e-ink screen. There's no significant delay when typing. It's not blazing fast, but it never gets noticeable enough to be annoying. I even watch videos on this thing, although I account for the lag by adding a 200 ms A-V delay on mpv (Ctrl++).
  - exikyut 6y ago
    To be completely clear, do you mean that there's a median of ~200ms of latency? That's kind of my "oww, server is too far away" point with SSH...
    - Funes- 6y ago
      It's closer to 150 ms. mpv only lets you increase or decrease delay in intervals of a hundred milliseconds, as far as I know.

deleted 6y ago

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foman 6y ago

Direct video link here https://weibo.com/tv/show/1034:4586028745293852 https://weibo.com/tv/show/1034:4586028745293852

achow 6y ago

Reddit demo links are down. The alternate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9qrURPAtnY

garfieldnate 6y ago

The refresh rate is much better than it used to be! Can hobbyists buy smaller e-ink screens (think iPad mini size) with refresh rate this good?

univalent 6y ago

I'm going to spring for this one. I'm still using an old TFT CCFL LCD display here because anything else gives me a pounding headache and face twitching.

tyler109 6y ago
Can you share the exact model?

deleted 6y ago

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plaidfuji 6y ago

A few years back there was a promising Dutch startup called Liquavista working on “electro wetting” - a kind of next-gen full-color low-latency reflective display tech that functioned a lot like LCD, but instead of modulating LC orientation, they would quickly tune the hydrophilicity of pixel-size glass cells that would cause an ink droplet to either bead up in the corner (become transparent) or wet the entire pixel. Sounded really cool. They got bought by Amazon and haven’t heard anything since. https://lookgadgets.com/liquavista/ https://lookgadgets.com/liquavista/

koolk3ychain 6y ago

This is the kind of bleeding edge device I wish a service like Drop (formerly MassDrop) would pick up. If anyone is interested I'd definitely be interested in facilitating a group buy for this device!

homakov 6y ago

any estimation when is it out? should i wait or get 13 inch version now?