19 ms·

Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

437 points by lnyan 5y ago

sktrdie 5y ago
Serious question: wouldn't just turning preferences of a normal monitor to black/white give you the same result? And is e-ink really better for eyes? Not sure I've seen research in this regard.
- avar 5y ago
  It's not remotely the same thing. If you haven't looked at an E-Ink display try tearing a page from a magazine or newspaper and comparing that to reading the same size of font on your laptop or PC. E-Ink is practically indistinguishable from reading a physical piece of paper, whereas the backlight alone from an LCD eventually gets tiring to stare at. Another huge difference is being able to use E-Ink displays in direct sunlight.
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  The main difference is that there is no backlight, so it's more comparable to a piece of paper (reflective light source) than a light bulb (direct light source)
- lopis 5y ago
  E-Ink doesn't emit light. There's lots of research that shows problems with looking at light-emitting screens all day.
- reacharavindh 5y ago
  Interesting question. Now, I’m curious myself. True that LCD panels need backlight and may not be true equivalent in black& white mode. However, we have many OLED panels now. Would OLED panels in black & white work for this case?
hajile 5y ago
They need OLED. Put the transparent OLED layer on top of the E-ink. Now you can use E-ink for your static content or the OLED when you need dynamic content. E-ink saves a lot of the OLED burn-in (which is at it's worst with white background) while OLED gives the ability to do more/better colors and fast response times.
h2odragon 5y ago
$800 to pre-order. (Corrected: $1800 for the pre-order, $800 for the smaller one) E-ink is one of those great technologies that seems like it has potential but won't "arrive" until after the patents all expire.
- dabeledo 5y ago
  $800 to preorder the smaller 13in one. The other one (25.3in as in the title) is $1800
- dotdi 5y ago
  The $800 model has an "Add to Cart" button for me (in Germany). The 25.3 model shows "Pre-order".
  - lovelyviking 5y ago
    "BOOX Mira Series only supports direct mail from China. And US, EU and UK warehouses are not supported for shipping. Some countries may levy tariffs on the imported goods. For the amount of tariffs, please consult the local customs department."
- hutrdvnj 5y ago
  Is it expensive because of the parents or because it's not cheap to create a big sized e-ink display? I mean small e-ink displays for ebook readers or e-ink tablets are quite affordable these days.
- samwillis 5y ago
  This is an interesting old thread about einks business model and parents: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 Some of the early parents have expired but there are a lot of them…
  - codethief 5y ago
    Came here to link to this thread. Also make sure to check out the color e-ink displays by Clearink that the top comment mentions. They are quite impressive. (Unfortunately, I recently heard from the people behind the Supernote tablet that those displays by Clearink are very low in contrast and therefore require lots of ambient light. There goes the dream of color e-ink displays…)
frou_dh 5y ago
You guys go ahead and buy, take one for the team and work out all the bugs/defects in Rev.A units :)
lambdaba 5y ago
I couldn't (easily) find information about refresh rates and such, what I want is to know if this is usable for coding. Frankly I'm down to go with lower stats for this, because I so want to be able to use a computer with just natural light. If anybody has been doing this I'd love to read about your experience!
- deanc 5y ago
  Might be a bit of a struggle without syntax highlighting? Contrast won't get you very far.
  - fho 5y ago
    You might be surprised how far contrast (and cursive, bold, etc) can get you. Eg: https://github.com/fxn/vim-monochrome https://github.com/fxn/vim-monochrome edit: Also, and probably a lot more controversial, code structure matters a lot. No syntax highlighting will save you if your code consists of opaque blocks of text.
    - WJW 5y ago
      I'll admit that that example did more than I expected with the limited tools it has, but it is still rather far from the things full color highlighting can do.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        You can, indeed, do a lot without colors. I actually find it a lot less distracting to have various shades of the same color and highlight with bold, italics, and a couple shades of gray. The other day I was wondering if I could add some non-ascii chars to htop's monochrome mode (looked like a pain, will pick it up later) to explore textures instead of colors. I remember using Think Pascal on the Apple II (too slow to be of any use) but it did a great job of highlighting the structure of the program under the source code. This is what I want syntax/semantic highlighting to do for me. These screens are higher resolution and can have multiple shades of gray, which is much more than what those pioneers had to communicate with their users. Horrendously expensive though.
zwirbl 5y ago
I couldn't find a video of the display in use, so here it goes (for the 13.3" version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBfWkxOfUfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBfWkxOfUfQ seems a little slow and the screen refreshes sometimes excessive, but much better than I expected
- vasilakisfil 5y ago
  for some reason, from the video, screen doesn't feel the same quality as other e-ink readers like kindle. edit: I mean, kindle videos feel like you are reading a real paper, while here feels like you are in an actual screen.
- leemailll 5y ago
  try this https://jvod.300hu.com/vod/product/0cecde96-786d-418d-a5b7-3e3358e53141/bfc999e730ea4f199a30ff63e6cf08c8.mp4?source=2&h265=h265/18799/fe740e13b2a049009440dc71e98a717d.mp4 https://jvod.300hu.com/vod/product/0cecde96-786d-418d-a5b7-3...
- avar 5y ago
  A little slow? I was pretty amazed by how fast it is in that video. I haven't kept up with E-Ink technology, but I own an old Kindle and it takes it 0.5-1s to refresh, but that 13.3" display is keeping up with finger gestures when scrolling. Yes it would suck for watching movies, but it seems to be really useful for anything involving text, e.g. i.e. a secondary monitor to read documentation on, or even program on. I suppose the lag in text input being updated might be more distracting than when using it purely for reading.
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    Fast for eink, but also absolutely terrible ghosting, which makes the speed considerably less impressive considering how straining it looks. What's the point of a fairly quick response to screen updates when you have to press the manual refresh button in order to read what's on it?
    - 5y ago
smusamashah 5y ago
What is the lifespan of high refresh e-ink devices such as this monitor? Is it measured in a billion refreshes for example? E-ink displays have been slow to update but like this monitor there are a bunch of e-ink tablets which even allow you to watch videos and play games. In my head it feels like it detoriate the device faster.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  > lifespan The declared generic (update frequency agnostic) lifespan for E-Ink displays a few years ago was: 10 million switches per dot
  - w-m 5y ago
    At 30 switches per second for video playback (which this device supports), a lifetime of 10m switches would be gone in around 93 hours.
    - mdp2021 5y ago
      That would be, of course, if for 93 hours one played a 30Hz flashing B-W-B-W... The average dot switch, on a binary (B/W) threshold, on normal video, is probably well less than every second. A value between 1'000 and 10'000 hours is more realistic. The technology was not born for this use. Nonetheless, the lifetime values one can find do not seem to be precise and reliable (that of 10 million is one piece of reported official information and not the only one). Having tests would be better, I am not sure how much these speculations can be trusted. Anyway, given the presence of EPD based smartphones in the market, together with the monitors, information will have to come out of users' experience.
- AlanYx 5y ago
  It will deteriorate relatively quickly if you're using it primarily to watch video. Of the three vendors of e-ink monitors (Boox, Dasung, Waveshare), I believe only Waveshare is clear about this in their support documents ("The e-Paper display cannot work as common LCD displays, the lifetime of the e-Paper display is short and it is related to the update times. You cannot use e-Paper to display video for a long time, which will shorten the lifetime of the e-Paper display."). With e-ink, the dots do not fail right away; the contrast deteriorates around the 10 million update mark.
patall 5y ago
My dad has bought the 25.3'' E ink monitor from Dasung. From what he tells, it does not have a backlight and is itself to dark for his taste outside of middle of the day. Maybe it will be better during summer or in bright condition but sitting further away from these devices may require more than just reflectiveness for some users.
- fbn79 5y ago
  eInk is not transparent, you canno have backlight. It's objective is to emulate ink on paper.
  - mrjin 5y ago
    It might be true you cannot have backlight, but for sure you can have front light. My ~7 years old Kindle paperwhite has that.
    - patall 5y ago
      I guess that may be what I meant, i.e second 24 of the video.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- numpad0 5y ago
  Contrast ratio of E Ink is like 10:1. I don't know exactly how it compares but backlit LCD is approx 1k:1, OLED is 1m:1 in contrast(pun intended).
  - GuB-42 5y ago
    You can't compare the contrast of an emissive (backlit LCD/OLED) and a reflective (eInk) display. Put your OLED display in direct sunlight on a bright summer day and you will get effectively get no contrast at all, the screen will reflect so much sunlight that your puny LEDs won't do much of a difference. Backlit LCDs will get some weak contrast because the backpanel is a bit reflective, but eInk displays will always be 10:1 because they use ambiant light instead of competing with it. These ridiculously high contrast ratios of OLED displays only take into account emitted light and only make sense in a dark room, or VR headset.
kumarvvr 5y ago
Would love this as a second or third screen to read books / documentation from.
OliverJones 5y ago
I love these E-Ink guys. They've been plugging away for a quarter century and their stuff keeps getting better.
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  It's only taking so long because they won't allow people to actually help progress the tech.
dash2 5y ago
The rival here is the Dasung 25.3" model, currently waiting for a new batch: https://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink-monitor-paperlike-253 https://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink... I'd love to hear from anyone who's worked with a monitor like this.
- patagonicus 5y ago
  I got the smaller Dasung about half a year ago, I posted a comment about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29429093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29429093 Let me know if you have any specific questions.
  - dash2 5y ago
    Thanks! * Do you use it as your main daily monitor? * I find screen time quite addictive (which is one reason why I am on HN so much). Do you notice any difference from this perspective when using an eink screen? * Has the screen quality degraded over time? * How big a difference has it made to your life?
    - aarongray 5y ago
      I can't speak to e-ink but regarding screen time addiction, I used Gray-Switch (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vegardit.grayswitch&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vegardit.g...) to turn my phone display black and white, and immediately my phone use decreased by 66%.
      - the_pwner224 5y ago
        This is now built in to newer versions of Android (I think 11+, and AppleOS may also have it).
        jonnycomputer 5y ago
        where would the settings for that be? accessibility?
moritonal 5y ago
Interesting limitation listed on their site: "AMD GPUs are not supported for now."
- BBC-vs-neolibs 5y ago
  Could it use Nvidia G-sync somehow?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vxa_victor 5y ago
These products look amazing but a major drawback is the lack of colors. Any chance e-ink will get color support?
- archerx 5y ago
  They exist and they look cool kind of like comic books. They are expensive and the refresh rate is slower though. https://www.waveshare.com/5.65inch-e-paper-module-f.htm https://www.waveshare.com/5.65inch-e-paper-module-f.htm
  - b112 5y ago
    It's all how you explain it. 4k e-ink has ~ 8M balls, and can refresh ... let's say 10x per second. giving a stunning refresh rate of 80megaballs per second. That's an incredibly high rate!
- mdp2021 5y ago
  You can use Kaleido (E-Ink EPD with RGB filter on top) - it's already available. Or, wait for cheap and fast E-Ink ACeP ("Advanced Color ePaper"). Quality, you will have to assess.
acd 5y ago
Wow this looks like a nice companion device for reading documentation. Anyone know if Boox eink displays works with ipad hdmi adapter as a secondary display?
TruthWillHurt 5y ago
Not a word on refresh rate.
- dspillett 5y ago
  Unless they have some wizz-bang new tech that no one else is using yet, which they would shout about if they were, with eInk you can pretty much say “if your use case makes you care much about refresh rates then eInk isn't a good choice for you ATM”.
  - TruthWillHurt 5y ago
    I agree, but even among e-ink displays there are refresh rates that make it difficult to enter text or view terminal output.
    - mdp2021 5y ago
      In text editing, I even set refresh in batched bursts of max 500ms (a few chars per display update), to be battery conservative. No problem.
jll29 5y ago
I can't wait until this reaches maturity to get a 11" or so sub-notebook which is quiet, low energy, with a good keyboard for reading and writing (text/code editing, emails, PDF reading of scientific papers). Looked into this a couple of years ago and it was too early, now one could almost design & build that.
- salamandersauce 5y ago
  You can already get a 10 or 13" eInk Android tablet and do all that already. Just need to bring your own keyboard.
- girvo 5y ago
  The Boox tablets are full android devices and support USB-C connectivity and Bluetooth for keyboards. They even have a clamshell keyboard case/attachment for sale that I have and use with my Note 2 Termux + Termux.Styling set to Black on White is surprisingly powerful, and works better than I expected. Adjusting the refresh rate helps too.
  - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
    Can it talk to my laptop via bluetooth? That would be rad. I'd use it outdoors, with my laptop running but still folded in my bag.
    - girvo 5y ago
      In what way? It’s got Bluetooth and can do anything an android device can :) If there’s something specific you have in mind I can give it a try?
      - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
        Yes please! I just want to know if such a screen can serve as the UI (including touch input from the user) for a laptop that's folded and put away somewhere nearby.
efferifick 5y ago
I wonder how well one can modify the framework laptop to use the 13 inch e-ink monitor. Even if a small hdmi cable needs to run outside the case, as long as the lid can close (no need auto sleep) I'd be happy. I don't know anything about 3D printing, but it will likely be necessary (perhaps not sufficient though).
- mdp2021 5y ago
  One of the only non-modular parts of the Framework is, very unfortunately, the display (it's glossy). If you just want to use an HDMI connection, a piece of plastic is sufficient, see: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=173025&stc=1&id=1566157578 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmenti... But do not think the solution is without issues (I mentioned elsewhere: touchscreen, battery...)
trabant00 5y ago
I am sad they go with the health angle. There is no evidence that suggest backlit or blue light are any more damaging for the eyes than a piece of paper with the same text. It's focusing that strains the eyes. https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/are-computer-glasses-worth-it https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/are-computer-... > Long hours staring at digital screens leads to decreased blinking. Blinking less sometimes causes a series of temporary eye symptoms known as eye strain. But these effects are caused by how people use their screens, not by anything coming from the screens. The best way to avoid eye strain is to take breaks from the screen frequently. > The amount of light coming from a computer has never been demonstrated to cause any eye disease.
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  Anecdotal but I consider it absolutely farcical that you could claim using an e-ink is no better for your eyes. I can literally feel the difference when using my ereader.
- martopix 5y ago
  On the other hand it is well known that it contributes to sleeplessness.
- b112 5y ago
  Lots of people are bothered by the backlight on their monitor. Lots. Eye strain != eye disease, or eye damage. A parallel, is you can strain a muscle, and it will be find in a few days with light use. This is precisely how many feel, when "over exposed" to endless bright light in their eyes. I looked at their product page, and did not see anything about "permanent damage to your eyes!", but... I certainly could have missed that. Sadly, I'm being forced to defend a company I dislike greatly, for their phone-home-to-china firmwares in other boox products. I can only imagine what any accompanying software they may include, to auto-adjust/etc the monitor, will entail.
patagonicus 5y ago
Looks pretty nice, especially the USB-C input. I might have gotten that one if it had been available when I was shopping for an e-Ink screen. I got a Dasung 13" one a while ago, the larger Dasung wasn't launched yet (and I was struggling a bit to justify the price tag of the 13", now I'd probably go for the larger one). It's very limited, basically only works for black and white text, but for that it's great. I use it pretty much daily, just keeping a shell open there. I've changed my terminal to be black on white and all colors map to light/dark gray (for light/dark versions of the basic terminal colors), which works decently. I did change themes for things like tmux and vim to work better on a grayscale screen. Reading text on it is great, but compared to a Kindle Oasis (whatever the newest model was last summer) its DPI is quite low, so you can't have text as small without it getting blurry. I mostly got it because I noticed that I was getting some eye strain staring at a regular screen all day and as best as I can tell it really has helped with that. It's also powered off of USB, which makes it usable on the go as a second screen. My main gripe is using a Mini-HDMI-Port with a custom cable to inject power from USB (I think HDMI->Mini-HDMI plus a separate USB cable for Micro-USB input also work, never tried), but it's also a bit annoying that the inputs are on the sides and not the back. I also use it with a monitor arm at home, the included pole for standing it up is ok for on the go, but I really wouldn't use it permanently. TL;DR: expensive, but if you want to reduce eye strain while reading a lot of text it really helps. Main driver for shell / coding tasks and I sometimes read longer websites/Google Docs/etc on it, though less frequently.
gawin 5y ago
How does this compare with the Dasung Paperlike 25.3? Looks like the same E-ink display, but perhaps different driver? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGblzUc_Z1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGblzUc_Z1I https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-253-the-first-25-3-inch-e-ink-monitor#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-253-the-first-2...
dkdbejwi383 5y ago
I'd absolutely love to try something like this for programming, but it's much too expensive for me to try out on a whim
- derekpankaew 5y ago
  Wait for it to show up on Amazon Prime, then use the 30 day return policy as a method to try it out?
tapia 5y ago
I am delighted to see that they have Linux support for their software. You don't see that so often, especially for such niche hardware. Really cool!
Someone 5y ago
“Remove ghosting with one press” is a feature that they use to sell the device? How bad is the ghosting/how often do you need to press that button?
- mherdeg 5y ago
  Seeing the no-ghosts button reminded me that it's very likely my young kids are never going to have the fun of pushing the "degauss" button on a CRT.
- toper-centage 5y ago
  My old and only eReader, a Kindle 3, had ghosting issues, but it self-fixed them by refreshing often. But there's a cost to that, because a full refresh takes significant time. In complex UIs that are more than just text you often can get away with updating only a portion of the screen, at the goat of bits of ghosting. My understanding is that this is still a limitation of this tech.
girvo 5y ago
I adore Boox. My Note 2 is amazing (and keeps getting better and faster note-taking with firmware updates every few months). I’ve ordered a Mira, the 13.3” one, which I think is a more useful size for the type of documents and uses e-ink has. This is super cool though!
- BostonEnginerd 5y ago
  Their devices look really neat, but I don't think I can bring myself to buy one until they resolve their GPL violations. https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/fz4yka/max3_review_gpl_license_problem_no_sources/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/fz4yka/max3_revi...
  - NoGravitas 5y ago
    Maybe someone can convince Naomi Wu to go visit their office in person like she did for Umidigi.
    - BostonEnginerd 5y ago
      I saw the original video on the Twitters, but didn't check out the followup until now. I'm thrilled that her visit worked and that the files were posted! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj04MKykmnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj04MKykmnQ
zimventures 5y ago
...but can it run Crysis?
- mdp2021 5y ago
  There is a guy who wrote a demoscene demo for a C64 disk drive: the drive itself contains a 6502 and the cable could transmit B/W video data. Audio amazingly obtained from mechanics. But I have never seen a demoscene demo from the electronics of a monitor display.
  - exikyut 5y ago
    A late comment, but this sortakinda vaguely leans in the general direction you're describing: https://github.com/RedBalloonShenanigans/MonitorDarkly https://github.com/RedBalloonShenanigans/MonitorDarkly
aj_g 5y ago
Related, does anybody have any suggestions for a cheap/large/easy to look at monitor that could be used for a digital picture frame? I was thinking of getting a Raspberry Pi to rotate through my photos in my home, but the hardest part of the project would be choosing a good discrete/mountable display.
gcanyon 5y ago
I don't need touch, and I don't need a sub-one-second refresh rate. I do need a monitor I can read documents on without eye strain that doesn't cost ~8x what an equivalent LCD monitor costs.
keewee7 5y ago
>Onyx Boox is a brand of e-book reader produced by Onyx International Inc, based in China China is the only country innovating right now. The rest of the world really needs to start building combined manufacturing and innovation hubs like Shenzhen.
- criddell 5y ago
  Isn't Onyx one of the more famous GPL violators? Maybe innovation is easier when you let others do the R&D and you just use it.
dirtyid 5y ago
Looks nice, but feels like another year where ebook hasn't arrived. Still waiting for the day of sub 500 eink 50 inch screens.
randomor 5y ago
Why hasn’t anyone built a short throw projector for office work(coding) yet? - reflective light just like eink so less eye strain - better refresh rate and latency - better color range Is it the resolution?
- burkaman 5y ago
  I think the market for people who want to (and are able to) work exclusively in a very dark room is probably pretty small. I'm also not sure what features a work-focused projector would have that a normal projector wouldn't.
- patentatt 5y ago
  Do projectors have less eye strain? That's quite intriguing if so. What if you had a front-projector projecting on an e-ink screen, such that various parts of the screen could be in color/motion mode (e-ink off, projector only), mixed mode (e-ink on, with color overlay for syntax highlighting or the like), or ink only (projector off). That seems like something that's doable with off-the shelf components and software, at least as a POC...
fnord77 5y ago
would smooth scrolling of text be possible?
intrasight 5y ago
What would be the benefit of this over a quality OLED monitor?
- mdp2021 5y ago
  If you are in context in which it is preferable to have * light reflecting instead of light emitting, and/or * bistable instead of kept on through energy. Some people use EPD at midday, black on white under the sun, and OLED at midnight, white on black ("off") in the dark.
Jeff_Brown 5y ago
This kind of thing needs Bluetooth. Then I could read outdoors with my laptop running in my backpack.
cgb223 5y ago
I own a Boox Note Air 2. Bought it when I was looking for a large screen eReader for the technical epubs and pdfs I’ve amassed over the years that require a big screen (big pages on the pdfs) pros and cons of this company are pretty clear Pros are that they have large eReaders and support any file format They also run android so if you use an app like Pocket or an RSS feed to read articles, they work well enough Cons: The company’s documentation is more or less broken. Google how to fix something and their docs are missing, outdated, and often in broken english. The screen itself is big but slow to refresh and in most modes leaves traces of the previous pages. They have a manual button to full refresh the page, but a user shouldn’t have to do that. It’s not a certified android device so you have to jump through a bunch of somewhat insecure hoops to get the play store installed and log in. Privacy: There privacy statement basically says “lol we promise to be private k?” So I want to run this thing through wireshark to see how true that is. My only skepticism is that it’s a Chinese company, and that might not be fair, but given the information I have on my device it would be good to confirm. All that said, they have a color eInk screen that’s coming out soon that looks wonderful.
- tata71 5y ago
  > insecure Compared to...running Play Services? Doubt.
  - sieabahlpark 5y ago
    Oh yes, the CCP and Play services are exactly identical. Thanks for your incredible insight
  - ev1 5y ago
    security, privacy, and anonymity are separate concepts
- tata71 5y ago
  This is the sort of device you either replace the OS, or put on a segregated network.
  - 5y ago
denysvitali 5y ago
799 USD
- chx 5y ago
  Nope, that's the Mira, the Mira Pro is 1800.
WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
Here are my problems with such devices. I own an Onyx Boox 3 for a year now, I guess I qualify. 1) these screens still have bad contrast compared to a printed page at the same DPI. They mostly compare to yellowed dog-eared 50-year-old books. The dots are also rather fuzzy, so not really comparable to what you get in a decent LCD at the same density. 2) if it comes to desktop use, no OS/environment except classic MacOS up to version 8 and maybe GEM gives a shit about monochrome displays, especially those where only 1-bit colors look decent (so Windows 3.11 would likely count too). On DEs which you can still theme, themes that look like printed pages (two colors for UI, no gradients, no exceptions to this rule) don't exist at all. There's GTK's "High Contrast" theme, but it renders everything also BIG and FAT, which is cumbersome to look at unless you need it because of eyesight problems. Also, there should be a way to disable all UI animations and most hover effects, but it either doesn't exist or keeps getting reinvented in any new major version so you're chasing it every once in a while. 3) Have you ever seen how Android renders colors on displays with no colors? God damn it to hell. I tried a terminal emulator. Some text was black, some white, some nigh-invisible, and some was white with a black (fuzzy) outline. I thought a monochrome display couldn't be ever described as garish, but now I've learned the errors of my ways. The only way it can work is if you export TERM=vt100 so it doesn't try to draw you rainbows where there can be none. 4) While the refresh speed got better compared to most Kindles I owned, when you're typing, it's still more annoying than a CRT with big afterburn. Maybe it's kind of acquired taste, I dunno, but not for me. Yet. I hope. I wouldn't mind a strictly 2-colored theme on a regular laptop screen as well, mind you.
- codethief 5y ago
  Re 3): Doesn't Android support a black-and-white mode?
  - WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
    Internal boox apps are good because they were designed that way. But things from the play store are shite on such screens. And yes, that’s the android’s idea of how to render color (or maybe it’s the driver, who knows). It’s like Microsoft Paintbrush on mono screens where you got different dithering patterns instead of colors, except worse.
al3mani 5y ago
What about f.lux (and others?) --> "Effects and extra colors" --> "Grayscale" ?
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  Still doesn't fix the problem of rather bright light being emitted from the screen into your eyes. Think also about all the power wasted on backlighting where ambient light could be just fine. Also, I don't know if you have noticed, but you can't use f.lux and friends and grayscale simultaneously, because grayscale is applied after gamma change, making it pointless.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
That promotional video didn't show a visible page refresh once. Which was what I was most interested in seeing, since lag while typing might be the thing I'm most worried about [well that and my syntax highlighting (:]
kentosi 5y ago
> *E Ink monitors' refresh speed is not as high as conventional monitors', So what is the refresh rate then? I can't seem to find it in the Specs section.
levpopov 5y ago
E-ink monitors are really cool (I've had a couple different ones for a while). However if your primary goal is reducing eye-strain, there are much better ways: https://twitter.com/levpopov/status/1466835595984977923 https://twitter.com/levpopov/status/1466835595984977923
oblak 5y ago
Man, I can't wait for something like e-ink to become usable as an actual 120Hz monitor. I've been sitting in front of shitty screens my entire life. Give display that do not shine and you could play games on. Won't happen in my life though
karmakaze 5y ago
> *Please confirm your ports (USB Type-C and HDMI) support secondary monitors by connecting your devices to another monitor first. AMD GPUs are not supported for now. I have no mental model of what this device is. Apparently it's not a display in the normal sense. Perhaps what's sent via HDMI/USB-C are effectively control signals rather than the colors/shades you want that get you the shades you want accounting for the response characteristics of the eInk display. What I'd like is for any of this extra logic to be in the device itself and not in software that requires installation and updates to keep working with OS updates, or other OSes altogether.
- totony 5y ago
  e-ink has some special sync settings (where it's a tradeoff between speed and ghosting). Probably what usb is used for. You can also aprtially refresh the screen&stuff. Probably easier to do it in software.
ciupicri 5y ago
repost https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27629455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27629455

437 points by lnyan 5y ago

Serious question: wouldn't just turning preferences of a normal monitor to black/white give you the same result? And is e-ink really better for eyes? Not sure I've seen research in this regard.

avar 5y ago
It's not remotely the same thing. If you haven't looked at an E-Ink display try tearing a page from a magazine or newspaper and comparing that to reading the same size of font on your laptop or PC. E-Ink is practically indistinguishable from reading a physical piece of paper, whereas the backlight alone from an LCD eventually gets tiring to stare at. Another huge difference is being able to use E-Ink displays in direct sunlight.
dkdbejwi383 5y ago
The main difference is that there is no backlight, so it's more comparable to a piece of paper (reflective light source) than a light bulb (direct light source)
lopis 5y ago
E-Ink doesn't emit light. There's lots of research that shows problems with looking at light-emitting screens all day.
reacharavindh 5y ago
Interesting question. Now, I’m curious myself. True that LCD panels need backlight and may not be true equivalent in black& white mode. However, we have many OLED panels now. Would OLED panels in black & white work for this case?

hajile 5y ago

They need OLED. Put the transparent OLED layer on top of the E-ink. Now you can use E-ink for your static content or the OLED when you need dynamic content. E-ink saves a lot of the OLED burn-in (which is at it's worst with white background) while OLED gives the ability to do more/better colors and fast response times.

h2odragon 5y ago

$800 to pre-order. (Corrected: $1800 for the pre-order, $800 for the smaller one) E-ink is one of those great technologies that seems like it has potential but won't "arrive" until after the patents all expire.

dabeledo 5y ago
$800 to preorder the smaller 13in one. The other one (25.3in as in the title) is $1800
dotdi 5y ago
The $800 model has an "Add to Cart" button for me (in Germany). The 25.3 model shows "Pre-order".
- lovelyviking 5y ago
  "BOOX Mira Series only supports direct mail from China. And US, EU and UK warehouses are not supported for shipping. Some countries may levy tariffs on the imported goods. For the amount of tariffs, please consult the local customs department."
hutrdvnj 5y ago
Is it expensive because of the parents or because it's not cheap to create a big sized e-ink display? I mean small e-ink displays for ebook readers or e-ink tablets are quite affordable these days.
samwillis 5y ago
This is an interesting old thread about einks business model and parents: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 Some of the early parents have expired but there are a lot of them…
- codethief 5y ago
  Came here to link to this thread. Also make sure to check out the color e-ink displays by Clearink that the top comment mentions. They are quite impressive. (Unfortunately, I recently heard from the people behind the Supernote tablet that those displays by Clearink are very low in contrast and therefore require lots of ambient light. There goes the dream of color e-ink displays…)

frou_dh 5y ago

You guys go ahead and buy, take one for the team and work out all the bugs/defects in Rev.A units :)

lambdaba 5y ago

I couldn't (easily) find information about refresh rates and such, what I want is to know if this is usable for coding. Frankly I'm down to go with lower stats for this, because I so want to be able to use a computer with just natural light. If anybody has been doing this I'd love to read about your experience!

deanc 5y ago
Might be a bit of a struggle without syntax highlighting? Contrast won't get you very far.
- fho 5y ago
  You might be surprised how far contrast (and cursive, bold, etc) can get you. Eg: https://github.com/fxn/vim-monochrome https://github.com/fxn/vim-monochrome edit: Also, and probably a lot more controversial, code structure matters a lot. No syntax highlighting will save you if your code consists of opaque blocks of text.
  - WJW 5y ago
    I'll admit that that example did more than I expected with the limited tools it has, but it is still rather far from the things full color highlighting can do.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      You can, indeed, do a lot without colors. I actually find it a lot less distracting to have various shades of the same color and highlight with bold, italics, and a couple shades of gray. The other day I was wondering if I could add some non-ascii chars to htop's monochrome mode (looked like a pain, will pick it up later) to explore textures instead of colors. I remember using Think Pascal on the Apple II (too slow to be of any use) but it did a great job of highlighting the structure of the program under the source code. This is what I want syntax/semantic highlighting to do for me. These screens are higher resolution and can have multiple shades of gray, which is much more than what those pioneers had to communicate with their users. Horrendously expensive though.

zwirbl 5y ago

I couldn't find a video of the display in use, so here it goes (for the 13.3" version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBfWkxOfUfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBfWkxOfUfQ seems a little slow and the screen refreshes sometimes excessive, but much better than I expected

vasilakisfil 5y ago
for some reason, from the video, screen doesn't feel the same quality as other e-ink readers like kindle. edit: I mean, kindle videos feel like you are reading a real paper, while here feels like you are in an actual screen.
leemailll 5y ago
try this https://jvod.300hu.com/vod/product/0cecde96-786d-418d-a5b7-3e3358e53141/bfc999e730ea4f199a30ff63e6cf08c8.mp4?source=2&h265=h265/18799/fe740e13b2a049009440dc71e98a717d.mp4 https://jvod.300hu.com/vod/product/0cecde96-786d-418d-a5b7-3...
avar 5y ago
A little slow? I was pretty amazed by how fast it is in that video. I haven't kept up with E-Ink technology, but I own an old Kindle and it takes it 0.5-1s to refresh, but that 13.3" display is keeping up with finger gestures when scrolling. Yes it would suck for watching movies, but it seems to be really useful for anything involving text, e.g. i.e. a secondary monitor to read documentation on, or even program on. I suppose the lag in text input being updated might be more distracting than when using it purely for reading.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  Fast for eink, but also absolutely terrible ghosting, which makes the speed considerably less impressive considering how straining it looks. What's the point of a fairly quick response to screen updates when you have to press the manual refresh button in order to read what's on it?
  - 5y ago

smusamashah 5y ago

What is the lifespan of high refresh e-ink devices such as this monitor? Is it measured in a billion refreshes for example? E-ink displays have been slow to update but like this monitor there are a bunch of e-ink tablets which even allow you to watch videos and play games. In my head it feels like it detoriate the device faster.

mdp2021 5y ago
> lifespan The declared generic (update frequency agnostic) lifespan for E-Ink displays a few years ago was: 10 million switches per dot
- w-m 5y ago
  At 30 switches per second for video playback (which this device supports), a lifetime of 10m switches would be gone in around 93 hours.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    That would be, of course, if for 93 hours one played a 30Hz flashing B-W-B-W... The average dot switch, on a binary (B/W) threshold, on normal video, is probably well less than every second. A value between 1'000 and 10'000 hours is more realistic. The technology was not born for this use. Nonetheless, the lifetime values one can find do not seem to be precise and reliable (that of 10 million is one piece of reported official information and not the only one). Having tests would be better, I am not sure how much these speculations can be trusted. Anyway, given the presence of EPD based smartphones in the market, together with the monitors, information will have to come out of users' experience.
AlanYx 5y ago
It will deteriorate relatively quickly if you're using it primarily to watch video. Of the three vendors of e-ink monitors (Boox, Dasung, Waveshare), I believe only Waveshare is clear about this in their support documents ("The e-Paper display cannot work as common LCD displays, the lifetime of the e-Paper display is short and it is related to the update times. You cannot use e-Paper to display video for a long time, which will shorten the lifetime of the e-Paper display."). With e-ink, the dots do not fail right away; the contrast deteriorates around the 10 million update mark.

patall 5y ago

My dad has bought the 25.3'' E ink monitor from Dasung. From what he tells, it does not have a backlight and is itself to dark for his taste outside of middle of the day. Maybe it will be better during summer or in bright condition but sitting further away from these devices may require more than just reflectiveness for some users.

fbn79 5y ago
eInk is not transparent, you canno have backlight. It's objective is to emulate ink on paper.
- mrjin 5y ago
  It might be true you cannot have backlight, but for sure you can have front light. My ~7 years old Kindle paperwhite has that.
  - patall 5y ago
    I guess that may be what I meant, i.e second 24 of the video.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
numpad0 5y ago
Contrast ratio of E Ink is like 10:1. I don't know exactly how it compares but backlit LCD is approx 1k:1, OLED is 1m:1 in contrast(pun intended).
- GuB-42 5y ago
  You can't compare the contrast of an emissive (backlit LCD/OLED) and a reflective (eInk) display. Put your OLED display in direct sunlight on a bright summer day and you will get effectively get no contrast at all, the screen will reflect so much sunlight that your puny LEDs won't do much of a difference. Backlit LCDs will get some weak contrast because the backpanel is a bit reflective, but eInk displays will always be 10:1 because they use ambiant light instead of competing with it. These ridiculously high contrast ratios of OLED displays only take into account emitted light and only make sense in a dark room, or VR headset.

kumarvvr 5y ago

Would love this as a second or third screen to read books / documentation from.

OliverJones 5y ago

I love these E-Ink guys. They've been plugging away for a quarter century and their stuff keeps getting better.

breakfastduck 5y ago
It's only taking so long because they won't allow people to actually help progress the tech.

dash2 5y ago

The rival here is the Dasung 25.3" model, currently waiting for a new batch: https://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink-monitor-paperlike-253 https://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink... I'd love to hear from anyone who's worked with a monitor like this.

patagonicus 5y ago
I got the smaller Dasung about half a year ago, I posted a comment about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29429093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29429093 Let me know if you have any specific questions.
- dash2 5y ago
  Thanks! * Do you use it as your main daily monitor? * I find screen time quite addictive (which is one reason why I am on HN so much). Do you notice any difference from this perspective when using an eink screen? * Has the screen quality degraded over time? * How big a difference has it made to your life?
  - aarongray 5y ago
    I can't speak to e-ink but regarding screen time addiction, I used Gray-Switch (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vegardit.grayswitch&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vegardit.g...) to turn my phone display black and white, and immediately my phone use decreased by 66%.
    - the_pwner224 5y ago
      This is now built in to newer versions of Android (I think 11+, and AppleOS may also have it).
      - jonnycomputer 5y ago
        where would the settings for that be? accessibility?

moritonal 5y ago

Interesting limitation listed on their site: "AMD GPUs are not supported for now."

BBC-vs-neolibs 5y ago
Could it use Nvidia G-sync somehow?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

vxa_victor 5y ago

These products look amazing but a major drawback is the lack of colors. Any chance e-ink will get color support?

archerx 5y ago
They exist and they look cool kind of like comic books. They are expensive and the refresh rate is slower though. https://www.waveshare.com/5.65inch-e-paper-module-f.htm https://www.waveshare.com/5.65inch-e-paper-module-f.htm
- b112 5y ago
  It's all how you explain it. 4k e-ink has ~ 8M balls, and can refresh ... let's say 10x per second. giving a stunning refresh rate of 80megaballs per second. That's an incredibly high rate!
mdp2021 5y ago
You can use Kaleido (E-Ink EPD with RGB filter on top) - it's already available. Or, wait for cheap and fast E-Ink ACeP ("Advanced Color ePaper"). Quality, you will have to assess.

acd 5y ago

Wow this looks like a nice companion device for reading documentation. Anyone know if Boox eink displays works with ipad hdmi adapter as a secondary display?

TruthWillHurt 5y ago

Not a word on refresh rate.

dspillett 5y ago
Unless they have some wizz-bang new tech that no one else is using yet, which they would shout about if they were, with eInk you can pretty much say “if your use case makes you care much about refresh rates then eInk isn't a good choice for you ATM”.
- TruthWillHurt 5y ago
  I agree, but even among e-ink displays there are refresh rates that make it difficult to enter text or view terminal output.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    In text editing, I even set refresh in batched bursts of max 500ms (a few chars per display update), to be battery conservative. No problem.

jll29 5y ago

I can't wait until this reaches maturity to get a 11" or so sub-notebook which is quiet, low energy, with a good keyboard for reading and writing (text/code editing, emails, PDF reading of scientific papers). Looked into this a couple of years ago and it was too early, now one could almost design & build that.

salamandersauce 5y ago
You can already get a 10 or 13" eInk Android tablet and do all that already. Just need to bring your own keyboard.
girvo 5y ago
The Boox tablets are full android devices and support USB-C connectivity and Bluetooth for keyboards. They even have a clamshell keyboard case/attachment for sale that I have and use with my Note 2 Termux + Termux.Styling set to Black on White is surprisingly powerful, and works better than I expected. Adjusting the refresh rate helps too.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  Can it talk to my laptop via bluetooth? That would be rad. I'd use it outdoors, with my laptop running but still folded in my bag.
  - girvo 5y ago
    In what way? It’s got Bluetooth and can do anything an android device can :) If there’s something specific you have in mind I can give it a try?
    - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
      Yes please! I just want to know if such a screen can serve as the UI (including touch input from the user) for a laptop that's folded and put away somewhere nearby.

efferifick 5y ago

I wonder how well one can modify the framework laptop to use the 13 inch e-ink monitor. Even if a small hdmi cable needs to run outside the case, as long as the lid can close (no need auto sleep) I'd be happy. I don't know anything about 3D printing, but it will likely be necessary (perhaps not sufficient though).

mdp2021 5y ago
One of the only non-modular parts of the Framework is, very unfortunately, the display (it's glossy). If you just want to use an HDMI connection, a piece of plastic is sufficient, see: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=173025&stc=1&id=1566157578 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmenti... But do not think the solution is without issues (I mentioned elsewhere: touchscreen, battery...)

trabant00 5y ago

I am sad they go with the health angle. There is no evidence that suggest backlit or blue light are any more damaging for the eyes than a piece of paper with the same text. It's focusing that strains the eyes. https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/are-computer-glasses-worth-it https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/are-computer-... > Long hours staring at digital screens leads to decreased blinking. Blinking less sometimes causes a series of temporary eye symptoms known as eye strain. But these effects are caused by how people use their screens, not by anything coming from the screens. The best way to avoid eye strain is to take breaks from the screen frequently. > The amount of light coming from a computer has never been demonstrated to cause any eye disease.

breakfastduck 5y ago
Anecdotal but I consider it absolutely farcical that you could claim using an e-ink is no better for your eyes. I can literally feel the difference when using my ereader.
martopix 5y ago
On the other hand it is well known that it contributes to sleeplessness.
b112 5y ago
Lots of people are bothered by the backlight on their monitor. Lots. Eye strain != eye disease, or eye damage. A parallel, is you can strain a muscle, and it will be find in a few days with light use. This is precisely how many feel, when "over exposed" to endless bright light in their eyes. I looked at their product page, and did not see anything about "permanent damage to your eyes!", but... I certainly could have missed that. Sadly, I'm being forced to defend a company I dislike greatly, for their phone-home-to-china firmwares in other boox products. I can only imagine what any accompanying software they may include, to auto-adjust/etc the monitor, will entail.

patagonicus 5y ago

Looks pretty nice, especially the USB-C input. I might have gotten that one if it had been available when I was shopping for an e-Ink screen. I got a Dasung 13" one a while ago, the larger Dasung wasn't launched yet (and I was struggling a bit to justify the price tag of the 13", now I'd probably go for the larger one). It's very limited, basically only works for black and white text, but for that it's great. I use it pretty much daily, just keeping a shell open there. I've changed my terminal to be black on white and all colors map to light/dark gray (for light/dark versions of the basic terminal colors), which works decently. I did change themes for things like tmux and vim to work better on a grayscale screen. Reading text on it is great, but compared to a Kindle Oasis (whatever the newest model was last summer) its DPI is quite low, so you can't have text as small without it getting blurry. I mostly got it because I noticed that I was getting some eye strain staring at a regular screen all day and as best as I can tell it really has helped with that. It's also powered off of USB, which makes it usable on the go as a second screen. My main gripe is using a Mini-HDMI-Port with a custom cable to inject power from USB (I think HDMI->Mini-HDMI plus a separate USB cable for Micro-USB input also work, never tried), but it's also a bit annoying that the inputs are on the sides and not the back. I also use it with a monitor arm at home, the included pole for standing it up is ok for on the go, but I really wouldn't use it permanently. TL;DR: expensive, but if you want to reduce eye strain while reading a lot of text it really helps. Main driver for shell / coding tasks and I sometimes read longer websites/Google Docs/etc on it, though less frequently.

gawin 5y ago

How does this compare with the Dasung Paperlike 25.3? Looks like the same E-ink display, but perhaps different driver? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGblzUc_Z1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGblzUc_Z1I https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-253-the-first-25-3-inch-e-ink-monitor#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-253-the-first-2...

dkdbejwi383 5y ago

I'd absolutely love to try something like this for programming, but it's much too expensive for me to try out on a whim

derekpankaew 5y ago
Wait for it to show up on Amazon Prime, then use the 30 day return policy as a method to try it out?

tapia 5y ago

I am delighted to see that they have Linux support for their software. You don't see that so often, especially for such niche hardware. Really cool!

Someone 5y ago

“Remove ghosting with one press” is a feature that they use to sell the device? How bad is the ghosting/how often do you need to press that button?

mherdeg 5y ago
Seeing the no-ghosts button reminded me that it's very likely my young kids are never going to have the fun of pushing the "degauss" button on a CRT.
toper-centage 5y ago
My old and only eReader, a Kindle 3, had ghosting issues, but it self-fixed them by refreshing often. But there's a cost to that, because a full refresh takes significant time. In complex UIs that are more than just text you often can get away with updating only a portion of the screen, at the goat of bits of ghosting. My understanding is that this is still a limitation of this tech.

girvo 5y ago

I adore Boox. My Note 2 is amazing (and keeps getting better and faster note-taking with firmware updates every few months). I’ve ordered a Mira, the 13.3” one, which I think is a more useful size for the type of documents and uses e-ink has. This is super cool though!

BostonEnginerd 5y ago
Their devices look really neat, but I don't think I can bring myself to buy one until they resolve their GPL violations. https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/fz4yka/max3_review_gpl_license_problem_no_sources/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/fz4yka/max3_revi...
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  Maybe someone can convince Naomi Wu to go visit their office in person like she did for Umidigi.
  - BostonEnginerd 5y ago
    I saw the original video on the Twitters, but didn't check out the followup until now. I'm thrilled that her visit worked and that the files were posted! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj04MKykmnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj04MKykmnQ

zimventures 5y ago

...but can it run Crysis?

mdp2021 5y ago
There is a guy who wrote a demoscene demo for a C64 disk drive: the drive itself contains a 6502 and the cable could transmit B/W video data. Audio amazingly obtained from mechanics. But I have never seen a demoscene demo from the electronics of a monitor display.
- exikyut 5y ago
  A late comment, but this sortakinda vaguely leans in the general direction you're describing: https://github.com/RedBalloonShenanigans/MonitorDarkly https://github.com/RedBalloonShenanigans/MonitorDarkly

aj_g 5y ago

Related, does anybody have any suggestions for a cheap/large/easy to look at monitor that could be used for a digital picture frame? I was thinking of getting a Raspberry Pi to rotate through my photos in my home, but the hardest part of the project would be choosing a good discrete/mountable display.

gcanyon 5y ago

I don't need touch, and I don't need a sub-one-second refresh rate. I do need a monitor I can read documents on without eye strain that doesn't cost ~8x what an equivalent LCD monitor costs.

keewee7 5y ago

>Onyx Boox is a brand of e-book reader produced by Onyx International Inc, based in China China is the only country innovating right now. The rest of the world really needs to start building combined manufacturing and innovation hubs like Shenzhen.

criddell 5y ago
Isn't Onyx one of the more famous GPL violators? Maybe innovation is easier when you let others do the R&D and you just use it.

dirtyid 5y ago

Looks nice, but feels like another year where ebook hasn't arrived. Still waiting for the day of sub 500 eink 50 inch screens.

randomor 5y ago

Why hasn’t anyone built a short throw projector for office work(coding) yet? - reflective light just like eink so less eye strain - better refresh rate and latency - better color range Is it the resolution?

burkaman 5y ago
I think the market for people who want to (and are able to) work exclusively in a very dark room is probably pretty small. I'm also not sure what features a work-focused projector would have that a normal projector wouldn't.
patentatt 5y ago
Do projectors have less eye strain? That's quite intriguing if so. What if you had a front-projector projecting on an e-ink screen, such that various parts of the screen could be in color/motion mode (e-ink off, projector only), mixed mode (e-ink on, with color overlay for syntax highlighting or the like), or ink only (projector off). That seems like something that's doable with off-the shelf components and software, at least as a POC...

fnord77 5y ago

would smooth scrolling of text be possible?

intrasight 5y ago

What would be the benefit of this over a quality OLED monitor?

mdp2021 5y ago
If you are in context in which it is preferable to have * light reflecting instead of light emitting, and/or * bistable instead of kept on through energy. Some people use EPD at midday, black on white under the sun, and OLED at midnight, white on black ("off") in the dark.

Jeff_Brown 5y ago

This kind of thing needs Bluetooth. Then I could read outdoors with my laptop running in my backpack.

cgb223 5y ago

I own a Boox Note Air 2. Bought it when I was looking for a large screen eReader for the technical epubs and pdfs I’ve amassed over the years that require a big screen (big pages on the pdfs) pros and cons of this company are pretty clear Pros are that they have large eReaders and support any file format They also run android so if you use an app like Pocket or an RSS feed to read articles, they work well enough Cons: The company’s documentation is more or less broken. Google how to fix something and their docs are missing, outdated, and often in broken english. The screen itself is big but slow to refresh and in most modes leaves traces of the previous pages. They have a manual button to full refresh the page, but a user shouldn’t have to do that. It’s not a certified android device so you have to jump through a bunch of somewhat insecure hoops to get the play store installed and log in. Privacy: There privacy statement basically says “lol we promise to be private k?” So I want to run this thing through wireshark to see how true that is. My only skepticism is that it’s a Chinese company, and that might not be fair, but given the information I have on my device it would be good to confirm. All that said, they have a color eInk screen that’s coming out soon that looks wonderful.

tata71 5y ago
> insecure Compared to...running Play Services? Doubt.
- sieabahlpark 5y ago
  Oh yes, the CCP and Play services are exactly identical. Thanks for your incredible insight
- ev1 5y ago
  security, privacy, and anonymity are separate concepts
tata71 5y ago
This is the sort of device you either replace the OS, or put on a segregated network.
- 5y ago

denysvitali 5y ago

799 USD

chx 5y ago
Nope, that's the Mira, the Mira Pro is 1800.

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago

Here are my problems with such devices. I own an Onyx Boox 3 for a year now, I guess I qualify. 1) these screens still have bad contrast compared to a printed page at the same DPI. They mostly compare to yellowed dog-eared 50-year-old books. The dots are also rather fuzzy, so not really comparable to what you get in a decent LCD at the same density. 2) if it comes to desktop use, no OS/environment except classic MacOS up to version 8 and maybe GEM gives a shit about monochrome displays, especially those where only 1-bit colors look decent (so Windows 3.11 would likely count too). On DEs which you can still theme, themes that look like printed pages (two colors for UI, no gradients, no exceptions to this rule) don't exist at all. There's GTK's "High Contrast" theme, but it renders everything also BIG and FAT, which is cumbersome to look at unless you need it because of eyesight problems. Also, there should be a way to disable all UI animations and most hover effects, but it either doesn't exist or keeps getting reinvented in any new major version so you're chasing it every once in a while. 3) Have you ever seen how Android renders colors on displays with no colors? God damn it to hell. I tried a terminal emulator. Some text was black, some white, some nigh-invisible, and some was white with a black (fuzzy) outline. I thought a monochrome display couldn't be ever described as garish, but now I've learned the errors of my ways. The only way it can work is if you export TERM=vt100 so it doesn't try to draw you rainbows where there can be none. 4) While the refresh speed got better compared to most Kindles I owned, when you're typing, it's still more annoying than a CRT with big afterburn. Maybe it's kind of acquired taste, I dunno, but not for me. Yet. I hope. I wouldn't mind a strictly 2-colored theme on a regular laptop screen as well, mind you.

codethief 5y ago
Re 3): Doesn't Android support a black-and-white mode?
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  Internal boox apps are good because they were designed that way. But things from the play store are shite on such screens. And yes, that’s the android’s idea of how to render color (or maybe it’s the driver, who knows). It’s like Microsoft Paintbrush on mono screens where you got different dithering patterns instead of colors, except worse.

al3mani 5y ago

What about f.lux (and others?) --> "Effects and extra colors" --> "Grayscale" ?

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
Still doesn't fix the problem of rather bright light being emitted from the screen into your eyes. Think also about all the power wasted on backlighting where ambient light could be just fine. Also, I don't know if you have noticed, but you can't use f.lux and friends and grayscale simultaneously, because grayscale is applied after gamma change, making it pointless.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

That promotional video didn't show a visible page refresh once. Which was what I was most interested in seeing, since lag while typing might be the thing I'm most worried about [well that and my syntax highlighting (:]

kentosi 5y ago

> *E Ink monitors' refresh speed is not as high as conventional monitors', So what is the refresh rate then? I can't seem to find it in the Specs section.

levpopov 5y ago

E-ink monitors are really cool (I've had a couple different ones for a while). However if your primary goal is reducing eye-strain, there are much better ways: https://twitter.com/levpopov/status/1466835595984977923 https://twitter.com/levpopov/status/1466835595984977923

oblak 5y ago

Man, I can't wait for something like e-ink to become usable as an actual 120Hz monitor. I've been sitting in front of shitty screens my entire life. Give display that do not shine and you could play games on. Won't happen in my life though

karmakaze 5y ago

> *Please confirm your ports (USB Type-C and HDMI) support secondary monitors by connecting your devices to another monitor first. AMD GPUs are not supported for now. I have no mental model of what this device is. Apparently it's not a display in the normal sense. Perhaps what's sent via HDMI/USB-C are effectively control signals rather than the colors/shades you want that get you the shades you want accounting for the response characteristics of the eInk display. What I'd like is for any of this extra logic to be in the device itself and not in software that requires installation and updates to keep working with OS updates, or other OSes altogether.

totony 5y ago
e-ink has some special sync settings (where it's a tradeoff between speed and ghosting). Probably what usb is used for. You can also aprtially refresh the screen&stuff. Probably easier to do it in software.

ciupicri 5y ago

repost https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27629455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27629455