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There are plenty of smartwatches with transflective displays today (e.g. most Garmins). Unlike normal LCD or LED displays they're perfectly readable in direct s

There are plenty of smartwatches with transflective displays today (e.g. most Garmins). Unlike normal LCD or LED displays they're perfectly readable in direct sunlight (with a reduced color gamut), they have great refresh rates, and basically become normal LCD displays when they have to. They do consume power more aggressively than e-paper/e-ink though: Garmin watches last a few days, while my Fossil hybrid smartwatch lasts a couple weeks. I just wish they made laptops with them. I'd buy a laptop I can use at the beach with sunglasses in a heartbeat.

jerlam 3y ago
Garmin is unfortunately in the middle of phasing out all their transreflective displays. The newest generation of their smartwatches (265/965/Epix) are all using OLED, save for the Fenix 7.
- porridge_ 3y ago
  The newest Garmin Instinct has a transflective display iirc
manwe150 3y ago
There is a newly released tablet with transreflective LCD and front light: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-first-color-rlcd-epaper-with-front-light https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-first-color-rlcd-... I got one on kickstarter a week ago, so I am still in the experimenting phase with it, but so far can confirm it works, with some quirks.
jlokier 3y ago
> I just wish they made laptops with them. I'd buy a laptop I can use at the beach with sunglasses in a heartbeat. My Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo SI1520 laptop back in ~2006 had a transflective LCD, and that wasn't mentioned in the spec. I just bought it because it seemed like a nice laptop, and took a gamble on it running Linux well, which it did. I found out some years after buying it, when I took it out in bright sunlight and found the screen was perfectly readable. In bright sunlight each pixel looked like a square mirror or black, rather than the usual colour in darker environments. I don't know if it was officially transflective, or just a side effect of the LCD implementation, but that was the effect. Text editing in Emacs in the Linux console while basking in open fields on a bright day was a breeze. I didn't try the beach but I think it would have worked perfectly. As this wasn't an advertised feature, I thought that meant later devices would tend to have the same as standard, just something nice we could take for granted. Unfortunately that hasn't been the case on newer devices. I'd probably buy another Fujitsu-Siemens laptop because I was very pleased with that one, but they shut down the business since then.
paradox460 3y ago
My Fenix 6x lasts 20 days on a charge, and far longer if I turn off the radios

jerlam 3y ago

Garmin is unfortunately in the middle of phasing out all their transreflective displays. The newest generation of their smartwatches (265/965/Epix) are all using OLED, save for the Fenix 7.

porridge_ 3y ago
The newest Garmin Instinct has a transflective display iirc

manwe150 3y ago

There is a newly released tablet with transreflective LCD and front light: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-first-color-rlcd-epaper-with-front-light https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/world-s-first-color-rlcd-... I got one on kickstarter a week ago, so I am still in the experimenting phase with it, but so far can confirm it works, with some quirks.

jlokier 3y ago

> I just wish they made laptops with them. I'd buy a laptop I can use at the beach with sunglasses in a heartbeat. My Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo SI1520 laptop back in ~2006 had a transflective LCD, and that wasn't mentioned in the spec. I just bought it because it seemed like a nice laptop, and took a gamble on it running Linux well, which it did. I found out some years after buying it, when I took it out in bright sunlight and found the screen was perfectly readable. In bright sunlight each pixel looked like a square mirror or black, rather than the usual colour in darker environments. I don't know if it was officially transflective, or just a side effect of the LCD implementation, but that was the effect. Text editing in Emacs in the Linux console while basking in open fields on a bright day was a breeze. I didn't try the beach but I think it would have worked perfectly. As this wasn't an advertised feature, I thought that meant later devices would tend to have the same as standard, just something nice we could take for granted. Unfortunately that hasn't been the case on newer devices. I'd probably buy another Fujitsu-Siemens laptop because I was very pleased with that one, but they shut down the business since then.

paradox460 3y ago

My Fenix 6x lasts 20 days on a charge, and far longer if I turn off the radios