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I’ve never seen this preference for e-ink over LCD anywhere outside of HN, and I still don’t understand what drives it. Is it some kind of phobia of emissive il

I’ve never seen this preference for e-ink over LCD anywhere outside of HN, and I still don’t understand what drives it. Is it some kind of phobia of emissive illumination? I have my own problems with LCD: even modern displays have issues with uniformity and off-axis color rendition, but e-ink’s solution to those comes at a much greater cost of contrast and refresh rate.

berkes 3y ago
> anywhere outside of HN Did you forget the entire industry of ebooks and -readers?
- mortenjorck 3y ago
  It’s solving a battery life problem there, not an emissive-versus-reflective problem, unless you’re someone who likes to read outdoors. I’m pretty sure 90-plus percent of the market has no preference for the tech over the LCDs of their tablets other than that they go for a long time on a single charge and the display never goes to sleep.
  - berkes 3y ago
    sorry, but [citation needed]. I highly doubt that what you say is true. When I go the homepage of e.g. Kobo e-readers, two of their four sales-points are that the reader is confortable on the eyes. Same for the kindle, where the first two points are "crisp..." and "comfortable on the eyes". I'm not saying marketing is always right, but if all e-readers are selling their devises on the merits of "being easy on the eyes", you can't just say that's not a thing for people buying them.
barrysteve 3y ago
Not anyone is looking for a constant stream of dopamine hits from their display. Sometime to simplify, sit and ponder and save oneself from constant visual interruption is my main preference for e-ink displays. 'Modern' computing has become pretty much intolerable for work for me. Any display that does not abuse my eyesight and can be passive like paper, is basically my go-to answer. I do not tolerate having to re-read the sentence I'm looking at because the display looks smooth, but can't hold a static representation to save it's life. My sister's macbook is gorgeous, but impossible to read text. She doesn't read as much anymore.. because of this phenomenon. Something about the display makes you stop seeing the line above and the line below the one you are currently reading, making it hard to hold a whole paragraph in your head, cause you're constantly re-scanning the same lines you didn't expect to drop. Like you're reading through a pinprick sized hole.

berkes 3y ago

> anywhere outside of HN Did you forget the entire industry of ebooks and -readers?

mortenjorck 3y ago
It’s solving a battery life problem there, not an emissive-versus-reflective problem, unless you’re someone who likes to read outdoors. I’m pretty sure 90-plus percent of the market has no preference for the tech over the LCDs of their tablets other than that they go for a long time on a single charge and the display never goes to sleep.
- berkes 3y ago
  sorry, but [citation needed]. I highly doubt that what you say is true. When I go the homepage of e.g. Kobo e-readers, two of their four sales-points are that the reader is confortable on the eyes. Same for the kindle, where the first two points are "crisp..." and "comfortable on the eyes". I'm not saying marketing is always right, but if all e-readers are selling their devises on the merits of "being easy on the eyes", you can't just say that's not a thing for people buying them.

barrysteve 3y ago

Not anyone is looking for a constant stream of dopamine hits from their display. Sometime to simplify, sit and ponder and save oneself from constant visual interruption is my main preference for e-ink displays. 'Modern' computing has become pretty much intolerable for work for me. Any display that does not abuse my eyesight and can be passive like paper, is basically my go-to answer. I do not tolerate having to re-read the sentence I'm looking at because the display looks smooth, but can't hold a static representation to save it's life. My sister's macbook is gorgeous, but impossible to read text. She doesn't read as much anymore.. because of this phenomenon. Something about the display makes you stop seeing the line above and the line below the one you are currently reading, making it hard to hold a whole paragraph in your head, cause you're constantly re-scanning the same lines you didn't expect to drop. Like you're reading through a pinprick sized hole.