4 ms·

It's responsive enough to do what it was purpose built for - read a book. It can do other things, but it's not made or marketed to do them, so they keep the cos

It's responsive enough to do what it was purpose built for - read a book. It can do other things, but it's not made or marketed to do them, so they keep the cost low by not innovating on responsiveness. Instead, they make it more comfortable to use in other ways, such as how it's held and navigated, and the backlight.

tonymet 2y ago
There are many high-quality products at a competitive cost. That's a pathetic excuse. A lot of time was spent integrating social features that no one uses. That time could have been spent on quality & latency. I understand their business goals and objectives. It's still a low-quality product. A profitable product can also be terrible.
- Tagbert 2y ago
  from what I've read, responsive screen refresh is inversely related to battery life. A more responsive screen results in less battery life. Amazon, and pretty much all other eink readers have prioritized battery life over absolute responsiveness. They have made significant improvements in responsiveness over the years. Do you remember how slow screen refreshes were on the original Kindle? It's just that that is not a high priority for their main use case of linear reading. If you want to use it for reading PDF reference books, you probably should look to one of the eink Android tablets that are more general purpose devices and may have a faster refresh rate.
  - jsheard 2y ago
    There's also an inverse relationship between response time and image quality with e-ink, speeding up the display comes at the cost of more smearing/ghosting. There's often a software option to tweak that balance one way or the other depending on your preference.
- hex4def6 2y ago
  As someone who worked on them a decade ago: To be clear, the displays are not created by Amazon / Lab126. Instead, they're a product of Eink Holdings, Inc. From what I remember, most of the screen refresh algorithms etc are Eink IP. And by the way, the cost of the display module alone was eye-watering, especially when compared with LCD displays... With e-ink, you can drive it faster, at the expense of massive power consumption or terrible ghosting / artifacting. You're not going to get the 6 weeks of use out of a battery doing that. For reading a book, smudges / ghosting sucks, so they optimize for full screen refreshes just often enough to clear that up (that's when the screen goes black then white, followed by the update). It's kind of a physics based fundamental limitation -- the display is closer to a mechanical display of old than an LCD. The kindle is a product that does one thing well: display static text in any lighting condition with a similar quality to the printed page.
  - klabb3 2y ago
    > Instead, they're a product of Eink Holdings, Inc. From what I remember, most of the screen refresh algorithms etc are Eink IP. And by the way, the cost of the display module alone was eye-watering Layman here, but what you describe sounds very much like innovation held back by patents: At the core, it’s really promising tech with actual major advantages over LCDs with applications already in many domains and possibly many more in the future; all you’d need really is incremental improvements, similar to the journey of LCD. Remember the shitty TFT(?) monitors from 20 years ago? Ghosting, low resolution, delay, low contrast, backlight bleeding, etc. If we hypothetically had 20 companies competing the traditional way, throwing international manufacturing and material science know-how on these bad boys, I’d bet $100 that we’d see massive gains in ability at a fraction of marginal cost – from incrementalism alone – way before you reach physical limitations. And with a bit of luck, there might be a breakthrough in the core tech as well. > It's kind of a physics based fundamental limitation -- the display is closer to a mechanical display of old than an LCD. I hear you. But brilliant people have been wrong about these statements in all kinds of areas before. Could you share more detailed what those hard limitations might be?
    - treflop 2y ago
- andrewmutz 2y ago
  > A lot of time was spent integrating social features that no one uses. That time could have been spent on quality & latency. Goodreads integration is the best! I track books I want to read with it and then when I’m ready for a new book use the integration to download a sample on the spot
  - tonymet 2y ago
    that's good maybe I should give it another review. It seemed like a neglected part of the OS
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
braunboffel 2y ago
> so they keep the cost low by not innovating on responsiveness Could you clarify who the "they" is? The way you write "not innovating on responsiveness" sounds very confident. Do you have a background in electrophoretic particle physics or industry expertise which is why you're saying that? Just want to make sure this isn't like some case where a commentor is saying "the only reason we haven't established a homeland on Mars is because rocket companies are not innovating".

tonymet 2y ago

There are many high-quality products at a competitive cost. That's a pathetic excuse. A lot of time was spent integrating social features that no one uses. That time could have been spent on quality & latency. I understand their business goals and objectives. It's still a low-quality product. A profitable product can also be terrible.

Tagbert 2y ago
from what I've read, responsive screen refresh is inversely related to battery life. A more responsive screen results in less battery life. Amazon, and pretty much all other eink readers have prioritized battery life over absolute responsiveness. They have made significant improvements in responsiveness over the years. Do you remember how slow screen refreshes were on the original Kindle? It's just that that is not a high priority for their main use case of linear reading. If you want to use it for reading PDF reference books, you probably should look to one of the eink Android tablets that are more general purpose devices and may have a faster refresh rate.
- jsheard 2y ago
  There's also an inverse relationship between response time and image quality with e-ink, speeding up the display comes at the cost of more smearing/ghosting. There's often a software option to tweak that balance one way or the other depending on your preference.
hex4def6 2y ago
As someone who worked on them a decade ago: To be clear, the displays are not created by Amazon / Lab126. Instead, they're a product of Eink Holdings, Inc. From what I remember, most of the screen refresh algorithms etc are Eink IP. And by the way, the cost of the display module alone was eye-watering, especially when compared with LCD displays... With e-ink, you can drive it faster, at the expense of massive power consumption or terrible ghosting / artifacting. You're not going to get the 6 weeks of use out of a battery doing that. For reading a book, smudges / ghosting sucks, so they optimize for full screen refreshes just often enough to clear that up (that's when the screen goes black then white, followed by the update). It's kind of a physics based fundamental limitation -- the display is closer to a mechanical display of old than an LCD. The kindle is a product that does one thing well: display static text in any lighting condition with a similar quality to the printed page.
- klabb3 2y ago
  > Instead, they're a product of Eink Holdings, Inc. From what I remember, most of the screen refresh algorithms etc are Eink IP. And by the way, the cost of the display module alone was eye-watering Layman here, but what you describe sounds very much like innovation held back by patents: At the core, it’s really promising tech with actual major advantages over LCDs with applications already in many domains and possibly many more in the future; all you’d need really is incremental improvements, similar to the journey of LCD. Remember the shitty TFT(?) monitors from 20 years ago? Ghosting, low resolution, delay, low contrast, backlight bleeding, etc. If we hypothetically had 20 companies competing the traditional way, throwing international manufacturing and material science know-how on these bad boys, I’d bet $100 that we’d see massive gains in ability at a fraction of marginal cost – from incrementalism alone – way before you reach physical limitations. And with a bit of luck, there might be a breakthrough in the core tech as well. > It's kind of a physics based fundamental limitation -- the display is closer to a mechanical display of old than an LCD. I hear you. But brilliant people have been wrong about these statements in all kinds of areas before. Could you share more detailed what those hard limitations might be?
  - treflop 2y ago
andrewmutz 2y ago
> A lot of time was spent integrating social features that no one uses. That time could have been spent on quality & latency. Goodreads integration is the best! I track books I want to read with it and then when I’m ready for a new book use the integration to download a sample on the spot
- tonymet 2y ago
  that's good maybe I should give it another review. It seemed like a neglected part of the OS

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

braunboffel 2y ago

> so they keep the cost low by not innovating on responsiveness Could you clarify who the "they" is? The way you write "not innovating on responsiveness" sounds very confident. Do you have a background in electrophoretic particle physics or industry expertise which is why you're saying that? Just want to make sure this isn't like some case where a commentor is saying "the only reason we haven't established a homeland on Mars is because rocket companies are not innovating".