Saved you a click: new E-Ink display with a 60-120hz refresh rate
Live Paper is not E-Ink, so it shouldn’t have the same inherent issues with ghosting or refreshing.
E-ink is a very specific display technology with ink particles floating in oil controlled by magnetic fields. They don’t explicitly state what this Live Paper exactly is, but they do state it’s something that solves the downsides of typical reflective LCDs, so, probably one of those but better.
Actual e-inks have the benefit of looking like ink blobs on paper and not square pixels, and the image staying even when power is completely removed, and the massive downside that because they are being physically moved, it actually takes a bit of time so they have terrible refresh rates.Yeah it looks like a transflective LCD with an (optional) almost orange internal light. Would it make a decent e-reader or note taking device, sure, but it’s not e ink.
That video is extremely impressive. Hoooo boy.
It’s resurfacing old tech? My Sony Ericsson P800 from 20 years ago had a screen that worked great in direct sunlight. It worked best in direct sunlight, the brightest the sun, the better you could see. Downside is that in the dark it had poor illumination
It’s LCD with a reflective background and lateral illumination rather than backlight
Transreflective lcd doesn’t look great though, especially when viewed at angles, or when the room is bright enough to light the reflective layer but dark enough to require the backlight.
No idea what the niche would be for this as there are already excellent looking e-ink displays which can play video in a pinch. Who’s going to go for a shittier looking one just for a higher refresh rate? I don’t think many gamers are looking for shitty looking black and white screens.
Zooming and panning a pdf is arguably more comfortable with higher frame rate.
Fair enough but is that enough to buy a whole different computer with a much worse display? Modern e-ink displays can do probably 10-15 fps on high frame rate which, while not perfect, is probably adequate.
As opposed to buing a separate display for the computer?
I like to think this thing would be nice reading the news while having a breakfast or reading an e-book outside or at the bed, not near my computer. So it makes a lot of sense to build a tablet with this display technology.
Every use case you described is already filled much better IMO by the high fps e-ink tablets like the Boox Tab Ultra. I would not want to do any of those things on the shitty screen shown in this post.
Boox Tab Ultra
Looks pretty nice device! Even the camera makes a bit sense in the demo they give (though apparently in practice the scanning rarely works). And cheaper to boot as well. I might consider getting this one.
But is the display really better quality? Atleast the DPI is slightly higher at 219 on the Boox Tab Ultra vs 190 on the Daylight. And Boox weighs 70 grams less, and that’s the device some reviews call heavy (and some lightweight…).
These reviews mention the slow display speed:
- https://www.xda-developers.com/boox-tab-ultra-review/
- https://www.techradar.com/reviews/onyx-boox-tab-ultra-review-an-e-ink-peg-in-an-ipad-hole even goes to describe it “distracting” and “Performance can’t keep up with fast typing”
- https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/onyx-boox-tab-ultra “Tab Ultra does let you choose between several refresh modes” and https://www.makeuseof.com/onyx-boox-tab-ultra-review/ "The HD preset works fine for casual reading, whereas the balanced mode works better when thumbing through documents or typing. Meanwhile, the fast mode is suggested for general website browsing, and ultrafast is more useful for video playback. "—surely if the display was always fast and working, this fidgeting would be pointless?
So perhaps there is some room for improvement? That being said, some other reviews don’t mention it and one says it’s faster than typical e-ink display, though that doesn’t sound immediately purely praising.
In the end it probably comes to the software: how fast it is, it well it works, how nice it is to use. It seems both have customized the standard Android, so I suppose the difference is in which one has done it better and which one has better custom apps. Per the reviews Boox doesn’t fare too well in this aspect. Maybe someone will make a comparative review of the devices.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
excellent looking e-ink displays which can play video in a pinch
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Hmm I hope it lives up to the hype. I wonder what this new display tech is.
Look at the video of the daylight. It’s a really ugly display IMO.
That’s a pretty cool display
This looks surprisingly good. I’d love to see what these would eventually look like with color.
