I live in places where the sun always shines; it's almost impossible to work normally outside (which is my preferred office) without eInk. I wish there were more laptops because it works fine for coding (I have Boox devices which I use sometimes to write code). Phone same thing. Of course with the great extra of having very long battery life.

My wife writes/reads books on eInk devices and I do reading, browsing and shell/coding. It works really well.

Living the e-ink dream. I keep waiting for some sort of ARM powered e-ink laptop to materialize out of the ether, but it hasn't happened yet.

I have a Boox Note Air that runs Android. I imagine the processor is ARM-based. I can hook up a BT keyboard + mouse and use it like I would a regular tablet.

Plus, it has 3 screen refresh settings (low, med, high), and the middle one makes typing a very nice experience

I'll have to check that out. Especially if it can be tinkered with via a custom rom like lineage.

Yeah, same, so I 'wing it' by having a Linux machine in my bag and ssh.

Check out the pinenote project. It is intended to be more than just a hackable eink reader slab.

Pinephone and Pinebook Pro owner. Eventually it will be added to the collection.

One Laptop Per Child had a transflective display, and I wish they'd managed to license that tech to someone else to help fund the project.

IIRC, with the backlight on you got full color. With the backlight off you got greyscale.

Together with the Pixel Qi you make reference to, there are a number of display technologies available or partially developed for outdoors use. And some are relatively old: has nobody here ever worked with, eg., a Palm Tungsten with transflective display?

N900 had a transreflective screen, officially as a selling point.

I think my Surface Go first gen also has it, even when not advertised as such, because I can switch to white themes and almost work with back-light off in the direct sun.

I always wondered why we couldn’t have either a lens at the top edge of a laptop display, or a translucent case to let the sun shine in behind the screen. Maybe the colors wouldn’t be perfect but you’d get more light behind the screen no?

Find yourself a half-silvered mirror, stick it in bright light, and put another mirror with some kind of diffuser behind it.

What happens is that the light in front of the mirror overwhelms the light coming from behind it. I think you'd pretty much have this problem with any kind of transmissive display, whether it's internally illuminated or relies on transmitted light. Unless you can also shade the front of the display, you'll see little.

Early box cameras, the type that had a drape over the eyepiece or viewplate for the photographer to compose the image, also had this problem.

All of these rely on obscuring some portion of the transmitted light to create a visible pattern. That's always going to be muted by ambient light from the front of the display. It's why we watch films in darkened cinemas but read books (reflective medium) in brightly-lit libraries (or at least with a strong reading lamp nearby). Note that with any LCD-based display, the polarising layer itself blocks ~50% of the transmitted light.

This is why high-ambient-light displays strongly favour reflective media. Ink on paper, paint on canvas, billboards. E-ink happens to be a rapidly-updatable version of this, though not quite as rapid as the electronicly-modulated pixels of an emissive display.

What would be a game-changer would be a material (or suite of materials) which change colour under some rapidly-switchable field (probably electric or magnetic), preferably either on the RBG or CMYK colour space, probably from a white baseline. A response in the 16--120Hz range would be sufficient for video. These would produce the effect of a printed or painted display that could present high-response video and which you'd illuminate from the front rather than back.

Though I think I'm already shuddering to consider the possible applications....

It's monochrome though right?

I can't imagine using a monochrome computer screen nowadays.

There are color touchscreens (Boox has one, there are phones that have those), but yeah I work in monochrome when there is sun or when I run out of battery; it works very well for me. But obviously YMMV! It beats sitting inside or squinting into my Macbook screen by a large stretch.

What about the refresh/redraw speed? I suppose e-ink has evolved past Kindle Paperwhite standards, because otherwise I can't see how you can use it for coding. Turning a page has a terrible redraw speed, it would drive me mad -- it looks like it was with LCD screens when they were first introduced: terrible.

It doesn't matter for reading books, of course.

In addition to using older technology, it's also possible that the Kindle makes different tradeoffs in terms of speed/contrast/ghosting/resolution. Personally, when reading, refresh speed is the property that I care least about among those four. I'd be surprised if engineers couldn't improve refresh speed when designing a panel for a laptop instead of an ebook reader.

On an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi with four refresh rates, "Normal" (highest quality, lowest refresh), "Speed", "A2", "X-Mode", I find "Speed Mode" entirely suitable for terminal-based work (Termux or SSH sessions).

Of course, colour-based syntax highlighting is unavailable, though a colour-eink device should be able to deliver a workable interpretation.

The "Normal Mode" is best suited to paginated books without any animation, and is virtually indistinguishable from printed paper (B&W/greyscale). Animation of any sort results in very annoying screen flash.

The "Speed Mode" effectively halftones images. I find that this often gives better results on photographs or shaded images, which otherwise appear slightly posterised in "Normal" mode. Most website animations are only grossly annoying (as per usual) rather than disrupting the display. (I really wish there were a toggle to disable animations entirely across web browsers.)

"A2" is mostly indistinguishable from "Speed" in my experience, though the refresh is slightly faster / ghosting slightly higher. Use when scrolling rapidly through materials. (Paginated navigation is much preferred for e-ink generally.)

"X Mode" is really only suitable for video. I actually watch many of those in "A-2", though in truth, this is more an "it's amazing it can be done" than "it works well". Yes, you can get a general impression of a video, but it's not a high-fidelity experience. That said, I don't watch much video in general.

I'm sure you don't have to wait for each letter to appear before typing the next, I would expect some slowdown but I don't think it would be as bad as you seem to imagine

Depends on how sensitive you are. For Kindle/book reading the image is static for long periods of time. For "interactive" screens (like when coding) it would drive me mad.

I was one of those people who could notice poor refresh rates in CRT (clicking teeth made it worse) and it drove me crazy.

This tech is not for me then.

A whole-screen refresh is slow, but typing does not require refreshing the entire screen. You can update small regions of the screen very quickly (which is what devices like e.g. the Remarkable do for writing).

There are different refresh settings. Its a trade-off between refresh and quality. At the fastest its artifacty but a YouTube video is watchable in real time. Probably 10-15fps. Speed mode is a decent compromise between quality and well speed for typing.

Yes, this is not as fast, but I got used to it quite quickly. I think you need ten finger typing or you might get very frustrated.

Ghosting drove me crazy with CRTs and older LCDs, so I guess this is not for me.

> Ghosting ... I guess

You should try. E-Ink displays refresh their areas using algorithms involving "waveforms", normally at a layer which hides the details, but giving the vendor and user options about how the display will work. The amount of ghosting depends on the "waveform".

I have no issues with ghosting using an Onyx Boox Max2 as a tablet for word processing - which is quite an achievement.

I do not think so no; I am from a CRT generation and I never noticed even with burnt in amber or monochromes(green). If you cannot stand that, eInk won't work for you I guess.

Check out review videos of Boox tablets (speed/X mode) or Dasung E-ink monitors. The refresh rate is pretty good.

Most E-ink devices are B&W, usually multi-shade greyscale, with higher-end devices being 16-shade. Dithering or halftoning gives quite good results on images.

There are some colour devices, though more usually ebook readers. Colour is muted -- more pastel than saturated, but gives some distinction for manga or color-differentiated graphics.

Video review of the Onyx BOOX Nova3 Colour: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=aSUcnkQCa-s

Oh, do books print the text in color now?

I think they were more talking about how modern code editors use color for syntax highlighting.

Alec of the YouTube channel Technology Connections has a video[1] about his experience with an E-Ink device on his second channel. He wanted to see if this would improve his productivity, so it's not exactly the same as your question, but it's still worth a watch, imho.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NfX0vlCa4k

Watching that now.

Alec is describing the earlier version of the Onyx BOOX Lumi, I've got the next-generation version (Max Lumi), and there's since been an update to that.

Some of the issues (display mode toggling, manual display refresh) are addressed, some remain. The "Navigation Ball" seems to be a new feature of my device not present in Alec's walkthrough, and puts numerous controls closer-to-hand. In particular there's an ability to tune contrast and display modes for each individual application (for most, "Speed" or "A2" mode is preferable to "Normal"). I get used to switching these for specific tasks / reasons (that is, within the same app). It's a quirk of the device.

Otherwise, quite a useful walkthrough, and fair as to device features and faults.

Have you found any drawing apps that work well with the eink screen - apart from the boox one?

No.

I'm a horrible guide for that as I'm really not an artist.

The BOOX notes app (which doubles largely as a paint app) is pretty good, however.

The principle issues with third-party drawing and handwriting apps, from what I understand, are:

- Input lag for Android-native as opposed to BOOX/e-ink optimised is much greater.

- Android apps tend to presume colour and animation, both of which are poorly supported by e-ink. (Though there are in fact colour e-ink devics, including from BOOX.)

Off topic but this YouTube channel is truly a gem. Interesting, clever, and entertaining. With a lot of personality.

And he doesn’t swear, so you can show it to curious kids without worrying about expanding their vocabulary in ways you didn’t intend.

I have an E-ink tablet, Boox Note Air. Some thoughts:

- Screen must be backlit. E-ink screens look great in perfect sunlight and fluorescent lights , but if you're used to a phone/tablet, you'd be surprised how dim e-ink can look just sitting on a couch in the evening, with a lamp a few meters away. Backlighting fixes that.

- Web browsing on e-ink is not bad at all if you stick to text-heavy stuff. The low refresh rate actually discourages "endless scroll" behaviour. Get a browser like Kiwi that allows you to set the Vol. keys as PgUp/PgDn. That makes the lag a lot less perceptible.

e-ink devices generally using frontlighting, not backlighting, which is way better on your eyes.

Thanks for the clarification. Yes, it is a front light.

An attached book light might also be an option. Some devices <coff>reMarkable<coff> don't have a frontlight.

Great battery life, light.Great for ebooks. I wish there was a laptop option as well, like HP's old Omnibook. Color is not required for many applications.

Or like the Gameboy Color's screen, you NEEDED external light to see it.

There are now cheap backlight+better LCD mods for the GBC, though. Backlight LCD >>>> ambient light LCD.

I use the LightPhone. IMO, eInk takes things maybe a bit too far. The refresh rate is terrible and I have yet to seen an eInk phone that has a good texting experience. Most of the companies doing this are trying to get people off their smartphones (a goal I agree with). But making texting harder ironically leads to me using the phone longer than I would if I had an easy way to send a text.

The battery life and visibility in the sun are both great features. I'm hoping the middle part of the spectrum between the eInk phones and the iPhone/Pixel starts to fill in. Something more along the lines of the Wise Phone (https://techless.com/).

Yes. I actually tend to call people back when they text me if I'm on the Light Phone lol, the physical experience of typing is that frustrating. I find myself hoping nobody texts me when my SIM is in the Light Phone because then it's hard to keep track of what info is on what device, iPhone or Light Phone, because yeah, I had to keep both, while I love the Light Phone and regret nothing and it's helped me practice better habits, the lack of productivity tools means the Light Phone is mainly a hike phone or going on a date phone for me.

I still would love an everyday phone that isn't an iPhone. Amazing rec for Wise Phone, has anyone tried it personally?

To be clear, the Light Phone does have an e-ink display. You're not happy with that?

https://www.gq.com/story/light-phone-2-review

Correct, it does have an e-ink display and I find it to be very limiting (beyond what's necessary to break bad smartphone habits).

Thanks.

E-ink is excellent for daylight use. I still have some issue with diffuse overhead lighting (e.g., fluorescent lighting). Detail is high, battery usage is generally low. Frontlight gives excellent indoor / dark ambient legibility.

The way I describe it: persistence is free, pixels are cheap, paints are slow, colour is (mostly) nonexistent. I find the interface far less distracting than emissive displays.

My own leaning is toward the dumbest phone I can find (though an e-ink display would be excellent), an e-book tablet, and a good laptop. Tablets are excellent for reading in ways that neither a smaller phone nor landscape laptop are.

I use a Hisense A5 since about two years and the battery runtime of over a week is just excellent. Being able to use it in plain sunlight is simply priceless. The grayscale display is good enough and i don't miss color at all. The only thing that somewhat bothers me is that it can't be equipped with some non-chinese alternate ROM like LineageOS. Nonetheless, as it turned out to be much better than expected i actually bought a second unit as a spare.

What are you using it for?

I use a normal Android phone and a phone sized Android e-reader. IMO, doing anything beyond reading long form material on an Android eink device is too painful to replace a phone because most apps have animations and lots of color.

https://www.cect-shop.com/en/xiaomi-moaan-inkpalm-5.html

https://github.com/philips/inkpalm-5-adb-english

I don't see the attraction of the Mudita Pure (other than a very nice aesthetic). It just seems like a (hugely) overpriced Nokia feature phone.

The Yota phone from 2013 had a regular LCD screen on the front, and an e-Ink screen on the back. I think there was even a Yota 2, but in terms of general adoption, it flopped hard.

Hmmm. I'm also looking at it as a way of supporting a startup that's trying to do something different. I'm annoyed with BIG TECH at the moment.

I'd like an e-ink 'monitor' that I can plug into my iphone and clip on the back of the device and have the same content displayed there as on the phone! best of both worlds!

I really would like that for the map on my bike.

You really want colour for maps. I have been there (GPS on E-Ink). Try a Kaleido E-Ink EPD display.

I use a Pocketbook InkPad Color for USGS topo maps. They look pretty nice. Zooming is slow, because they are extremely complex vector PDFs on a low power device. I should probably try converting them to images to work around that problem. The screen is actually surprisingly tolerable for photos, too.

Surely you should use bitmap tiles; you can either use a network server for unplanned locations or download tiles beforehand for planned ones. Orux Maps offers the option.

HiSense A5 is a dual-screen, something to consider.