Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

https://shop.boox.com/products/mira

by lnyan • 5 years ago

437 258 5 years ago

shop.boox.com

h2odragon2• 5 years ago

$800 to pre-order. (Corrected: $1800 for the pre-order, $800 for the smaller one)

E-ink is one of those great technologies that seems like it has potential but won't "arrive" until after the patents all expire.

dabeledo• 5 years ago

$800 to preorder the smaller 13in one. The other one (25.3in as in the title) is $1800

dotdi• 5 years ago

The $800 model has an "Add to Cart" button for me (in Germany). The 25.3 model shows "Pre-order".

lovelyviking• 5 years ago

"BOOX Mira Series only supports direct mail from China. And US, EU and UK warehouses are not supported for shipping. Some countries may levy tariffs on the imported goods. For the amount of tariffs, please consult the local customs department."

hutrdvnj• 5 years ago

Is it expensive because of the parents or because it's not cheap to create a big sized e-ink display? I mean small e-ink displays for ebook readers or e-ink tablets are quite affordable these days.

samwillis• 5 years ago

This is an interesting old thread about einks business model and parents:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779

Some of the early parents have expired but there are a lot of them…

codethief2• 5 years ago

Came here to link to this thread. Also make sure to check out the color e-ink displays by Clearink that the top comment mentions. They are quite impressive. (Unfortunately, I recently heard from the people behind the Supernote tablet that those displays by Clearink are very low in contrast and therefore require lots of ambient light. There goes the dream of color e-ink displays…)

ChuckNorris894• 5 years ago

it has potential but won't "arrive" until after the patents all expire

This is somewhat of a misconception. The high cost today has nothing to do with patents anymore, for the most part, though that' still a speedbump. It getting good yields in the fabs for the e-ink films that's the problem, and that's where e-ink has the secret sauce and why others can't compete even though they know how it works.

It's like saying TSMC's 3nm won't get any traction until it's patents expire, while the true vale comes form the fact that only they can get that process to scale profitably and their competition can't, even though they have access to the same tech and materials and $$$ funds.

So, I'm sure there are competitors who can replicate the e-ink tech. But to fab it profitably at that scale? Nope.

codeisawesome• 5 years ago

I would love to be a fly on the wall when the unit price calculation for some high tech item is made. I wonder if it just goes like “component x + y + margin%”… what those components are in stuff like processors, screens etc must be so interesting!

rbanffy4• 5 years ago

It getting good yields in the fabs for the e-ink films that's the problem

There is a decent market for rigid (heavy) 20-30" ~100 dpi panels as desktop monitors. Lowering the pixel density would certainly increase the yield, as would the rigid back. There is a high premium for light panels for e-readers and portables, but for use as a desktop monitor, we can deal with a lot more weight and, since we see them from further away, we can deal with lower densities.

From where I sit, it's hard to tell whether my laptop has a high-density screen or a more normal 1080 one.

I'd love to have one, but I wouldn't even consider it if it's twice as expensive as a 4K HDR 120Hz LCD monitor.

axegon_• 5 years ago

Given the prices of e-ink displays in general, this is not too bad. Still outrageous though.

robbedpeter• 5 years ago

Seems bonkers to me. If they'd been more permissive with licensing the tech, they'd have made a lot more money, advanced the tech, and they could have exploited spin off. The way it was handled seems petty and small minded in a stupid and greedy way.

scns• 5 years ago

Might be motivated by FOMO. Fear is a bad advisor <edit>sometimes</edit>.

gonehome• 5 years ago

Rumor I heard from someone in the industry is that the patents have expired, but now the original holder pressures the few fabs to refuse work from competitors or get black balled.

As a results it’s extremely hard for new people to enter the industry and the original e-ink people have zero interest in actually building stuff vs. just leveraging this kind of power to screw others and keep margins high.

lambdaba• 5 years ago

I couldn't (easily) find information about refresh rates and such, what I want is to know if this is usable for coding. Frankly I'm down to go with lower stats for this, because I so want to be able to use a computer with just natural light.

If anybody has been doing this I'd love to read about your experience!

deanc• 5 years ago

Might be a bit of a struggle without syntax highlighting? Contrast won't get you very far.

fho5• 5 years ago

You might be surprised how far contrast (and cursive, bold, etc) can get you. Eg: https://github.com/fxn/vim-monochrome

edit: Also, and probably a lot more controversial, code structure matters a lot. No syntax highlighting will save you if your code consists of opaque blocks of text.

deepstack• 5 years ago

I don't care about syntax highlighting, being coding in black and white terminal for a really long time. I care more about screen to be more like paper than screen. LED color screen really hurts my eyes. Coding in natural light on paper would be much better.

chriswarbo• 5 years ago

I enjoyed using my OLPC XO-1 for writing, programming, terminal usage, web browsing, etc. whilst sat outside on a sunny day. Was certainly a contrast to 'phone screens, which were barely visible, even with a backlight and shielded under a hand!

(The XO-1 uses a different display technology to these e-ink monitors, but the result is similar: a high-resolution greyscale display, lit externally)

girvo5• 5 years ago

While not coding per se, I write fiction on my Boox Note 2 in Wordgrinder through Termux and it’s pretty great (especially if I increase the refresh rate). And that’s an older slower device!

smusamashah• 5 years ago

What is the lifespan of high refresh e-ink devices such as this monitor? Is it measured in a billion refreshes for example? E-ink displays have been slow to update but like this monitor there are a bunch of e-ink tablets which even allow you to watch videos and play games. In my head it feels like it detoriate the device faster.

mdp202117• 5 years ago

lifespan

The declared generic (update frequency agnostic) lifespan for E-Ink displays a few years ago was:

10 million switches per dot

w-m• 5 years ago

At 30 switches per second for video playback (which this device supports), a lifetime of 10m switches would be gone in around 93 hours.

AlanYx• 5 years ago

It will deteriorate relatively quickly if you're using it primarily to watch video. Of the three vendors of e-ink monitors (Boox, Dasung, Waveshare), I believe only Waveshare is clear about this in their support documents ("The e-Paper display cannot work as common LCD displays, the lifetime of the e-Paper display is short and it is related to the update times. You cannot use e-Paper to display video for a long time, which will shorten the lifetime of the e-Paper display.").

With e-ink, the dots do not fail right away; the contrast deteriorates around the 10 million update mark.

patall3• 5 years ago

My dad has bought the 25.3'' E ink monitor from Dasung. From what he tells, it does not have a backlight and is itself to dark for his taste outside of middle of the day. Maybe it will be better during summer or in bright condition but sitting further away from these devices may require more than just reflectiveness for some users.

fbn79• 5 years ago

eInk is not transparent, you canno have backlight. It's objective is to emulate ink on paper.

mrjin• 5 years ago

It might be true you cannot have backlight, but for sure you can have front light. My ~7 years old Kindle paperwhite has that.

numpad0• 5 years ago

Contrast ratio of E Ink is like 10:1. I don't know exactly how it compares but backlit LCD is approx 1k:1, OLED is 1m:1 in contrast(pun intended).

GuB-42• 5 years ago

You can't compare the contrast of an emissive (backlit LCD/OLED) and a reflective (eInk) display.

Put your OLED display in direct sunlight on a bright summer day and you will get effectively get no contrast at all, the screen will reflect so much sunlight that your puny LEDs won't do much of a difference. Backlit LCDs will get some weak contrast because the backpanel is a bit reflective, but eInk displays will always be 10:1 because they use ambiant light instead of competing with it.

These ridiculously high contrast ratios of OLED displays only take into account emitted light and only make sense in a dark room, or VR headset.

sabellito• 5 years ago

That's kinda the point of these things, to not be backlit; you're supposed to provide the needed amount of light yourself.

DoingIsLearning6• 5 years ago

and is itself to dark for his taste outside of middle of the day.

Indeed, from the description it sounds like their work setup doesn't have enough ambient light for confortable reading conditions.

patagonicus4• 5 years ago

Huh, weird. I got the small Dasung with a backlight, but I almost never use the backlight since avoiding that is one of the reasons I did get an E-Ink screen in the first place. You do need the room to be somewhat well lit, so in the mornings and evenings I'll turn on the overhead lights. Probably slightly harder to read than a book since the background isn't bleached white, but it's close-ish.

patall3• 5 years ago

I think the difference in this setup is that you sit further away from the large screen than from the small one. And then, it becomes more of an issue. I haven't seen it myself though, only hearsay.

Edit: Also, you are probably not in your late fifties. Eye-sight under low-light definitely decreases with age.

zwirbl• 5 years ago

I couldn't find a video of the display in use, so here it goes (for the 13.3" version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBfWkxOfUfQ

seems a little slow and the screen refreshes sometimes excessive, but much better than I expected

vasilakisfil• 5 years ago

for some reason, from the video, screen doesn't feel the same quality as other e-ink readers like kindle.

edit: I mean, kindle videos feel like you are reading a real paper, while here feels like you are in an actual screen.

leemailll• 5 years ago

try this https://jvod.300hu.com/vod/product/0cecde96-786d-418d-a5b7-3...

avar4• 5 years ago

A little slow? I was pretty amazed by how fast it is in that video. I haven't kept up with E-Ink technology, but I own an old Kindle and it takes it 0.5-1s to refresh, but that 13.3" display is keeping up with finger gestures when scrolling.

Yes it would suck for watching movies, but it seems to be really useful for anything involving text, e.g. i.e. a secondary monitor to read documentation on, or even program on. I suppose the lag in text input being updated might be more distracting than when using it purely for reading.

formerly_proven• 5 years ago

Fast for eink, but also absolutely terrible ghosting, which makes the speed considerably less impressive considering how straining it looks. What's the point of a fairly quick response to screen updates when you have to press the manual refresh button in order to read what's on it?

junon• 5 years ago

This is pretty on par for e-ink at the moment. Since the pixels are physical material, there is the mechanical movement time that has to be taken into account.

DoingIsLearning6• 5 years ago

I still don't understand how there isn't a market for a work _laptop_ with a display like this?

- Longer battery life

- easy on the eyes for long sessions reading/writing

- Allows me to actually work outside!!!

There is a huge market of people out there (Thinking about the typical ThinkPad users) that don't give 2 craps about color accuracy. We literally just want to read and write.

Anyone envolved in Product Management that can give some insights?

Is it too expensive?

Are there not enough users?

Are vendors scared of the lackluster of the device when compared with shinny reflective displays?

breakfastduck5• 5 years ago

No one is going to sell a device that costs significantly more than any other for the same power to provide what 99% of users would consider a sub par/ unusable display.

Like seriously can you imagine trying to sell a laptop that is unable to watch any media, play any games and has the refresh rate / perceived performance of a 15 year old tablet.

This stuff isn't ready to be a 'main' display yet.

dugditches• 5 years ago

patents if i recall.

a netbook style, or even like old kindle keyboard sized up would be pleasant.

salamandersauce3• 5 years ago

It would be expensive and mouse cursors are not the most enjoyable with these things. You really have to crank the speed to use a mouse cursor without extreme frustration on eInk and that comes with a huge quality loss. I imagine most people need color for certain tasks even if it's not accurate like making a PowerPoint or something. For most people I think it would be more of a frustration than a help when running Windows.

Boox and others like Boyue do make Android eInk tablets which are pretty flexible. You don't need a mouse either which solves that problem. Very good for reading PDFs. Termux and a good text editor like Emacs or Vim can let you get some work done.

Epa095• 5 years ago

The old OLPC laptop had a weird screen which kind of became a black and white e-ink screen when the brightness got turned all the way down, and was a quite normal colour screen otherwise. No clue how it was made though, and if there has been any further work in that direction.

cassianoleal5• 5 years ago

Try reducing your screen's refresh rate to mimic that of an eInk display. Interacting with the machine becomes a horrible chore. Every input feels laggy and sluggish. It's hard to control the pointer. Even at 30Hz it becomes very difficult to focus on the actual tasks because the computer doesn't seem to respond to your commands.

baybal2• 5 years ago

eInk Inc. levies giant patent royalties on eInk screen manufacturers.

Plus

There are no 8 bit eInk controllers

BiteCode_dev2• 5 years ago

Hard sell, but a laptop with a reversible 2-1 screen, one side OLED, and one e-ink, would probably be a winner.

Or something like the framework laptop, but with a plugable/ unplaggable screen, and you switch as needed.

I would buy one. Espacially on travel, where the prospect of working outside in nature, and having a one week battery life would be fantastic for work.

throw8932894• 5 years ago

I work on a beach a lot. Laser printer costs $100 and paper is like 0.01 cents. Probably better usability.

This thing is not hardened for outdoor use. I dont think it would work in cafe. If it drops on floor, liquids, sand, salty water....

rexreed• 5 years ago

I did that in the old days with a repurposed kindle.

rini17• 5 years ago

You expect anything from a market that till very recently sold 768p displays and hdds?

nhumrich• 5 years ago

What you _can_ do, is buy the boox lumi, a 13 inch Android e-unk tablet. Then get a Bluetooth keyboard folio for it. You now essentially have a 13 inch laptop chromebook.

Jeff_Brown4• 5 years ago

If you just want it for reading, you could buy a $200 laptop and use this as an external display. If you're not running hot you could leave your laptop closed inside a backpack or case while you used it. Still kind of fiddly but it sounds good to me.

3pt14159• 5 years ago

No colour. I want an e-ink with syntax highlighting. This is great and all, but even 16 base colours would go a long, long way. Oh also, would be nice if it were built into a MBP and I could switch between monitor types quickly, but I know that's a pipedream.

daneel_w2• 5 years ago

I don't understand your post. First you state that you don't understand how there isn't a market for a laptop using this screen, then you underline that there is a huge market out there (somehow "typical ThinkPad users", who apparently don't care about color or anything else, and just want to read and write), and then you ask why these things don't sell much and if the problem is that the device is lackluster compared to a normal cheap LCD display.

Have you looked at these displays in use? They're slow, flickery, have low contrast, and cost absurd money. They're still desperately trying to crawl out of the "enthusiast / early adopter" stage. I really want one. Everyone really wants one. But nobody wants the overpriced rubbish the current generation is.

patentatt2• 5 years ago

A lot of counterpoints here, how about a half normal display, half e-ink? Left side of the monitor is LCD m, and the right side is e-ink. Might be a bit cramped for some use cases, might work for others. Or, how about a rollable, flexible OLED that can dynamically roll out and cover more and more of the e-ink display, so that you could roll out the OLED when needed, or tuck it in when you want full e-ink?

srmatto• 5 years ago

I've read previously on HN that there's one company with a stranglehold on the e-ink patent and so the prices are artificially high for the screens. This probably would make a e-ink laptop or tablet more expensive than it should be.

But yes, I agree. I've wanted an e-ink laptop for working outside for years.

vzaliva• 5 years ago

I would prefer a modular laptop where I can swap between OLED and liquid paper screens. Just snap another screen before going to work in a park.

snthd• 5 years ago

Allows me to actually work outside!!!

This can also be achieved with a transflective panel.

Edit: Here's one retrofitted to a thinkpad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuegrU_kIq8

atlgator• 5 years ago

They could partner with framework to offer the one in their marketplace.

gbraad• 5 years ago

Lenovo ThinkBook has an eink screen. Not exclusively, but works quite well.

dreamcompiler• 5 years ago

The OLPC had a dual-mode display that worked great for reading both indoors and out. For some reason nobody has since picked up on this idea.

http://www.olpcnews.com/hardware/screen/olpc_xo_resolution_d...

officeplant• 5 years ago

I really would love one of these for the 2D AutoCAD work I do which mostly involves electrical diagrams and 2D building layouts for fire / gas alarm systems. One of the main problems I see is the finite lifespan of an E-Ink display vs traditional monitors. Not to say the old 1440P TN displays I use at work will last forever, but I'm not sure an E-Ink display having to refresh constantly for 8 hours a day of work will hold up nearly as long.

pcurve• 5 years ago

There's "fast" mode. https://youtu.be/oBfWkxOfUfQ?t=994

Image quality goes down, but I was very very very impressed...

misja111• 5 years ago

I have a Boox Note and the excessive screen refreshes are really annoying there as well. But I'm impressed by the part in the demo where they show the playing of a video, this works pretty smoothly and I don't see any flickering.

Now I'm wondering why those screen refreshes in 'normal' apps are needed? Is this just some artifact because the apps were written for normal displays and haven't been adjusted for e-ink?

abalaji• 5 years ago

Maybe I haven't kept up with the eink market but this seems super impressive especially the video part around 14:33. I have a Remarkable and it's pretty slow to switch pages but I assume that's to prevent ghosting. With a little bit of computer vision magic, they might be able to add a content aware feature that swaps the modes based on what's being displayed.

https://youtu.be/oBfWkxOfUfQ?t=873

kumarvvr• 5 years ago

Would love this as a second or third screen to read books / documentation from.

OliverJones• 5 years ago

I love these E-Ink guys. They've been plugging away for a quarter century and their stuff keeps getting better.

breakfastduck5• 5 years ago

It's only taking so long because they won't allow people to actually help progress the tech.

dash23• 5 years ago

The rival here is the Dasung 25.3" model, currently waiting for a new batch:

https://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink...

I'd love to hear from anyone who's worked with a monitor like this.

patagonicus4• 5 years ago

I got the smaller Dasung about half a year ago, I posted a comment about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29429093

Let me know if you have any specific questions.

dash23• 5 years ago

Thanks!

* Do you use it as your main daily monitor?

* I find screen time quite addictive (which is one reason why I am on HN so much). Do you notice any difference from this perspective when using an eink screen?

* Has the screen quality degraded over time?

* How big a difference has it made to your life?

moritonal• 5 years ago

Interesting limitation listed on their site: "AMD GPUs are not supported for now."

BBC-vs-neolibs• 5 years ago

Could it use Nvidia G-sync somehow?

vxa_victor• 5 years ago

These products look amazing but a major drawback is the lack of colors. Any chance e-ink will get color support?

archerx• 5 years ago

They exist and they look cool kind of like comic books. They are expensive and the refresh rate is slower though.

https://www.waveshare.com/5.65inch-e-paper-module-f.htm

b1124• 5 years ago

It's all how you explain it. 4k e-ink has ~ 8M balls, and can refresh ... let's say 10x per second. giving a stunning refresh rate of 80megaballs per second.

That's an incredibly high rate!

mdp202117• 5 years ago

You can use Kaleido (E-Ink EPD with RGB filter on top) - it's already available. Or, wait for cheap and fast E-Ink ACeP ("Advanced Color ePaper").

Quality, you will have to assess.

acd• 5 years ago

Wow this looks like a nice companion device for reading documentation. Anyone know if Boox eink displays works with ipad hdmi adapter as a secondary display?

frou_dh• 5 years ago

You guys go ahead and buy, take one for the team and work out all the bugs/defects in Rev.A units :)

TruthWillHurt2• 5 years ago

Not a word on refresh rate.

dspillett• 5 years ago

Unless they have some wizz-bang new tech that no one else is using yet, which they would shout about if they were, with eInk you can pretty much say “if your use case makes you care much about refresh rates then eInk isn't a good choice for you ATM”.

TruthWillHurt2• 5 years ago

I agree, but even among e-ink displays there are refresh rates that make it difficult to enter text or view terminal output.

jll29• 5 years ago

I can't wait until this reaches maturity to get a 11" or so sub-notebook which is quiet, low energy, with a good keyboard for reading and writing (text/code editing, emails, PDF reading of scientific papers).

Looked into this a couple of years ago and it was too early, now one could almost design & build that.

salamandersauce3• 5 years ago

You can already get a 10 or 13" eInk Android tablet and do all that already. Just need to bring your own keyboard.

girvo5• 5 years ago

The Boox tablets are full android devices and support USB-C connectivity and Bluetooth for keyboards. They even have a clamshell keyboard case/attachment for sale that I have and use with my Note 2

Termux + Termux.Styling set to Black on White is surprisingly powerful, and works better than I expected. Adjusting the refresh rate helps too.

Jeff_Brown4• 5 years ago

Can it talk to my laptop via bluetooth? That would be rad. I'd use it outdoors, with my laptop running but still folded in my bag.

mhitza• 5 years ago

PDF reading of scientific papers

Unless you have perfect eyesight, at 11" those types of documents won't be a pleasant reading experience. I'm in the market for a good e-ink tablet to fulfill that role, but I don't consider current offerings quite there yet (maybe I have too many criteria in mind, like price, specs, supporting software, hackable if company goes bust, etc).

efferifick• 5 years ago

I wonder how well one can modify the framework laptop to use the 13 inch e-ink monitor. Even if a small hdmi cable needs to run outside the case, as long as the lid can close (no need auto sleep) I'd be happy. I don't know anything about 3D printing, but it will likely be necessary (perhaps not sufficient though).

mdp202117• 5 years ago

One of the only non-modular parts of the Framework is, very unfortunately, the display (it's glossy).

If you just want to use an HDMI connection, a piece of plastic is sufficient, see:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmenti...

But do not think the solution is without issues (I mentioned elsewhere: touchscreen, battery...)

trabant00• 5 years ago

I am sad they go with the health angle. There is no evidence that suggest backlit or blue light are any more damaging for the eyes than a piece of paper with the same text. It's focusing that strains the eyes.

https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/are-computer-...

Long hours staring at digital screens leads to decreased blinking. Blinking less sometimes causes a series of temporary eye symptoms known as eye strain. But these effects are caused by how people use their screens, not by anything coming from the screens. The best way to avoid eye strain is to take breaks from the screen frequently.
The amount of light coming from a computer has never been demonstrated to cause any eye disease.

breakfastduck5• 5 years ago

Anecdotal but I consider it absolutely farcical that you could claim using an e-ink is no better for your eyes. I can literally feel the difference when using my ereader.

martopix• 5 years ago

On the other hand it is well known that it contributes to sleeplessness.

b1124• 5 years ago

Lots of people are bothered by the backlight on their monitor. Lots.

Eye strain != eye disease, or eye damage. A parallel, is you can strain a muscle, and it will be find in a few days with light use.

This is precisely how many feel, when "over exposed" to endless bright light in their eyes.

I looked at their product page, and did not see anything about "permanent damage to your eyes!", but... I certainly could have missed that.

Sadly, I'm being forced to defend a company I dislike greatly, for their phone-home-to-china firmwares in other boox products. I can only imagine what any accompanying software they may include, to auto-adjust/etc the monitor, will entail.

patagonicus4• 5 years ago

Looks pretty nice, especially the USB-C input. I might have gotten that one if it had been available when I was shopping for an e-Ink screen.

I got a Dasung 13" one a while ago, the larger Dasung wasn't launched yet (and I was struggling a bit to justify the price tag of the 13", now I'd probably go for the larger one). It's very limited, basically only works for black and white text, but for that it's great. I use it pretty much daily, just keeping a shell open there. I've changed my terminal to be black on white and all colors map to light/dark gray (for light/dark versions of the basic terminal colors), which works decently. I did change themes for things like tmux and vim to work better on a grayscale screen.

Reading text on it is great, but compared to a Kindle Oasis (whatever the newest model was last summer) its DPI is quite low, so you can't have text as small without it getting blurry. I mostly got it because I noticed that I was getting some eye strain staring at a regular screen all day and as best as I can tell it really has helped with that. It's also powered off of USB, which makes it usable on the go as a second screen.

My main gripe is using a Mini-HDMI-Port with a custom cable to inject power from USB (I think HDMI->Mini-HDMI plus a separate USB cable for Micro-USB input also work, never tried), but it's also a bit annoying that the inputs are on the sides and not the back. I also use it with a monitor arm at home, the included pole for standing it up is ok for on the go, but I really wouldn't use it permanently.

TL;DR: expensive, but if you want to reduce eye strain while reading a lot of text it really helps. Main driver for shell / coding tasks and I sometimes read longer websites/Google Docs/etc on it, though less frequently.

sktrdie• 5 years ago

Serious question: wouldn't just turning preferences of a normal monitor to black/white give you the same result? And is e-ink really better for eyes? Not sure I've seen research in this regard.

avar4• 5 years ago

It's not remotely the same thing.

If you haven't looked at an E-Ink display try tearing a page from a magazine or newspaper and comparing that to reading the same size of font on your laptop or PC. E-Ink is practically indistinguishable from reading a physical piece of paper, whereas the backlight alone from an LCD eventually gets tiring to stare at.

Another huge difference is being able to use E-Ink displays in direct sunlight.

dkdbejwi3832• 5 years ago

The main difference is that there is no backlight, so it's more comparable to a piece of paper (reflective light source) than a light bulb (direct light source)

lopis• 5 years ago

E-Ink doesn't emit light. There's lots of research that shows problems with looking at light-emitting screens all day.

reacharavindh• 5 years ago

Interesting question. Now, I’m curious myself. True that LCD panels need backlight and may not be true equivalent in black& white mode. However, we have many OLED panels now. Would OLED panels in black & white work for this case?

gawin• 5 years ago

How does this compare with the Dasung Paperlike 25.3? Looks like the same E-ink display, but perhaps different driver?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGblzUc_Z1I

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-253-the-first-2...

dkdbejwi3832• 5 years ago

I'd absolutely love to try something like this for programming, but it's much too expensive for me to try out on a whim

derekpankaew• 5 years ago

Wait for it to show up on Amazon Prime, then use the 30 day return policy as a method to try it out?

tapia• 5 years ago

I am delighted to see that they have Linux support for their software. You don't see that so often, especially for such niche hardware. Really cool!

Someone• 5 years ago

“Remove ghosting with one press” is a feature that they use to sell the device?

How bad is the ghosting/how often do you need to press that button?

mherdeg• 5 years ago

Seeing the no-ghosts button reminded me that it's very likely my young kids are never going to have the fun of pushing the "degauss" button on a CRT.

toper-centage• 5 years ago

My old and only eReader, a Kindle 3, had ghosting issues, but it self-fixed them by refreshing often. But there's a cost to that, because a full refresh takes significant time. In complex UIs that are more than just text you often can get away with updating only a portion of the screen, at the goat of bits of ghosting. My understanding is that this is still a limitation of this tech.

girvo5• 5 years ago

I adore Boox. My Note 2 is amazing (and keeps getting better and faster note-taking with firmware updates every few months).

I’ve ordered a Mira, the 13.3” one, which I think is a more useful size for the type of documents and uses e-ink has.

This is super cool though!

BostonEnginerd2• 5 years ago

Their devices look really neat, but I don't think I can bring myself to buy one until they resolve their GPL violations.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/fz4yka/max3_revi...

NoGravitas2• 5 years ago

Maybe someone can convince Naomi Wu to go visit their office in person like she did for Umidigi.

aj_g• 5 years ago

Related, does anybody have any suggestions for a cheap/large/easy to look at monitor that could be used for a digital picture frame? I was thinking of getting a Raspberry Pi to rotate through my photos in my home, but the hardest part of the project would be choosing a good discrete/mountable display.

gcanyon• 5 years ago

I don't need touch, and I don't need a sub-one-second refresh rate. I do need a monitor I can read documents on without eye strain that doesn't cost ~8x what an equivalent LCD monitor costs.

keewee7• 5 years ago

Onyx Boox is a brand of e-book reader produced by Onyx International Inc, based in China

China is the only country innovating right now. The rest of the world really needs to start building combined manufacturing and innovation hubs like Shenzhen.

criddell• 5 years ago

Isn't Onyx one of the more famous GPL violators? Maybe innovation is easier when you let others do the R&D and you just use it.

dirtyid• 5 years ago

Looks nice, but feels like another year where ebook hasn't arrived. Still waiting for the day of sub 500 eink 50 inch screens.

randomor• 5 years ago

Why hasn’t anyone built a short throw projector for office work(coding) yet?

- reflective light just like eink so less eye strain

- better refresh rate and latency

- better color range

Is it the resolution?

burkaman• 5 years ago

I think the market for people who want to (and are able to) work exclusively in a very dark room is probably pretty small. I'm also not sure what features a work-focused projector would have that a normal projector wouldn't.

patentatt2• 5 years ago

Do projectors have less eye strain? That's quite intriguing if so. What if you had a front-projector projecting on an e-ink screen, such that various parts of the screen could be in color/motion mode (e-ink off, projector only), mixed mode (e-ink on, with color overlay for syntax highlighting or the like), or ink only (projector off). That seems like something that's doable with off-the shelf components and software, at least as a POC...

hajile• 5 years ago

They need OLED.

Put the transparent OLED layer on top of the E-ink.

Now you can use E-ink for your static content or the OLED when you need dynamic content.

E-ink saves a lot of the OLED burn-in (which is at it's worst with white background) while OLED gives the ability to do more/better colors and fast response times.

fnord77• 5 years ago

would smooth scrolling of text be possible?

intrasight• 5 years ago

What would be the benefit of this over a quality OLED monitor?

mdp202117• 5 years ago

If you are in context in which it is preferable to have * light reflecting instead of light emitting, and/or * bistable instead of kept on through energy.

Some people use EPD at midday, black on white under the sun, and OLED at midnight, white on black ("off") in the dark.

Jeff_Brown4• 5 years ago

This kind of thing needs Bluetooth. Then I could read outdoors with my laptop running in my backpack.

cgb223• 5 years ago

I own a Boox Note Air 2.

Bought it when I was looking for a large screen eReader for the technical epubs and pdfs I’ve amassed over the years that require a big screen (big pages on the pdfs)

pros and cons of this company are pretty clear

Pros are that they have large eReaders and support any file format

They also run android so if you use an app like Pocket or an RSS feed to read articles, they work well enough

Cons:

The company’s documentation is more or less broken. Google how to fix something and their docs are missing, outdated, and often in broken english.

The screen itself is big but slow to refresh and in most modes leaves traces of the previous pages. They have a manual button to full refresh the page, but a user shouldn’t have to do that.

It’s not a certified android device so you have to jump through a bunch of somewhat insecure hoops to get the play store installed and log in.

Privacy: There privacy statement basically says “lol we promise to be private k?” So I want to run this thing through wireshark to see how true that is. My only skepticism is that it’s a Chinese company, and that might not be fair, but given the information I have on my device it would be good to confirm.

All that said, they have a color eInk screen that’s coming out soon that looks wonderful.

tata712• 5 years ago

insecure

Compared to...running Play Services? Doubt.

ev1• 5 years ago

security, privacy, and anonymity are separate concepts

tata712• 5 years ago

This is the sort of device you either replace the OS, or put on a segregated network.

dont__panic2• 5 years ago

I use NetGuard on mine to prevent it from phoning home, and restrict internet connections to Firefox and a couple of other apps that I trust. I also mostly use mine with wifi off, since it's an ereader/notetaking device that doesn't need to constantly drain battery via wireless internet.

I am a little nervous about the trustworthiness of Onyx, but at the same time... I don't really trust my smart TV, or my old Kindle, or visiting friend's Windows laptops either. So I guess it's kinda moot.

denysvitali• 5 years ago

799 USD

chx• 5 years ago

Nope, that's the Mira, the Mira Pro is 1800.

WesolyKubeczek3• 5 years ago

Here are my problems with such devices. I own an Onyx Boox 3 for a year now, I guess I qualify.

1) these screens still have bad contrast compared to a printed page at the same DPI. They mostly compare to yellowed dog-eared 50-year-old books. The dots are also rather fuzzy, so not really comparable to what you get in a decent LCD at the same density.

2) if it comes to desktop use, no OS/environment except classic MacOS up to version 8 and maybe GEM gives a shit about monochrome displays, especially those where only 1-bit colors look decent (so Windows 3.11 would likely count too). On DEs which you can still theme, themes that look like printed pages (two colors for UI, no gradients, no exceptions to this rule) don't exist at all. There's GTK's "High Contrast" theme, but it renders everything also BIG and FAT, which is cumbersome to look at unless you need it because of eyesight problems.

Also, there should be a way to disable all UI animations and most hover effects, but it either doesn't exist or keeps getting reinvented in any new major version so you're chasing it every once in a while.

3) Have you ever seen how Android renders colors on displays with no colors? God damn it to hell. I tried a terminal emulator. Some text was black, some white, some nigh-invisible, and some was white with a black (fuzzy) outline. I thought a monochrome display couldn't be ever described as garish, but now I've learned the errors of my ways. The only way it can work is if you export TERM=vt100 so it doesn't try to draw you rainbows where there can be none.

4) While the refresh speed got better compared to most Kindles I owned, when you're typing, it's still more annoying than a CRT with big afterburn.

Maybe it's kind of acquired taste, I dunno, but not for me. Yet. I hope.

I wouldn't mind a strictly 2-colored theme on a regular laptop screen as well, mind you.

codethief2• 5 years ago

Re 3): Doesn't Android support a black-and-white mode?

WesolyKubeczek3• 5 years ago

Internal boox apps are good because they were designed that way. But things from the play store are shite on such screens.

And yes, that’s the android’s idea of how to render color (or maybe it’s the driver, who knows). It’s like Microsoft Paintbrush on mono screens where you got different dithering patterns instead of colors, except worse.

al3mani• 5 years ago

What about f.lux (and others?) --> "Effects and extra colors" --> "Grayscale" ?

WesolyKubeczek3• 5 years ago

Still doesn't fix the problem of rather bright light being emitted from the screen into your eyes. Think also about all the power wasted on backlighting where ambient light could be just fine.

Also, I don't know if you have noticed, but you can't use f.lux and friends and grayscale simultaneously, because grayscale is applied after gamma change, making it pointless.

jonnycomputer3• 5 years ago

That promotional video didn't show a visible page refresh once. Which was what I was most interested in seeing, since lag while typing might be the thing I'm most worried about [well that and my syntax highlighting (:]

kentosi• 5 years ago

*E Ink monitors' refresh speed is not as high as conventional monitors',

So what is the refresh rate then? I can't seem to find it in the Specs section.

levpopov• 5 years ago

E-ink monitors are really cool (I've had a couple different ones for a while). However if your primary goal is reducing eye-strain, there are much better ways: https://twitter.com/levpopov/status/1466835595984977923

oblak• 5 years ago

Man, I can't wait for something like e-ink to become usable as an actual 120Hz monitor. I've been sitting in front of shitty screens my entire life. Give display that do not shine and you could play games on.

Won't happen in my life though

karmakaze• 5 years ago

*Please confirm your ports (USB Type-C and HDMI) support secondary monitors by connecting your devices to another monitor first. AMD GPUs are not supported for now.

I have no mental model of what this device is. Apparently it's not a display in the normal sense. Perhaps what's sent via HDMI/USB-C are effectively control signals rather than the colors/shades you want that get you the shades you want accounting for the response characteristics of the eInk display. What I'd like is for any of this extra logic to be in the device itself and not in software that requires installation and updates to keep working with OS updates, or other OSes altogether.

totony• 5 years ago

e-ink has some special sync settings (where it's a tradeoff between speed and ghosting). Probably what usb is used for. You can also aprtially refresh the screen&stuff. Probably easier to do it in software.

ciupicri• 5 years ago

repost https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27629455

Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

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