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by lostgame 2257 days ago
But e-ink technology isn’t ready to go out of the gate - the refresh rate is still a significant issue that makes it virtually purposeless for much beyond reading. If it is at this point, it just didn’t happen quickly enough.
3 comments
nitrogen 2257 days ago
I'd like a very large e-ink display for artwork, signage, and metrics. It doesn't have to refresh more than once every several seconds.
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megous 2256 days ago
Even for signage it has some spectacular failure modes. Where LCD would just not show anything, the e-ink will keep the last (and invalid) information confusing everyone in the process.
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3fe9a03ccd14ca5 2257 days ago
Some of the eink displays linked here have 12s refresh, and it does a super annoying flash black/white process while refreshing.
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lostgame 2257 days ago
Then you are a niche case. In order to forward a new technology, the masses need to adapt it. Apple, for instance, had to upscale the manufacture of Retina displays by starting with a proven successful product - then moving it to the iPad, then moving it to MacBooks.

We had e-book readers for e-ink, but they stayed at a super slow refresh rate. There was no reason to create a tablet sized e-ink display until the ReMarkable removed the issue of the delay.

Now we will have clones of that, and after that we will see a push to larger displays.

Mass manufacturing is hugely about cost balance vs. demand.

I think digital whiteboards in offices would be a great market for this. Again, though, if you’re going to draw on it at all there needs to be zero latency.

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dingaling 2256 days ago
>There was no reason to create a tablet sized e-ink display

Of course there was; large-format publications like newspapers, magazines and technical documents. All requiring large display area and not needing fast refresh. But yet, all ignored by the manufacturers and so LCD tablets became the default for those despite their drawbacks.

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akavel 2257 days ago
How about ClearInk? https://youtu.be/kE_byDwLjxk?t=34

Also, ye olde e-Ink has plans for Q3 2020: https://youtu.be/vOTid3I-4EI

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arendtio 2256 days ago
A few years ago those Pixel Qi displays had quite acceptable refresh rates (the Notion Ink Adam had one of those displays):

https://youtu.be/193w4JLm5hE?t=286

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