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by soared 1810 days ago
A very relevant thread from four months ago about why e-ink is so insanely expensive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143407
1 comments

"e-ink is so insanely expensive"

What do you mean? What specific type of display, what size of display, what volume and what is the price? I keep hearing this claim about "insanely expensive" , "patent troll" and every time I've asked simple questions like which patent, what lawsuits, what prices, I've never gotten a satisfactory reply. Please have a look at my comment history, I believe the prices of electrophoretic displays are directly linked to their volumes. The displays in use in high volume products are cheap while those hand kerfed large panels are a couple of orders of magnitude higher cost since their volumes a couple of orders of magnitude lower.

I also already asked in that thread for any form of substantiation and never got a reply. It is weird to see that exact specific comment linked to again and again. Boing boing linked to that comment, multiple blog posts linked to that comment and used it as a citation claiming E Ink is evil. Well, I don't know if they are or not, but something more concrete than a throwaway comment and a self-referential insane infinite loop of comments would be necessary for me to form an opinion.

Mmmmm in comparison to normal displays they are really expensive, that’s pretty much all anyone is getting at. I can get a regular sized 1080p display for like $50, and the same size would be 10x for e-ink. The price is more for good reasons like you’ve explained, but still just high in comparison.
> The price is more for good reasons like you’ve explained, but still just high in comparison.

Yes, if you compare liquid crystal with volumes in millions of units per week with electrophoretic displays with volumes of at best a million units a month, then yes, it will be high. Even the difference in bulk materials cost alone will be 10x higher, not to mention the manufactured items like TFT backplane costs.