Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Version467 1059 days ago
To relieve eye strain. Reading on an e-ink screen is so much more comfortable than on any emissive monitor. With current tech the downside is of course reduced refresh rate as well as low color contrast.

Depending on the workload, that might be a worthy trade off. I tried coding on a grayscale eink display for a while and noticed a big difference in eye strain and overall concentration levels after a long session. But the display I had was too small and I didn't like living without syntax highlighting, so I went back to a normal screen. This product would solve those issues.

Authors and writers in general might be another target audience for this product. It's niche for sure, but eink has a lot of applications beyond price displays in a store.

2 comments

> Reading on an e-ink screen is so much more comfortable than on any emissive monitor.

E-ink vendors tout this, but the jury's still out. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22762257/

> To relieve eye strain.

I think this will expose another, possibly larger, problem. My room is too poorly lit other than the screen.

If there is no light coming from the screen, I am forced to turn on a light to read the screen. Maybe that's a good thing, I am not sure.

Some people have an inverse problem - it is difficult to position a monitor so that it doesn't reflect a window. This technology sounds perfect for that.
EPD displays aren't magically paper-like; in fact they are far from looking like actual paper. There's either plastic or glass in front, and they give the same glare as any other matte or glossy display. If anything, active lighting (either backlight or frontlight) helps mitigate glares, shadows, and other external lighting non-uniformities.
> Maybe that's a good thing, I am not sure.

If you are young or if you are old with eyestrain issues it may be worth your while to learn about things like bias lighting, blue filters, PWM dimming, etc.

If you are old with good vision then I guess just keep doing what works :)