Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by saintkaye 710 days ago
I thought e-ink had a refresh rate limitation. What’s happening here. Anyone every design in e-ink?
4 comments

It's not eInk but a transflective LCD, so in fact, completely different technology-wise. While it has faster refresh rate, it is not bi-stable, has lower contrast, worse viewing angles, etc. The main thing it has in common with eInk is that it works without a backlight.
Its not e-ink, its an ordinary transflective LCD display, similar to what you’d find on a digital watch or the Game Boy.
It's not actually e-ink like other devices, it's a different display tech where they've managed to basically nail it.

I'd love to see a full size display like this.

Dasung has eink HDMI monitors that have quite a high refresh rate. For a 25” monitor it runs about $1700. https://shop.dasung.com/
‘Quite high’ is still not what you’d think of as ‘quite high’ if you’d never experienced earlier versions of eink though.

LTT on YouTube has some video reviews of Dasung’s displays. I know tastes vary when it comes to LTT - and they focus on some ridiculous things in the reviews (Can you game on them? Obviously, no.) but if you get past that I do think the videos do a a good job of showing how the monitors feel.

https://youtu.be/-ZXrJRpA0Jw?si=8yXfAG34vLZDRwXi

https://youtu.be/aVUxxn53mBE?si=O-Vcpk4mzQECghHn

If anyone has pointers to how this mode works I'd be interested. It's 160dpi, which is lower than some eInk displays but faster refresh rate is good. Not using PWM to manage brightness is also good.
This thread with the founder has more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40457491
Have you used one? I have not (so this a genuine question!)

I am really skeptical of the ‘paper-like’ quality it supposedly has. Are the viewing angle and glare really not noticeable?

More holistically, does it actually ‘seem like’ paper in the same way a Kindle does? If it does not, I’m very down on calling it ‘e-paper’.

Sounds like vaporware.
It's LCD with a reflective backing they've put alot of effort into finetuning. Really not that implausible. Remember the Pebble wasn't e-ink either.
It's not vapourware, it exists and a view of any demo will reassure.

They've just done a very good job.

From what I understand it's an LCD with some kind of coating they developed.