[jolmg]

> The current crop of controllers are optimized for low power, which fits the e-reader use case but that is not optimal for the interactive use case.

Why try to contort the technology for something it's not good at, instead of using a more appropriate technology like transflective LCDs? Eink isn't the only option for reflective displays. If you increase the power use of eink to get better refresh rates, I imagine you'd end up using more power than (and still end up with lower refresh rates than) an MIP display.

I don't understand the growth of the market as a whole for eink monitors, when tLCDs exist and are disappearing from the market.

[enragedcacti]

I'm pretty sure e-ink has a much higher ceiling for reflectance than TLCDs/RLCDs, so you'll be able to use it comfortably without a frontlight in a lot more situations which could more than make up for increased power usage. I think they are also naturally better in terms of glare compared to any type of LCD.

[Groxx]

Viewing angles are also fantastic compared to almost all T/R LCDs - they tend to be fairly directional. It's a great display tech for many things that don't need 60+fps.

[manwe150]

And contrast ratio seems far higher to add on to the benefits. I want to like reflective displays, and there are many new ones lately too, but they just fall a bit short, especially if they try to do color

[nomel]

I think the coolest display tech was Mirasol.

Uses flipping wave interference for color. So cool. How do you make black? Easy! Humans can't see UV! :D

[1] https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/the-rise-and...

[adolph]

It isn't clear to me that eink's underlying display technology isn't good at the interactive computing use case so much as the implementations aren't optimized for it. There could be a position where more power than an eink reader is used but still far less than traditional active displays since unchanged pixels aren't driven.

[adrian_b]

It should be good enough for interactive use, but not for watching movies.

In TFA it is said that for these new faster panels the transition time of a pixel is around 50 ms. This is comparable with some old LCDs.

[alex-a-soto]

That's how I think about it too.

E-readers are vertically integrated devices: the hardware, software, UI, and refresh behavior are all tailored around reading. E-ink tablets like reMarkable are similar, but optimized around writing and annotation.

A traditional monitor is much more general-purpose, so it doesn't get the same kind of end-to-end optimization for the display medium. I think there's room for an in-between category: a more interactive e-ink device where both the hardware and software are designed around the strengths and limits of the panel.

There's some related work happening in this direction:

https://nlnet.nl/project/epd-wayland/