I’ve been using a Bigme B251 [0] (likely the exact same panel) for about 9 months now. I recommend Amazon simply due to return policy; these can come with bad panels. They don’t notably fail early if the panel is fine when you get it.
Refresh is slow, colors are low saturation, and there is ghosting.
It’s also an absolute JOY to use for anything text related once you get past those differences.
For those on MacOS stillcolor [1] is an absolute MUST.
Curious, do you write code on it? I've heard the ghosting makes them nearly unusable for coding, but the concept of coding in e-ink is just so enticing to me!
I have a Dasung monitor (black & white, not colour) and its reasonably good for coding. You need to use light themes on eink devices (I use the default Emacs theme), as using a dark theme does lead to unusable bad ghosting.
Mine is a few years old and newer panels are better, so I would expect this to be pretty good.
I do! I mostly use JetBrains stuff and Sublime Text. The ghosting is a non-issue for me.
I do keep a color calibrated panel running next to it in case I need a video going or something (conference, etc.). But the ghosting is a non-issue for coding once you figure out the settings and limits that work for you.
Of note I spent a chunk of my career working with and programming on a Harris H100 via terminal, and slowing down is a nice little throwback to me.
E-ink technology is a godsend. Until refresh rate and image quality improve, though, it's great for many things other than a general-purpose monitor. For instance, I just ordered the Mudita Kompakt: I love how it's low-power and extremely minimal by default, but you can sideload apps if you so desire. With a regular smartphone, I have to traverse the opposite path, which is vastly more cumbersome and inefficient: root the phone, install GrapheneOS, take care of all the wasteful and unneeded "features" or functionalities, install and set up a minimalist launcher, install tools to get around bloat and other nuisances, etc. And there's no guarantee you'll end up with a satisfying result. I very much prefer starting from the ground up than trying to regain control over my phone and remove all the corporate and retarded shit. I'd even love the Kompakt more if it didn't come with a camera--I have dedicated cameras I use for pictures and video.
Can you elaborate? All I see is a lot of ghosting of the home screen items still showing all around the text, eating up the contrast ratio so it's much worse than a cheap TN panel and visually distracting, and a lot of redraw delay. I'm not trying to be mean, I just wonder what could possibly be worth tolerating those deficiencies. Yes, e-ink is amazing for battery but you said "so nice to look at" so that's a completely different and unrelated metric.
OK, admittedly it does look bad on video, but seeing it in person is a totally different experience.
1) Rapidly changing between apps without pressing the manual refresh button is a little unrealistic usage. Also, the ghosting is way less noticeable in person vs the camera recording here. The contrast looks great in person, similar to the contrast of ink of paper.
2) eInk screen technology is way easier on the eyes for me. I can read on it basically continuously. There's no backlight, it's entirely ambiently lit so usage in direct sunlight is easy. The technology works by physically moving ink particles around and looks like ink on paper. there's also optional front lights for use in darker environments but it's usually off.
The top bar is a CSS issue. I forgot to enable the black and white only mode in the einkbro browser. Since I rarely look at top bar it slipped my mind.
What exactly is the target market for a very expensive monitor with 4096 colors and an unspecified but almost certainly very slow refresh rate? I could see if they were marketing it as some sort of static display for advertising or similar, but it seems to be intended as a desktop monitor.
Is there some application that e-ink is so good at that it makes up for the multiple extremely serious disadvantages?
Beat me to it -- completely relate, man. I wrote an entire Visual Studio extension just to let me set my monitor to extremely low brightness/contrast and still be able to read the text.
I've since discovered medication that has eliminated the brunt of Migraine, for me, but this would have been an easy purchase to make, for me.
Mine have gotten significantly better since I purchased the monitor as well, but I think part of that was stepping back from grad school and being more retired.
Hoping to reengage and continue my pursuit of a grad degree but we shall see.
FWIW, the Next color machines had 12bit (4096) color and in practice it didn't make much of a difference. I was using one fairly extensively in the late 90s (by which time 24bit was the norm -- albeit not yet ubiquitous) and for anything other that photo/video work it was perfectly reasonable. It's amazing how far a good dithering algorithm can get you.
It's much easier on your eyes to read an e-ink display, I would buy this for the right price as a second monitor but if they ever put ads on it even only when its turned off that would be an instant dealbreaker.
Being able to work while in the sun might be nice. Transflective LCDs would be better for this if they were as widely available and didn't likely suffer from lower pixel density.
You know, given the very limited refresh rate of e-ink, you could probably get a full resolution picture at full refresh rate over some wet string.
There's no reason you couldn't do a wireless battery powered full-size display. You could get the image over WiFi, maybe Bluetooth, or a custom USB dongle like Logitech.
It would be absolutely killer to have a portable wireless second display with my laptop. E-ink is perfect for that
I predict this won't be popular. E-ink is great for reading a book, especially on a portable battery-powered device, but on a large desk display connected to a general-purpose computer, it doesn't make sense at all.
Slow and inconsistent refresh rate, limited lifetime cycles that you could wear it out in a year or 2 with frequent use.
I recently acquired a Kobo Clara Color and love the way it looks. It would be neat to have a monitor with the same look, but I would want the refresh rate to be at least a bit faster before I would find it acceptable in a monitor.
Also the price tag is a non-starter. Maybe it will be cheaper and faster some day.
Hopefully it's just a start? I would probably love to replace my displays with a high fidelity e-paper, I think it would make working much more enjoyable.
> Seriously, that price is insane for what you get.
Sorry, but how are you evaluating that? You'd get this because you want a non-emissive display, so what other non-emissive displays are you comparing it against?
Yes, if you want better color acuity, refresh rates, or cost-per-inch, you don't want eInk.
I don't think that is news.
Otherwise you are a motorcycle rider calling cars too expensive.
I’ve been using a Bigme B251 [0] (likely the exact same panel) for about 9 months now. I recommend Amazon simply due to return policy; these can come with bad panels. They don’t notably fail early if the panel is fine when you get it.
Refresh is slow, colors are low saturation, and there is ghosting.
It’s also an absolute JOY to use for anything text related once you get past those differences.
For those on MacOS stillcolor [1] is an absolute MUST.
I’m open to any questions!
0: https://www.amazon.com/-/he/B251PC/dp/B0CYYWZ9M9
1: https://github.com/aiaf/Stillcolor
Curious, do you write code on it? I've heard the ghosting makes them nearly unusable for coding, but the concept of coding in e-ink is just so enticing to me!
I have a Dasung monitor (black & white, not colour) and its reasonably good for coding. You need to use light themes on eink devices (I use the default Emacs theme), as using a dark theme does lead to unusable bad ghosting.
Mine is a few years old and newer panels are better, so I would expect this to be pretty good.
I do! I mostly use JetBrains stuff and Sublime Text. The ghosting is a non-issue for me.
I do keep a color calibrated panel running next to it in case I need a video going or something (conference, etc.). But the ghosting is a non-issue for coding once you figure out the settings and limits that work for you.
Of note I spent a chunk of my career working with and programming on a Harris H100 via terminal, and slowing down is a nice little throwback to me.
same! I am curious to know this as well.
The Bigme display is unavailable on Amazon.
"Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock."
Maybe a tariff thing? It’s available on amazon.nl, although it does say it’ll take 9 to 10 days to ship.
Sorry about that! It must have been cached or something; I used my order history and it still showed a price when I grabbed that link.
E-ink technology is a godsend. Until refresh rate and image quality improve, though, it's great for many things other than a general-purpose monitor. For instance, I just ordered the Mudita Kompakt: I love how it's low-power and extremely minimal by default, but you can sideload apps if you so desire. With a regular smartphone, I have to traverse the opposite path, which is vastly more cumbersome and inefficient: root the phone, install GrapheneOS, take care of all the wasteful and unneeded "features" or functionalities, install and set up a minimalist launcher, install tools to get around bloat and other nuisances, etc. And there's no guarantee you'll end up with a satisfying result. I very much prefer starting from the ground up than trying to regain control over my phone and remove all the corporate and retarded shit. I'd even love the Kompakt more if it didn't come with a camera--I have dedicated cameras I use for pictures and video.
I love eInk. It's so nice to look at compared to normal LCD screens. I got an eInk phone, which is much cheaper than these full sized monitors though.
Here's a video of me reading Hacker News on an eInk phone: https://youtu.be/dvO9ScTdwz8?si=VSjo84qywuq8KHps&t=133
Can you elaborate? All I see is a lot of ghosting of the home screen items still showing all around the text, eating up the contrast ratio so it's much worse than a cheap TN panel and visually distracting, and a lot of redraw delay. I'm not trying to be mean, I just wonder what could possibly be worth tolerating those deficiencies. Yes, e-ink is amazing for battery but you said "so nice to look at" so that's a completely different and unrelated metric.
E.g. shortly after your timestamp, https://i.imgur.com/LEl1IHt.png
Ghosted icons everywhere, extremely low contrast black-on-grey top bar.. it's like reading a bad fax in the 80s.
OK, admittedly it does look bad on video, but seeing it in person is a totally different experience.
1) Rapidly changing between apps without pressing the manual refresh button is a little unrealistic usage. Also, the ghosting is way less noticeable in person vs the camera recording here. The contrast looks great in person, similar to the contrast of ink of paper.
2) eInk screen technology is way easier on the eyes for me. I can read on it basically continuously. There's no backlight, it's entirely ambiently lit so usage in direct sunlight is easy. The technology works by physically moving ink particles around and looks like ink on paper. there's also optional front lights for use in darker environments but it's usually off.
The top bar is a CSS issue. I forgot to enable the black and white only mode in the einkbro browser. Since I rarely look at top bar it slipped my mind.
Here's what it looks like with black/white mode:
https://imgur.com/a/ootFuzl
What exactly is the target market for a very expensive monitor with 4096 colors and an unspecified but almost certainly very slow refresh rate? I could see if they were marketing it as some sort of static display for advertising or similar, but it seems to be intended as a desktop monitor.
Is there some application that e-ink is so good at that it makes up for the multiple extremely serious disadvantages?
I have migraines that can be triggered by eye strain. Using an eink monitor helps IMMENSELY.
Beat me to it -- completely relate, man. I wrote an entire Visual Studio extension just to let me set my monitor to extremely low brightness/contrast and still be able to read the text.
I've since discovered medication that has eliminated the brunt of Migraine, for me, but this would have been an easy purchase to make, for me.
Mine have gotten significantly better since I purchased the monitor as well, but I think part of that was stepping back from grad school and being more retired.
Hoping to reengage and continue my pursuit of a grad degree but we shall see.
FWIW, the Next color machines had 12bit (4096) color and in practice it didn't make much of a difference. I was using one fairly extensively in the late 90s (by which time 24bit was the norm -- albeit not yet ubiquitous) and for anything other that photo/video work it was perfectly reasonable. It's amazing how far a good dithering algorithm can get you.
The refresh rate is, of course, a different issue
It's much easier on your eyes to read an e-ink display, I would buy this for the right price as a second monitor but if they ever put ads on it even only when its turned off that would be an instant dealbreaker.
Ok, 'second monitor for reading lots of text' makes sense. Shame about the price, though.
Being able to work while in the sun might be nice. Transflective LCDs would be better for this if they were as widely available and didn't likely suffer from lower pixel density.
You know, given the very limited refresh rate of e-ink, you could probably get a full resolution picture at full refresh rate over some wet string.
There's no reason you couldn't do a wireless battery powered full-size display. You could get the image over WiFi, maybe Bluetooth, or a custom USB dongle like Logitech.
It would be absolutely killer to have a portable wireless second display with my laptop. E-ink is perfect for that
I predict this won't be popular. E-ink is great for reading a book, especially on a portable battery-powered device, but on a large desk display connected to a general-purpose computer, it doesn't make sense at all.
Slow and inconsistent refresh rate, limited lifetime cycles that you could wear it out in a year or 2 with frequent use.
If you work mainly in text (reading, writing, programming), then e-ink makes a ton of sense over LCD. Low power, easier to read.
For those who use their computers mainly to watch movies and play video games, e-ink would not be ideal.
I recently acquired a Kobo Clara Color and love the way it looks. It would be neat to have a monitor with the same look, but I would want the refresh rate to be at least a bit faster before I would find it acceptable in a monitor.
Also the price tag is a non-starter. Maybe it will be cheaper and faster some day.
I wish Daylight team would make a monitor. Mira Pro is cool, but it screams "first-gen."
Regular reminder that Boox is notorious for their constant GPL violations.
Constant violations that they refuse to address. afaik they've never released any of the GPL code they use.
How does this rule get enforced?
Hopefully someone takes them to court one day.
Are the other Android ebooks better? Meebook, Bigme?
(or are they actually the same company?)
Ugh, Want... $1,899.99... Pause...
plus $2753.55 of tariffs if you live in the United States, makes it even more insane.
Seriously, that price is insane for what you get. That costs more than what gets you a top tier 32” 4K OLED screen with a high refresh rate.
Hopefully it's just a start? I would probably love to replace my displays with a high fidelity e-paper, I think it would make working much more enjoyable.
> its slow refresh rate makes it problematic for desktop computing tasks like browsing the web.
Hmm, I'm not sure what I'd use something like this for. Might be better as a phone as a follow up to their phone-size Palma e-reader.
> Seriously, that price is insane for what you get.
Sorry, but how are you evaluating that? You'd get this because you want a non-emissive display, so what other non-emissive displays are you comparing it against?
Yes, if you want better color acuity, refresh rates, or cost-per-inch, you don't want eInk.
I don't think that is news.
Otherwise you are a motorcycle rider calling cars too expensive.
My position is that you are giving up too much for that one single feature.