If it was <$500 I'd probably impulse buy it immediately, I wonder how long it will take for prices (either of this screen or future alternatives) to drop from its current $1,800 price...
I spent the first 30 years of my life in the UK and US letter paper always looked too squat when I encountered it at work. I've spent the past 11 years living in the US. I recently dug out some old papers on A4 and they looked weirdly elongated. It's surprising how strong the perceived weirdness of paper dimensions could be and and how easily it was changed. Seems like it's totally subjective and we could probably be comfortable reading in many proportions.
This statement is purely subjective. It is false in general and there's nothing objective about it. I've read thousands of pages of A4 with no problems, and in fact I'd say it's great.
(Which might be the problem.)
How many people are going to want to do this?
How many people are going to want to do this who wouldn't otherwise just buy an e-ink Android tablet that's got a display input that are already on the market?
It's a niche product to begin with.
I hope someone goes down this rabbit hole... is it possible to make a wireless e-paper display that does not need any battery? I am wary of batteries because I have managed to "swell up" two old android phones by keeping them constantly connected to power and using them to take timelapse videos.
proompt: can a supercapacitor power an e-ink display?
Google Bard:
Yes, a supercapacitor can power an e-ink display. E-ink displays are very low-power devices, so a supercapacitor can provide enough power to keep the display running for a long period of time. In fact, supercapacitors are often used to power e-ink displays in devices such as e-readers and wristwatches.
Supercapacitors are different from traditional capacitors in that they can store a lot of energy for their size. This makes them ideal for powering low-power devices, such as e-ink displays. Supercapacitors also have a long lifespan, which is important for devices that are used for extended periods of time.
If you are looking for a way to power an e-ink display, a supercapacitor is a good option. Supercapacitors are small, lightweight, and have a long lifespan. They are also very efficient at storing and releasing energy, which makes them ideal for powering low-power devices.
Here are some additional details about supercapacitors and e-ink displays:
* *Supercapacitors:* Supercapacitors are energy storage devices that can store a lot of energy for their size. They are made up of two electrodes separated by an electrolyte. When a voltage is applied to the electrodes, the electrolyte allows electrons to flow between them. This flow of electrons creates an electric field that stores energy. * *E-ink displays:* E-ink displays are a type of electronic display that uses a layer of electrically charged microcapsules to create an image. The microcapsules are filled with a liquid crystal material that is either black or white. When an electric field is applied to the microcapsules, the liquid crystal molecules align in a way that either reflects or absorbs light. This creates the image on the display.
E-ink displays are very low-power devices because they do not require any backlighting. The only power that is needed is to create the electric field that aligns the liquid crystal molecules. This makes them ideal for powering with supercapacitors.
Supercapacitors are a good option for powering e-ink displays because they are small, lightweight, and have a long lifespan. They are also very efficient at storing and releasing energy. This makes them ideal for powering low-power devices, such as e-ink displays.
But I don't need a whole new monitor, and this Philips display seems way expensive relative to the cost of the individual e-ink panel.
Edit: Thank you, everyone, for the recommendations - for the fun of the project I might give this a try, but I guess I can also see why this hasn't become popular yet. For the money I can print out a lot of PDFs...and take a color highlighter to them.
Sony had one as well, but they've discontinued it and as a result prices have gone up a lot.
- Android e-Ink tablet
- Vise-grip style holder that connects to a VESA mount
- Two-arm VESA monitor stand, with my main monitor on the other arm
It's not quite as smooth as I'd like, but it works.
Android E-ink tablet
A stand what would be comfortable for you to place the tablet when you don't use it
WiFi
Syncthing
When you are done you just put it back on the stand.
Bonus points if you find a wireless charging solution for this.
I bet someone can even make it into a thing and market it as “smart paper”.
But in fact it's totally integrated, following the current anti-modular, if not anti-user philosophy in most consumer hardware, and ends up being a bit of a frankenstein.
Surely the market for each separate monitor. especially the epaper sidekick, would be greater than this weird integrated combo?
I'm looking at this as 'that's cool, but ... wait, what, it's integrated? Why (oh why)?', but maybe I'm missing the specific use-case or customer this might have been designed for.
Philips could have invested into something similar to paperwhite (indirect backlighting for eink displays)
No product is perfect, that is a trusim. If you look for flaws you can always find them. Does HN ever have something nice to say about any product or service?
I'm not sure I would like this either, looking from LCD to E-Paper and back, but I know I should actually try it before having an opinion.
Give me an A3 size, monochrome, 4k resolution, transflective LCD, at 30fps, that I can scroll through text naturally and read with external ambient light. That to me would be the perfect 'reading' 2nd monitor.
See the old 'Pixel Qi' displays as an example of this tech.
There's also a color RLCD tablet being released soon by Eyemoo. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35900620
Both displays refresh at 60Hz, and have 1920x1080 and 1600x1200 resolution respectively.
Remarkable 2 is too small. Quaderno 13.3 2nd gen, seems cool.
https://onyxboox.com/boox_mira https://onyxboox.com/boox_mirapro
What's wild about this Philips one is they are pricing it like a 13" eInk monitor with a 24" color monitor attached for free.
Make it white, slap an Apple logo on it, call it the iPaper Display Pro Duo and it will sell for $1999. Easily. Dibs on the name Apple, call me to discuss royalties and naming rights.
JK, the panel is garbage though. 250 nits?! Unless you work in dark basement you can GTFO with that shit. It's a shame to see such good ideas being half-assed in execution. If you make a niche product you better make it flawless if you want it to sell as niche users are very picky.
250 nits in 2023 is a joke.
I bought a Dell 27" 4K monitor during the pandemic that ended up being too dim and the most flare-prone coating I've ever encountered. Dunk on the Apple 27" 5K display all we want, but it's insanely bright and almost impossible to glare.
It cost 3x what my Dell did but it's essentially usable in my home office where the Dell monitor was not usable.
So the Dell was 1/3 the cost for 0% of the value.
I also only had such displays growing up but now I need more since my current apartment is hella bright from all the sun exposure.
Is the issue that offices tend not to have screens in direct sunlight, but homes often aren't designed like this?
I think there's an american word for this, or close: jagoff.
Growing up in Russia I had the impression that Philips were OK TVs and VCRs. Then they came up with built-in ambilight (not available in the US last I checked) and it just blew my mind. I know projects like Hyperion exist to make ambilight experience available on arbitrary tvs but I never had the time to play with it.
On topic - I could see myself using this display to see reference docs on the side but probably not at the price of 850$. Google sez that's how much they cost in the markets where they are available
Many years later I worked with a very neat voice recognition system of theirs, limited in scope but astonishingly low CPU use. What documentation they provided was nearly useless and I could never get it to work properly. They had something really amazingly good for the time, and they didn't know how to develop it or pitch it or sell it, they just didn't have a clue.
And we here again: somebody had an idea for which there seems to be no market testing, and frankly no common sense behind it. I mean, what need is it supposed to fulfil having a second mini-monitor latched onto your main monitor.
For example, a Philips monitor is now actually produced by TPV / MMD, who have an exclusive right to sell Philips-branded monitors. It's the same company making AOC and Envision.
They used to be a pretty good company, though! Its spinoffs are highly successful (NXP Semiconductors, Nexperia, ASML, parts of Thales, parts of Atos Origin), and it did create a boatload of innovations like the CD.
Crisp but they have killer light bleed at the edges on bigger sizes. And their turn on splash screen is a 30 second bright blue hue. I doubt philips have any concern for warm/cold light on the e-ink display.
Yikes. I was trying to be positive to offset my criticisms, but this sounds terrible.
Twisting their head to the side, and at suboptimal viewing distance and angle, for long durations to "read a lot of content"?
How's that going to work for ergonomics and eye strain?
An alternative would be to use it for lower-priority monitoring content (e.g., emails, chats, ops monitoring), which you can bring to the main display when you need to look closely or interact. The e-ink and placement de-emphasizes these distractions, but keeps them in your "peripheral vision" so you can occasionally check them with minimal effort. (Well, that would be the theory or pitch, but you'd have to study the reality and nuances of that.)
If the IPS panel is on while you read on the E-Paper screen, there will be light aimed at your eyes from the left side. That alone will cancel out a good deal of the benefits of reading from a reflective screen. Similar to using a regular display against a daylight lit background, such as an open window.
Philips Monitor 24" + ePaper: $600
Mira/Waveshare ePaper only: $600
I've been looking for a RaspberryPI4/Linux and prices are crazy (Currently use a small $100 IPS display).
I'd consider getting one if I could attach it to my existing monitor; I'm not replacing a good and perfectly functional monitor with a new one to get a "let's see what the market thinks of this" gimick.
- work on a document on your laptop/desktop
- send it to your Scribe
- mark it up
- send it back w/ markups
There are also a couple of 3rd part e-ink monitors which seem to work well, and a couple of e-ink ebook readers/tablets where it is possible to connect to a computer and use as a second display/graphics tablet (that latter is a killer feature, which I'd give a lot for Amazon to make possible, even if it was only by allowing apps, and putting that in place as an app --- see the "Superdisplay" app for Samsung tablets for an example of how well it could work).
Imagine a matched line monitors/readers which looked good together and could be placed either side of each other. Maybe a daisy chained computer interface, or not. Would have looked better and sold better too.
What I want from a monitor is to detach it from the base and use it as a wireless display in the bed for example. Or maybe bring the 32 inch into the toilet or into the bathtub. That would help me a lot with my back pain.
Slide it in, slide it out. Auto recognize when it is in range so you can shove stuff into it. Use BLE built into the monitor to communicate. Charge when necessary.