alt Hacker News> 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.
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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...
I'm currently reading your post on a transflective LCD monitor. The problem with them is the very low contrast ratio which requires very high ambient illumination to make them readable or other workarounds like what they did for the Daylight DC-1.
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.
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.