I just searched and found Dasung Paperlike[0], but it seems both quite small and quite expensive.
Is there some technological limitation to creating a large e-ink monitor?
0:https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-world-s-first-e-ink-monitor-13-3#/
But they're pricy: grayscale is $3600, color is $4700: https://www.visionect.com/development_kits
The underlying display is still made by eInk Inc, who sells a very similar product on their own website: 31.5" instead of 32", and only in grayscale - but surprisingly: for only $2000: http://shopkits.eink.com/product/signage-evaluation-kit-v3-w...
I plan to buy one of these large eInk/ePaper displays and mount them on the wall in my home's atrium where I'll display a dashboard showing traffic levels, road cameras, and a weather update. I'd really like color though, but $2000 vs $4700 - I guess I'll make-do.
However, it seems working with the epaper display suppliers is a bear.
PS: If I were looking to deploy a wall mounted panel which doesn't look like a development kit, I would wait for a while. ;)
E Ink is a brilliant display, but the process of manufacturing, cutting the TFT mask etc is expensive; only on mass volumes can displays costs become incredibly cheap (6" E Ink in a kindle is <$10 USD). It's the same for most displays OLED etc in small volumes are expensive; which is why the touchbar solution COGS is over $200 USD.
Therefore E Ink has a high MOQ of a few hundred thousand units, anything below that and you're priced at basically prototype costs which is why a 32" E Ink display is $2k.
If its really just for reading PDFs, have you tried a Kindle DX?
If you want something hooked up to a computer for whatever reason, I know http://shopkits.eink.com/product/13-3%CB%9D-epaper-display-e... does exist and you can buy it (alibet its expensive -- but not as expensive as the dasung, wow, 1300?) but its very DIY development kit.
There was another company in the USA that I found that also sells e-ink displays that are HUGE, they do it as digital signage (menu at a coffee bar type stuff). I can't fathom what they charge but its probably astronomical.
I do think this is all a bit unfortunate, I would love to have a few of these e-ink displays on my walls at home for things like shared calendar with my family and put a few in the office for our calendars too but its just crazy expensive and very inaccessible for now.
Unfortunately I think e-ink missed the boat. They never got past the volume curve to make large displays remotely mass produced (due to expense), and they are expensive because they aren't mass produced....
The other use case for it being a monitor is ease of use. It is slightly difficult to transfer a PDF to a Kindle; not very difficult I know, but enough that I rarely do it.
I think you are right about manufacturing scale. LCDs have such incredible scale I don't think e-ink could ever match, unless there was a combined e-ink LCD.
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Side note, that 13.3 e-ink kit looks suspiciously like the Dasung Paperlike form factor.
It'd be great if Apple's industrial design team did an e-ink iPad, they would be able to make it considerably thinner and sturdier.
There are no technological limitations in terms of the panel size (backplane technology is practically the same as TFT), but its rather a volume question.
We see this "personal display" theme pop-up quite often on our email, but the pricing is prohibitive (even compared to high quality and high resolution LCD consumer panel) and the refresh rate does impose a lot of limitations on what you can do.
I think that E Ink is best used for displaying information and use cases that benefit from E Ink itself (think high contrast, outdoor scenarios, indoor units that work 24/7, applications where you can power a display with a battery and reduce installation complexity).
Looks like if it's a technical issue, it's a solvable one.
There isn't any technological limitation as far as I know; it's just that e-ink displays are hideously expensive to make.
I'm not sure if refresh rate is a function of display size at all, but I will say they've come a long way at improving it over earlier Kindle modles.
I use it to read PDFs and take notes with a stylus pen.
https://www.amazon.com/Onyx-Max-13-3-Flexible-Handwriting/dp...