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Comment by xvector | Hacker News Reader

I recently switched from reading white-on-black on OLED to e-ink and it's been a world of difference. E-ink is so much easier on the eyes. It's amazing how it works in any lighting condition. It really does feel like the display technology of the future (for productivity.)

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I mean OLED is basically shining a LED flashlight at your eyeballs, so, yeah. Of course, pretty much every other form of backlit display has the same problem. The only thing I can think of that might be better would be possibly a laptop LCD with the backlight taken out and replaced with a front surface mirror, and then that depends on the surrounding lighting, too.

What you’re describing is a transflective screen. It has a normal transmissive LCD mode but the main use is as a reflective screen. They have the speed of an LCD but usually the brightness and contrast are poorer than current e-ink screen.

Counter-intuitive, but a reflective screen is potentially more damaging to the eyes than a transflective (illuminated) one because with the reflective one, the reader has to depend on the ambient lighting entirely. Many times the flux of light falling into the retina of a reader may not be enough and prompt the pupil to open more widely than required, and set them eyes up for quicker degradation.

I thought it was the other way around. Pupil dilation tends to be based on ambient light, so the closer the screen intensity matches ambient light the better.

Yes, but a dimly lit room will cause more exertion on the pupillary muscles anyway, because the flux of light is way too low for all types of focused activity like reading. Both undivided attention and the flux of light have a significant influence on the pupillary state of the eyes.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4634867/

There is zero evidence -- I mean literally, none, go look for yourself -- that emissive screens are better for your eyes in any way than reflective one. Shining a lightbulb directly into your eyes isn't any worse than shining a lightbulb at a mirror with dark spots on it.

100%. The nature of light that falls on the retina doesn’t change whether it’s reflected off of a surface or shine directly via an incandescent bulb.

What matters to the eye is the flux of light (i.e. intensity) and for that, the emissive screens are better since they are not dependent on ambient lighting. Great point!

While I agree in the sense that I have not seen evidence that reflective is better than emissive, I would rather see studies than depend upon ad hoc comparisons. The properties of a light source are typically different, the properties of surface reflecting or transmitting (for the lack of a better word) the light are different, and how the screen brightness responds to ambient light is different.

There are many reasons why one type of screen may be better than another. The lack of compelling evidence simply means that there is a lack of research and certainly does not imply they are equivalent.

The underlying issue may not be reflective vs. emissive, but rather luminance/contrast ratios. Here's one paper on the subject: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01698...

Basically their finding is that a very modest amount of luminance contrast (8:1) is optimal for reading, after which readability actually decreases. Which actually isn’t that surprising when you think about it. If you had a display where the whites were as bright as the sun, and the blacks were perfectly, totally non-reflectively black, it would be hard to read.

This is probably consistent with people’s experience with e-readers. E-ink doesn’t have a particularly good contrast ratio, but it is adequate and roughly in the sweet spot for reading. Whereas today’s 200:1 IPS displays score well on spec charts and are great for video and games but are arguably not that good for reading, at least for some people.

A "200:1" IPS display can't really provide that 200:1 contrast at e-paper-like luminance. In fact, it probably can't even provide the same contrast as e-paper itself. The technologies are too different for a direct comparison.

For me black text on white oled with yellow filter is much easier on eyes than than white on black. Main problem of oled is the flickering.

There are yellow/orange/red filters on some e readers. And it's often black on gray, not black on white (it depends on the e reader though).

I prefer reading on backlit LCD/OLED, personally. Been doing it since I was a young child, have read more this way than any other format.

I got an e-ink just for the portable battery life.

I've never found an LCD or OLED display that's anywhere near as good as e-ink in sunlight.

Fair point! I always read indoors.

I bought a cheap Kindle with no backlight to read more at outdoors. It's great with direct sunlight but really bad at indoors, specially when reading at bed as the screen is under a shadow in all the positions I find comfortable to read. Ended putting it aside and returning to the smartphone even thought the screen is smaller I find it easier to read everywhere and to store in the pocket. It's bad under sunlight but doable.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the Dasung 27 inch eink monitor. I hope it becomes reality it would be perfect for long days of coding.

Coding on EPD displays, some miss the colour highlighting. Maybe with Kaleido or a high refresh ACeP...

I mean I think I can live with for the most part if the benefits of eye strain outweighs it.

You should probably try that process on an available device (e.g. a 10.3'' tablet, maybe connected to your station through VNC or similar) to see if the experience is satisfactory and worth considering using a big EPD display for your purposes.

How many colors do you need? What about bold, cursive, underline? Another font?

Amber on black has been a great OLED experience to me.

White might be too bright.

> It's amazing how it works in any lighting condition.

In the dark it needs a backlight though.

Frontlight. E-ink displays are not backlit, because they're opaque. They're instead illuminated on the front side using lights placed on the sides in the frame.

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