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Comment by patall | Hacker News Reader

My dad has bought the 25.3'' E ink monitor from Dasung. From what he tells, it does not have a backlight and is itself to dark for his taste outside of middle of the day. Maybe it will be better during summer or in bright condition but sitting further away from these devices may require more than just reflectiveness for some users.

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That's kinda the point of these things, to not be backlit; you're supposed to provide the needed amount of light yourself.

> and is itself to dark for his taste outside of middle of the day.

Indeed, from the description it sounds like their work setup doesn't have enough ambient light for confortable reading conditions.

Contrast ratio of E Ink is like 10:1. I don't know exactly how it compares but backlit LCD is approx 1k:1, OLED is 1m:1 in contrast(pun intended).

You can't compare the contrast of an emissive (backlit LCD/OLED) and a reflective (eInk) display.

Put your OLED display in direct sunlight on a bright summer day and you will get effectively get no contrast at all, the screen will reflect so much sunlight that your puny LEDs won't do much of a difference. Backlit LCDs will get some weak contrast because the backpanel is a bit reflective, but eInk displays will always be 10:1 because they use ambiant light instead of competing with it.

These ridiculously high contrast ratios of OLED displays only take into account emitted light and only make sense in a dark room, or VR headset.

> Put your OLED display in direct sunlight on a bright summer day and you will get effectively get no contrast at all,

Recent iPhone oleds are dull but usable in direct sunlight.

Which brings us back to another thread, brightness.

Freakin' OLEDs are brighter than the bloody sun!!! The sun! I half expect my face to get sunburned looking at them!

It’s certainly not, not even close. Try this: set your brightness to maximum, put it in the direction of the sun and use another device to take a photo of them both.

It is as if the sun has become one with my PDA.

10:1 is nevertheless quite low. Black is really dark grey, and white is light grey. Having bad eyesight, I find e-ink displays too straining to use in most lighting conditions.

Huh, weird. I got the small Dasung with a backlight, but I almost never use the backlight since avoiding that is one of the reasons I did get an E-Ink screen in the first place. You do need the room to be somewhat well lit, so in the mornings and evenings I'll turn on the overhead lights. Probably slightly harder to read than a book since the background isn't bleached white, but it's close-ish.

I think the difference in this setup is that you sit further away from the large screen than from the small one. And then, it becomes more of an issue. I haven't seen it myself though, only hearsay.

Edit: Also, you are probably not in your late fifties. Eye-sight under low-light definitely decreases with age.

eInk is not transparent, you canno have backlight. It's objective is to emulate ink on paper.

It might be true you cannot have backlight, but for sure you can have front light. My ~7 years old Kindle paperwhite has that.

I guess that may be what I meant, i.e second 24 of the video.

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