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The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

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Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#51

Post by illwrks »

jcfrei wrote: post #32

I keep reading that reading stuff on a paper or e-ink display is easier on the eyes than a monitor. Certainly makes sense if the comparison is to a CRT but compared to a standard LCD? Are there any medical studies that confirm this? As far as I know modern life exposes us to far little brightness, causing myopia for a lot of people. If anything a very bright backlight display should probably be better for our eyes...

I think it comes down to emitted light vs reflected light.

If you're looking into an LCD panel and the light it's emitting is not adjusted to match the environment you're in, too bright or too dull, then you will strain your eyes.

With an e-ink screen, anything printed, or even a cinema screen, it doesn't usually emit light and therefore relies on the light emitted from other things around you to reflect off of the surface, illuminating the surface of the thing you're looking at. This is more natural and provides less strain on your eyes.

On a personal preference side of things, I can't look at bright sources in the evening. My wife is a terror for looking at her phone at 100% brightness, it's blinding if she hands it to me to look at. Where as my devices are setup to dim and be as low as possible in the evening, even the profile on the TV.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#52

Post by tluyben2 »

jcfrei wrote: post #32

I keep reading that reading stuff on a paper or e-ink display is easier on the eyes than a monitor. Certainly makes sense if the comparison is to a CRT but compared to a standard LCD? Are there any medical studies that confirm this? As far as I know modern life exposes us to far little brightness, causing myopia for a lot of people. If anything a very bright backlight display should probably be better for our eyes...

I work a lot in the sun (even in the shade here there is a lot of sun) and a lot of times I have to get inside to do any work as normal LCD is simply not readable. While eInk is readable like, well, paper. So works fine in sun and shade.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#54

Post by jonahbenton »

Grumbledour wrote: post #43

I always think of the remarkable as a really odd device. Hardware wise, it looks great, but I seldom hear good things about the software, only that it is "improving" for years now. Also, while I think the form factor would be great for a text and graphics based computing device, they seem to invest as much energy as possible in playing down the computing angle, so that instead of having something great to do technica…

I'm a fan of the remarkable, use v2 every day. My high school daughter uses my old v1 every day. We both love it.

But it is absolutely very opinionated- entirely oriented around hand-writing use cases, specifically those that involve being away from power and network. So its power budget is low and it has amazingly robust synchronization.

You can read and do some other things on it, but that's not what it solves for.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#55

Post by simias »

0-_-0 wrote: post #22
nicoburns wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think A is fundamentally impossible. A backlit display is always going to look different to a reflective surface. My money's on C: a new display tech which works similarly to color E-ink, but isn't actually E-ink. Qualcomm's Mirasol technology looked amazing for this, but sadly it never made it into any mainstream products and they've basically shut it down at this point.

In principle it's possible to measure the ambient light and set the emitted light to simulate reflected light from paper so that an OLED looks indistinguishable from paper. Next gen QLED displays might have the brightness to pull this off even in bright sunlight.

If you really want to simulate reflected light you also have to be able to control the angle of the light that you emit, and you want to absorb incoming light almost completely otherwise there'll be a conflict (glare, in particular).

I suspect that it might be easier to improve reflective displays, but I have no expertise in this field so maybe I'm completely wrong about that.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#56

Post by salamandersauce »

Grumbledour wrote: post #43

I always think of the remarkable as a really odd device. Hardware wise, it looks great, but I seldom hear good things about the software, only that it is "improving" for years now. Also, while I think the form factor would be great for a text and graphics based computing device, they seem to invest as much energy as possible in playing down the computing angle, so that instead of having something great to do technica…

Boox Note Air does through Bluetooth or USB C. It just runs Android so you can pretty much do whatever. It's literally an Android Tablet with an eInk screen.

Remarkable you can hack in keyboard support. They are just focused on making a good digital notepad. Even their reading software is sub-par.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#57

Post by teekert »

0-_-0 wrote: post #17
noja wrote: post #2

Why the ReMarkable doesn't have a backlight I do not understand.

I would probably buy it if it had one, but I want to read in the dark often without turning the lights on and bothering others.

There are probably cases with small leds.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#58

Post by tzs »

vbezhenar wrote: post #36
jcfrei wrote: post #32

I keep reading that reading stuff on a paper or e-ink display is easier on the eyes than a monitor. Certainly makes sense if the comparison is to a CRT but compared to a standard LCD? Are there any medical studies that confirm this? As far as I know modern life exposes us to far little brightness, causing myopia for a lot of people. If anything a very bright backlight display should probably be better for our eyes...

I don't think that's true as long as you provide healthy lightning. Light is light, doesn't matter whether it came from the sun or from backlight lamp. E-ink obviously is preferable when you're reading in the direct sun light, because LCD could be barely visible in those conditions.

One significant difference is that with e-ink you can provide healthy lighting. With an LCD display you are stuck with whatever backlighting is built in.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#59

Post by throwuxiytayq »

Grumbledour wrote: post #43

I always think of the remarkable as a really odd device. Hardware wise, it looks great, but I seldom hear good things about the software, only that it is "improving" for years now. Also, while I think the form factor would be great for a text and graphics based computing device, they seem to invest as much energy as possible in playing down the computing angle, so that instead of having something great to do technica…

Remarkable is really a device for people who explicitly don't want those features. They're betting hard that the market exists, although it probably isn't as large as the market for an as-powerful-as-possible general-purpose computing device.

I've seen it mentioned that someone got an USB keyboard working, and the device is pretty hackable overall (you can SSH to root over wifi out of the box!), but I think if you want to connect an external keyboard then it probably isn't for you anyway. You can't even type text in documents.

Disclaimer: reMarkable 2 user, pretty happy with their focus, but I wish the device was more responsive in some scenarios (complicated drawings are very slow) and there's certainly many missing core drawing/writing/reading features.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#60

Post by teorema »

I love eink devices but got turned off by the first couple of generations because they always underdelivered with PDF display, which seemed like a central use case to me. I should be able to open a random graphics-heavy PDF and have it display perfectly (ignoring color) and in a reasonable amount of time for an eink device to be worth it to me.

This has made me want to revisit them but I don't think I'd want to purchase one without being able to stress test in person.

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