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Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

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Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#61

Post by DoingIsLearning »

breakfastduck wrote: post #57
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand how there isn't a market for a work _laptop_ with a display like this? - Longer battery life - easy on the eyes for long sessions reading/writing - Allows me to actually work outside!!! There is a huge market of people out there (Thinking about the typical ThinkPad users) that don't give 2 craps about color accuracy. We literally just want to read and write. Anyone envolved in Product Managem…

No one is going to sell a device that costs significantly more than any other for the same power to provide what 99% of users would consider a sub par/ unusable display. Like seriously can you imagine trying to sell a laptop that is unable to watch any media, play any games and has the refresh rate / perceived performance of a 15 year old tablet. This stuff isn't ready to be a 'main' display yet.

> imagine trying to sell a laptop that is unable to - watch any kind of media - looks 'laggy'

Imagine thinking that the consumer market is only for media consumers. There is a whole market of enterprise products out there, and there is certainly a use case for a _work_ laptop which needs no multimedia support.

I wouldn't argue that someone buying this machine would only use only this machine. But I know I am not alone in saying that this would be my daily driver when focus is required.

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#62

Post by Epa095 »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #53
zwirbl wrote: post #13

I couldn't find a video of the display in use, so here it goes (for the 13.3" version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBfWkxOfUfQ seems a little slow and the screen refreshes sometimes excessive, but much better than I expected

I still don't understand how there isn't a market for a work _laptop_ with a display like this? - Longer battery life - easy on the eyes for long sessions reading/writing - Allows me to actually work outside!!! There is a huge market of people out there (Thinking about the typical ThinkPad users) that don't give 2 craps about color accuracy. We literally just want to read and write. Anyone envolved in Product Managem…

The old OLPC laptop had a weird screen which kind of became a black and white e-ink screen when the brightness got turned all the way down, and was a quite normal colour screen otherwise. No clue how it was made though, and if there has been any further work in that direction.

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#63

Post by qaq »

breakfastduck wrote: post #57
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand how there isn't a market for a work _laptop_ with a display like this? - Longer battery life - easy on the eyes for long sessions reading/writing - Allows me to actually work outside!!! There is a huge market of people out there (Thinking about the typical ThinkPad users) that don't give 2 craps about color accuracy. We literally just want to read and write. Anyone envolved in Product Managem…

No one is going to sell a device that costs significantly more than any other for the same power to provide what 99% of users would consider a sub par/ unusable display. Like seriously can you imagine trying to sell a laptop that is unable to watch any media, play any games and has the refresh rate / perceived performance of a 15 year old tablet. This stuff isn't ready to be a 'main' display yet.

1% is 1.6 million units per year that's a billion dollar company

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#64

Post by xuki »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #61
breakfastduck wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is going to sell a device that costs significantly more than any other for the same power to provide what 99% of users would consider a sub par/ unusable display. Like seriously can you imagine trying to sell a laptop that is unable to watch any media, play any games and has the refresh rate / perceived performance of a 15 year old tablet. This stuff isn't ready to be a 'main' display yet.

> imagine trying to sell a laptop that is unable to - watch any kind of media - looks 'laggy' Imagine thinking that the consumer market is only for media consumers. There is a whole market of enterprise products out there, and there is certainly a use case for a _work_ laptop which needs no multimedia support. I wouldn't argue that someone buying this machine would only use only this machine. But I know I am not alon…

Manufacturers need to do this at scale. It’ll be so expensive if they only make a few thousand units.

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#65

Post by bluGill »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #61
breakfastduck wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is going to sell a device that costs significantly more than any other for the same power to provide what 99% of users would consider a sub par/ unusable display. Like seriously can you imagine trying to sell a laptop that is unable to watch any media, play any games and has the refresh rate / perceived performance of a 15 year old tablet. This stuff isn't ready to be a 'main' display yet.

> imagine trying to sell a laptop that is unable to - watch any kind of media - looks 'laggy' Imagine thinking that the consumer market is only for media consumers. There is a whole market of enterprise products out there, and there is certainly a use case for a _work_ laptop which needs no multimedia support. I wouldn't argue that someone buying this machine would only use only this machine. But I know I am not alon…

Not much of a market, I have to do media based training all the time, even though my 95% case is text based.

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#66

Post by salamandersauce »

jll29 wrote: post #42

I can't wait until this reaches maturity to get a 11" or so sub-notebook which is quiet, low energy, with a good keyboard for reading and writing (text/code editing, emails, PDF reading of scientific papers). Looked into this a couple of years ago and it was too early, now one could almost design & build that.

You can already get a 10 or 13" eInk Android tablet and do all that already. Just need to bring your own keyboard.

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#67

Post by xuki »

b112 wrote: post #56
zepto wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#68

Post by patagonicus »

Looks pretty nice, especially the USB-C input. I might have gotten that one if it had been available when I was shopping for an e-Ink screen.

I got a Dasung 13" one a while ago, the larger Dasung wasn't launched yet (and I was struggling a bit to justify the price tag of the 13", now I'd probably go for the larger one). It's very limited, basically only works for black and white text, but for that it's great. I use it pretty much daily, just keeping a shell open there. I've changed my terminal to be black on white and all colors map to light/dark gray (for light/dark versions of the basic terminal colors), which works decently. I did change themes for things like tmux and vim to work better on a grayscale screen.

Reading text on it is great, but compared to a Kindle Oasis (whatever the newest model was last summer) its DPI is quite low, so you can't have text as small without it getting blurry. I mostly got it because I noticed that I was getting some eye strain staring at a regular screen all day and as best as I can tell it really has helped with that. It's also powered off of USB, which makes it usable on the go as a second screen.

My main gripe is using a Mini-HDMI-Port with a custom cable to inject power from USB (I think HDMI->Mini-HDMI plus a separate USB cable for Micro-USB input also work, never tried), but it's also a bit annoying that the inputs are on the sides and not the back. I also use it with a monitor arm at home, the included pole for standing it up is ok for on the go, but I really wouldn't use it permanently.

TL;DR: expensive, but if you want to reduce eye strain while reading a lot of text it really helps. Main driver for shell / coding tasks and I sometimes read longer websites/Google Docs/etc on it, though less frequently.

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#69

Post by avar »

formerly_proven wrote: post #44
avar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little slow? I was pretty amazed by how fast it is in that video. I haven't kept up with E-Ink technology, but I own an old Kindle and it takes it 0.5-1s to refresh, but that 13.3" display is keeping up with finger gestures when scrolling. Yes it would suck for watching movies, but it seems to be really useful for anything involving text, e.g. i.e. a secondary monitor to read documentation on, or even program on. I…

Fast for eink, but also absolutely terrible ghosting, which makes the speed considerably less impressive considering how straining it looks. What's the point of a fairly quick response to screen updates when you have to press the manual refresh button in order to read what's on it?

I haven't used this product, but if you look at the linked YouTube video starting at around 11 minutes you can see it going from "ghosting" that's hardly noticeable when reading an article, to really noticeable ghosting and lower resolution (but much faster refresh rate) in the "video mode". If you're watching a video presumably the "ghosting" would all mush together.

E.g. at 11m47s[1] the reviewer is in the text mode, hasn't pressed the manual refresh button, and when I pause the video the text doesn't seem to have any visible artifacts (maybe some for around half a second, until the image "settles"?).

I agree that it would suck for a lot of applications, but as a secondary screen to read text/documentation, or even watch the scrolling output from a CI system this seems amazing.

Have you used this display in person? Is it worse than it seems to be in that video? If so for what (if any/all) modes and use-cases?

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBfWkxOfUfQ#t=11m47s

Re: Boox Mira Pro – 25.3" E Ink Monitor

#70

Post by patagonicus »

dash2 wrote: post #27

The rival here is the Dasung 25.3" model, currently waiting for a new batch: https://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink... I'd love to hear from anyone who's worked with a monitor like this.

I got the smaller Dasung about half a year ago, I posted a comment about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29429093

Let me know if you have any specific questions.

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