this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
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This article has completely missed a selling point of e-readers for people like myself: no constant refreshing.
My eye strain, when reading for a long time, doesn't come from the light (or lack thereof), which is evident as a positive of backlit Kindles and other e-readers, though the constant flicker of screens. E-ink solves this issue perfectly, and with every device in that article mentioning "60Hz" on their alternatives I feel as though they've missed a big point of having an e-reader and what exactly constitutes as "paper like" (it's a lot more than just "low/no backlight").
As I understand it, Kindles aren’t backlit but rather frontlit (or sidelit) with a layer designed to diffuse the light across the page evenly. The claim is that the lack of direct lighting helps in the fight against eye strain as well.
Yeah, there's a reason people prefer Kindle e-ink type e-readers to just using a tablet like a Kindle Fire, even if the latter can do more stuff
Are you talking about pwm? Most screens don't refresh if nothing is changing
This isn't technically correct. CRT, LCD, and OLED displays are generally constantly refreshing the image. There are some niche exceptions like memory-in-pixel displays but they are few and far between. eInk displays are very different in this aspect because the display itself acts as a physical memory of the image because its mechanism of creating an image involves physical changes (pigmented particles moving closer or further away from the visible plane).
I just wanted to add this video to your comment because e-ink is so cool and this guy has a bunch of macro shots of the displays that are awesome and you can see the particles in the screen changing colors.
https://youtu.be/1qIHCUWAgh4
So cool!
Thank you!!!
Another point (which is a result of not refreshing the screen) which the article misses is power consumption. I can use my reader for several weeks without recharging.