This is interesting. Seems to be an e-ink-like (but not actually e-ink) monochrome 10" display with a modified Android launcher and 60hz refresh.
Focuses on eye-comfort and outdoor usage. $729 inc stylus. Launched today.
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I really struggle to see what people plan on doing with these monochrome, Android-only machines. Is it for black and white web surfing? OK, but how badly do folks want that to be an e-ink experience? It it just for reading? If so, Kindles and Kobos already have that market dialled in.
I know Om thinks this is the future, but this doesn’t have any apps on it that people use to do actual work. Word? Excel? Photoshop? Lightroom? A developer story?
One might argue that this is for “light computing,” like the iPad I’m typing this on now, but the iPad can do some heavier computing if needed, and it’s an iPad, which feels leagues ahead of where this thing is right now.
I’m just not sure that “the computer you probably love actually sucks; buy ours” is a market message that’s going to resonate with a lot of people.
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The non Kindle e-ink market is what Boox sells into. The main reason I bought a Boox was to use Readwise Reader on an e-ink screen — which is not supported by Kindle.
The downside of e-ink is the painfully slow refresh rate, which is what Daylight appear to be targeting with their new device.
I used to be such a fan of e-ink, but when I looked into the research on eye strain/comfort, I concluded that e-ink displays themselves don’t actually make that big of a difference. Instead, eye strain is alleviated by better eye habits when engaging with a display. For instance, reading with pagination induces instinctive blinking during page-turns, which is a good thing — using scrolling instead reduces blinking, leading to worse eye strain.
So, I’ve come to believe that reducing display brightness and increasing display warmth provides a roughly equivalent experience in terms of display-induced eye strain. Moreover, I believe that e-ink’s eye comfort benefits are largely just marketing and any real benefits are tied up in those kinds of behavioural confounders.
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This is fair! But Daylight is marketing this as a full tablet, not an e-reader. It looks to me like it’s a very expensive e-reader, poorly marketed as a tablet thanks to its refresh rate. I’m not sure the marketing jives with the actual product.
For 1/2 the price….maybe!
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