World's First Reflective LCD computer monitor for indoor use. It is a 32" screen FullHD True-color (16.7 million colors) 60Hz without backlight. Because no backlight is needed, the screen is very thin and have very low energy consumption. It can also be used at sun-light.
An unboxing/first impression is available on yt [1]
At first I thought "Lower power consumption" vs. e-ink may be a fat finger copy/paste. After searching for color e-ink power consumption, I find the chart at rdot [1] sums it up pretty well. If e-ink is being used as a monitor, its power consumption will still be much better vs. LCD, but it won't have the almost zero power profile of static e-ink rendering.
If price, resolution, and quality keeps up, it won't be just for outdoors. It may eat up most of the portable monitor/laptop market in not too distant future.
The lower power consumption claim seems to be against ordinary (backlit) LCD monitors, not e-ink. It's kind of surprising that their tech specs section doesn't actually list typical power consumption given that claim. Their technology page claims "Sun Vision Display's reflective LCDs consume less than 6 watts..." and also later "Sun Vision Display’s 32” reflective color LCD panel uses less than 5 watts of energy." (not a typo; the two numbers are different).
Still, if that's true, 5-6W is much better than the equivalent sized Samsung Frame TVs in art mode.
I have this in my Amazfit Bip watch with one month battery life and always readable display and to this day I don't understand why there are pretty much none other watches using trans reflective display besides very expensive garmin which still has crappy battery life.
Had for few months stint with OLED smartwatch until I returned back to Bip, OLED was unbearable in daylight unless on maximum brightness and I had to charge it minimum twice a week, while I charge Bip once a month.
Can confirm, it's amazing. The Bip 2 actually dipped in battery time, with first gen I could do 55 days even (HR off). It's the closest match for Pebble fans. It even has a custom firmware/apps scene. Truly beyond me why no one else pushes these. Is it hard to source? Or is display quality so important for the masses, that they rather charge every 2 days?
I think judging by how software updates look B is correct, people don't care anymore about functionality, but how things look. They don't wanna perfectly OK display which is not so colorful and doesn't have so high resolution, but it's ALWAYS readable, more sunlight the better and battery life is counted in 4-6 weeks, they will rather have display with better colors and resolution and charge it every 2 days.
Or there is option C, same as with compact phones, it's relatively small group of users and companies just don't care with providing them any options. Nowadays if you want "compactish" phone with good camera and decent battery life your only options are year old Zenfone 8, year old Pixel 5, Xiaomi Mi 12/12X or Samsung S22 and that's pretty much it, two phones released recently, meanwhile you have hunreds of tablets ("phones") to choose from.
Same thing with laptops, you can have either ugly unbreakable workhorse Thinkpad T series, but most of the people will rather buy crappy laptop from different brand because it looks nicer and they don't care they will have it in repair all the time.
And it's even worse with transreflective watch with good battery life and normal size, which will not break your wallet, such thing doesn't exist anymore at all. You can buy premium Garmin which is huge, expensive and lasts maybe 2 weeks and that's pretty much it unless you order some obscure copy of original Amazfit Bip (SMA Q2 or Q3), but in that case it's just easier to buy used Bip for peanuts. PineTime has crap battery life and 11mm thickness, Bangle.js is huge, so it's Timex R300 plus pricey and all of these are released long time ago anyway.
Judging by that I use the exact brands you mentioned, this could be true :v You shortly gave me the fear that the Bip S is discontinued, but it's still on the Amazfit product page, and is available at the usual retailers.
Bip S is hardly sold here anymore, I can see it only in one shop on price comparison site plus it was already small downgrade battery life wise (but not as bad as newer iterations milking the name), so I'd still rather go for used Bip as I did for 20$
This is really cool but I would want basicly the opposite. I want a laptop with this display for use outdoors and the plug in to a docking station with regular monitor for indoor/night use. Is there a technology for adding a backlighting to reflective lcd displays. Could a material like a one way mirror behind the lcd so you could use the display back light in low light conditions.
What you describe around a two-mode screen is basically the whole IP around the transflective displays made by 'Pixel Qi' (Unrelated to google pixel).
I know they made a few devices and saw some projects of people retrofitting them in acer and thinkpad laptops. For a period maybe 10 years ago adafruit also sold the display and driver as a standalone. Then I assume they went bust (around 2015, according to wikipedia).
Would be great if someone made those again to retrofit on business laptops.
the technology for using this in low light is called a lamp!
in all seriousness, eink devices use something called front lights, which are embedded in the side of the tablet or device and project light from the edge of the screen. it works very well, even allowing red or amber light coloration which is great on the eyes. i have read that front lighting adds a little bit of thickness to a device, though my devices with the technology seem just as then as any of my regular lcd devices.
I recall old Thinkpads had a little lamp at the top of the screen as an early keyboard light. I guess we've come full circle and that ancient lighting technology will make a come back ;)
I am interested in this. OP do you work for Sun Vision? Y'alls presentation media is absolute shit. You need better mics and cameras. You need to show them in multiple lighting environments. Get a thing that holds and camera (phone or whatever) and moves back and fourth on a linear rail.
Also, people will watch a shit video with good sound but will turn off a useful video with bad sound. You have bad sound in every chunk of media I've looked at. If you want to succeed (and I think you really have something the world needs), spend a few hundred bucks on some mics that don't suck.
I know it says indoor but I wonder how these would do outside at a high glare setting like a beach? Or an array for outdoor signage? Competing with the sun it's pretty tough
In conclusion, the contrast of the Eink panel is obviously
better in all the tested lighting conditions above.
However, even without direct light and in dimmer conditions
the Sun Vision Display RLCD works quite well for me
(with my particular eye strain issues, I consider it to be
actually more comfortable not using it in direct light,
but your mileage may vary)
After seeing how the translucent Apple logo on some MacBooks let the sun in through the back of the screen, I always wondered why no one made a translucent screen backing so you could put the back of the laptop against the sun and get more light in
One of the biggest reasons LCDs are so inefficient is that they block most of the light. Each R/G/B subpixel blocks everything that isn't that colour and turns it into heat. The polarizer also has to block all the light that is the wrong polarization and turn that into heat.
This means that the backlight has to be incredibly bright relative ambient light. So even if you positioned it to harness the power of the sun as a backlight, it'd be a lot dimmer than the ambient sunlight.
The reflective LCD in the OP is nice because the sun is behind you instead of shining in your face.
TL;DR, you'd end up having to squint your eyes anyway since the display would be much dimmer than the sun you're staring at, unless you rigged up some cardboard so you didn't have to stare into the sun.
Transparent LCD display used to be commonly available for use with overhead projectors. Back in the 80s and 90s, "every" classroom had these projectors to put transparencies on, or just to write on with a dry erase pen. So, put together a transparent LCD screen to go on top and boom, LCD projector for your computer. Of course, integrating the bulb, the LCD, and the optics happened shortly after (with much smaller LCDs) with nicer output, but less flexibility.
It actually sounds more appealing than you would think. You could for instance run warmer lighting in your office after sunset and the display would not be blasting blue light in your face until bedtime. Great idea but I'll wait til the price comes down.
Demand and practicality. It's much harder to use a RLCD. Remember how everyone used to complain about how bad the GBA screen was and how bright a light you needed to view it? Early laptops had RLCDs too but those are harder to use on a plane or train and color only makes it harder.
The response time seems rather bad, at least compared to regular LCD displays. You can see the mouse cursor leave a trail: https://i.imgur.com/S1fNFFl.png
Huh, glossy finish on a screen that always needs light shining on it? Probably necessary for the image quality and would be worse with matte, but seems counterintuitive.
Yeah I expected a matte finish as well, but i'm not very sure why.. maybe that aspect could even clinch the deal for some use-cases though? Would like to see what it's like for sure!
I wonder if it'd be worthwhile, given it'd be difficult to control the light input - would it be possible to get accurate colour reproduction without intensely controlled light sources?
No, it'd be a terrible ebook reader display. RLCDs are very hard to view in poor light especially color ones and don't have the same perfect viewing angles.
For mostly static monochrome content like text in an eBook eInk is a good fit. There was a few reflective LCD eReaders in the late 2000s, early 2010s but they fizzled out pretty quick once eInk devices reached an acceptable price range. Their only value was being cheaper.
An unboxing/first impression is available on yt [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehqj0W3koP0