Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Once again, I don't think these are quite the universal truisms that many like/want to assume they are. I don't think eink is going anywhere anytime soon (if ever) either, but honestly ... why the insistance on bestowing universal and inherent "betterness" upon eink devices (especially for "serious" readers)? Why the need to suggest eink preference is somehow more than just preference alone? Is preference and availability not enough?
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I suppose it is a matter of preference - I spent a couple years with a tablet which did have better "contrast" than an e-ink display, but that contrast was between black pixels and white glowing pixels so it is hard for an unlit eink display to compete on that front. And of course that contrast advantage only exists in a relatively dark room - outdoors or near windows on a bright day I couldn't see anything but glare on the screen. Hell I couldn't tell you what program was running in sunlight, let alone actually read any text on the screen!
BUT, reading on a tablet meant staring at a clearly digital screen with visible pixels. With two (admittedly low power) magnifying glasses ganged together I still cannot tell that there are pixels of any kind on my Kobo Mini.
Now yes, the e-ink screen is slightly grey in appearance, hence the "better contrast" for a white glowing phone/tablet screen - but text quality is *SO* much better on eink that there really is no comparison. It's so good that there is really little room for improvement - sure, a whiter screen would be nice and since I have a reader with no light, that would be nice too - but you couldn't actually improve the resolution any (or if you could it wouldn't matter any because it is already impossible to see pixels with the aided eye let alone unaided).
Now my tablet was old (I purchased it toward the end of 2011)- maybe there are tablets now that are readable in sunlight and have a higher DPI than the human eye can detect, but I haven't seen any yet. And of course even if a tablet *could* ever reach the text quality and readability of my now discontinued bottom of the line Kobo Mini, could it come anywhere close the battery life? But that's another issue.