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Old 09-13-2024, 05:03 PM   #23
radius
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Device: Aura One, Paperwhite Signature
I don't know about the TCL devices, but I used to have a Sony Clie PDA with a transflective screen. I think that is the same as what you are calling reflective LCD.

It was nowhere near as good as eink is on today's devices for reading.

First, the contrast was low. The default, uncolored background area of the screen wasn't as white as today's eink. So when I was indoors, I often had to turn on the frontlight. Outdoors it worked great.

Second, there was a gap between the crystal layer and the reflective layer so there could be a slight shadow of whatever was displayed on screen. This used to be very common for two color LCDs at the time too. I think with modern display manufacturing techniques this is likely remedied.

Third, the colour wasn't all that vibrant, though far better than today's color eink reader.

On the plus side, it was just as responsive as TFT screens and didn't have any ghosting.

In videos I've seen on Youtube, I think the darkness of the reflective layer continues to be a problem today even if it has been improved.

Regarding the frontlight and comfort, I don't see how that would be any different than frontlighting on an eink panel. They are both using a lightguide layer on the front to bounce white LCD light off the display layer.

With today's pixel density and display layer sandwiching techniques, I'm also intrigued at what RLCD could be like, but the fact that there are so few devices on the market probably means it isn't good enough. There is so much tooling and supply chain etc. for LCD panels that it would be far cheaper than eink so the display quality must not be there.

Last edited by radius; 09-13-2024 at 05:06 PM.
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