Best 2023 options for 13.3” Eink device ???

[davester]

My eyes are getting brutally thrashed from all the time spent on my iPad Pro 12,9”. I use Blue-Blocker glasses, but they don’t completely alleviate the eye-strain and I’m looking to purchase a non light-emitting device for surfing the web, watching YouTube and reading emails. Would appreciate your thoughts on what seems to be only 2 options available:

1) A 13.3” BLACK & WHITE Eink Android tablet, such as the new Boox Tab X. The screen refresh rate is impressive for video, but the non-color aspect may cause confusion and frustration when using the device as sometimes green & red have a similar grey-scale, so colored-text on colored backgrounds may be distracting (and time-wasting) to figure out?!

2) A 13.3” color Eink Android tablet, which is not available yet, but rumors have it that a “Boox Tab X C” is anticipated to come out this year, which although the color aspect is certainly better than the B&W version, I have noticed that ALL color Eink devices have a darker screen background than the lighter B&W screens, so it would be harder to see the contents on the screen. In some product review videos, it seems that the user needs to turn on the device front-light in order to get a decent view/illumination of the screen ... but wouldn’t that somewhat defeat the purpose of the Eink device, in that I’m trying to avoid any extra-lighting entering my eyes, although this may be scattered light, which is different than the iPad’s direct LED screen lighting.

Your thoughts please on whether you think the B&W is better/worse than COLOR Eink if one wants to use the tablet for several hours every day. Thanks!
-Dave

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by davester

Your thoughts please on whether you think the B&W is better/worse than COLOR Eink if one wants to use the tablet for several hours every day.

Basically, it doesn't matter whether you are "illuminated" by a bright object (bw screen) or by a darker but illuminated object with the same brightness (Kaleido 3 screen).
The color filter layer lets less light through from the screen. It is therefore darker and can only be made brighter by incident light.
The problem here lies in the uniformity of the illumination of such a large area - this was successful with the Tab Ultra C (10.3), but not with the Tab X (b/w) as far as I am informed.
I can only recommend 13.3 and color if uniform brightness is not particularly important to you.

[Quoth]

Forget colour eink except for comics and graphic novels. Inherently you need about x4 to x6 the light for the coloured eink that uses a filter on a mono screen and you get about 4000 colours as mono eink has only 14 greys, black and white. There is a different type of colour electronic paper from the Eink Corp for signs but full colour refresh is over 1.5 seconds. It does have more colours and may be less dark, but it seems unsuitable for an ereader.

The mono eink works far far better with ambient light and has much sharper text.
Forget any kind of eink for video.

For actual reading text the 8″ 300 dpi mono eink models are best.

Android models have the advantage you can install apps for all the different libraries, subscription and vendors, but for PD ebooks and bought ebooks the Kobo has the best metadata based Library interface if you just want to read.

The eink as a tablet is mostly poor, but to simply read text the mono eink is best.

[ottischwenk]

Regarding the EInk color space of Kaleido 3: it only offers 4096 colors and these are far from "natural" - but this transports additional information compared to grayscale.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Forget colour eink except for comics and graphic novels. Inherently you need about x4 to x6 the light for the coloured eink that uses a filter on a mono screen and you get about 4000 colours as mono eink has only 14 greys, black and white. There is a different type of colour electronic paper from the Eink Corp for signs but full colour refresh is over 1.5 seconds. It does have more colours and may be less dark, but it seems unsuitable for an ereader.

That's correct so far

The mono eink works far far better with ambient light and has much sharper text.

The latter is wrong - my Boox Tab Ultra C (10.3 inch, b/w 300 dpi, C 150 dpi) shows text sharper than any other 10.3 inch device - and also sharper and more contrast than my Tolino Epos 3 (Kobo Sage).
And also has more pixels than the 13.3-inch Boox Tab X

Forget any kind of eink for video.

You don't know the latest technology in EInk control - the Boox Tab devices also make this possible

For actual reading text the 8″ 300 dpi mono eink models are best.

Are you serious about this suggestion? If anyone wants to upgrade from 12.9 inch.
10.3 inches are already questionable - they are available in 300 dpi

Android models have the advantage you can install apps for all the different libraries, subscription and vendors, but for PD ebooks and bought ebooks the Kobo has the best metadata based Library interface if you just want to read.

There are Android apps that put the applications of all Linux devices (Kindle, Kobo, ....) in the shade.

The eink as a tablet is mostly poor, but to simply read text the mono eink is best.

This is also a matter of taste - because of the new Boox Tab technology (GPU) I only use such devices anymore.
Tab Ultra C - 10.3 inch, 300 dpi, color only; as a working device with keyboard and mouse
Tab Mini C - 7.8 inch, 300 dpi, color only; as a standard reader.
Boox Palma (b/w, smartphone design) is ordered - for on the go and for travelling

[Renate]

Put me in the "mono is best" camp. Although I don't have any experience with color.

Originally Posted by Quoth

... the Kobo has the best metadata based Library interface if you just want to read.

I'm confused. What kind of Library interface is not metadata based?

OMG, more models! The "Tab Mini C" is a 7.8" color with slim borders.

I see the "Palma", although it's not listed in the "Products" and it's sold out.
Grrr: The Palma has no GPS. Considering that all the Qualcomm processors have that built in...

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Renate

Put me in the "mono is best" camp. Although I don't have any experience with color.

I'm confused. What kind of Library interface is not metadata based?

I was really comparing with apps or ereaders with no true library, just a file browser and the Kobo makes best use of Metadata for a Library and best integration with Calibre, though the obsolete Sony models work better with Calibre than Kindle does. The oldest Kindles work better with Calibre, but have ghastly Mobi only and low resolution.

My Boyue Likebook Mars P78 has a "Library page"/GUI. But it seems useless. You can really only browse by directory, then file.
Obviously all working Library GUIs (Kindle, Sony, Kobo, & Nook) use metadata sensibly.
Many Android Apps and KOReader don't. I'm not fussed on a filebrowser which is also what reMarkable seems to use.

Curiously the miniature Y-Ben P47L has a "Library" that uses the Title metadata, but it seems to only sort by title and in A-Z order and I forget how to designate titles as favourites. It also has a list ordered by last opened (MRU list). It has 8G Flash and that many ebooks need better filters.

The Sony PRS350 and PRS-T2 are just about useable and the Kindle has got worse. I find the My Books GUI on the Kobo is best.

An 8″ is most similar to a paperback and very light compared to 9.7″ or 10.3″. Obviously for PDFs you might need 10.3″ or larger, but for reflowable novels the 6.8″ to 8″ mono eink is hard to beat.

Comics and graphic novels are much shorter reading time and much less words than novels, so I prefer the 10″ LCD Android tablet to the 10.3″ eink for those.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Quoth

You can really only browse by directory, then file.

I am always amazed by all the different needs/solutions for people.
Especially attitudes to directories.
I have lots of technical documentation that I keep organized by manufacturer in directories, but I would never try to organize my books that way.
Having Waugh/Evelyn/Novels/Brideshead\ Revisited.epub would drive me insane.
I basically have two directories, Books and ADE, no subdirectories.
I might make it Gutenberg, Other, ADE.
File location is minutiae, visible in the properties in library if you want to know.
Also, there's not enough hours in the day to tag or rate them.
My library is usually sorting them by file modification time so recent borrows or downloads are on the top.
I can search (indiscriminately) for title or author and usually a few letters get me where I want to go.

[Quoth]

Yes, my technical stuff is organised by directories. But much of it has no meta data and is a mix of scans as DJVU, PDFs, TIF, jpeg and png. Only a tiny percentage that are either PDF books small enough for 8″ or PDF instruction manuals that are small are on Calibre.

The ebooks books are all by author directory by default, but that's irrelevant. My tablet does have ebooks and PDFs as two folders on the 256G uSD card and the PDFs are mostly just copied from the PC structure. I use Xodo for those. Various epub apps on Android phones & tablets just to test.

[snapper.fishes]

We are drifting further and further off topic here.

Going back to the topic, I would not recommend getting an e-ink device for viewing videos. I have the Boox Tab Ultra C, and while Youtube is very much watchable on it, it butchers the video quality. Web browsing is fine though.

Also, do you get the same eyestrain when looking at computer/TV screens? If not, your eyestrain might be caused by PWM, and turning the brightness on your iPad Pro to max might actually ease the strain.

[davester]

PWM is not the issue as my eyes have been burning while using monitors for over 20 years. I realize that using eink has many limitations, including watching videos, but the bottom-line question is: For everyday tablet related tasks like reading/replying to email, watching video clips on YouTube, and surfing the web ... would Kaleido-3 color 13.3" eink device give a better overall experience vs. a B&W 13.3" eink device?

* B&W screens may be WORSE because text/images may be hard to read/see as Red-text on a Green-background both have a similar greyscale.
* B&W screens may be BETTER because the background is lighter (because of not having the color filter array on top of it), such the contrast is better to view black text oh a white background.
* B&W screens may be BETTER because it is less likely to need the frontlight because of the better contrast.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by davester

* B&W screens may be WORSE because text/images may be hard to read/see as Red-text on a Green-background both have a similar greyscale.

That's true

* B&W screens may be BETTER because the background is lighter (because of not having the color filter array on top of it), such the contrast is better to view black text oh a white background.

That's not correct

* B&W screens may be BETTER because it is less likely to need the frontlight because of the better contrast.

That's not correct.

The problem with 13.3 inches lies in the uniformity of the lighting, which plays a much more important role in color than in b/w

[Quoth]

[QUOTE=davester;4341401]PWM is not the issue as my eyes have been burning while using monitors for over 20 years. I realize that using eink has many limitations, including watching videos, but the bottom-line question is: For everyday tablet related tasks like reading/replying to email, watching video clips on YouTube, and surfing the web ... would Kaleido-3 color 13.3" eink device give a better overall experience vs. a B&W 13.3" eink device?

Originally Posted by davester

* B&W screens may be WORSE because text/images may be hard to read/see as Red-text on a Green-background both have a similar greyscale.

Not really.
Very rare problem as no professionally produced document will have that. Stupidity like pale grey on white or dark grey on black is more common and those work better on mono than colour.

Originally Posted by davester

* B&W screens may be BETTER because the background is lighter (because of not having the color filter array on top of it), such the contrast is better to view black text oh a white background.

Yes, always.

Originally Posted by davester

* B&W screens may be BETTER because it is less likely to need the frontlight because of the better contrast.

Yes, always. I rarely use the frontlight. If a large screen is unevenly lit then use a decent bedside or desk lamp. The LED yellow stick "filament" is the best LED kind. Halogen and ordinary tungsten a bit power hungry and hot. The CFL vary a lot in colour quality. Colour temperature and Colour rendition (Rendition often poor on cheap LED or Florescent and both poor on the most efficient non-incandescent lamps. Halogen is best colour rendition. LED can totally lack cyan and Florescent/CFL can be too green)

B&W text on colour eink screens using filters (all except the uselessly slow CYM electronic paper panels for signage) are lower resolution than mono eink and fuzzier and lower contrast. The proper eink (not the CYM electronic paper by eink corp) has black, white and 14 greys and thus can't do subpixel addressing as well as LCD. I'm not sure that they even try, but could be wrong?
With LCD above a certain resolution (no sure) the greater grey scale (254 + black + white vs 14) can mean that antialiasing rather than subpixel addressing (which adds blue and red fringes to text) can look better. A matte surface UHD LCD with IPS or better at high resolution and brightness turned down can now be nearly as good as eink, but the current iPad isn't anything like as good as my LG 23″ 4K UHD screen or my slightly larger Samsung 4K UHD. I do have curtains pulled and carefully selected room lighting. Brightness at 11, Contrast 36.