Hisense Q5 Tablet sporting a 10.5″ monochrome reflective LCD screen launched

[Jose Manuel S]

As reported earlier on, Hisense went official with its latest smartphones, including colour ink models in China on April 23rd. The Chinese tech giant also launched an e-ink tablet. The Hisense Q5 tablet as it called utilises an e-ink display which isn’t only gentle on the eyes but also goes easy on battery consumption.

The Hisense Q5 features a 10.5-inch monochrome RLCD display with a 16:9 aspect ratio and HD resolution. The display technology is said to be based on the principle of natural light reflection and doesn’t project any harmful blue light. The tablet is powered by an Octa-core UNISOC Tiger T610 processor. The chipset pairs with a 4GB RAM and there is 64GB of storage crammed inside.

...
More info in Gizmochina.

[Gibbo]

Few pics.

[sdspieg]

"An earlier version of this article referred to the Hisense Q5 as a tablet with an E Ink display, but it appears this tablet’s grayscale display may actually be a reflective LCD screen. This could give it a faster screen refresh rate while still enabling high outdoor visibility without a backlight. But it may not feature the high contract and lower power consumption associated with E Ink displays.: ((

[pdurrant]

It's a sunlight-readable greyscale tablet, even if it uses reflective LCD not E-Ink. I'll be interested to read reviews when it's out.

[Quoth]

I think my Nokia E65, maybe I bought it in 2007, had a reflective mode for sunlight with very little colour. It looked normal in ordinary indoor lighting.
My current phone is unusable in bright sunlight; you can shade it to use it, except for photographs, obviously.

[sdspieg]

But so can somebody please explain to me why not a SINGLE company has come out with a truly (black-and-white) e-ink-based 'dumb', cheap 10' display with really only bluetooth (just so we can hook up a keyboard) and maybe wifi? Most of us DO have phones anyway with 3/4/and soon 5G that could easily serve as hotspots for the display... So people like me who want to write/code/... outside in the sun can easily rely on these other, far more mass-consumption, 'high-specs' devices (like mobile phones) to do some of the 'heavy lifting'. Also as things evolve.
I spend a lot of time on my Kindle, reading AND annotating, also outside. And that really works perfectly fine. Sure, the refresh rate is not the same as an LCD screen (or better), but for typing - it's perfectly fine. And so I have NO idea why Amazon is so 'tolerant' on DRM, but so restrictive on hacking, bluetooth, etc. But is seems that they won't budge on that. So why aren't other vendors jumping on that maybe not HUGE, but still quite significant market opportunity?
And so yeah, I will also want to see the reviews of this device. But I KNOW that eink is just fantastic outside AND is unrivaled in power consumption. And I VERY much doubt that this device will come anything CLOSE to the Kindle in price, daylight-visibility AND battery. I STILL think that vendors SHOULD be able to put together a MUCH more attractive package at that price point (330$) for the 10s of thousands (I'd reckon) users like me... I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

[Quoth]

Because eink panels are expensive.
The cost of such a screen, with case, memory, CPU, radios etc would be the same as any eink 10" ereader.
It's a tiny niche market to have a monochrome screen. No-one does a monochrome LCD even though it would have better contrast, better viewing angle be able to have a reflective mode, have higher resolution and save maybe 3/4 of the backlight power.

Also an ereader is low power because you are mostly reading a page. Typing on it is massively more power consumption and might even be nearly as high as a same resolution mono LCD!
Bluetooth and especially WiFi radios use a lot of power; that's why Bluetooth annoyingly goes to sleep and loses characters. A dedicated wireless keyboard with USB dongle works far better on my Android tablet. A USB keyboard is better still.

The Kindle is sold near cost. A 10" screen eink as you describe would be at least twice the price of a Kindle Paperwhite.
There are some ereaders that can be used as monitors. They are expensive. They'd be no cheaper if they were not ereaders.

The 5G is overhyped. In most cases and places it will not be any different to 3G or 4G. The really fast modes are like the 5.8GHz WiFi, or worse coverage.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by sdspieg

But so can somebody please explain to me why not a SINGLE company has come out with a truly (black-and-white) e-ink-based 'dumb', cheap 10' display with really only bluetooth (just so we can hook up a keyboard) and maybe wifi?
[...]
So why aren't other vendors jumping on that maybe not HUGE, but still quite significant market opportunity?
[...]
I STILL think that vendors SHOULD be able to put together a MUCH more attractive package at that price point (330$) for the 10s of thousands (I'd reckon) users like me... I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

10s of thousands is not a significant market for something so expensive to develop, no one would make money on such a product.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by sdspieg

But so can somebody please explain to me why not a SINGLE company has come out with a truly (black-and-white) e-ink-based 'dumb', cheap 10' display with really only bluetooth (just so we can hook up a keyboard) and maybe wifi? Most of us DO have phones anyway with 3/4/and soon 5G that could easily serve as hotspots for the display... So people like me who want to write/code/... outside in the sun can easily rely on these other, far more mass-consumption, 'high-specs' devices (like mobile phones) to do some of the 'heavy lifting'. Also as things evolve.
I spend a lot of time on my Kindle, reading AND annotating, also outside. And that really works perfectly fine. Sure, the refresh rate is not the same as an LCD screen (or better), but for typing - it's perfectly fine. And so I have NO idea why Amazon is so 'tolerant' on DRM, but so restrictive on hacking, bluetooth, etc. But is seems that they won't budge on that. So why aren't other vendors jumping on that maybe not HUGE, but still quite significant market opportunity?
And so yeah, I will also want to see the reviews of this device. But I KNOW that eink is just fantastic outside AND is unrivaled in power consumption. And I VERY much doubt that this device will come anything CLOSE to the Kindle in price, daylight-visibility AND battery. I STILL think that vendors SHOULD be able to put together a MUCH more attractive package at that price point (330$) for the 10s of thousands (I'd reckon) users like me... I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

10.3˝ ePaper Display (VB3300-KCA)【Display Module Only】
cost $349.00 (Tax excl.)

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

10.3˝ ePaper Display (VB3300-KCA)【Display Module Only】
cost $349.00 (Tax excl.)

The display module doesn’t contain a touch panel.

PLEASE NOTE:
(I) THE PRODUCTS ARE NOT CONSUMER PRODUCTS INTENDED FOR PERSONAL, FAMILY OR HOUSEHOLD PURPOSES; AND
(II) PURCHASER IS PURCHASING THE PRODUCTS FOR COMMERCIAL USE AND/OR IN A BUSINESS CAPACITY. ORDERS PLACED BY CONSUMERS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.

Usually Trade evaluation products are sold with a small margin. LCD is cheaper.
The cost of the electronics for LCD, OLED/AMOLED or LCD is very similar and about the same for a dedicated ereader, a tablet or a wireless screen/monitor.

Edit:
I see the evaluation PCBs are expensive, but those are low volume custom boards. The actual displays are production items.

[sdspieg]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The Kindle is sold near cost. A 10" screen eink as you describe would be at least twice the price of a Kindle Paperwhite.

But that would still (presumably) be below 300$! Which - I suspect - would still very much be within the price range that users like me would be willing to pay...

[sdspieg]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

10s of thousands is not a significant market for something so expensive to develop, no one would make money on such a product.

So what ARE the volumes at which these things DO start to 'make sense' commercially? Frankly, I'd suspect that the (more expensive) WACOM applications would attract FAR smaller (and less affluent) groups of users than the 'coding/text-processing'-crowd...

[sdspieg]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

10.3˝ ePaper Display (VB3300-KCA)【Display Module Only】
cost $349.00 (Tax excl.)

Interesting. But are there any reviews? This looks more like a 'proof of concept' type of device. Mind you: I'd LOVE to be proved wrong!

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by sdspieg

So what ARE the volumes at which these things DO start to 'make sense' commercially?

About 100,000 unless it's a market that supports a premium price. See the market that Sony aims their Digital Paper at and the fact it didn't support ebooks (PDF only) and latest version needs a supported Windows version or Mac version (no older versions or Linux) to run the Program to put stuff on/off, no mass storage mode. It's for a narrow well off Corporate niche.
10.3" is about $500 excluding sales tax/VAT
13.6" is about $600 s/h old model and about $800 newer? Was at $1100.
You can treat it as a virtual printer for PDFs (only), so if that works via a USB printer driver it might work on CUPs on Linux/Unix/BSD.

The competing more user configurable models that can work as eBook reader or monitor are up to $1200 and don't work very well as monitors. For example I can't find a single browser or wordprocessor for Windows or Linux that is optimised for eink, i.e. having a page mode for "scrolling" or editing.
I found ONE Android app with eink mode settings.

Without a true page mode instead of the "infinite" scrolling that's been the norm since the 1970s, the eink editing experience would be terrible.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by sdspieg

So what ARE the volumes at which these things DO start to 'make sense' commercially? Frankly, I'd suspect that the (more expensive) WACOM applications would attract FAR smaller (and less affluent) groups of users than the 'coding/text-processing'-crowd...

A quick search suggests WACOM have yearly revenues of around 800M USD.
Do I think they are selling quite a lot of devices.