The Dasung Paperlike Color (12 inch) is a portable monitor featuring a 2560 x 1200 pixel E Ink Kaleido 3 color display.
Up for pre-order in China for 4,999 CNY (about $700), it’s not exactly the cheapest portable display that money can buy. But it is less than half the price of the 25.3 inch Dasung Paperlike Color monitor that the company launched last fall.
Dasung has been making E Ink monitors, and occasionally tablets, for years. But the company has only recently started adding color models to its lineup.
E Ink’s Kaleido display technology applies a color filter over a greyscale screen. The result is a high-contrast, low-power display that only uses power when the imagery on the screen changes, and which offers a glare-free reading experience with a screen that can be viewed using nothing but ambient light (although there is a white frontlight embedded under the bezels, making the Paperlike Color (12 inch) screen easier to view in dimly lit environments.
But this is very much a screen designed for reading rather than gaming or watching videos. It only supports up to 4096 colors. And the 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution of this display applies to greyscale content: it will most likely drop significantly when viewing color materials (typical Kaleido 3 displays offer 300 pixels per inch in black and white modes and 150 ppi in color, but by my calculations a 12 inch, 2560 x 1600 pixel screen is a 235 ppi display, so I’m not really sure what that means for color resolution here).
E Ink displays also have significantly lower refresh rates than LCD or AMOLED displays. So, even though Dasung offers a high-refresh rate mode, videos and animations will likely look a little choppy and/or blurry on the screen.
Still, while the Dasung Paperlike Color (12 inch) is very clearly a niche device that will have limited appeal, it’s always nice to have options in the portable monitor space.
This portable display has an aluminum alloy body that measures 288.3 x 196.1 x 5.3mm (11.35″ x 7.72″ x 0.21″) and weighs 439 grams (15.5 ounces). It has a USB-C port for power and video input, and comes with a “portable stick stand.”
There’s no word on when the Paperlike Color (12 inch) will be available outside of China or how much it will cost.
via ITHome
It’s so hard to make a decision on e-ink (b&w or color) without actually seeing it in person. I’ve never seen color e-ink in person so I’m not certain how I would use it. 12″, 4096 color. How would comic book pages look like? Color PDFs? How do the eyes feel?
I only ever saw a kindle once in my life (years ago) and was thoroughly impressed. It was so much better than I expected from watching screenshots on my standard color monitors. I could even feel how much more relaxed my eyes were. It was breakthrough tech.
I never bought an ereader because I wasn’t sure I was going to devote much time reading. Nowadays, I feel differently and am looking for a handheld reader.