eInk Monitor for coding
04 Mar 2020
Some techy hardware that might be interesting for coding - eInk Monitor 
General reasoning is some “better” for eyes. I mean for some reason it is less strain when reading eBooks vs e.g. iPad over long term periods. Dunno of medical reasons because studies might be misleading as lcd is a go-to praised tech atm, but whatever - direct light, blinking frequency, blue light… many people can confirm this just by experience.
However, despite eInk technology is present for some ~10 years, the only commercial gadgets are ebooks which are normally small screens and not connectable to pc.
But, but, but… there is nowadays one company that made it really working - Dasung. I’ve been going around and investigated it quite a bit because it is a) $1100 b) hard to order from china, but suddenly found a like-new on local ebay analogue (guy just opened a box) and decided to try it. For tech details you can read here (Dasung Paperlike HD) or look some video reviews on youtube, but from my personal experience:
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Yes overall it is better for my eyes, meaning maybe it doesn’t solves all issues of near work, but after long sessions eyes are not feeling heavy and sand-full.
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It is 13’ which is huge for eInk, but small for lcd. It surely feels like working on laptop vs other 24’ lcd I have, meaning - screen estate is small and you need to work mostly in fullscreen modes (which is overall I was doing before just by habit).
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Hardware wise it works perfect out of the box with MacBookPro. I still have 2015 model w hdmi
and it is just plug in. OSX drivers have some issues (china 
) but they are not needed at all. Only for full-refresh keyboard shortcut. -
Most of daily workflow is ok - code editing, terminal, slack, chrome. Some need better themes (b&w) but this is a small barier for devs - e.g. I’ve done custom theme for Sublime and now all looks good for my tastes.
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What don’t work well - colour git diffs and reviews (incl Reviewable)… mostly because they are green&red and those are mostly same in b/w. However, this looks like a better theme issue as well.
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I am still experimenting with several monitors setup e.g. eInk + 24’ lcd, technically it is ok, but I can’t made it useful for my workflow yet, mostly because I’ve never worked in such setups and feeling not ok moving app windows from one to another vs just switching them.
The biggest thing what those guys in Dasung have done - they made it responsive which is the core of their technology, even mouse movements are good-enough. A bit laggy vs lcd but ok - it does not create any issues on practice. Working w text has no issues at all - meaning it even promotes total mousless way of doing things. I guess I was doing some 80-90% from keyboard, but now eliminating the rest as well. Browsing is 80/20 - many sites with good themes are ok, but some “black” or “very colourful” themes sucks.
P.S. feel free to ping me if you have any questions about - will be happy to share.
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