[HN Gopher] The Mira Pro Color is Boox's first color E Ink monitor
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The Mira Pro Color is Boox's first color E Ink monitor
Author : tortilla
Score : 70 points
Date : 2025-04-30 17:33 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| techpineapple wrote:
| Ugh, Want... $1,899.99... Pause...
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| Seriously, that price is insane for what you get. That costs
| more than what gets you a top tier 32" 4K OLED screen with a
| high refresh rate.
| techpineapple wrote:
| Hopefully it's just a start? I would probably love to replace
| my displays with a high fidelity e-paper, I think it would
| make working much more enjoyable.
| karmakaze wrote:
| > its slow refresh rate makes it problematic for desktop
| computing tasks like browsing the web.
|
| Hmm, I'm not sure what I'd use something like this for. Might
| be better as a phone as a follow up to their phone-size Palma
| e-reader.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| > Seriously, that price is insane for what you get.
|
| Sorry, but how are you evaluating that? You'd get this
| because you want a non-emissive display, so what other non-
| emissive displays are you comparing it against?
|
| Yes, if you want better color acuity, refresh rates, or cost-
| per-inch, you don't want eInk.
|
| I don't think that is news.
|
| Otherwise you are a motorcycle rider calling cars too
| expensive.
| jerrysievert wrote:
| plus $2753.55 of tariffs if you live in the United States,
| makes it even more insane.
| throwaway74354 wrote:
| Regular reminder that Boox is notorious for their constant GPL
| violations.
| eltondegeneres wrote:
| Constant violations that they refuse to address. afaik they've
| never released any of the GPL code they use.
| simulator5g wrote:
| How does this rule get enforced?
| rwmj wrote:
| Hopefully someone takes them to court one day.
| izzydata wrote:
| I recently acquired a Kobo Clara Color and love the way it looks.
| It would be neat to have a monitor with the same look, but I
| would want the refresh rate to be at least a bit faster before I
| would find it acceptable in a monitor.
|
| Also the price tag is a non-starter. Maybe it will be cheaper and
| faster some day.
| gibibit wrote:
| I predict this won't be popular. E-ink is great for reading a
| book, especially on a portable battery-powered device, but on a
| large desk display connected to a general-purpose computer, it
| doesn't make sense at all.
|
| Slow and inconsistent refresh rate, limited lifetime cycles that
| you could wear it out in a year or 2 with frequent use.
| bityard wrote:
| If you work mainly in text (reading, writing, programming),
| then e-ink makes a ton of sense over LCD. Low power, easier to
| read.
|
| For those who use their computers mainly to watch movies and
| play video games, e-ink would not be ideal.
| enescakir wrote:
| I wish Daylight team would make a monitor. Mira Pro is cool, but
| it screams "first-gen."
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| What exactly is the target market for a very expensive monitor
| with 4096 colors and an unspecified but almost certainly very
| slow refresh rate? I could see if they were marketing it as some
| sort of static display for advertising or similar, but it seems
| to be intended as a desktop monitor.
|
| Is there some application that e-ink is so good at that it makes
| up for the multiple extremely serious disadvantages?
| simulator5g wrote:
| It's much easier on your eyes to read an e-ink display, I would
| buy this for the right price as a second monitor but if they
| ever put ads on it even only when its turned off that would be
| an instant dealbreaker.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| Ok, 'second monitor for reading lots of text' makes sense.
| Shame about the price, though.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| I have migraines that can be triggered by eye strain. Using an
| eink monitor helps IMMENSELY.
| mdip wrote:
| Beat me to it -- completely relate, man. I wrote an entire
| Visual Studio extension just to let me set my monitor to
| extremely low brightness/contrast and still be able to read
| the text.
|
| I've since discovered medication that has eliminated the
| brunt of Migraine, for me, but this would have been an easy
| purchase to make, for me.
| pacaro wrote:
| FWIW, the Next color machines had 12bit (4096) color and in
| practice it didn't make much of a difference. I was using one
| fairly extensively in the late 90s (by which time 24bit was the
| norm -- albeit not yet ubiquitous) and for anything other that
| photo/video work it was perfectly reasonable. It's amazing how
| far a good dithering algorithm can get you.
|
| The refresh rate is, of course, a different issue
| jolmg wrote:
| Being able to work while in the sun might be nice.
| Transflective LCDs would be better for this if they were as
| widely available and didn't likely suffer from lower pixel
| density.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| I've been using a Bigme B251 [0] (likely the exact same panel)
| for about 9 months now. I recommend Amazon simply due to return
| policy; these can come with bad panels. They don't notably fail
| early if the panel is fine when you get it.
|
| Refresh is slow, colors are low saturation, and there is
| ghosting.
|
| It's also an absolute JOY to use for anything text related once
| you get past those differences.
|
| For those on MacOS stillcolor [1] is an absolute MUST.
|
| I'm open to any questions!
|
| 0: https://www.amazon.com/-/he/B251PC/dp/B0CYYWZ9M9
|
| 1: https://github.com/aiaf/Stillcolor
| malshe wrote:
| The Bigme display is unavailable on Amazon.
|
| "Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will
| be back in stock."
| CobaltFire wrote:
| Sorry about that! It must have been cached or something; I
| used my order history and it still showed a price when I
| grabbed that link.
| TrueGeek wrote:
| Maybe a tariff thing? It's available on amazon.nl, although
| it does say it'll take 9 to 10 days to ship.
| amarant wrote:
| Curious, do you write code on it? I've heard the ghosting makes
| them nearly unusable for coding, but the concept of coding in
| e-ink is just so enticing to me!
| asadm wrote:
| same! I am curious to know this as well.
| tazjin wrote:
| I have a Dasung monitor (black & white, not colour) and its
| reasonably good for coding. You need to use light themes on
| eink devices (I use the default Emacs theme), as using a dark
| theme does lead to unusable bad ghosting.
|
| Mine is a few years old and newer panels are better, so I
| would expect this to be pretty good.
| Funes- wrote:
| E-ink technology is a godsend. Until refresh rate and image
| quality improve, though, it's great for many things other than a
| general-purpose monitor. For instance, I just ordered the Mudita
| Kompakt: I love how it's low-power and extremely minimal by
| default, but you can sideload apps if you so desire. With a
| regular smartphone, I have to traverse the opposite path, which
| is vastly more cumbersome and inefficient: root the phone,
| install GrapheneOS, take care of all the wasteful and unneeded
| "features" or functionalities, install and set up a minimalist
| launcher, install tools to get around bloat and other nuisances,
| etc. And there's no guarantee you'll end up with a satisfying
| result. I very much prefer starting from the ground up than
| trying to regain control over my phone and remove all the
| corporate and retarded shit. I'd even love the Kompakt more if it
| didn't come with a camera--I have dedicated cameras I use for
| pictures and video.
| seam_carver wrote:
| I love eInk. It's so nice to look at compared to normal LCD
| screens. I got an eInk phone, which is much cheaper than these
| full sized monitors though.
|
| Here's a video of me reading Hacker News on an eInk phone:
| https://youtu.be/dvO9ScTdwz8?si=VSjo84qywuq8KHps&t=133
| tofof wrote:
| Can you elaborate? All I see is a lot of ghosting of the home
| screen items still showing all around the text, eating up the
| contrast ratio so it's much worse than a cheap TN panel and
| visually distracting, and a lot of redraw delay. I'm not trying
| to be mean, I just wonder what could possibly be worth
| tolerating those deficiencies. Yes, e-ink is amazing for
| battery but you said "so nice to look at" so that's a
| completely different and unrelated metric.
|
| E.g. shortly after your timestamp,
| https://i.imgur.com/LEl1IHt.png
|
| Ghosted icons everywhere, extremely low contrast black-on-grey
| top bar.. it's like reading a bad fax in the 80s.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| You know, given the very limited refresh rate of e-ink, you could
| probably get a full resolution picture at full refresh rate over
| some wet string.
|
| There's no reason you couldn't do a wireless battery powered
| full-size display. You could get the image over WiFi, maybe
| Bluetooth, or a custom USB dongle like Logitech.
|
| It would be absolutely killer to have a portable wireless second
| display with my laptop. E-ink is perfect for that
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