I stare at a screen all day for work, so I’ve been eyeing these types of products for a while. I tried an e-ink tablet before, but it was so slow it was painful even for typing. So, I went with the more professional-looking Paperlike.
Dasung doesn’t have a distributor in Taiwan, so I was going to order from Indiegogo. But then I saw they had their own Shopify site, which made things much easier. A couple of things to keep in mind:
First off, it’s pretty fast. Not as fast as a regular monitor, but usable (I’d say around 20-30fps). Way faster than other e-ink displays I’ve seen. Great for writing.
Coding? I tried, and then I noped out. The speed’s fine, but the screen’s tiny. I hate coding on small screens; I’d rather get it over with on a bigger one. Maybe it’s different if you’re used to working on smaller displays.
The screen has three modes, basically different contrast levels. You can switch between them with buttons on the front. There’s a manual refresh button for ghosting, which is handy. The backlight feels pointless, though. I bought an e-ink monitor to avoid light, hello?
The included cable is USB-powered HDMI to mini HDMI, about 1m long. They say to avoid adapters, but I’m using a regular HDMI extension cable without issues. Also, not sure if it was a mistake, but I got two identical cables and no stand… (although there were some stand-looking screws in a big bag). Using an IKEA tablet stand for now, works perfectly.
Software-wise, it was plug-and-play on my Win10 PC. No compatibility issues. My graphics card is a fifteen-year-old AMD 7700, so you don’t need anything fancy. Windows did try to project touch input to my main monitor at first, but you can fix that in the control panel. Speaking of touch, it’s super useful. Get the touch version if you can. The mouse experience on this thing is atrocious.
My current setup is a browser (Firefox with Clean Reader is great) in light theme, font size adjusted, permanently on the Paperlike. Research, reading, writing, all happen there. About 50% of my screen time now. My eyes are thanking me; no more getting blinded by poorly implemented white backgrounds.
For coding, it depends. I still prefer my big screen, but if you’re used to a 13-inch Macbook, you might dig it.
Overall, it’s expensive at over three grand, but there’s nothing else like it right now. I’d recommend it to engineers and writers. You can always make more money, but you can’t replace your eyesight.
Oh, and reading comics on this thing is amazing. Seriously.