Modos Color Monitor Pushes E-Paper Displays Further

A bit low when not in a relatively bright area (say a house during the day without lights on), but that's largely solved by the backlight or a small tilt to catch light better. And in direct sunlight it's excellent. The display isn't as nice as Pebble Time (fewer colors, more directional, overall slightly dimmer) but it's more than functional enough. Transflective is obviously the right choice for watches, I don't know why everything else has gone for phone-like panels that are often unreadable…

As a defense of Garmin, even without reflective/transflective/whatever displays (which would be better in sunlight), they still manage decent battery life. I can easily go a full week without charging mine, or several days with a daily ~1hr activity which uses GPS. It's certainly nothing compared to the ~month I managed on my previous watch, but plugging it in during my shower every few days totally eliminates battery anxiety, so I'm satisfied.

I've seen these portable e-ink monitors available for nearly 10 years now, but this one seems to be the first that's responsive enough for general usage, which is a big step forward. Out of curiosity, if anyone here has one, what do you use it for? There must be something people are using them for if they've been a product niche for so long, but I can't think of what I would do with a standalone 13 inch e-ink monitor.

Wow, I'm glad to see that person is getting some more recognition for this work. A claim in the video that I can't verify but makes economic/logistic sense is that the speed problem isn't the panels but the controllers. The current crop of controllers are optimized for low power, which fits the e-reader use case but that is not optimal for the interactive use case.