So, Ive recently gotten back into writing and been thinking about how much more fun it would be to write Outside. Problem is, the sun hates screens. I have an Alphawrite Neo, of course, but I’ve always been insecure about lugging a weird educational device around with me in public. So I started looking into Eink tablets that could be used with a keyboard and

Jesus H. Christ, that price tag!

I just want something to type on something. Apparently thats strange, so maybe there will be something cheaper as just a word processor. It seems that the only reasonable offering here is the Freewrite Traveler, though, so I look it up and

WHY‽ It’s the same price!

Okay, maybe I could just get a Raspberry Pi 400 and attach an eInk monitor to it. Apparently, this is not the usual use-case for E-ink, but there are in fact e-ink monitors out there! Most were around a thousand dollars for some reason, but here is the cheapest one I could find:

That’s around the price point of a Boox Go, for reference, which has a really slow screen refresh rate.

Why is there no affordable e-paper products that arent a pain to use? I am aware of cheaper ones, but the ones ive seen reviews if aren’t able to keep up with typing in a way that seems responsive. And I’m aware that you can find eink displays (as in the component) for as low as $30, so they should be able to be cheaper than this!

  • Zak@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Rumor has it they’re expensive to manufacture. Add to that a small market and some patents and you get elevated prices.

    Amazon might sell Kindles below cost because it drives book sales on their platform, but it’s hard for anyone but Amazon to make that model work.