In December, Dasung announced that they were going to release their first large screen computer monitor that employed an E INK Screen. In the past, they have issued a number of 13.3 inch models, that were ideal for a secondary monitor, but the Dasung 253 is a different beast altogether. The company has just announced that they are running a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds and they said it will begin shipping in August, 2021.
The Dasung Paperlike 253 features a 25.3 E INK display with a resolution of 3200×1800. It looks like it has a front-lit display. It comes with its own stand and will be able to be mounted to the wall with VESA. It will have a full HDMI connection to plug into your video card or PC, it is unknown if it has a Displayport input. Dasung typically releases their monitors to be entire powered by HDMI, so it doesn’t have an internal battery, a processor, RAM or internal storage. It is basically just a monitor, but with an E INK display, instead of OLED, LCD, LED etc. There are four physical buttons on the bottom left hand side of the monitor. One is a power button, a toggle switch to turn the front-light on or off, a full page refresh and to engage in A2 mode. This mode basically will increase the performance, which is good for programs that would have lots of animations or to browse the web.
The overall design of the Paperlike 253 is stunning. It has a gunmetal silver strip on the bottom, where the physical buttons are and a slim black bezel on the sides and top. The back of the monitor is also pure silver, so it would look really nice on a desk. Prior Dasung products have all been jet black, so this one at least has a different color scheme.
This E INK Monitor is going to retail for around $2,000, which is fairly expensive, but it it is going to definitely appeal to people who suffer from various vision ailments, that prevent them from staring at an LCD/LED screen for long durations.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
