Dasung has been developing and releasing a series of E INK monitors for over five years. The company has always focused on the 13.3 variant, but it is kind of small for a primary monitor. This is why they crowdfunded a 25 inch monitor earlier this year and raised a few hundred thousand dollars. They have fulfilled most of their back orders and promised that they would open up sales to the average customer sometime in late 2021. Due to the EPD shortage, they need a little more time and said that they will begin selling them in late January or February, 2022.
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 Dasung seems like it has a lot going for it, even if it costs over $2000. The Onyx Boox Mira Pro was supposed to be a solid competitor, but it has only been available in China and doesn’t have a North American release date yet.
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.
