Dasung has been in the dedicated E INK monitor game for a very long time. They have released over 5 different monitors over the years and they gradually have become more refined. Their entire history in this space has culminated in the 253, which is a 25 inch E INK monitor that has tremendous design sensibilities and the refresh rate is almost the same as that of an LCD. The company said the monitor features integrated Dasung Turbo patented tech which offers a refresh rate that is comparable to the best LCD display out there. It retails for $2600 from the Good e-Reader Store.
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.
Since this monitor can act as a primary or secondary display, it opens up a wide array of possibilities. You will be able to spend hours writing, programming, surfing the internet or doing other productive things. Since it has an E INK display, it is not backlit, so there would be no lights shining in your eyes, since e-paper absorbs light. People with vision disorders will feel right at home, and will finally be able to work, without the drawbacks of the eye strain that typical monitors cause.
If you are going to be using this regularly in a desktop PC environment in conjunction with a regular computer monitor you should invest in a video card, so you can have 2 HDMI ports. The Dasung does not have a Display Port. If you are going to be using this with a MAC laptop make sure to buy the unofficial USB-C to HDMI adapter, but not the official Apple adapter. Also, if you have an M1 or one of the newer M1 MAX etc, the GPU drivers are very buggy. The only workaround I can think of is to use a DisplayLink adapter or a DisplayLink dock, which does the graphics processing in the CPU and the dongle chip, bypassing the terrible M1 GPU completely. The only thing I will really recommend for any setup is to use the Fast++++ setting to make the motion look smoother and cut down on the mouse lag. However, you will notice some ghosting, which you can solve with a full page refresh. You also want to download the official software for PC or MAC from the Dasung website.
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.