This is a crowdfunding project. The product is still in the funding and prototyping phase. I personally backed it and will do a review here once I receive it. The estimated shipping date is in June. Update: the shipping date expected is September now.
Eazeye, a company that already created the Eazeye a 24″ naturally backlit LCD monitor (I made a quick review about it here) is launching a new innovating product.
The radiant: it is a portable 15.6″ FULL HD (1920 * 1080) transflective monitor.
Contents
What is a transflective LCD?
It’s like being both a RLCD and a regular LCD monitor. In a Reflective LCD monitor, the backlight is replaced with a mirror, it allows the light to pass through the screen, hit the mirror and then go back to your eyes and act as “a backlight”.
In a transflective LCD the mirror is only half reflective, with a backlight behind it. It allows the monitor to be use as a regular LCD by using the backlight, but also as a reflective display by turning completely the backlight off.
Here is a picture made by Eazeye to help you understand:
Features
- Size: 15.6″
- Aspect ratio: 16:9
- Refresh rate: 60Hz
- Contrast ratio: 25:1
- Response time: 5 ms
- Resolution: 1920 * 1080
- DPI: 141.21
- Lighting type: backlight (can be turned off completely) / ambient light
- Ports: HDMI and USB-C
- Frame: all aluminum
- VESA: yes, 75 mm
- Touch: 10 point touchscreen
Why buy it?
Eyestrain
This is the main reason why I’m buying it, to try to find a solution to my eyestrain. This screen can be used without backlight it means that, if you have enough ambiant light in your room, use this device without any artificial light. A lot of people get eyestrain from blue light, from LEDs and others artificial lights.
Also, this monitor uses a full spectrum LED backlight, produces less blue light and a more natural daylight like light.
Will this solve your eyestrain problem? I will be completely honest, I don’t know. The cause of eyestrain can come from so many different things that it is not possible to know in advance. This is a hit or miss, but the only way to know is to try different solutions.
Unlike eink
This monitor have advantages over eink.
Colors: even though Dasung and Bigme launched their eink color monitor it is only available at a hefty price of $1649 and in a big 25.3″ format. It has also more colors than eink.
Refresh rate: with a 60 hz refresh it blows any eink monitor. It will feels like a regular LCD
No ghosting: unlike eink there is no ghosting on this transflective LCD.
Outdoor
We are in May and the sun is getting out. Wouldn’t it be nice to develop program outside instead of your dark room? This monitor is made for the sun and unlike your screen laptop which will be hardly visible this one will not fight the sun but get power from it.
Second monitor while traveling
Want a dual screen but traveling with your laptop? well this could act as your second screen and have more real estate.
Less consomption
With only 3 watts when the backlight is off, you will consume less electricity and it won’t drain your laptop battery.
Expected inconvenience
Two of the biggest drawback of TLCD / RLCD
Low contrast / brightness
Without a strong backlight like on regular LCD, you can expect those type of monitors to have a lower contrast, meaning everything will be darker, the white won’t be as white. Also the “brightness” will mostly depend on how much ambient light you have in your room or outside.
The best is having your desk really close to your window that have the most light coming from it. You can also use an external lamp with cold or warm light depending on your liking. If you are “allergic” to external artificial light, it will defeat the purpose of getting less eyestrain though.
Glare / Glossy
Most TLCD / RLCD screens have a glossy surface instead of a matte one. Why? because a matte surface usually disperse light on every direction, so you have less light hitting the mirror inside the monitor thus less brightness.
This is why they use a glass / glossy material, because it will let the light go through the screen, to the mirror.
Placement in your room or outside is then key to minimize glare.
On youtuber reviews, that had the prototype version of the Radiant, you can see that there is a lot of glare and that you easily see yourself in the monitor, like a mirror.
This is something tricky to solve, because putting for example a matte film, it will reduce the brightness and contrast.
But the Eazeye team have been taking it into consideration and announced on Indiegogo that they are working on using an anti-glare glass layer. Hopefully it works out, and the final shipped unit will have it.