Intro

In recent years I’ve developed pretty strong preferences for a couple of display technologies. For the time being at least, I’ll probably only buy devices that use these technologies (OLED and E-Ink).

My preferences are bound to environmental factors, so I should point out that:

• While using electronic devices I usually work in a relatively dimly-lit environment
• For most of the year I live off solar power so try to limit my power usage

I spend a lot of time looking at screens and want to be as comfortable as possible. I like the screen to be dim, without sacrificing too much clarity or colour accuracy. The darker the room, the dimmer the screen can be and still appear bright. I don’t want to live in complete darkness, so the best balance for me ends up being a relatively dim room where I can still see clearly enough to read a book (for example).

Once I got used to my first OLED display, I really stopped enjoying the way LCD looks. Insipid blacks are inherent to LCDs; they use an evenly-lit screen, then block out pixels (sub-pixels, more accurately) when they are supposed to be black. The effect is like covering a torch with a piece of paper. Better quality displays might block out more of the light, but they always let some through, and the blacks end up as some form of grey. LCD viewing angles (even the better ones) mean images look weird once you move off-axis. It all just feels so… digital.

OLED

OLEDs are far more interesting in that each pixel is like its own little light source, which can be turned off independently of the other pixels. Black is truly the absence of light. In a dark room, black parts of an OLED display completely disappear into the darkness.

Truly black pixels (ie rgb(0, 0, 0)), don’t use any power, so dark mode UIs can use a little less power than alternative colours. I don’t know how significant this is, probably not very but I like dark themes anyway so it’s nice to use them by default and have a feeling that I’m at least steering battery life in the right direction.

At full brightness OLEDs are apparently less efficient than some other displays, but as I’ve already said I tend to use mine at pretty low brightness (usually the bottom 25% but even when the room is bright I still rarely go over 50-60% on my devices).

OLED Disadvantages

Some common criticisms of OLED are:

• Lack of brightness compared to some other displays
• Burn-in (image retention), where if the same image appears on-screen too much of the time, a kind of ghost of it can be ‘burnt in’ to the display

The lack of brightness is not a concern for me. I don’t use my main computing devices outdoors. I don’t go out as often as I should as it is, so when I do I don’t want to spend time looking at screens. I have a Garmin Fenix 5 Plus (with a transflective memory-in-pixel display) watch for the time and GPS tracking/maps if I need it. If I expect to sit waiting for something (like a bus), I take an old Kobo Mini with an e-ink screen. My phone will be in my bag or pocket and probably stay there.

Burn-in has also not affected my use. I still use my Galaxy Note 3 (phone) daily as a mini tablet for podcasts and videos. The Note 3 is just over 10 years old at time of writing. I think technically there is some burn-in, as when I look at a pure black screen, at its dimmest setting, in the dark, I can see some slight scratchy artefacts. But I never noticed them in real usage, ie they have never stood out when I’m watching videos or browsing the web. (I wrote this from memory, but I just turned the lights off and got my camera out to get a pic of this but I can’t even see it, so it can’t be that bad. I’ll update if I see it again!)

I don’t have always-visible taskbars and status bars, so there aren’t really any elements which always appear on my screen and would attract burn-in. I also notice I’ve unintentionally mostly used Samsung AMOLED panels, which have a pretty good reputation. So my experience may not be typical, although from what I hear this does generally seem to be less of an issue than it used to be. Modern OLED devices also use some tricks such as ‘moving the screen around’ by a few pixels periodically, and even detecting static logos and reducing their brightness.

E-Ink

E-paper/e-ink (Wikipedia: Electronic paper) also really appeals to me… a display made of tiny capsules containing an actual ink-like substance, in white and black, with each colour being either repelled or attracted by opposing electrical charges. It’s like electrically moving ink around. The capsules/pixels retain their colour (tone, really) even if there is no power at all (I’ve bought a few old broken e-ink readers from eBay, they often have an ancient image from the last-read book on their screen, even if the battery is removed or the screen is cracked).

Although lots of e-ink devices do have a light for their display, it’s a front light, with a very different quality to backlights, and is optional. For me, e-ink looks its best when viewed under reflective light (ie the ambient light of the room you’re in) although the frontlight is definitely handy for when you’re in a darker environment.

Something about this technology feels really warm and comfortable. I particularly like it on cheaper devices, they feel like some kind of future commodity tech, unlike the common contemporary fragile glass/metal slabs, which need babying, feeling like a responsibility more than a tool. So much modern tech is all about being the brightest and flashiest, shouting for attention.