This Color E Ink Monitor Promises It’s (Almost) Fast Enough to Keep Up With YouTube

We’ve seen E Ink devices meant to emulate a smartphone, E Ink displays positioned on the flip side of a laptop lid, and even a folding E Ink tablet. Still, somehow, the Boox Mira Pro color E Ink monitor is the one paper-like screen I’m most intrigued by. The only question left is whether its refresh speed is fast enough to keep up with my browser’s many, many tabs while watching a YouTube video on the side.

Boox is known for its e-readers, tablets, and its phone-sized Boox Palma. On the other end, the company’s Mira Pro black-and-white monitor seemed a little too much like a novelty without the option for color. The new, $1,900 Mira Pro with color is an expensive, though promising product that could make staring at your screen easier on the eyes.

Color E Ink utilizes ink capsules that get pulled around with an electrical field. Boox’s monitor uses E Ink’s Kaleido 3 display tech that can display 4,096 colors. The display type was created for tablets and other signage, but we’re a bit surprised it took so long for somebody to make it into a full-fledged monitor.

The Boox Mira Pro promises a fast enough refresh to watch videos. Still, past attempts at using Kaleido to watch YouTube weren’t ideal. Boox claims its “Super Refresh” can minimize some ghosting that occurs when images change too fast for the display to keep up. Even so, the company makes it clear on its website that “E Ink monitors’ refresh speed is not as high as conventional monitors, and increased speed will result in more ghosting.” So if you were thinking you would use this monitor for gaming at above the typical 24 frames per second, you can expect some truly wonky visuals.

The Mira Pro comes with four modes that users can switch to when scrolling, reading, typing, or watching content. The E Ink monitor also includes a physical button you can press to refresh the screen when it becomes necessary. The included stand allows for swivel and tilt. You can also turn it 90 degrees to use it vertically, which is handy for coders.

We’ll have to see it in person to believe it, but there are other reasons why you’d want a 25-inch E Ink display over a typical backlit IPS LCD monitor. The display type is typically less straining on your eyes. After eight hours straight of working with a screen, a full-sized E Ink monitor sounds mighty appealing. The downside is that colors will likely not look as accurate as they should on an LCD or OLED display. Images will also appear slightly desaturated compared to the “inky” blacks of OLED.

The display’s specs aren’t too shabby. The resolution is 3,200 x 1,800, and it has ports for HDMI, mini-HDMI, USB-C, and DisplayPort. The monitor also includes dual speakers. That’s all par for the course on your average work monitor, but at $1,900, the color Mira Pro is demanding a lot for its large E Ink display. It costs nearly as much as the $2,000 Samsung Odyssey 3D, another niche monitor with a very particular use case. At least it’s clear there’s still room for people to innovate with the old, staid desktop screen design.