Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The Modos Flow is an E-Ink display that is as smooth as a traditional display, because it refreshes at 60Hz.
- The company built several custom microcontrollers to ensure it worked as intended.
- The displays are now in their crowdfunding stage, with the backer’s package starting at $619 for the monochrome variant.
Electronic paper, commonly known as e-paper, has been around for several decades, but its primary use cases have been limited to devices that are feeble in terms of performance, such as e-readers, or physically small, such as smartwatches. Because of how slowly an e-paper refreshes, it has remained far from use cases that can be described using synonyms of “fast.” However, there’s recently been an attempt to change the status quo by a company named Modos, which has built an e-paper display that runs at 60fps and works with virtually any powerful device.
Six years into building a fast E-Ink display, Modos has introduced its first commercial product, the Modos Flow, which uses a 13.3-inch E-Ink Carta 1300 display panel. To ensure paper-like visuals, the display has a high 3200 x 2400 pixels resolution, leading to a 300fpi. It comes with a USB-C port that supports DisplayPort over USB-C. It’s also portable, so you’re not bound to a wall socket.
The biggest challenge was getting the display to refresh fast enough for a 60Hz refresh rate (pixels refresh 60 times per second, or once every 16.67ms). During the time troubleshooting for a solution, the team had to create the display pipeline from scratch, basically custom microcontrollers that allow the E-Ink display to run fast enough, and the key was to isolate the FPGA driver (which works as an interface between the computer and the display protocol) onto a separate chip.
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Other changes that the company made to the display were how it refreshes. A traditional e-paper or E-Ink display uses global refresh, meaning the pixels only start showing new output when the entire screen has been updated. If that process is sped up (to get faster refreshing), the display tends to get washed out and have poorer contrast. To counter this, Modos switched to a system in which each pixel updates individually, rather than waiting for the entire screen to update at once.
Now, because Modos wrote the entire code from the ground up, it gives users control over what they want to see and how they want to see it on the screen. There are multiple options to switch among dedicated display modes for web browsing, writing, or watching videos, each of which has a different mode. Users can also control saturation, front light intensity, and the warmth of the light.
Modos Flow also largely addresses the ghosting we see on e-paper displays while they’re waiting to fully refresh.
The Modos Flow comes in both monochrome and color options, though you can’t expect the latter to show even half of the colors your poor LCD. However, that’s not the point. E-Ink, or e-paper in general, is primarily preferred by people who need to look at screens for most of their day and want to avoid the eye strain that comes from sitting in front of displays all day long. It’s also suitable for people looking to wind down, cut back on screen time during vacations, or simply transition to a slower lifestyle.
The Modos Flow also supports touch and stylus input for anyone who wants to use it for sketching or taking notes directly onto their PC. Technically, you can also game on it, too, and not experience maddening lag.
Modos isn’t the only brand in this pursuit. The Daylight DC1 is a handy e-paper tablet for reading and writing with a smooth 60Hz display. However, unlike the Flow, you can’t use DC-1 with just any computer or smart device you want to.
The Modos Flow is currently listed for $719 for the colored model and $619 for the monochrome one on Crowd Supply, a crowdfunding model. However, these prices are for its crowdfunding stage, and we might see an increase once they launch as commercial products. The displays won’t start shipping until December this year, so be prepared for the wait if you plan to back the project. That’s nothing compared to the six years the company spent perfecting it, but it’s still enough to rile a few people up.
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