For the longest time, E-Ink’s display technology has been hampered by its painfully-slow refresh rates, which have made it largely viable strictly for reading and slightly laggy writing tasks. That appears to have changed with the Acer EP130K, a high-refresh rate monitor that uses one of E-Ink’s newest panels.
That’s right, Acer is getting in on the e-paper game with this portable USB monitor, allowing you to supplement your laptop’s display with an eye-friendlier secondary screen while on the go. And no, it won’t give you a headache with its slow refresh rates, as the outfit claims this thing refreshes at a 60Hz, making it a viable display for use in all sorts of productivity tasks.
The Acer EP130K is a USB monitor that measures 13.3 inches, so it’s compact enough to throw in your bag right next to your daily laptop. Despite the smaller size, it comes with 3,200 x 2,400 resolution, so text and images should look especially sharp on this thing, while the 60Hz refresh rate means your PC’s output isn’t going to look weird on it the way it would usually look on other E-Ink monitors. It uses an E-Ink Kaleido 3 panel, by the way, so you get no backlighting, no blue light, and no glare for a truly comfortable paper-like viewing experience.
It comes with two modes: grayscale and color. In grayscale, it’s able to use the full 3,200 x 2,400 resolution, so you get super crisp details, dense text, and detailed interface elements. In color mode, it drops to 1,600 x 1,200 pixels, so you get less sharpness on the overall display, although you do get 4,096 colors, so it’s not looking all drab and boring. Both modes allow the monitor to offer the full 60Hz refresh rate, with the outfit claiming a 20ms gray-to-gray response time. Will this look as good as a traditional LCD monitor as far as refresh rates go? We don’t know, since this type of display still handles motion differently than more traditional screens, so we’ll have to see it at work to really figure things out.
The Acer EP130K comes with both stylus and multi-touch support, so you can draw, tap, and swipe at various elements onscreen, which is really useful for a portable display, since not everyone might have access to a good mouse peripheral on the go. Plus, you can scribble notes on it like you do on a note-taking tablet. No word on whether it has a built-in battery, though, so that may prove to be an issue if it’s going to hijack power from your laptop’s battery, Since it’s an E-Ink panel, though, it should use up a lot less power than traditional LCD and OLED monitors, but the high refresh rate might not make it quite as efficient as traditional e-readers.
It requires just a single USB-C connection to your laptop or desktop, so you get minimal wire mess. Other features include two USB-C ports, a mini-HDMI input, a headphone jack, a pair of one-watt speakers, and a kickstand for propping it up on a desk. Do note, this monitor doesn’t have front lighting, so you’ll absolutely need ambient light (preferably plenty of it) in order to use it comfortably.
The Acer EP130K is slated to launch in the first quarter of next year. No pricing has been announced.