There’s finally a 25-inch E Ink monitor for extreme readers

E Ink devices are great for two reasons: they’re gentle on the eyes (no blue light blasting into your retinas) and way more power-efficient than color LCDs. Basically: good for reading, bad for anything else. This is why e-readers use E Ink and computer monitors don’t.

But, if for some reason, you really want an E Ink monitor, you can now get one from Onyx for a whopping $1,500. It’s exclusive to China for now so you’ll have to import it; the rest of the world can get it in October. The Onyx Boox Mira Pro is a 25-inch E Ink display (via GoodEreader) that mimics Apple’s industrial design — it’s huge, beautiful, and so damn expensive. You have to really love reading to fork over this kind of cash for this niche monitor instead of buying a larger, higher-resolution, color TV or display.

Premium paper stock — This display is the latest in Onyx Boox’s line of E ink devices, following up the 13.3-inch Mira display and the iPad-sized Note Air tablet. The company has been building up quite a reputation in the E Ink device space and the Mira Pro display certainly stands out. The E Ink monitor has a 3,200 x 1,800 resolution and uses what the company calls “BSR super refresh technology” developed by Aragonite; it’s supposed to improve E Ink’s notoriously slow refresh rates. According to GoodEreader, the Mira Pro display is otherwise barebones: there are no buttons on the front, the display is front-lit with a color temperature system that presumably adjusts based on lighting conditions, and it connects via mini HDMI. Yooa.Online reports there are two USB-C ports. Avid readers will appreciate that the monitor can be viewed in portrait or landscape orientations.

All these features are packaged inside an aluminum alloy frame that could have come from Apple (the stand’s resemblance to Apple’s $1,000 one for the Pro Display XDR is uncanny). Compared to other E Ink displays, such as Dasung’s Paperlike 253, which looks like a Dell monitor from 10 years ago, the Mira Pro at least looks modern.

Too soon — I’m glad to see E Ink displays make their way into more products, but the Mira Pro is clearly a product for early adopters with money to splurge. At $1,500, the Mira Pro is more affordable compared to the $2,000 Dasung Paperlike 253, but it’s still by no means cheap like LCD monitors. We’re far from a world where E Ink monitors are on every desk.

Ask yourself, how badly do you want to see your Twitter timeline or a Word document in pure black and white? It might be worth the investment if you’re really concerned about blue light intake. Otherwise, you could just turn Windows or macOS grayscale with a simple setting; it’s not exactly the same, but the effect is similar.