When I first saw the Daylight DC-1 in a promotional video, it looked too good to be true. A minimalistic, monochrome tablet, similar to my reMarkable 2 or Kindle Scribe , but with a display that could run fast enough to watch videos and play games, without the ghosting or hesitation of E Ink. Could this be the writing tablet of the future? The answer is complicated, but promising.
The Daylight DC-1 moves faster than any E Ink tablet I’ve seen, and I’ve seen the best E Ink devices from Onyx, a company pushing E Ink to its speed limit. That’s because the Daylight computer is not using E Ink. When I say "E Ink," I'm talking about a specific screen technology as well as the company that makes it.
There is only one company making E Ink, and that's E Ink Corporation. An E Ink panel belongs to a category of displays called e-paper (or "ePaper" as E Ink brands it). Instead of E Ink, the Daylight DC-1 uses a unique reflective LCD display that is also a type of e-paper.
The Daylight DC-1 can refresh up to 60Hz, which is fast enough for smooth video. An Onyx Boox Tab Ultra using E Ink can refresh somewhere between 10-20Hz at most, and the experience is not very smooth at that fast rate. You’ll see ghosted images, and the screen will flash frequently as it refreshes entirely – like shaking the Etch A Sketch, basically.
Daylight’s website claims its technology is “better than E-Ink [sic]” and “faster than E Ink.” It is certainly faster, but I wasn’t sure it was bette.
