Sunlight readable colour LCD displays (without using backlight)

previously

Almost all consumer color LCD displays are designed for use with backlights. But there are are some which are transflective, ie will take incoming light and reflect it back thru the LCD. There are some limitations, like viewing angle and so on, that make this more difficult, but it can work. The Garmin Vista HCx is at least one commercial unit which is reasonable.

The military probably dont care about battery life, and just use more power, at least in fixed installations. No idea what they use in the handhelds.

Some of the OLED displays are bright enough to be sunlight visible - some phones use these. Lifetime is still an issue.

I also saw a Hummingbird depth sounder for marine use with a *very* bright display, about 10" screen, and with excellent color. But it draws a couple of amps at 12 volts.

Still waiting for someone to develop a color version of the E-ink technology used in those book readers.

Other than that, I agree, I would rather have a readable monochrome display, than an unreadable color one.

Is there such a thing?

When searching for a mapping GPS I did my research, looked at numerous video reviews and picked one with a colour display and wow, talk about disappointed. Under typical bright Aussie sunlight conditions it's almost unusable unless the sun is directly overhead or I use the backlight which seriously reduces the battery life. Even with the backlight on it's still a struggle. I tried an anti-reflective screen protector and that just made it worse.

After carefully reviewing the videos I now realise this is par for the course, and wasn't just an artifact of the Youtube video compression as I had previously thought.

What do the military use, are there super high price military spec colour displays that are still to trickle down to the domestic market, or is that it?

The greyscale GPS market looks like it'll be extinct within a year. Worse is better?

Fairly skimpy research. The garmin oregon 450 and family is absolutely brilliant in full sun. In fact it is better in full sun than in the shade of trees where the backlight is not quite bright enough. I have no idea why this is so but it is different to other lcd screens I have seen. This is reasonably well reported in any of the user forums. Earlier models were hard to read but the 450 and 550 series are very good. This was particularly important to me as I use it outdoors quite a bit.

previously

My Garmin GPSMAP 76CSX is quite readable in sunlight without a back-light.

It's already done!

Cheers, Chris.

Fujitsu Next Generation Color e-Paper

Ectaco jetBook Color eInk

Looks like it's going to be available this year.

Hmm,

When I read this:

E Ink has partnered with tier-1 companies such as Epson, Texas Instruments, Marvell, and Freescale Semiconductor to provide a best-in-class ecosystem of supporting electronics products. Our partners are working towards enabling E Ink's newest generation of ePaper displays with solutions like dedicated discrete ePaper controllers and display power management integrated circuits. E Ink has continued to advance the state of the art and provide design flexibility to product manufacturers.

And the "Technical Specifications" sheet, I suspect this product has a way to go yet before reality.