Office workers with dry eyes and myopia are flocking to domestic e-ink screens | Zhiliao

Author | Huang Nan

Editor | Yuan Silai

A track that seemed to have been dormant for a long time is rapidly gaining popularity among young office workers.

Due to the need to work in front of a computer for long hours, and considering eye protection, recently, Wang Wei, who had just had myopia surgery, bought herself a new "productivity tool" - an e-ink fast-refresh tablet.

It looks similar to an iPad but is thinner. Compared with regular tablets weighing 500 - 600 grams, it usually weighs around 400 grams, making it easy to carry around. In terms of functionality, it's like a "de-entertained" tablet. It is equipped with an operating system that can run pre-installed applications and allows the installation of third - party apps.

At first, Wang Wei only used the e-ink tablet as a notepad. But after some time, she found that the usage scenarios of this product were more diverse than expected. It can basically meet the needs of daily office work, such as organizing meeting records, processing text, and even replacing some functions of a mobile phone.

Since Kindle exited the Chinese market, the capital market's attention to e-ink screens has gradually cooled down. However, in fact, this is a rather large niche market. According to data predictions from Luotu Technology, by 2025, the scale of China's e-ink consumer market may reach 459 billion yuan, with a five - year compound growth rate of up to 59%.

Moreover, e-ink products are no longer limited to e-books. They have expanded from e-books to areas such as reading and writing notebooks, mobile phones, and tablets, and the displays have evolved from black and white to color.

"We can clearly see that, on the one hand, different from the traditional book - reading market in the past, the introduction of open systems such as Android has enhanced the productivity of e-ink products; on the other hand, color screens have become the general trend," Wang Jingbo, the co - founder of BOOX, told Yingke. BOOX's key business is e-ink products, covering four major product lines: readers, reading and writing notebooks, fast - refresh tablets, and monitors. Currently, it mainly promotes color e-ink screen products.

Of course, although the e-ink track is relatively niche, it is far from crowded. From the perspective of product expandability, there is still a large space for exploration. Manufacturers such as BOOX, Hanwang, and iFlytek have been constantly trying out new products in the field of electronic e-ink screens.

According to the official data from Elink, the upstream supplier of e-ink screens, BOOX's color e-ink screen products rank first in global sales, with a shipment volume of about 200,000 units in 2024.

This data may be insignificant compared with the sales volume of iPads. Even in the foreseeable future, the color e-ink screen product track may not be very eye - catching, but it can develop steadily. While large hardware companies are struggling to squeeze out the last drop of water from the towel, companies like BOOX can thrive in the niche track.

The Story Starting from Kindle

Compared with Apple's product launches, Kindle's debut was rather shabby.

In November 2007, at Amazon's new product launch event at the W Hotel in Lower Manhattan, only more than 100 journalists and publishing industry executives showed up. Jeff Bezos, wearing a blue sweatshirt, still had the thinness and quirkiness of a geek. He introduced Kindle on stage himself, claiming that this device inherited the movable - type printing technology invented by Gutenberg.

This product completely changed the e-ink screen industry. Its paper - like design can solve the pain point of users getting tired easily during long - term reading. Once launched, Kindle quickly opened up the market and became the synonym for e-books.

Kindle (Source/Amazon)

Compared with common LCD screens, e-ink screens have a fundamental difference in display principle. LCD screens adjust the orientation of liquid crystal molecules through voltage to display different colors and images. They need continuous power supply to maintain the image, and continuous refreshing can cause flickering.

E-ink screens are based on electrophoresis technology. In liquid capsules, black and white particles float up and down under the action of an electric field to form an image. Then the particles stop moving, and the image will not disappear when the power is cut off, and the screen will not flicker when turning pages. This characteristic gives e-ink screens some physical defects, such as a general refresh rate of only 1 - 2Hz and a slow response speed during operation.

However, these "shortcomings" also give e-ink screens obvious advantages in eye protection. They have no blue light or stroboscopic effect. They use full - reflection display, simulating the characteristics of ink and paper. The color change is smooth, which is closer to the feeling of reading on paper and causes less harm to the eyes.

Therefore, for a long time, the main application scenario of e-ink screens was e-books, which also attracted a group of domestic manufacturers such as BOOX to enter the market.

BOOX entered the e-ink screen field in 2008. Through self - developed technologies such as bsr fast - refresh, color adjustment, and afterimage self - clearing, it improved the touch response speed and image refresh speed of its products.

As a market educator, Kindle readers had a great say at that time. In the Chinese market alone, an internal Amazon document in 2018 stated that by the end of 2017, the sales volume of Kindle in China accounted for more than 40% of its global market share.

However, e-ink screens have been lukewarm in China since then, mainly limited by display technology. E-ink screens can never reach the fluency and saturation of LCD screens.

Although the annual shipment volume of e-ink screen devices is increasing, its scale is still small in the huge electronic device market. According to Luotu Technology data, the global shipment volume of electronic paper tablets in 2023 was 12.54 million units, and the sales volume in the Chinese market was 1.23 million units. In contrast, the shipment volume of tablets in the same year was 135 million units.

The Emergence of New Opportunities

Some enterprises have also tried to break the dull situation of the e-ink screen market, and the emergence of color e-ink screens was once highly anticipated.

However, in the early years, the color e-ink screen technology was not mature enough, and the color display effect was poor, with problems such as low color saturation and blurred images. For example, Hanwang once faced technical bottlenecks. Due to the low refresh rate, there was obvious stuttering when switching images.

The difficulty of color e-ink screen technology lies in ensuring high resolution and high refresh rate while achieving rich and vivid color display, as well as how to reduce costs and improve the cost - performance ratio of products.

Wang Jingbo, the co - founder of BOOX, told Yingke, "Strictly speaking, color e-ink screens are an iterative upgrade based on black and white e-ink screens to support more application scenarios." As the content form has changed from pure text to diverse media forms such as color illustrations and videos, users' demand for color display from black and white in eye - protection scenarios has been continuously increasing.

There was a breakthrough in color e-ink screen technology around 2021. The emergence of technologies such as Kaleido 3 and Kaleido 3+ has made the color performance of e-ink screens more vivid, greatly improved the saturation, and effectively reduced the afterimage when turning pages.

These technologies, while retaining the eye - protection characteristics of e-ink screens, are not easy to cause eye fatigue during long - term use. They also enable devices to better display multimedia content such as color charts, comics, and PDF files, greatly expanding the usage scenarios and giving domestic e-ink screen manufacturers a glimpse of new opportunities.

BOOX Color Screen Display (Source/Enterprise)

When researching users' usage habits, BOOX found that among some e-book users, there was a demand for recording and organizing that extended from daily reading. Even in addition to reading, e-ink screens showed high adaptability and practicality in more scenarios such as office work and learning.

From the perspective of portable office needs, compared with the iPad, although the iPad has more functions, its entertainment attribute is too strong, and it often becomes a "stumbling block" for users when they focus on office work. Wang Jingbo gave a vivid example: For instance, when users use an iPad to write a report, they are often unconsciously attracted by entertainment applications such as social media and games, and are "tempted" by pop - up messages to jump to another app, resulting in a significant reduction in work efficiency.

Aiming at this pain point in the scenario, BOOX came up with the idea of a system - level e-ink office notebook. The system provides functions such as reading, note - taking, and voice transcription, and the data is interconnected to present multi - tasking and the entire work process on the e-ink screen, solving users' pain points.

For example, in a meeting scenario, users can use the BOOX office notebook to record audio. The system has a voice - to - text function, allowing users to directly organize materials based on the meeting records. The multiple large models and AI Agents it is equipped with can also assist users in content verification, improving the efficiency of meeting review.

In simple terms, BOOX's e-ink office notebook can be regarded as a tablet computer with the entertainment content removed and a more eye - friendly screen. All major functions work in a collaborative ecosystem, which is more efficient than running multiple single - point APP tools independently, and it is not easy to cause data loss or errors due to frequent software switching.

On one hand, domestic manufacturers are constantly exploring new application directions for products. On the other hand, a storm is brewing.

Since entering the Chinese market, Amazon has been struggling with the problem of being out of place. Its e - commerce business has been no match for its Chinese competitors, and the total sales volume of Kindle in ten years was only about one million units, becoming a "noodle bowl lid" that many people joked about.

On June 30, 2023, Amazon finally decided to cut off this business with a dismal future, and Kindle announced its exit from the Chinese market.

With the departure of the big fish, domestic e-ink screen companies finally got their chance.

From E-books to Tablets

In the hardware field, China has the most flexible, daring - to - try, and strongest - delivery - ability companies in the world.

Compared with Amazon, which focuses on "e-books", domestic e-ink screen products have been trying to break out of this category and narrow the gap with tablets.

In 2013, BOOX launched its first e-ink screen product, the BOOX C65, which was equipped with an open system. Its Android system allows users to freely install third - party applications. This was the first e-ink screen product to break out of the reading scenario. In last year's new product, the BOOX T10C, a Qualcomm Snapdragon octa - core processor is used, and three large AI models, ByteDance Doubao, Baidu Wenxin Yiyan, and Alibaba Tongyi Qianwen, are integrated.

In 2025, when DeepSeek became extremely popular, BOOX was the first e-ink screen brand in the industry to integrate the full - version DeepSeek at the system level. Currently, the BOOX system has integrated four popular large AI models, supporting multiple scenarios such as independent APPs, floating windows, line - selected AI, and split - screen dual - app operation for quick access.

E-ink screen products on the market today can be roughly divided into three categories. The first category still retains a relatively closed software and hardware ecosystem and is mainly targeted at specific application scenarios or user groups. These readers usually come pre - installed with specific reading software, only support e - book files in specific formats, and do not support the installation of third - party applications. For example, Kindle, and most of these products still use black and white screens.

The second category of products is mainly targeted at highly personalized customization groups, allowing users to customize according to their own needs, such as adjusting screen display settings and installing specific application software. However, due to relatively limited performance and display effects, their functional features still remain at the reading level. Products like the iReader Ocean2 use a customized Android system.

The third category is represented by BOOX, which uses an open ecosystem and a smart assistant system. Based on a mobile - phone - level hardware platform, while retaining and enhancing the eye - protection characteristics of e-ink screens, it introduces content partners. Users can download various content APPs such as WeChat Reading and Tomato Novel. Compared with products with a closed ecosystem mainly based on traditional book content, it has stronger expandability. The application scenarios have also expanded from office work to web browsing, using APPs, and taking online courses.

BOOX's Offline Store (Source/Enterprise)

This is also an inevitable trend. It is becoming more and more difficult to replicate the internet get - rich - quick myths, and office workers have decided to take good care of their bodies.

"Nowadays, there has been a huge change in users' reading content. It is no longer limited to books themselves. Influenced by tablets and mobile phones, the demand for reading and viewing public account articles, news - type messages, short online course animations or videos has increased significantly. Users hope to have an eye - friendly screen that can achieve the functions of tablets and mobile phones. Reading has gradually become a universal function for e-ink screen products, just like making phone calls on a mobile phone," Wang Jingbo pointed out.

He told Yingke that currently, the core user age group of BOOX products is between 25 - 45 years old, and users of the T10C color screen product are concentrated between 30 - 45 years old, with a good reputation among white - collar workers in first - and second - tier cities.

The monotonous e - book era is over. Even for readers, manufacturers have come up with many new ideas. For example, BOOX has made a reader in the form of a mobile phone, with a screen of only 6.13 inches and a weight of only 160 grams. In the past, some users had reading needs during their commute but were worried that using a reader would be out of place with the surrounding environment. The mobile - phone - like design of the P6 Xiaobaima can resolve this embarrassment.

BOOX P6 Xiaobaima (Source/Enterprise)

The once - expensive color e-ink screens have also seen a price drop. The Poke series of BOOX, targeted at students and new office workers, is priced at 899 yuan, and the highest - priced Tab series is generally around 3,000 yuan. In contrast, the prices of iPads and Surfaces range from several thousand yuan to tens of thousands of yuan.

A few years after Kindle left, the domestic e-ink screen market has become more vibrant. Even in this AI boom, e-ink