Dasung is a Chinese company the specialized in displays and tablets with E Ink displays. But the Dasung Link is something a little different – it’s the company’s first 6.7 inch E ePaper display meant to be used with your smartphone.

While we’ve seen phones with E Ink displays before, the Dasung Link is more like an E Ink second screen for the phone you already have. The company calls it an E-ink Phone Monitor. After going up for pre-order in China in December, 2022 the Dasung Link will be available globally soon through an Indiegogo campaign. Update: The campaign went live on April 11, 2023 with prices starting at $299 during crowdfunding. 

Here’s how the Dasung Link works: you buy one of three Dasung Link models and pair them with your phone using a wireless or wired connection. That way you can keep your phone in your pocket or bag while interacting with your smartphone apps on an E Ink display.

Dasung offers three different models of the Dasung Link:

  • Android model with wireless connection support
  • iOS model with wireless connection support
  • Wired model that works with phones that support video out over USB

Each version features a 6.7 inch black and white E Ink display with 300 pixels per inch. The Link has an aluminum body that measures 8mm (0.31 inches) thick, physical buttons on the sides, and a touchscreen that allows you to interact with your apps using only the E Ink display.

The selling point is that you get all the benefits of E Ink (a paper-like viewing experience with wide viewing angles, sunlight visibility, low power consumption, and reduced eye strain) without having to buy a phone with a dedicated E ink display. If your phone already has a good processor, camera, and other specs, then you don’t have to give them up to get an E Ink phone if you can just pair your phone with an E Ink display that you can use whenever you want.

While E Ink displays have lower screen refresh rates than LCD or AMOLED screens, Dasung has been making ePaper monitors for years and the company says there’s a “Turbo” mode for the Link that offers smoother scrolling and graphics. Just don’t expect high-motion content like videos or games to run as smoothly on any E Ink display as they do on other screens.

The Dasung Link also has a front-light system with adjustable color temperature, allowing you to more easily view the screen in dimly lit environments, while adjusting the amount of blue light emitted at night (or any other time).

Dasung says the Android and iOS versions of the Link come with a battery dock cover (there are 5,000 mAh and 6,800 mAh battery options) and pair with your phone wirelessly, while the wired version is a thinner model that lacks wireless support, has lower power consumption, and works with select phones from companies including Huawei and Samsung.

Dasung also began taking orders in December for the Dasung Paper Like U, the world’s first curved monitor featuring a E Ink display. It features a 25.3 inch, 3200 x 1800 pixel display with support for HDMI and USB Type-C input and the same “turbo” mode technology that enables higher refresh rates on the Dasung Link.

You can check out the launch video for both products (in Chinese) below, courtesy of the E Reader Channel. Jump to about 9:12 in the video if you just want to see the section covering the Dasung Link.

via @DasungTech, zhuanlan.zhihu.com and Weibo (1)(2)

This article was first published December 10, 2022 and most recently updated February 28, 2023. 

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15 replies on “Dasung Link is a 6.7 inch E Ink monitor for your smartphone (updated)”

  1. This would work well with my arm-mounted cyberdeck I’ve been working on.

  2. i am an idiot with too much money therefore i will buy this pos!

  3. Great idea,but i think its better to have a different screen which can be swapped with your phone is so much better than having to carry a different device to get the E-Link display.

  4. They had this with their not-Ereader, their first tablet like device. Their solution then DID require the screen to stay on as Dominic says below. Some devices can turn their screen off when casting (but some of those only in desktop mode) so it might work better with those. Then again, if Dasung found a software solution that bypasses the device’s default MO then all the better. Personally I won’t be getting it any time soon (at least not unless there are rave reviews) since the use cases I can imagine don’t suit me: I don’t use turn by turn navigation, I don’t read novels/long articles on my phone, and I am not planning on touristing super bright sunny places any time soon (plus if I were, I’d likely want to use the camera in which case I’d have to take out the actual phone). If you could leave your phone “off” (i.e. screen off) and then take this out of your pocket, turn it on and check your messages it’d be great. but having to take your phone out, turn it on, connect, and then read messages? too much hassle.

    Plus the one remaining factor we need to see is the price. Having a sunlight-legible second screen for your phone is a nice luxury, but it’s precisely that, a luxury, and if it’s priced like a luxury it will severely limit its target audience.

    I tried it out but it wasn’t that great to use (I honestly ended up barely using that device, since its advantage was not as an ereader but as a sunlight legible tablet, but fluid mode on the screen, plus a bad radio meant not great battery life. the most use I got from it was when I was in Acapulco with cousins and on of my cousins had to read a bunch of stuff for class. Since she had to scroll back and forth between many places in the PDF my Kobo Forma wasn’t as fast/convenient as she needed and the notEreader fit her needs perfectly in that sun (a normal tablet would have struggled in that light and suffered in the heat).

  5. What they actually need to do is create a screen that is swappable between phone cases, and create a bunch of phone cases for variety of different models. I don’t want to carry around two devices. But it would be cool to have a case that I can flip around and there’s an e-ink screen on the other side.

    1. yeah, they tried something similar except it wasn’t possible between cases, it was some cases for very specific models. Which sucked if you didn’t have one of the most popular phones or were thinking of upgrading anytime soon. So yeah, the swappable bit would be crucial. Now if they could come up with somewhat generic cases based on size (like the ones for tablets with those strappy bits) then it might be feasible (I doubt a company this small could make specific cases for that many phones unless they were 3D printing them one by one.

  6. Doesn’t your screen have to be on to actually be able to mirror it though lol. This seems like a really poor idea haha.

    1. I’ve used scrcpy with android, and it has an option to turn off the phone screen. I’d imagine if the screen did have to stay on, this is completely pointless.

    2. Chinese phones have been banned in the USA for a reason. China is smart enough to figure out you can just put the same chips that steal information from a phone into the E ink display that connects to your phone, as to bypass the law.

      1. Okay, I don’t want to have to do this because I’m just going to make myself look like an idiot who is “supporting the wrong side” to SOMEONE, but this isn’t right.
        The US didn’t ban Chinese phones. You can still buy them and indeed most phones are mostly Chinese anyway. They banned companies operating within the US from doing business with Huawei and a short list of other Chinese entities. And the reason given was over security concerns with cellular network infrastructure, because at the time, plans to roll out 5g were starting to be put into action, and Huawei also makes cellular network infrastructure. You can insert your own theories about whether that was justified or even reasonable or which “corrupt wasteland full of weak losers” is better than the other here, but as long as you don’t need to give this silly little wireless display a wi-fi password or install a new app on your phone, it shouldn’t be able to phone home.

  7. A 11 – 13 inch (close to A4 paper size) tablet would have been the ideal form factor for me for reading PDFs.

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