E-ink is really good for text based screens because it can be used for long periods of time without eye-strain. For people who sit churning out news stories on word-processors, or reading lots of documents will find an e-ink display jolly useful – if it is big enough.

Paperlike is basically an e-ink display which sports a 13.3-inch screen size which is about the same as a laptop display. This could possibly be big enough to do the secondary monitor roll rather well.

It is designed by a sci-fi writer Dong Gong, mostly for his fellow writers and has the backing of the Chinese Government.

The max resolution of Paperlike is at 1600×1200, or alternatively you could opt for lower res at 800×600. The only down side is that e-ink’s refresh rate isn’t quite as fast as regular monitors. This means that if you are going to use it to type you might want to lower the resolution to get the speed up a bit. It might be better for you to read something while you are typing on the screen of your regular monitor.

It is not cheap though. Paperlike is currently on Indiegogo seeking funding. You can pick one up with $200 off for $799. As such it is pretty much like a tablet.