We have two e-readers from Kobo. Both have e-ink. They can both also run a browser. Pretty cool thus far? The refresh rate is abysmal which you're gonna notice whilst browsing, and it all has to be rendered local (including all the bloated JS being used nowadays). Both of these factors are a killer for battery life. So if you'd be scrolling down a web page, and then replying to say here in HN that'd be terrible use case because input is also terrible (touchscreen isn't very accurate either and low refresh rate makes the letters appear slowly). For pure reading however, it is great, and for browsing it is OKish (the only disadvantage is the rendering). It has Pocket support which is sanitised.
The less the screen is refreshed, the better e-ink is.
Backlit displays hurt our eyes because most apps often use full white backgrounds without taking into account the much bigger surface (that is, light) our eyes is exposed to by doing so, which is roughly double compared to say 10 years ago. That can be corrected by choosing darker themes, but good luck convincing most people to do that.
E-Ink technology needs a lot more time to become a viable option for monitors.
In the office most programmers and designers use dark themes, but in fact they are more straining than light themes because your eyes do more work adjusting for seeing little bright things in the dark than for seeing little dark things in the light - I guess in the end it is a matter of taste.
Or just turn the brightness down. The monitor I'm using now has a dedicated button for cycling through brightness settings. I have it on minimum for general use, and I set it to maximum for games/movies.
The refresh rate sucks. Transflective LCD gets you e-ink-like contrast, LCD-like refresh rate, and battery life that's still much worse than e-ink but a significant improvement over backlit LCD.
