THIS MONITOR IS POWERED BY THE SUN! Sun Vision rE RLCD Monitor Review

This is the Sun Vision rE, an RLCD monitor – that being reflective liquid crystal display. Unlike basically all displays, this thing doesn’t have a backlight. In fact, it basically just has a mirror behind a regular LCD panel, meaning the more light you shine on it, the better it looks. In bright sunlight this thing looks pretty good, and is incredibly readable compared to regular backlit displays. In fact, to properly enjoy content outdoors on a sunny day, you’ll likely need multiple thousands of nits, something like DIY perks custom outdoor gaming display would do the trick, providing you want to build a custom extra power hungry display. By contrast, this thing will do thousands of nits, AND only draw around 5 watts from the wall. 

Of course the problem is, with no light, this no work. In fact, it’s actually kind of worse than that, because this thing is totally dependent on ambient sources of light, which means when the light is dimmer, or a warmer colour temperature, the display changes to reflect that, meaning it’s completely useless for colour sensitive work. Sun Vision do sell that as a benefit though – it’s “ambient light matching” – which for anyone who’s used F.Lux knows is a nice feature, but it’s not like you can’t do that with a backlit monitor, or that office specific monitors don’t often come with ambient light sensors to do that very thing. 

The big problem with this though is, you need an awful lot of light. Even my remarkably bright studio lights aren’t anywhere near enough to make this thing look usable, let alone vibrant and rich. With typical office lighting, it is effectively useless. Even with my studio lights – which themselves have a visible reflection on the screen which you do notice – it looks like the saturation is turned down considerably. It looks almost greyscale, which isn’t great for a monitor that boasts “16.7 million colours”. 

The reason for the lacking brightness is pretty simple though. Liquid crystal displays, throughout their numerous layers, block the vast majority of light – to the order of around 95% – that’s why monitor backlights are actually ridiculously bright, as the majority of that light is blocked by the panel – and in this case, the light has to go through the panel TWICE. There is also a limit to the mirror construction, which means only 80% of the pixel’s surface is reflective, which further limits light output, and is also why they’ve opted for a frankly terrible pixel density. This is a 32 inch monitor, with a 1080p 60 hertz panel. Regular viewers will know I really don’t like 27 inch 1080p, so this.. This is just worse. It’s pretty far from crisp or sharp, when you can see it anyway! 

One other thing to note is the contrast, or lack thereof. Sun Vision quotes this at just a 25:1 contrast ratio, which is frankly insane. An IPS panel, which is known for having pretty naff contrast, ie black looks grey, meaning darker shades blur together rather than standing apart nicely, generally will have a contrast ratio of 1000:1, so to have your brightest white only be 25 times brighter than your darkest black, that’s really not a pleasant content viewing experience. 

[Record clip on monitor to hear speakers]

And speaking of content viewing experiences, the rE does have built in speakers, by my god they are dreadful. They are tinny, compressed, and honestly kind of uncomfortable to listen to. You’re hearing them now, so hopefully you get the idea.

So clearly then, this is a monitor best suited for outdoor use – direct sunlight is really the only option to make this bright enough to use well, but… why would you want to use a monitor outside? And here’s a better question, why isn’t it waterproof? Yeah, this thing is just a regular – in fact incredibly cheap feeling – monitor. This isn’t IP rated, so why does this exist? Well, this whole thing makes a lot more sense once you look at what else Sun Vision Displays makes. They do sell weatherproof enclosed RLCD displays meant for digital signage, food trucks and general outdoor use. That makes an awful lot more sense – and apparently people were buying the digital signage displays to use as monitors, so Sun Vision decided to start offering their panels in a typical indoor monitor chassis. 

The claims they make about this thing are… well… interesting. Their main selling point is that a non-backlit display is apparently better for your eyes – and more importantly less likely to give you permanent eye damage! That’s quite the bold claim. Supposedly that’s due to four factors. One, low blue light. This is mostly pseudoscience – the idea that blue light damages your eyes is unfounded, and even if it was true, this thing reflects the sun’s light back at you, WHICH IS MORE POWERFUL THAN A MONITOR BACKLIGHT! So that’s a no-go. Next is flicker free – something that basically all displays for the last decade have actively marketed themselves as being. Next is ambient light matching. That might be helpful for some, although again that is something that both software and monitors themselves can do already, with a usable level of brightness indoors. And finally, low dimming. This is actually a really funny one, basically saying if you use a display in the dark, it should be able to dim itself to match the darkness. The problem is if you try to use this in the dark, you just can’t, and it always is a good 10x dimmer than it should be indoors, clearly not matching the ambient brightness well. Best case you could argue this monitor would help your eye strain because you can’t use it for more than a couple hours a day, therefore saving you from looking at a display. That’s my charitable read of the ‘health benefits’. That’s not to say that if you try this monitor and find it is better for you that you’re wrong to think that – as always, do what works best for you – but if eye strain is a problem for you, I’m pretty confident a typical, and more usable, LCD or OLED can offer the same functionality, all day long. 

They do mention gaming on this, which is kind of funny. They claim this has a 10 millisecond response time, although by looking at some high speed footage it looks to be more like 20 milliseconds to me, that is just not suitable for gaming, let alone the 60 hertz refresh rate, terrible pixel density, and of course the need for the entire sun to light the thing. I did, of course, play some games on it, but I can’t say it was exactly an enjoyable experience. Ironically I actually found myself straining to see what was on screen due to the lack of contrast and washed out colours. 

For black and white stuff – office work, for example – this is great, especially in the sun. The fact it only draws 5 watts is really cool and a feature I feel they should be leaning more heavily on rather than quackery about normal monitors literally destroying your eyeballs – and sorry I have to go back to this – their site claims “Reflective displays don’t emit any blue light”. I’m sorry what?? What is this then? What colour would you say this is? Blue, right? What colour is ONE THIRD OF THE PIXEL MADE UP OF? BLUE! Like, if you’re going to lie, at least do a basic fact check first guys. And as I said, in the sun anyway, this thing emits MORE blue light than a regular LCD, so that’s a double layered lie. Anyway, if this all still sounds appealing to you, I have one more little surprise. This monitor will set you back $1,499. Yeah. This is more expensive than most OLED gaming monitors. You could buy TWO of my stunning Philips EVNIA 8600 QD-OLEDs for that (at least when they’re on sale anyway). To add insult to injury, this is clearly a cheap chinese OE body they’ve slapped their panel into. It has two HDMI ports, USB power out, DC in and a headphone jack, and a screw-in tilt-only stand that has their logo printed ON THE WRONG SIDE. This is the sort of cheap aliexpress quality you expect from a £150 1440p 165Hz IPS gaming monitor, not a $1,500 premium display. I get that the volume on their panels probably isn’t all that high, but my god that’s a lot for a monitor, let alone one with so many limitations. But hey, if you’ve got $1,500 burning a hole in your pocket, you like to work outside but not in the rain, and only want a monitor that works for daylight hours, then sure, grab yourself an rE. Otherwise, check out my lengthy list of monitor reviews in the cards above for some other options…