It is well lush! Thin bezel around 3 sides. Excellent viewing angle when vertical. A decent array of video ports and USB. And fairly wallet friendly £280. There's a lot of screen for your money.

(Yes, I do have a desk crowded with gadgetry!)

I'm only using this for reading very long (and only slightly boring) documents. I can't tell you if it has the millisecond response you want for gaming. But for watching content, it is superb. The screen isn't reflective and the picture is fabulous.

There are plenty of options if you want to fiddle with your gamma, contrast, brightness, and all the other things which are standard these days.

Downsides

I'm going to start with the slight niggles I found.

First, is the built-in USB hub. You get 4 USB-A sockets - two are USB-3 and have 900mW, two are USB-2 and have 500mW. That's basically fine, but I would have expected at least a couple of USB-C by now. But what's worse is that the hub itself takes the stupid USB-B 3.0 connector. Yeah, the weird double height one. It comes with a cable in the box. But it is a bit daft.

As always, the blue LED for power is too bright - but nothing a bit of tape can't fix.

The speakers are a little tinny. Basically fine for a conference call, but nothing more. There is a headphone socket if you want to route audio to something more substantial.

I think the EDID is a little wonky - see the Linux section below.

On Windows, my laptop sometimes forgot that audio could be routed through the monitor. I restarted my hub and everything worked again. I've no idea if that's the fault of the laptop, hub, or screen.

The settings buttons are a little fiddly. No worse than any other screen - and the sort of thing you play around with once and then never again.

Positives

Great mounting options. As well as boring horizontal, the monitor can be rotate left or right to 90 degrees. The stand is well sprung so the height is easily adjusted. Similarly, it can be tilted back a bit if that's what you want.

Audio quality out of the headphone socket is excellent. No cross-chatter even at high volumes.

The cables which come with it are a decent length (HDMI, DP, Power) and the DP cable has a locking mechanism (squeeze to open).

It uses two build-in thumb-turn screws to connect the stand to the base-plate, and the monitor to the stand. No tools required. Oh, and the base-plate also rotates.

Linux

The USB hub shows up as 05e3:0610 Genesys Logic, Inc. Hub - nothing remarkable. Just works.

For some reason, I couldn't get my Linux box to drive it at 60Hz without turning on fractional scaling. I think that's a limit of my GPU. I'll be honest, I'm not sure what's the difference between 200% @ 2160p and 100% @ 1080p.

Here's what the monitor reports using sudo get-edid -b 7 | parse-edid (run without -b 7 first to find your bus number).

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "PL2893UH"
    ModelName "PL2893UH"
    VendorName "IVM"
    # Monitor Manufactured week 33 of 2023
    # EDID version 1.4
    # Digital Display
    DisplaySize 620 340
    Gamma 2.20
    Option "DPMS" "true"
    Horizsync 15-150
    VertRefresh 24-75
    # Maximum pixel clock is 600MHz
    #Not giving standard mode: 1920x1440, 60Hz
    #Not giving standard mode: 1920x1200, 60Hz
    #Not giving standard mode: 1920x1080, 60Hz
    #Not giving standard mode: 1680x1050, 60Hz
    #Not giving standard mode: 1440x900,  60Hz
    #Not giving standard mode: 1400x1050, 60Hz
    #Not giving standard mode: 1280x1024, 60Hz
    #Not giving standard mode: 1280x720,  60Hz

    #Extension block found. Parsing...
#WARNING: I may have missed a mode (CEA mode 95)
#WARNING: I may have missed a mode (CEA mode 94)
#WARNING: I may have missed a mode (CEA mode 93)
    Modeline    "Mode 22" 262.75  3840 3888 3920 4000 2160 2163 2168 2191 +hsync -vsync 
    Modeline     "Mode 0" 533.25  3840 3888 3920 4000 2160 2163 2168 2222 +hsync -vsync 
    Modeline     "Mode 1" 
    Modeline     "Mode 2" 
    Modeline     "Mode 3" 148.500 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1084 1089 1125 +hsync +vsync
    Modeline     "Mode 4" 148.500 1920 2448 2492 2640 1080 1084 1089 1125 +hsync +vsync
    Modeline     "Mode 5"  74.250 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1082 1087 1125 +hsync +vsync interlace
    Modeline     "Mode 6"  74.250 1920 2448 2492 2640 1080 1082 1089 1125 +hsync +vsync interlace
    Modeline     "Mode 7"  74.250 1280 1390 1420 1650  720  725  730  750 +hsync +vsync
    Modeline     "Mode 8"  74.250 1280 1720 1760 1980  720  725  730  750 +hsync +vsync
    Modeline     "Mode 9"  54.000 1440 1464 1592 1728  576  581  586  625 -hsync -vsync
    Modeline    "Mode 10"  54.000 1440 1464 1592 1728  576  581  586  625 -hsync -vsync
    Modeline    "Mode 11"  27.000  720  732  796  864  576  581  586  625 -hsync -vsync
    Modeline    "Mode 12"  27.000  720  732  796  864  576  581  586  625 -hsync -vsync
    Modeline    "Mode 13"  27.000 1440 1464 1590 1728  576  578  581  625 -hsync -vsync interlace
    Modeline    "Mode 14"  27.000 1440 1464 1590 1728  576  578  581  625 -hsync -vsync interlace
    Modeline    "Mode 15"  54.054 1440 1472 1596 1716  480  489  495  525 -hsync -vsync
    Modeline    "Mode 16"  54.054 1440 1472 1596 1716  480  489  495  525 -hsync -vsync
    Modeline    "Mode 17"  27.027  720  736  798  858  480  489  495  525 -hsync -vsync
    Modeline    "Mode 18"  27.027  720  736  798  858  480  489  495  525 -hsync -vsync
    Modeline    "Mode 19"  27.027 1440 1478 1602 1716  480  484  487  525 -hsync -vsync interlace
    Modeline    "Mode 20"  27.027 1440 1478 1602 1716  480  484  487  525 -hsync -vsync interlace
    Modeline    "Mode 21"  25.200  640  656  752  800  480  490  492  525 -hsync -vsync
    Modeline    "Mode 23"  241.50 2560 2608 2640 2720 1440 1443 1448 1481 +hsync -vsync 
    Modeline    "Mode 24"  200.25 2560 2608 2640 2720 1440 1443 1448 1474 +hsync -vsync 
    Option "PreferredMode" "Mode 22"
EndSection

But, ultimately, all the functions worked with Linux. The display was crisp, sound was passed over DP or HDMI, the USB port worked flawlessly.

Verdict

Too often "vertical" monitors have crap viewing angles. I'm delighted to say that the PL2893UH is perfect. Even at an oblique angle text remains sharp and colours remain consistent.

If you're going to be staring at a screen all day, it might as well be this one!

You can buy the monitor on Amazon.

I've (mostly) grown out of the habit of tearing down things which are currently useful, and tend to wait until they reach their natural end before poking them with sharpened metal.

In late 2009, I purchased the Elonex E511EB from Waterstones. My review of it on this blog was incredibly popular - with over 250 comments!

As much as I loved the 511EB, it is well past its useful lifespan. I've since got a nook and my wife has a Kindle. The Elonex still works, but it's a little slow and clunky. So - time to break out those screwdrivers and see if I can reuse the eInk screen for something else.

After unscrewing the back and cracking off the case, this is what I found (click the images to embiggen them).

The board, made by Hanvon, runs Windows CE, and appears to be cobbled together from the most random of parts. Here's a close up of it

This really is a Frankenstein's monster of a device. Despite having no wireless capabilities, there's space for an antenna! The ribbon connector clip doesn't attach to anything.

In fact, of the three ribbon connectors present, only the one on the left is connected to anything! I assume the large empty space is for a WiFi / 3G modem to be coupled to the antenna and the smaller ribbon latch. Perhaps the one on the right is for a touchscreen digitizer?

To the left of the board is a random switch. It doesn't appear to be connected to anything else. It's not even accessible when the device is assembled.

The speakers are fairly cheap and don't hide anything of importance.

For the chip nerds among you, this is what's driving the engine:

The CPU is the Ingenic JZ4740. Interestingly, this chip is perfectly suited to running Linux. Which makes Hanvon's decision to run Windows CE all the more bizarre.

The eInk controller is the Epson D135211B2. According to this Chinese hacker's website, that's the same version of controller used to work the Kindle's eInk screen.

Connecting the eInk screen to the board is this component from Ichia.

The board itself has very tiny torx screws holding it in place. Once removed, they reveal:

Nothing of consequence.

What To Do With The Screen?

So, I have an 800*600 eInk screen, in reasonable condition, just begging to be put to good use.

Some clever people, like Matthew Petroff, have turned their Kindles into amazing displays - but that relies on the Kindle having a network connection. As does the amazing Kindleberry project which links the Kindle to a Raspberry Pi.

The 511EB is dumb. Dumb as a box of rocks. There's no networking, so that's out. The system is capable of displaying PNGs, but that would require mounting the internal memory, uploading, unmounting, rebooting, and automatically opening an image. Not feasible.

So, what I want to see is if it's possible to control the eInk screen directly from something like the Raspberry Pi.

The screen connector is the ED050SC3(LF) It's the same screen used for lots of 5 inch PVI displays.

Now, all I need to do is find some (simple) way to drive the screen. Any bright ideas, people?