The well accepted definition of an e-reader is <i>"a mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading"</i> (from wikipedia) and most (all?) of those devices are reflective as opposed to LCDs which are backlit.<p><i>"They spent five days reading from a paperback and five days from an iPad."</i>. If only iPads were used, I don't believe the word e-reader is appropriate.<p>If you use an e-ink display without a built-in light, there are no reason this would be any different then using a book (as mentioned in the article but it's not only about <i>"the original kindle"</i>). Also there were tons of studies about the effect of light on sleep and especially blue light emitted by LCDs, most e-reader makers use a warmer light if I'm not mistaken.<p>EDIT: elaborating
Probably the only useful line in the article:<p>> The light emitted by most e-readers is shining directly into the eyes of the reader, whereas from a printed book or the original Kindle, the reader is only exposed to reflected light from the pages of the book.<p>So it's talking entirely about brightly backlit tablets, not e-readers with e-ink.
F.lux has this study on their webpage.<p><a href="https://justgetflux.com/research.html" rel="nofollow">https://justgetflux.com/research.html</a>
<a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/12/18/1418490112.full.pdf+html" rel="nofollow">http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/12/18/1418490112.full...</a><p>I was really hoping for research comparing F.lux to a non-backlit screen; this seems to tell us what we already knew.
This is one reason why I use a European model Samsung Galaxy S3 (GT-I9300) for ebooks. It includes "mDNIe" which gives you very flexible OLED display configuration on rooted phones. You can completely turn off the blue channel and remap blue to green so blue things remain visible. I use the "Galactic Night" app for switching between mDNIe modes.<p>To further reduce light exposure I use gray (remapped to yellow) text on a black background (very dark because the display is OLED). I set the screen brightness to maximum in FBReader to avoid PWM flicker, and reduce the text brightness to compensate. I also disable the phone indicator LEDs. I don't find reading like this to harm my sleep.<p>The one problem is that the mDNIe mode very briefly flashes to default when the phone is first turned on from standby. I think this could be fixed with a kernel patch but I just avoid looking at the screen then.
I put a red filter over our nightlight, which seems to work quite well for reading paper books (or non-lit e-readers). Now I've also ordered some amber LED bulbs, without any blue light at all, which should be a more of a permanent solution.<p>I also ordered an amber filter for my phone, although I think perhaps a better solution would be to not use phones/tablets in bed.. but I'm not sure it's realistic to always avoid the temptation.<p>The final part of the solution is to have a wake-up light. I had one before, and it's really quite essential up here in the north. But I think it would be beneficial everywhere. Studies showed that people have different times it's natural for them to wake up ("A" and "B" people), and if you wake up earlier than what's natural for you, it affects your performance. Solution? Block out all external light from the bedroom, and use a wake-up light as an artificial sunrise. (Or allow people to come to work/school at different times, but that's not always an option).
The study only seemed to compare An iPad with print books. While I am sure many people who do use an iPad for ebooks I am sure there are many more Kindle readers, which may well have given a different result.
I've been looking for a laptop with a kindle like screen and a cool ARM processor for ages. My brain gets burned by the backlit screen and my lap gets burned from the steamy hot intel processor. I would be happy to switch to Ubuntu even if I prefer OSX if this became available.
Any kind of bright light at night is going to reduce your melatonin production. This problem goes all the way back to the introduction of incandescent lighting, e-readers are just the latest chapter.
I use the Kindle app under "sepia" mode to help mitigate this sort of problem, somewhat. It works much f.lux does, though I don't think it's as extreme as f.lux's colors.
If you really have to read with a backlit display on your iPad or another device, just get flux[1].<p>[1] <a href="https://justgetflux.com/" rel="nofollow">https://justgetflux.com/</a>
This article is poorly titled. Disappointing since the BBC is capable of better journalism than this. They should be specific that it is backlit LCD screens (especially LED backlights since their spectrum is predominantly in the blue range which simulates morning) rather than what is typically meant when someone says E-readers, ie: readers that use E-Ink panels which are not backlit and thus rely on ambient light.
The study ignores real e-readers with e-paper displays that mimic dead tree books extremely well. They also have a sample size of 6 for each of the 2 groups...