As I understand it going faster typically skips steps that are necessary for maintenance of the panel. Fine for a while but if you don't periodically run a "proper" cycle the panel could eventually be permanently damaged.

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birdsongs an hour ago | parent [-]

That's exactly it. I was a firmware engineer at reMarkable making the latest tablets.

We had some secret eink sauce (propriety waveforms) to get the high refresh rates and colour contrast without a full flashing screen reset, but even then you need to run longer maintenance refreshes occasionally.

Pixels are just vertical columns of viscous fluid with charged ink particles. A waveform is just voltage changes over time to these columns to shift the particles up and down. More black to the top = darker shade of grey. Colour (in the gallery display, at least) is the same, just with each CMY particle group having different charges and responses to different waveforms.

Every once in awhile this vertical column gets messy with loose particles distributed through it (ghosting, muddy contrast) so performing a hard rail-to-rail voltage reset forces all the particles up and then down, and gives you a clean slate.

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20k 43 minutes ago | parent [-]

Out of interest, what (vaguely) is the amount of time you need between maintenance refreshes?

	▲	birdsongs 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It really depends on the state of the screen. It's easier with reading PDFs, for instance, when you can get away with a full refresh on page turns. Versus someone drawing on the screen with a lot of zooming and panning. People with the tablet would notice that when they stop a series of these actions that were back to back, the screen will "clean" itself after about 5 seconds of idleness.