The following comment on backlighting was made by visitor.

Backlighting For E-Book Readers

To address the backlighting issue on e-book readers is not easy because there are many factors to consider on a technical level.

Backlighting as a concept is not wrong, evil, or bad for the eyes. Light is essentially light, and light reflected off an e-ink screen is not significantly different from light being emitted from the device itself. If EPDs could be developed with backlighting, they most assuredly would be. It's a practical constraint that prevents it, not some altruistic intention on behalf of manufacturers.

The real-world disadvantages of backlighting are hard to cite because different technologies utilize it differently. Some backlit screens simply cannot be made transflective (transmissive + reflective) or reflective, eliminating their feasibility in bright ambient light. Some compromise transflective solutions are mediocre in both transmissive and reflective applications.

With dedicated transmissive displays, you've got to worry about power consumption and daylight readability. With transflective, there may be optical compromises, and so far they also consume more power than dedicated reflective technologies generally do. However, this is changing as a few good backlight-capable technologies are being experimented with.

As far as eye strain...that's more an effect of using a device too maladjusted to the ambient light in the visual periphery than it is to the nature of the backlight itself. When mated well to the quantity of light in the surrounding environment (at least within peripheral vision), eye strain is pretty much nonexistent. Claims about "looking at a light source" are usually uninformed about even basic physics of light. Flicker of CFL (compact florescent light) backlights could be a problem, though no more than reading a book under a flickering incandescent or fluorescent room light, and the effect can be negated with more stable light sources.

As a result of the technological issues in implementing different types of backlights into different types of screens with different types of results...there is no clean or easy way to come up with advantages and disadvantages.

This writer wishes to remain anonymous.