This article is really a game of two halves. The first half is my original exploration of the TRMNL OG and the second half – jump here – is my thoughts on the (much improved) TRMNL X.
If you’ve never heard of a TRMNL before keep reading – it’s the most fun thing I’ve discovered recently and editor hackers and nerds like me will love them!
Exclusive TRMNL Discount Code
Get $15 off your first TRMNL with discount code Elwyn15
That nearly covers the Clarity upgrade kit, which includes the battery upgrade, developer edition, charging cable, and microfiber clean cloth.
The rest of this blog post was originally published as an Issue of Cut/daily, my free weekly newsletter for Post Pros.
Cut/daily’s genesis can be traced back, in part, to this John Callahan cartoon.
The kernel of the idea was to create a daily nugget of editorial insight, wisdom or witty remark. Each day, there would be something new to enjoy, like turning over the next cartoon on a New Yorker desk calendar.
Well, today I wanted to share a new discovery that delivers that same daily dose of delight, the TRMNL OG.
Plus, a new way for you to enjoy a daily slug of Cut/daily wisdom if you set yourself a new homepage… but more on that later.
As you know, editors like to have new things on their desk; we tell ourselves they will help us work faster, or smarter (#2). And some actually do.
The TRMNL can make you faster – by helping you focus – and smarter, by drip-feeding you wisdom. But it’s got no whistles and bells to entice you.
Its genius is in its constraint.
I’m still at the start of my TRMNL journey, but I already know I love it.
TRMNL – A Review for Film Editors
What is a TRMNL?
TRMNL describes itself as “an e-ink companion that helps you stay focused.”
We believe technology should enhance your life without demanding your attention. Our ePaper dashboard is designed to provide information you need at a glance, without the endless notifications from traditional screens.
— TRMNL
It’s built by and for DIY tinkerers, homebrew developers, and an open community of builders who have embraced TRMNL’s radical simplicity but are pushing it to do so many interesting things.
Stats:
- 7.5″ e-ink display with 4 grayscale and fast refresh
- 1800mAh battery, upgradeable to 2500mAh. Lasts 2-6 months pending refresh preferences.
- 850+ available plugins
- Build your own plugins
What can TRMNL do?
The basic concept of TRMNL is that you build a Playlist of plugins to display on the device, each one getting its moment to shine depending on the refresh rate you set.
That might include:
- The contents of your Ethereum Wallet
- Astronauts who are in space right now
- Your Calendar (Google/Apple/Outlook)
- Digital Postcards sent to your TRMNL
- Todo Lists
- Days Left Until…
There are also community-built plugins called Recipes:
There’s even a recipe to track the latest recipes.
Out of the box, a TRMNL doesn’t ‘do’ anything. It’s inherently customisable, so you have to come to it with a tinkerer’s mentality. Which I, for one, fully appreciate.
One excellent aspect of TRMNL is that, as it’s an e-ink display, the battery only needs charging every 3-6 months, depending on how frequently it refreshes the screen.
It’s lightweight, well-made, and much more enjoyable than it might seem at first glance.
The limitation of non-real-time information* is actually what makes it great.https://www.youtube.com/embed/izRMluaoRhc?feature=oembed
What is TRMNL good for?
So many things, depending on what you want to do with it. That’s the beauty of it.
For film editors, I could imagine using it for:
- Tracking daily tasks
- Post schedule milestones
- Days to Picture Lock countdown
- Learning a shortcut a day
- Custom workflow cheatsheets
- Delivery spec checklists
- Render/Export monitor
- Drive space monitor
- YouTube stats tracker
- Cut/daily Wisdom
Most of these plugin ideas don’t exist yet. But invest a little time with Claude Code, and you could easily have an MVP cooking.
I’ll let you know what I create next for my own TRMNL…
*What is TRMNL not made for?
It’s not a screen designed for constant gawking, doom-scrolling, or the like.
This is brilliant and a refreshing change of mindset from the phone.
The shortest refresh rate interval is 5 minutes, so you can keep tabs on things, but not in real-time, and most of the time you’ll have your device refresh rate set to at least 15 minutes to help the battery last 90 days.
So, for example, while I had tried to install the Flip Clock plugin, because I liked the look of it, it was impossible to keep in sync with reality.
Instead, I forked that plugin and used Claude Code to adapt the existing code to turn it into a Flip Calendar with the day and date instead of the time.
Cut/daily Wisdom – A Daily Quote
If you get yourself a TRMNL, you too can enjoy the Cut/daily wisdom plugin, featuring a choice nugget of editorial wisdom, gleaned from the annals of Cut/daily’s 500 Issue Archive, in particular the 80+ Cut/daily Meets… interviews with some of the industry’s best and brightest.
But, as a Cut/daily reader, you too can also pass by /wisdom on the Cut/daily site at any point, to enjoy that day’s nugget of wisdom with the added benefit of being able to click the reference link to dive into the original source material.
Get $15 off your first TRMNL with discount code Elwyn15
That nearly covers the Clarity upgrade kit, which includes the battery upgrade, developer edition, charging cable, and microfiber clean cloth.
TRMNL X Quick Review for Video Editors
The TRMNL X is the latest e-ink device from TRMNL which ships with a bigger, more detailed screen, a longer battery life and a new touchbar that allows for some level of interaction with the screen.
One of the benefits of the TRMNL OG is that it’s small enough to sit neatly on a desk, while the TRMNL X’s larger footprint makes it ideal for spaces like a kitchen, or being mounted on a wall.
While I’ve been delighted to have the TRMNL OG in my edit suite to glance at throughout the day, as an experiment I placed the TRMNL X into our family kitchen instead. I tried to do this with as little fanfare as possible to see how the kids would take to it.
To this end the plugins that I programmed into the playlist were more focused on things I thought they might find interesting or at least curiosity provoking.
Here’s my complete TRMNL X playlist
The surprising outcome I was secretly hoping for?
They’re interested in learning new things, asking questions about what’s on the screen and are practicing their reading skills on a daily basis.
Seeing the line for the sun moving across the world map, along with the ISS position has helped the younger two (4, 6 years) to understand timezones and day/night etc. My oldest has sometimes taken to copying down the Japanese characters and then using Google Translate to translate what she’s meticulously written out – with translatable success I might add.
For me, having the BTC price appearing on there means I can incidentally keep on eye on things, without feeding the pointless habit of regularly checking in an app. Also the inspirational quotes that appear from time to time have often been very useful to the day ahead.
All this to say having a TRMNL X in our family’s orbit has been a good thing, far better than having an iPad or Alexa in the room and led to interesting conversations and creative pursuits.
What’s good about the TRMNL X
Here are five things I like about the TRMNL X.
1. The overall design is better and feels like a lot of time and attention has gone into each and every part of the device.
2. The bigger screen is both a higher resolution, refreshes faster and delivers an extended range of greys for more detailed and nuanced images. It’s surprising how great renaissance art looks on it’s low-fi black and white display.
Specifically, the X has a 10.3-inch, 1872 × 1404 display with 16 shades of grey, versus the OG’s 7.5-inch, 800 × 480 display and four grayscale levels.
3. The TRMNL X looks fantastic. It’s minimalist, comes in a nice range of colours (black, white, clear, sage, gray and a light faux wood finish) and personally, I love the see-through aesthetic of the clear option.
4. The battery life is phenomenal, especially with the Clarity Kit Upgrade which increases the battery capacity even further. Depending on how you configure your TRMNL’s activities, the battery should last for several months without charging.
5. The Touch Bar makes it interactive so you can easily move between plugins on your playlist, or, as of a few days ago, even use the controls to interact with what’s being shown on the display at the time.
What happened when I thought my TRMNL X broke
One of the interesting ways to find out what a company is really like is when something goes wrong.
For a few days I thought my TRMNL device had frozen. It wouldn’t do anything. I tried rebooting it, hard refreshing it, removing the batteries – which involved completely dismantling the entire device (thankfully it comes supplied with the correct Torx screwdriver to do so) – and sending several emails to their customer support team.
All of which was a great opportunity to put that customer service to the test and I have to say they were exemplary. Friendly, helpful and willing to do whatever it takes to solve the issue.
In the end it turned out that all I actually needed to do was to charge the device, as it had fully drained it’s battery.
This was counterintuitive at first, but, because of the way e-ink screens work – it had kept the last displayed pixels on the screen because that was just the last configuration of the ink before it ran out of battery.
So if you face the same issue, that might just be the solution.
Anyway, TRMNL were great and I’d highly recommend their products and their company and if you want any of their video blogs from CEO Ryan Kulp, you’ll see they like to do things differently.
Final Thoughts on the TRMNL X
Overall I think choosing to have something like a TRMNL X in your home is definitely a more intentional way to have unintrusive yet impactful tech around your life. It sits there quietly, not dominating your attention or your space, but proving useful or inspiring when you give it a glance.
Life with a TRMNL X isn’t a set it and forget it endeavour. Playlists need curating and refining over time to better suit your actual habits and preferences. One example I can think of from our kitchen set up is that I had to remove the modern art plugin as some of the daily images were either too weird or too inappropriate for our young family. That said, the old school art is working out just fine.
The most fun thing about the TRMNL eco-system is being able to create, modify and explore a growing world of home brew plugins that can do all kinds of interesting things. And to me that’s what good tech is all about.
Exclusive TRMNL Discount Code
Get $15 off your first TRMNL with discount code Elwyn15
That nearly covers the Clarity upgrade kit, which includes the battery upgrade, developer edition, charging cable, and microfiber clean cloth.
