We’ve had e-readers and e-notebook devices with color e-paper screens for a few years now, but E Ink is finally addressing some of the technology’s biggest shortcomings with the Kaleido 3 and E Ink Gallery announced earlier this month 3, announced yesterday . In particular, we’re working on color and resolution improvements.
When we got our hands on the first devices to feature E Ink’s first-generation color e-paper display technology, we were both blown away by the e-readers capable of displaying color images, and a little disappointed by what we saw. Kaleido, as E Ink says is color e-paper for consumer devices, is limited to 4,096 colors (screens on smartphones, laptops or tablets can display millions of shades) and is very dependent on bright light sources Those colors don’t look dark and messy. Companies such as Amazon and Kobo seem to reflect our experience, and they have yet to adopt color E Ink displays for their popular e-readers.
Over the past few years, E Ink has rapidly iterated its Kaleido technology, releasing updated versions that improve color saturation and performance. These include Kaleido 3, released a few weeks ago, with improved responsiveness and refresh rates, allowing the screen to play videos and animations without unsightly ghosting, plus better headlights for improved colors when reading in the dark reproduce. The Kaleido 3 is an exciting option for tablets and other media consumption devices, but it’s still limited in resolution and only 4,096 colors.
That’s where the E Ink Gallery 3 is more promising. Like the earliest e-readers, it has a relatively slow refresh rate, taking a second and a half to redraw the entire page in full-color mode and half a second in color mode with reduced image quality. But the trade-off may be worth it, as the E Ink Gallery 3 can reproduce over 50,000 colors using the “Four-Particle Ink System: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and White.” Even with a cheap LCD panel, it’s still nowhere near as good as Kaleido in color fidelity, but it’s a huge improvement. E Ink Gallery 3 also boosts image resolution to 300 DPI for color and black and white content, while Kaleido still limits color images to 150 DPI. In the age of Retina Display technology, this is remarkable.
There’s no specific word on when we’ll see an e-reader or pen-compatible e-notebook device (hopefully later this year) with E Ink’s new Gallery 3 screen technology, but in addition to touting its improved specs, the company also Demonstrated the flexibility of showcasing the display through several chunky prototypes.
Like the OLED displays that make devices like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 possible, E Ink’s e-paper displays are flexible and durable, meaning we could eventually see foldable e-readers or electronic Notes, they’re just as easy to carry around. Of course, the screen is nearly double the size to accommodate larger magazine and newspaper layouts — both formats that don’t reflow well and are hard to read on devices like the Amazon Kindle. Again, there’s no timeline for when we’ll actually see such a device released, but it’s a future that E Ink is clearly investing heavily in and wants to see happen.