E Ink upgraded the screen found in most color e-readers
E Ink announced the next generation of its Kaleido color e-paper screen technology today, delivering several welcome improvements. The company's existing Kaleido 3 displays can be found in e-readers and tablets from companies like Kobo, PocketBook, and Boox, while Amazon's Kindle Colorsoft uses a customized version to improve performance. The new Kaleido 4 technology addresses some of Kaleido 3's shortcomings with…
Key points
- E Ink announced Kaleido 4, a new color e-paper screen for e-readers.
- It doubles color gamut volume and boosts contrast by 50 percent.
- Hanvon's M10C II tablet will be the first device with Kaleido 4.
E Ink announced the next generation of its Kaleido color e-paper screen technology today. The new Kaleido 4 display offers several improvements over Kaleido 3, which is used in e-readers from Kobo, PocketBook, and Boox, while Amazon's Kindle Colorsoft uses a customized version.
Kaleido 4 addresses shortcomings of Kaleido 3 with better color reproduction, better contrast, and faster screen refreshes. E Ink claims the new technology doubles the color gamut volume of its predecessor, which should improve how color images look.
Technical details and limitations
Unlike E Ink's Gallery 3 display, which uses colored pigments that move to form full-color images, Kaleido 3 employs a color filter over an e-paper panel with just black and white pigments. This approach yields fast refresh rates but produces color images at a lower resolution with a limited palette that tends to look desaturated. The extra color filter also leaves plain text looking darker than on black-and-white E Ink screens.
Kaleido 4 remains limited to 4,096 colors and lower resolution for color images compared to black-and-white text. However, it increases white reflectance by 15 percent and boosts contrast by 50 percent, so plain text may look less muddy. Thanks to a new oxide TFT backplane, Kaleido 4's performance is faster, with refresh rates up to 18fps, enabling video playback.
First device and availability
No companies like Amazon or Kobo have announced new devices with Kaleido 4 screens yet. Hanvon Technology will be the first to adopt the technology in its upcoming M10C II tablet.
The M10C II will only be available in China. It will feature a Kaleido 4 display with a micro-etched tempered-glass surface designed to reduce glare and provide a more authentic paper-like feel when taking notes using its battery-free pen.
