Color e-readers have been round for over a decade, and a few manufacturers, resembling Pocketbook and iFlytek, have experimented with the expertise. Nonetheless, neither of their merchandise has bought very effectively. E INK has invested lots of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in refining the expertise with the intention of mass market enchantment. It has now hit vital mass with the Amazon Kindle Colorsoft, Kobo Libra Color, Kobo Clara Color and the Outstanding Paper Professional.
Smaller manufacturers have additionally embraced the newest era Kaleido 3 e-paper. Many of the merchandise are e-notebooks designed to view and edit PDF paperwork in full color and freehand drawing. All of them run Google Android and have full entry to the Google Play Retailer. This consists of merchandise from Onyx Boox, Meebook, Hyread, and Bigme.
The Know-how
There are two sorts of color, E INK, that the entire corporations embrace. The preferred is Kaleido 3. It provides richer colors, growing its color saturation by 30% in comparison with the earlier era, E Ink Kaleido Plus, along with 16 grayscale ranges and 4,096 colors. Kaleido 3 additionally makes use of E Ink ComfortGaze, a brand new entrance gentle expertise that reduces the quantity of blue gentle, with a decreased Blue Gentle Ratio (BLR) and Blue Gentle Toxicity Issue (BLTF) by as much as 60% and 24%, respectively. BLR is the poisonous blue to complete blue gentle output ratio, and BLTF is the brightness to hazardous blue ratio. Moreover, the ink is responsive, so Kaleido 3 can play animations and movies.
The previous few generations of color e-paper might solely show 4,096 colors and 100 PPI. Kaleido 3 managed to extend the colour accuracy to 150 PPI. This was completed by placing the Colour Filter Array nearer to the ink layer. The corporate did additional updates to the print sample; previously, they used glass and switched to plastic. Do colors look washed out as in earlier variations of Kaleido? E INK mentioned K3 reduces the sunshine scatter and lack of color. LCDs utilizing CFA do not need this concern, on condition that they’re emissive. The tradeoff is power effectivity and eye fatigue. E INK can be utilizing RBGW colours and never CMYK.
The second color, E INK expertise, known as Gallery 3 and is just obtainable on one present product, the Outstanding Paper Professional. Outstanding introduced that as a substitute of a 300 millisecond response time, they obtained it all the way down to 100 milliseconds. Many individuals thought this improve was as a result of engineers working on the firm, however as a substitute, it was E INK that improved it.
In a latest 2023 earnings report, E INK said, “E Ink launched the 8-inch superior color ePaper (Gallery 3) in 2022 to reinforce the expertise of utilizing color e-readers. In 2024, we are going to present an upgraded model of Gallery 3 to ship optimized efficiency and enhanced visible expertise for purchasers.”
The optimized Gallery 3 e-paper show and a few under-the-hood energy made the reMarkable Paper Professional shine. In June of this yr, E INK issued a press launch stating that they had fashioned a three way partnership with Himax for the T2000. In the event you don’t know what this implies, it’s a next-generation color ePaper timing controller. The brand new TCON design drives display screen updates quicker with decrease energy consumption, supporting a broad spectrum of color e-paper expertise platforms aimed toward e-readers, e-notebooks and digital signage. The T2000 eNote handwriting perform enhances display screen refresh pace to supply a easy writing expertise.
The T2000 represents a major development in TCON expertise in comparison with E Ink’s predecessor TCON, the T1000, which was launched in 2019. The T2000 integrates E Ink’s proprietary color imaging algorithm, which helps E Ink’s newest full-colour e-paper show applied sciences, together with E Ink Kaleido 3, E Ink Gallery 3, and E Ink Spectra 6. Along with delivering high-quality picture colors, the T2000 processes color rendering greater than ten occasions quicker than the earlier era.
Execs and Cons
Color e-readers supply enhanced visible enchantment, vibrant graphics, and a richer studying expertise for graphic novels and comics. Digital textbooks and cookbooks present further worth.
A number of drawbacks embrace battery life, decision limitations, and value. In contrast to conventional black and white e-readers with a light-weight gray display screen and razor-sharp textual content, color e-readers attempt to use colors for the background and textual content. If you’re studying e-books on it, the color saturation and fonts won’t ever look pretty much as good as a pure black-and-white e-reader.
Most individuals use a smartphone or pill to do their studying. Nonetheless, this does include some drawbacks. The “Digital eye pressure” and “laptop imaginative and prescient syndrome” are actually acquainted situations brought on by the prolonged use of tablets, computer systems, and smartphones. With illumination offered by light-emitting diodes (LEDs), the screens of those units are emissive, which means they’re made seen by shining gentle at your eyes. The brighter your environment, the brighter these lights have to shine. Emitting gentle instantly in the direction of your eyes is a part of what permits a pill to provide vibrant colors. Nonetheless, research have noticed a lowered blinking fee amongst customers emissive digital units, resulting in dry eyes and emotions of eye pressure. Amongst kids, extreme publicity to computer systems and tablets can result in situations that impair the eyes’ means to trace throughout a web page, making studying troublesome.
Many of the gentle emitted by LEDs—the sunshine supply behind telephones, tablets, and computer systems—comes from blue gentle, the a part of the sunshine spectrum with the shortest wavelengths and highest power. Publicity to blue gentle has been proven to lower the power of cells within the eye to restore themselves, elevating issues about imaginative and prescient impairment, particularly in kids.
Moreover, whereas any gentle impacts the sleep-regulating hormone melatonin, analysis has proven blue gentle to have a considerably extra highly effective impact than gentle from different components of the spectrum. As a result of interfering with our pure sleep cycles can result in an elevated danger of well being situations, together with diabetes, coronary heart illness, and despair, we should be cautious about our publicity to night-time illumination.
With an e-reader, every guide web page is “printed” in E Ink while you’re able to learn it. Due to E Ink’s paper-like high quality, you’ll be able to learn on an eReader in a variety of lighting situations, identical to a printed guide. However with an e-reader, you’ll be able to improve the font dimension and line spacing, relieving drained eyes that even a printed web page can’t present.
Way forward for Colour E-Readers: Hype or Revolution?
Amazon, Rakuten Kobo, and Outstanding have all said that their present era of color e-readers is simply the beginning. They plan to launch new merchandise in 2025 and past. Pocketbook, Onyx Boox, Bigme, and different smaller gamers will proceed to launch new merchandise designed for studying books and taking notes.
E INK is the one participant that powers the e-paper screens on each e-reader and e-notebook. They spend some huge cash on analysis and improvement to maintain their tech present and supply their massive shoppers unique new options to make them stand out. One such instance is the Kindle Scribe, the primary 10-inch E INK pill to supply 300 PPI; now that is the norm.
E INK Kaleido 3 got here out in early 2023, and the Kaleido 4 is creating. It’ll probably be launched in 2025, providing a color decision increase from 150 PPI to 200 PPI or much more. The higher the decision, the much less saturated the screens search for lengthy studying classes. Focus on the long-term potential of color e-readers and their impression on the e-reading market.
I used to be by no means a fan of E INK Kaleido 3 expertise because it might solely show round 4,096 colors, and Gallery 3 might show 50,000. Sadly, Gallery 3 has some refreshing points that should be sorted out earlier than extra corporations supply new e-readers utilizing the tech. One of the best instance of an ideal color e-reader is probably going the Kobo Libra Colour with bodily page-turn buttons and the brand new Kindle Colorsoft, which visually is one of the best one in the marketplace.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the previous fifteen years. Newspapers and web sites such because the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Put up and the New York Instances have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
