Get Ready for More eReaders With Color E Ink

Digital book readers usually fall into one of two categories: ones with black-and-white screens with weeks of battery life, and models with regular LCD screens that aren’t much different from regular tablets. However, more eReaders with color E Ink screens are on the way.

E Ink, the company that designs the digital ink displays used in countless eReaders and other devices, has started mass production of the E Ink Gallery 3 display technology. The new tech supports a full-color gamut through cyan, magenta, yellow, and white particles. Black and white content refreshes at 350 milliseconds, “fast color mode’ (presumably with reduced colors) is 500 ms, standard color mode is 750-1000 ms, and the best color is 1500 ms. There’s also support for pen input, opening the door for a Kindle Scribe-type device with a color screen.

It’s not great that a full color refresh takes over a second, but E Ink still retains all of its advantages — less eye strain than a normal LCD or OLED screen, and much better power efficiency. E Ink only uses power when refreshing the display, unlike other display technologies, which require constant power to stay on.

There’s no word yet on if Amazon will release a Kindle with the new color E Ink screen, but other manufacturers are stepping up. Bigme, BOOX, iFlyTek, iReader, PocketBook, Readmoo, and AOC plan to release products based on E Ink Gallery 3 “in 2023 and beyond.” Sharp also showed off a digital note-taking device in October using the Gallery 3 screen.

Source: E Ink