E Ink’s latest tech teases full-color e-readers with practical refresh rates
With two major display industry trade shows coming up in the next month, the rock the e-reader industry was built on — E Ink — has been pulling out the big guns. Earlier this month, E Inkannounced the next generationof its Kaleido color displays, which promise to increase color saturation while reducing blue light. The company has now announced the next generation of its Gallery display technology.
Previous Gallery displays were primarily relegated to the commercial sector for use in signage due to their horrible refresh rates, butGallery 3is aimed directly at the consumer market. The first generation of Gallery displays had a two-second refresh rate for black and white. The latest displays will bring that down to 350 ms. As for color displays, Gallery 3 will also have three color modes with refresh rates of 500 ms, 750–1000 ms, and 1500 ms.
Although it seems the Kaleido 3 and the Gallery 3 would compete, each fills different niches. The Kaleido display has a color resolution of 150 ppi compared to 300 ppi on the Gallery screens. However, the most significant difference is in the display technology. The Kaleido screens use an RGB glass color filter array on top of the black and white microcapsule E Ink display. The Gallery has multicolor microcapsules that don’t need the color filter array, and it displays colors in CMYK. The glass color filter array also means that the Kaleido is a rigid display, whereas the Gallery will have versions suitable for rollable and foldable displays.
Like the Kaleido, the Gallery will support pen input and use the same blue-light reducing technology. They will be on display this week at Touch Taiwan in Taipei and early in May for Display Week in San Jose, California. It’s unclear when we’d see this on consumer-facing products, though.
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