E Ink Unveils Kaleido 4 With Brighter Color And Faster Refreshes
E Ink says its new color e-paper display improves contrast and refresh speed, but reports disagree on how many colors it can show.
E Ink has announced Kaleido 4, a new version of the color e-paper technology used in e-readers and writing tablets. The company says it improves color reproduction, contrast and screen refresh speed over Kaleido 3. Its first announced device is Hanvon Technology’s M10 C II tablet, which will be available in China.
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What Changes With Kaleido 4
E Ink says Kaleido 4 doubles the color gamut volume of its predecessor, according to both Engadget and The Verge. The outlets differ, however, on the number of colors the display can produce: Engadget reports E Ink’s figure as more than 40,000, while The Verge says Kaleido 4 remains limited to 4,096. Neither report resolves that discrepancy.
The Verge reports that E Ink claims a 15 percent increase in white reflectance and a 50 percent boost in contrast. Those changes could make black-and-white text look clearer than it does on Kaleido 3, where the color filter can leave text looking dark. For now, the improvement in everyday use remains to be seen: Engadget says the new display needs to be compared directly with older Kaleido screens.
Why Refresh Speed Matters
Kaleido screens place a color filter over an e-paper panel that forms images with black-and-white pigments. According to The Verge, Kaleido 3 refreshes relatively quickly, but its color images have a limited palette and lower resolution than its black-and-white text. E Ink’s Gallery 3 technology instead uses colored pigments to produce richer images, though both outlets note that it refreshes more slowly.
E Ink says an oxide backplane helps Kaleido 4 refresh fast enough to display video at up to 18 frames per second. That is modest beside a conventional phone screen, as Engadget notes, but it represents an improvement for e-paper. The Verge says the new backplane sounds similar to a modification used in Amazon’s Kindle Colorsoft.
The First Device—and What Comes Next
Hanvon Technology’s M10 C II is the first announced tablet using Kaleido 4. Engadget reports that it pairs the display with a redesigned front light and micro-etched glass intended to feel more like paper when writing. The Verge says the glass is designed to reduce glare and that the tablet supports a battery-free pen.
Kaleido 3 screens already appear in devices from companies including Kobo and Boox, while Amazon uses a customized version in the Kindle Colorsoft, according to The Verge. Neither Amazon nor Kobo has announced a Kaleido 4 device, the outlet reports. For readers outside China, the Hanvon launch therefore offers an early look at the technology, rather than a broadly available upgrade.
Sources
This story was compiled by AI from the reports below. Read the originals for the full details.