E Ink Upgrades Color Screen Tech with Kaleido 4

Display technology firm E Ink has revealed its newest color e-paper generation, Kaleido 4, designed to address several limitations found in its predecessor, Kaleido 3. While Kaleido 3 currently powers e-readers and tablets from brands like Kobo, PocketBook, and Boox, alongside customized versions used in devices like Amazon's Kindle Colorsoft, the upcoming technology focuses heavily on enhancing color accuracy, contrast, and overall responsiveness.

Unlike E Ink’s Gallery 3 technology—which uses moving colored pigments to form full-color images as seen in the Remarkable Paper Pro, but suffers from frustratingly slow refresh speeds—Kaleido 4 continues to employ a color filter placed over a black-and-white e-paper panel. This methodology maintains rapid refresh performance, though the display remains capped at 4,096 colors and renders color imagery at a lower resolution than standard black-and-white text.

Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event

Nevertheless, E Ink reports that the new Kaleido 4 display technology doubles the color gamut volume compared to the previous iteration. It also increases white reflectance by 15 percent and boosts contrast by 50 percent, meaning plain text should appear significantly less muddy than it often does on Kaleido 3 screens. Furthermore, a new oxide TFT backplane enables performance speeds reaching up to 18fps, allowing the screens to handle video playback.

Major device manufacturers like Amazon and Kobo have not yet revealed any upcoming products featuring the Kaleido 4 screens. However, Hanvon Technology will become the initial adopter by integrating the technology into its upcoming M10C II note-taking tablet in China, featuring a micro-etched tempered-glass surface built to minimize glare and simulate a natural paper texture when paired with its battery-free stylus.

Source: The Verge