Color e-paper has always felt like a compromise to me. You get color, but the text loses some of its crisp, printed-page look. That’s always been my biggest gripe with color e-readers.
Turns out, E Ink has a solution called Kaleido 4, the latest version of its color e-paper platform, and it already ships on Hanvon’s M10C II notebook.
What does Kaleido 4 improve?
As the official release claims, Kaleido 4 doubles the previous generation’s color gamut volume, pushing it above 40K. For those catching up, color gamut refers to the range of colors a screen can show. We don’t get a unit, though, so don’t mistake it for a color count.
White reflectance, how much light the screen bounces back, rises by 15%. Contrast also rises by 50%. In short, the color volume, contrast, and reflectance all go up, making Kaleido 4 a better display.
With those improvements, E Ink wants e-paper to handle color PDFs and engineering drawings, not just books. New algorithms also push video to 18 frames a second at best. I’m not convinced video is a major selling point for e-paper, but smoother playback could help with educational content.
What does the first Kaleido 4 device offer?
Hanvon’s M10C II is where Kaleido 4 debuts. A new oxide backplane (the layer of transistors that switches each pixel) runs at higher voltages for faster refreshes. With Hanvon’s own screen-timing chip, page flips and scrolling are 27% faster.
That should help address one of e-paper’s more persistent frustrations: sluggish navigation.
A reworked front light, the screen’s built-in glow, aims for more natural color reproduction. For handwriting, it includes a battery-free pen with 8,192 pressure levels and micro-etched tempered glass that cuts glare and parallax (the gap between the pen tip and the ink) while providing a paper-like writing resistance.
I’d say Kaleido 4 is designed to support a broader range of digital content, like educational illustrations, science and technology reference materials, and presentations, and to reduce the perception of screen graininess.
In the future, you could see this display technology used in devices from brands like Amazon (such as the Kindle Colorsoft), digital notetakers, e-paper tablets, and digital textbooks.
RELATED COVERAGE:
