E Ink upgraded the screen found in most color e-readers

E Ink introduced its next-generation Kaleido 4 color e-paper display technology, an upgrade to the Kaleido 3 panels used in most color e-readers. The announcement covers improvements to color reproduction, contrast, and refresh speed, and the technology will first appear in a note-taking tablet sold in China. Current Kaleido 3 screens appear in devices from Kobo, PocketBook, and Boox, while Amazon's Kindle Colorsoft uses a customized version of that panel.

Kaleido 3 works by placing a color filter over an e-paper panel that contains only black and white pigments. That design allows relatively fast screen refreshes, but it produces color images at a lower resolution than black-and-white text and with a limited palette that tends to look desaturated. The added color filter also makes plain text appear darker than it does on e-readers that use a black-and-white-only E Ink screen.

E Ink says Kaleido 4 doubles the color gamut volume of its predecessor. The display is still limited to 4,096 colors, far fewer than the millions produced by modern LCD and OLED screens, and color content still renders at a lower resolution than black-and-white text. The company also claims the new panel raises white reflectance by 15 percent and improves contrast by 50 percent, which could make plain text look less muddy than it often does on Kaleido 3.

E Ink's Gallery 3 technology, used in the Remarkable Paper Pro, forms full-color images with colored pigments that move around. It has not been adopted as widely because its refresh rate is slow enough to feel frustrating in use. Kaleido 3 refreshes much faster, and a new oxide TFT backplane in Kaleido 4 pushes performance further, with refresh rates up to 18fps that make video playback possible.

No new devices featuring Kaleido 4 have been announced by Amazon or Kobo. Hanvon Technology will be the first to adopt the technology, in its upcoming M10C II tablet. The device will be available only in China.

The M10C II will pair its Kaleido 4 display with a micro-etched tempered-glass surface intended to reduce glare and give a more paper-like feel when writing with its battery-free pen.

More hardware news from TechManNews.