E Ink Develops New Color E-Paper Display

(Photo by ifanr Video/YouTube)

Color eReaders are still not a thing, but E Ink continues to develop its technology and is now ready to unveil a new color e-paper display called Print-Color.

As Liliputing reports, Print-Color retains all the advantages of E Ink's previous e-paper technology, meaning it only uses power when refreshing the screen, requires no backlight, and can be easily seen outdoors. However, it builds on those features with the ability to display black, white, red, green, and blue colors. It can also combine the colors allowing it to perform like a full color screen.

Here's the Print-Color display in action:

This new display technology certainly has the potential to revolutionize eReaders as full-color devices, but E Ink is initially targeting business, retail, and educational use cases.

We don't know how much Print Color displays cost, but it's surely going to carry a premium over the non-color E Ink panels, at least initially. Whether we get consumer color eReaders will ultimately depend on how big that premium is.

There's also a question mark over how useful or popular color eReader devices would prove with consumers. Amazon's Kindle is very popular because it allows you to carry around hundreds of books and read them off a paper-like display. A color version would do the same, but would enhance other works—for example, digital comics. Is that enough to get consumers to pay more and switch?

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This isn't the first time E Ink has developed a full-color e-paper solution; the company produced a 20-inch Advanced Color ePaper (ACeP) back in 2016.

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