New Color Libra and Clara now advertised in US

[cellaris]

Originally Posted by dem1980fr

Yes, I mean the ”as good" means "the experience".
When I use my Libra H2O outside, I like that the paper seems to be white like real paper.
So if the paper seems to be grey on Libra Colour model, it is a downgrade of the experience for me.
I read often mangas, and there are some pages in color, so they are BW on my Libra, but i was able to read them. Colour is a great new function but I would like to test this device outside before buying... Inside, with backlight, I think the experience will be fine.
I don’t know if I will buy this Colour or waiting for a Libra Colour 2 :/

Here we come back to the distinction between colour and black and white.

If you want to read manga (black and white) and novels (black and white) outdoors, there is nothing to see or think about: a monochrome reader is much better. If you want to read comics (colour) outdoors, in my opinion a colour e-reader looks better than a monochrome e-reader because the colours stand out against the darkness of the screen, whereas a monochrome e-reader does not give you colour even though its screen is whiter.

Indoors and with the lighting on, the situation changes a lot. The differences are minimised with black and white content and huge with colour (because monochrome e-readers only have greyscale). Here it depends on how much you use colour. I use it in my regular reading of novels to distinguish text elements and for underlining and highlighting (and also for external applications). For me personally, it pays off. If you only use it occasionally, you will have to decide whether it is worth it or not.

[cellaris]

Originally Posted by slantybard

Someone else on Reddit has posted photos showing side by side Colour Libra and Libra 2 in various lighting conditions for those interested:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kobo/commen...looking_great/

Direct link to their photos: https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...0ou4Q9Ru5EZECZ

And where are the comparative pictures of colour content in different lighting conditions?

I stress this point again: anyone who buys a colour e-reader is buying it to view colour content (unless they have lost their mind). To forget something so obvious is incomprehensible to me.

[deleted2]

Originally Posted by cellaris

I stress this point again: anyone who buys a colour e-reader is buying it to view colour content (unless they have lost their mind). To forget something so obvious is incomprehensible to me.

Just wanting to see the books covers in colours, and some of the pictures that might be in it, or to highlight text in colours, is it enough to lose one's mind?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Claude_C

Just wanting to see the books covers in colours, and some of the pictures that might be in it, or to highlight text in colours, is it enough to lose one's mind?

But 99% to 99.9% of your time will be reading the mono text, and as there are no eink panels better than 300 ppi, you get at best 150 ppi on a colour eink ereader. That's quite a sacrifice. If you have a (sleep) cover you might not see the covers much at all.

Now if there were even 450 dpi/ppi mono ink, then the colour version would be 225, which is hugely better than any current colour eink.

[deleted2]

Originally Posted by Quoth

But 99% to 99.9% of your time will be reading the mono text, and as there are no eink panels better than 300 ppi, you get at best 150 ppi on a colour eink ereader.

I don't know where you got your information, but I read that you get a 300 ppi while reading text. And 150 ppi when watching stuff in colours. There are 2 "layers" or "panels", as I understood it. One for black & white, the other for colours. It's not a single panel for colours and black and white.

Here’s the official info : https://www.eink.com/brand/detail/Kaleido

An E Ink Kaleido™ Module is comprised of a TFT backplane, Ink layer, Color Filter layer and Protective Sheet.E Ink Kaleido™ displays offer 16 levels of grayscale and are capable of displaying 4096 colors

[cellaris]

Originally Posted by Claude_C

Just wanting to see the books covers in colours, and some of the pictures that might be in it, or to highlight text in colours, is it enough to lose one's mind?

That is for the individual user to decide. I am not one of those who underestimate the aesthetic aspects. A colour e-reader will be more pleasing to you the more use you make of colour.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Claude_C

I don't know where you got your information, but I read that you get a 300 ppi while reading text. And 150 ppi when watching stuff in colours.

No, it's IDENTICAL principle of colour to colour on an an LCD panel. No-one quotes tne mono resolution of the actual LCD, just the colour resolution, because quoting the underlying mono resolution would be misleading. LCDs also can be stripe like Triton, or a 2 x 2 pattern like Kaleido (but with more staurated colours), or other more complicated schemes with R, G, B, yellow and white.

Once you add a colour filter to a mono panel, the real mono resolution is lost. Certainly for LCD and eink, if the text is black and the background is white there can be an apparent slightly better quality than the 150 dpi.

This image from E Ink Corp, is exactly what I wrote. There is a standard 300 dpi mono eink panel and there is a 2 x 2 layout of translucent coloured dots printed on if, giving a colour resolution of 150 dpi. The pixels are no longer black, white and 14 greys, but tinted, so true 300 dpi is gone.

The 2 x 2 coloured dots is the printed layer between the mono ink and the liight pipe for the front light. Each coloured dot has to exactly cover one mono pixel


A hypothetical 2000 x 1200 LCD, or eink, colour panel that using stripes (like Triton or TVs use) is 6000 x 1200, or 2000 x 3600.
If it's using a 2 x 2 pattern so that with squarish pixels both on the actual panel and the coloured pixels (which use 4 mono pixels under the filter), then the actual underlying mono panel is 4000 x 2400 pixels.

It's true that because of the subpixels the mono dpi isn't as bad as 150dpi (equally true for LCD and even OLED), but you do not ever have the same quality as as a mono panel of 300 dpi.

Some sellers and people describing color eink based of kaleido or triton are either mistaken or being misleading. No-one sells colour LCD or OLED that way and given 200 to 1000 levels per sub pixel, vs 16 for eink, the sharpeness of the same colour dpi panel in LCD/OLED is much better than eink.

The colour is simply passive translucent dots on a mono panel in the case of eink.

[deleted2]

Originally Posted by Quoth

No, it's IDENTICAL principle of colour to colour on an an LCD panel. No-one quotes tne mono resolution of the actual LCD, just the colour resolution, because quoting the underlying mono resolution would be misleading. LCDs also can be stripe like Triton, or a 2 x 2 pattern like Kaleido (but with more staurated colours), or other more complicated schemes with R, G, B, yellow and white.

Once you add a colour filter to a mono panel, the real mono resolution is lost. Certainly for LCD and eink, if the text is black and the background is white there can be an apparent slightly better quality than the 150 dpi.

This image from E Ink Corp, is exactly what I wrote. There is a standard 300 dpi mono eink panel and there is a 2 x 2 layout of translucent coloured dots printed on if, giving a colour resolution of 150 dpi. The pixels are no longer black, white and 14 greys, but tinted, so true 300 dpi is gone.
Attachment 207737
The 2 x 2 coloured dots is the printed layer between the mono ink and the liight pipe for the front light. Each coloured dot has to exactly cover one mono pixel


A hypothetical 2000 x 1200 LCD, or eink, colour panel that using stripes (like Triton or TVs use) is 6000 x 1200, or 2000 x 3600.
If it's using a 2 x 2 pattern so that with squarish pixels both on the actual panel and the coloured pixels (which use 4 mono pixels under the filter), then the actual underlying mono panel is 4000 x 2400 pixels.

It's true that because of the subpixels the mono dpi isn't as bad as 150dpi (equally true for LCD and even OLED), but you do not ever have the same quality as as a mono panel of 300 dpi.

Some sellers and people describing color eink based of kaleido or triton are either mistaken or being misleading. No-one sells colour LCD or OLED that way and given 200 to 1000 levels per sub pixel, vs 16 for eink, the sharpeness of the same colour dpi panel in LCD/OLED is much better than eink.

The colour is simply passive translucent dots on a mono panel in the case of eink.

When I look at pictures and videos, the text on the Kobo Kaleido screen look as crisp as the Paperwhite next to it.

[Quoth]

So the Libra Colour 150 dpi is a bit better than a DXG 150 dpi for regular black text and white "paper", but nothing like as good as a Libra 2 Mono 300 dpi.

The Libra colour screen is essentially the Libra 2 screen with coloured dots on every pixel. Then the controller/software selectively uses the underlying mono pixels to give the desired shade as your eye averages the page.

Your eyes see much more detail in shade than hue. So Colour television uses twice to four times sharper mono detail than colour detail to save transmission space. So instead of red and green dots (if the blue dots all have black), you see yellow.

Hence pure black text on white "paper" will look a little sharper than 150 dpi, but it's not proper 300 dpi any longer.

[deleted2]

Originally Posted by cellaris

That is for the individual user to decide. I am not one of those who underestimate the aesthetic aspects. A colour e-reader will be more pleasing to you the more use you make of colour.

I'm an esthete.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Claude_C

When I look at pictures and videos, the text on the Kobo Kaleido screen look as crisp as the Paperwhite next to it.

Video is especially useless to compare ereaders.

Also you'd need direct vision (not a photo), or a macro lens on a decent camera showing just part of the screen.

Then what are you viewing with?

I've taken a load of photos here of different ereaders and tablets and not published them as I'm not convinced the results viewed would be adequate to give the correct impression.

Some logical reflection and people will realise it's impossible for a Kaleido (simply printed colour pattern) eink to give the same sharpness and contrast as the 300 mono eink panel without the coloured dots.

[deleted2]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Hence pure black text on white "paper" will look a little sharper than 150 dpi, but it's not proper 300 dpi any longer.

I have trouble believing that. Why are they talking about 300 ppi if we don't get that?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Claude_C

I have trouble believing that. Why are they talking about 300 ppi if we don't get that?

Who are "they"?

You can't get the 300 dpi. It's gone because of the printed colour dots.

[Aleron Ives]

If they advertised that the colour filter compromises the greyscale performance on regular books, people would be less excited by Kaleido's flawed technology.

[deleted2]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Who are "they"?

You can't get the 300 dpi. It's gone because of the printed colour dots.

They, Kaleido, Kobo, etc.

Why put a 300 dpi panel if you can only get 150 dpi? This makes no sense.