PocketBook Era Color

[Xaenor]

For any owners out there: Do devices with colour-screen support consume the battery charge faster than purely B&W ereaders? Does it depend on the colour vs B&W documents?

[dmalinovsky]

Originally Posted by Xaenor

For any owners out there: Do devices with colour-screen support consume the battery charge faster than purely B&W ereaders? Does it depend on the colour vs B&W documents?

Unfortunately, yes. Kaleido 3 screen is darker, so you have to use the front light indoors and make it brighter to compensate the grey background. But even with this, the battery should last for 2-3 weeks without WiFi (one week if you're an avid reader like me, reading several hours every day).

Keep in mind that Era Color has larger battery than Era B&W, so you probably won't notice any difference (2500 mAh vs 1700 mAh).

[Quoth]

It's purely the frontlight using extra power. Kaleido 3 is just a regular B&W (mono 16 levels) eink panel with printed pattern of translucent coloured dots.

[Xaenor]

I see, thanks for sharing. Someone in a discussion on the Era Color on reddit mentioned issues with battery life on their colour-screen ereaders (specifically Inkpad Color C), and I found it a bit suspicious.

[cellaris]

Originally Posted by Xaenor

For any owners out there: Do devices with colour-screen support consume the battery charge faster than purely B&W ereaders? Does it depend on the colour vs B&W documents?

It will depend on the battery of the device and whether it is used with the illumination on or off. As indicated above, having a darker screen means that the illumination of the e-reader is normally used at higher levels, which is compensated for by a more powerful battery. In my particular case (Onyx Boox Tab Mini C) the battery life is similar to the average of my monochrome e-readers (which varies according to their characteristics).

In any case, each user has a different way of using their colour e-readers. Some people use them with the light always off (even if the screen is darker), others use them in a mixed mode (pure text with illumination; images -comics- without illumination, because the colour corrects to some extent the darkness of the screen). I prefer to use the lighting always on (except outdoors). Generalisations should be taken with caution.

[Michal Jancik]

Originally Posted by Xaenor

The German news source claims the price of 259 Euro.

This is quite a fair price when I take into account the price of previous devices on the prehistoric HW type Alwiner B288.

But overall, I have quite a problem with colored eReaders. I have always used book readers for reading books B&W, for book readers with a 6-inch display, I really don't understand the point of fitting a color display, why?

It seems more correct on displays with a size of 7.8, but in my case I could only try the previous Gen. of Kaleido 2 Color display which had a very low resolution and as for reading books (black ink) reading was not very pleasant, due to poor contrast and dark background.

Unfortunately Pocketbook ERA Color did not appeal to me, the device has a large enough screen for comfortably reading MANGA, but it is usually B&W. The price and quality for reading color comics convinced me of the TCL with the Nxtpaper display. https://www.tcl.com/eu/en/tablets/tcl-nxtpaper-10s

in addition, the device costs a fraction of the price, it is faster, as is the installed application, the current android version, and the color presentation of the display is significantly better for my eyes than the faded colors of the Kaleido display, which usually has to be equally backlit most of the time.

That's why I was interested in the writing of the "Galery 3" technology, which is a possible writing for static displays due to the long response where you drink your coffee before the page is turned, but I was interested in the quality and fidelity of color rendering, as I have never seen this technology with my own eyes.

PS: But since I bought the Inkpad 4, I am very careful about protecting the front glass from Pocketbok, as in the case of the BOOX Leaf2, where one version has a flush screen and the other (black) has an alignment layer, and the difference in contrast is really big. (despite the fact that it is an identical E-INK screen)

The version of the Pocketbook ERA with a recessed screen without additional layers would IMHO be a very good choice and would make a very good book reader even despite the bad optimization of the OS, even in the case of the Kaleido version.

[Quoth]

The Gallery 3 still is far behind the TCL NxtPaper 3.0 for colour and contrast. It's good enough for a brightly lit shop or shop window signage, but only about 50,000 combinations of hue, saturation and brightness. The complementary/secondary Cyan, Yellow and Magenta are maybe twice as bright as brightest Red, Green and Blue primaries because it's subtractive.
It's for semi-static adverts.

Also for Kaleido you'd need better than 450 dpi to have the Nxtpaper 11 display sharpness. The "later in 2024" Nxtpaper 15 seems to be slightly higher resolution. Also the quoted resolutions of LCD are real, rather than them boasting of the underlying mono panel resolution (which might be 3600 x 2000 pixels if the Nxtpaper 11 is stripes, I'll try a better magnification system).
Soon the QLED (quantum dot on LCD) will be on phones and tablets, not just TV screens, which will give x5 brightness in full sunlight, or a reduction to 1/5th of backlight power. The eink can't use quantum dot colour as the red or green light emitting dots are driven by blue light. OLED might use them. The OLED are not real LEDs like Sony Crystal panels, or the large LED panels but diode-like electroluminescent dots giving blue or violet and having both phosphors for red and green (some have quad arrays with yellow too) and sometimes a colour filter.

[cellaris]

This is the eternal discussion about colour e-readers. And I think the positions are irreconcilable.

Each user has his or her own reasons for preferring one device over another. Personally, I don't want to read anything on a tablet: no novels, no comics, no technical PDFs, nothing. And I don't want to carry two devices to read, depending on the content. I think it's great that people read on their tablets, but that option is out of the question for me. (I have owned the TCL NXTpaper 11 tablet and the TCL 40 NxtPaper 4G smartphone for quite some time now and I do not share your enthusiasm for these reading devices. I think the distance between an e-reader and a tablet or smartphone is the same in both directions).

I still think comparisons should be made between similar devices: tablets with tablets and e-readers with e-readers. Or at least compare them one device at a time. But the colour e-reader, precisely because of its unique feature of combining e-ink and colour (and that is its "raison d'être"), is compared to two different devices at the same time. For some things it is compared to a monochrome e-reader and for others to a tablet. And in the comparison, obviously, you always lose out. Why don't you compare each device separately? How does a comic book look on a monochrome e-reader? How can you use a tablet without illumination? If you compare colour with a tablet it loses out (4096 vs. millions) but if you compare it with a monochrome reader it wins out (4096 vs. 0). If you compare the unilluminated screen with a monochrome reader it loses because it is darker, but if you compare it with a tablet it wins because the tablet cannot be used without illumination.

A colour e-reader (also a monochrome one) is a compromise between several factors. There will be users who don't like that compromise. I understand that. But my point is that Kaleido 3 already offers an acceptable compromise (in terms of display) for many users. And that is why more and more colour e-readers are coming on the market.

[Quoth]

You can't use Kaleido 3 indoors (normal ambient lighting) without LED front-light on.

I still think comparisons should be made between similar devices: tablets with tablets and e-readers with e-readers.

Well, that's an opinion. I'd not be using eink for reading novels if I did that. It's because of comparison between different devices that I prefer reading novels on a 8″ Sage.

Choice is good. Feel free to choose colour eink. However so far all the official marketing of it has been less than honest. Also comparisons are usually with shiny surface tablets set too bright.


Also if there was a good enough colour eink, I'd still have two reading devices, one at 7" to 8" and one at 10" to 14".
Even the 300 dpi 8" is too small for PDFs and scanned books. Even a 10.1″ is too large to comfortably read a novel. I'd use 6″ if 7 or 8 wasn't available.

The reason for many of the Kaleido 3 ereaders is niche companies trying to improve their niche. There are actually very few companies with colour eink and unless Kobo or Amazon join in, they have a tiny share of the mono market, never mind the very niche colour reader, where the main use case is comics. The colour, saturation, contrast and sharpness is too poor for mainstream mono or colour use.

[cellaris]

Originally Posted by Quoth

You can't use Kaleido 3 indoors (normal ambient lighting) without LED front-light on.

Of course it can be used without lighting indoors. And with a reading lamp in the background, too. Just because I prefer to do it with the lighting on (as I also do with monochrome e-readers) doesn't mean that others can't do it with the lighting off. What you can't do at all is with a tablet.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by cellaris

If you compare colour with a tablet it loses out (4096 vs. millions) but if you compare it with a monochrome reader it wins out (4096 vs. 0). If you compare the unilluminated screen with a monochrome reader it loses because it is darker, but if you compare it with a tablet it wins because the tablet cannot be used without illumination.

Colour eink can't be used without illumination in normal indoor light.

It's not actually 4096 colours or 16.7 Million (more for HDR screens). That's the total of the hues (colours), saturations and levels/brightnesses. The eink has black, white and approximately 14 grey levels. The LCD has between 256 and over 1000 distinct polarisations, those are translated to brightness changes by using one or two polarising layers. Both, apart from QLED based LCD panels, use coloured filters, either stripes or a 2 x 2 pattern of R G & B. (some LCD panels use R, G, B, Y and clear dots).

No-one bothers to make mono LCD HiRes graphic panels now, they are all coloured.

So ANY colour eink (not Gallery as it's not regular eink) is lower resolution than the best mono panel at that size, either 1/3:1 for Triton or 1/2:1/2 for Kaleido (X:Y). The result is so poor in contrast and brightness, because it's front lit and the filter reflects that light. Kaleido 3 uses the most washed out pastel red, green and blue dots to make the screen brighter at the expense of having really very poor saturation. Doesn't solve the filter reflecting a bit.

So likely 4096 is a little optimistic in total hues, shades and levels. Around 4000. Because there are only 14 levels between white and black the range of brightnesses for the same hue is limited. The hue will shift on all tertiary colours as the saturation or brightness is reduced. So colour rendition is very much worse than 4096 suggests.
As the monochrome is twice the resolution of colour eink the image can be dithered in a 2 x 2 cell (actually a more complex arrangement is used.
Without dithering it's less than 4096 vs 16, not 0. With dithering it's close to 64 shades, or 256 shades at slight loss of resolution. Laser and inkjet do this and only have on/off dots, though dot size can be varied.
Mono toned images will look better on mono eink than colour eink and won't need the front light in most situations. Text will look better on 300 dpi mono eink than colour unless the mono is an old Kindle Basic (167) or worse, a DX/DXG (only 150 dpi).

All decent mono eink are 300 dpi. The larger than 10.3" panels are lower dpi, which is one reason why I never bought a Sony DPT.

The only thing colour eink does better than mono eink is comics. The large enough ones for PDFs are too poor for the old scanned books and magazines without processing. The larger ones also have even worse resolution.

Now if E ink Corp. produces Kaleido 3 using 12" to 14" panels with mono 600 dpi (or at least 500 dpi) then that might be interesting. They'd still need a front light and 14″ is challenging to front-light evenly.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by cellaris

Of course it can be used without lighting indoors. And with a reading lamp in the background, too. Just because I prefer to do it with the lighting on (as I also do with monochrome e-readers) doesn't mean that others can't do it with the lighting off. What you can't do at all is with a tablet.

Looks like you are sitting near a window. Also we have gloomy skies. And it looks terrible!

I adjust my monitor or tablet screen so peak white is slightly dimmer than laser printing paper would be at the same ambient light. If it looks illuminated it's too bright.
About 8% for the LG monitor.
The Nxtpaper 11 is at about 12% to 16% at night and 22% to 26% in daytime. Only outdoors needs it higher.

I have had a pretty good Lenovo tablet, but I didn't read on it, except web, messages, etc. I'd read on my monitor in preference. It is too shiny. The 10.3" Elipsa eink wasn't quite good enough for scanned content, only enough for modern manuals and proofing POD, but the later no-glare 23″ LG 4K HDR monitor is better than the Elipsa to proof PDFs for POD, so with getting that and the Sage the 10.3" Elipsa has been redundant even before the Nxtpaper 11 came a month ago.

I'm a massive fan of mono eink for reading novels and have 4.7", 5", 6" (167 dpi and 300 dpi), 7", 7.8", 8", 9.7" (150 dpi) and 10.3" (223 dpi?). I prefer 8″, but 4.7" to 6" is handier for pockets.

[cellaris]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Looks like you are sitting near a window. Also we have gloomy skies. And it looks terrible!

I'm sitting where I always read during the day: on a sofa by the window. And I can assure you that a tablet without lighting looks much worse: you can't see anything

[Michal Jancik]

Originally Posted by cellaris

I'm sitting where I always read during the day: on a sofa by the window. And I can assure you that a tablet without lighting looks much worse: you can't see anything

Is the device with the color screen in the attached photo Inkpad Color 3?
Could you add a comparison photo with PB Color 3 vs TCL NxtPaper ?
Gracias primo.

[Xaenor]

Originally Posted by cellaris

Of course it can be used without lighting indoors. And with a reading lamp in the background, too. Just because I prefer to do it with the lighting on (as I also do with monochrome e-readers) doesn't mean that others can't do it with the lighting off. What you can't do at all is with a tablet.

Thanks for sharing the comparison photos - these actually look pretty great in the real-world environment. I was always wary of the colour e-ink's 150 PPI resolution and the darkened background by default, but these issues aren't nearly as prominent as people make them out to be. That third photo is just chef's kiss - it's like I'm looking at an old comic issue fresh from the store.

When you do use a frontlight, how bright do you normally set it for comfortable reading? That is, in situations when there's not enough natural light.