¿¿300ppi color eink when??

[galax]

Greetings,

The most recent devices and premium ones with color eink come with 150ppi in color mode. I understand that the technology is evolving but I couldn't help wondering if there will be ever 300ppi color eink.

¿Are there any manufacturers testing or developing 300ppi color eink at the moment?

¿What people think is the timeline for 300ppi color eink to arrive?

Right now 150ppi color looks quite good, so it's not a bad investment until 300ppi devices appear.

Thanks

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by galax

Greetings,

The most recent devices and premium ones with color eink come with 150ppi in color mode. I understand that the technology is evolving but I couldn't help wondering if there will be ever 300ppi color eink.

¿Are there any manufacturers testing or developing 300ppi color eink at the moment?

¿What people think is the timeline for 300ppi color eink to arrive?

Right now 150ppi color looks quite good, so it's not a bad investment until 300ppi devices appear.

Thanks

Color eInk is not evolving. It's come to a standstill.

As to when, maybe never. That's my guess.

[Quoth]

We have seen no increase in over 11 years in mono eink ppi beyond 300.
A 300 colour would need 600 mono.

Kaleido is 4 years old and could have been done in 2005. It's only translucent coloured dots that don't fill the mono pixel.

The ACeP is better colour and older, but about 10 times slower. The Kaleido or mono eink is about 150 to 300 slower than other current displays.

Mirasol was more than 15 years ago. One product and nothing more.

The future is matt LCD and matt QLED. Battery life for reading on some phones and tablets with paper-like LCD or OLED is now comparable to some eink readers.

The only future for eink is niche mono dedicated ereaders, unless an new technolgy is discovered/ invented.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by galax

Greetings,

The most recent devices and premium ones with color eink come with 150ppi in color mode. I understand that the technology is evolving but I couldn't help wondering if there will be ever 300ppi color eink.

¿Are there any manufacturers testing or developing 300ppi color eink at the moment?

¿What people think is the timeline for 300ppi color eink to arrive?

Right now 150ppi color looks quite good, so it's not a bad investment until 300ppi devices appear.

Thanks

You can purchase a 300 PPI colour screen. The issue is that since Gallery 3 has 4 colours of particle (cyan, magenta, yellow, white) in one cell, it is slow to refresh the screen. While Gallery 3 is much improved in speed over the earlier renditions and there was a short lived ereader using a Gallery 3 screen, it is still too slow for ereader use in most people's opinion.

See E Ink Gallery™ 3 for more information.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

You can purchase a 300 PPI colour screen. The issue is that since Gallery 3 has 4 colours of particle (cyan, magenta, yellow, white) in one cell, it is slow to refresh the screen. While Gallery 3 is much improved in speed over the earlier renditions and there was a short lived ereader using a Gallery 3 screen, it is still too slow for ereader use in most people's opinion.

See E Ink Gallery™ 3 for more information.

Gallery 3 = ACeP. It's still uselessly slow for anything other than signage and no sign of it ever getting close to eink speeds, which is is already only marginal. It's still optimistic to claim 1.5s full refresh (1500 ms).

Most Gallery 3 panels are lower than 300 dpi because signage doen't need it. It seems doomed even in retail display market.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by DNSB

While Gallery 3 is much improved in speed over the earlier renditions and there was a short lived ereader using a Gallery 3 screen, it is still too slow for ereader use in most people's opinion.

Unfortunately, Bigme's Gallery 3 device was a complete disaster, since it was billed as a tablet (including camera, IIRC) and not an e-reader, even though Gallery 3 is nowhere near good enough for a tablet. It's pretty sad, since we need Gallery 3 to succeed so that E-Ink will spend time and money developing Gallery 4. Instead, we're probably going to get Kaleido 4.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Unfortunately, Bigme's Gallery 3 device was a complete disaster, since it was billed as a tablet (including camera, IIRC) and not an e-reader, even though Gallery 3 is nowhere near good enough for a tablet. It's pretty sad, since we need Gallery 3 to succeed so that E-Ink will spend time and money developing Gallery 4. Instead, we're probably going to get Kaleido 4.

Unless Kaledio 4 can give us the full contrast for a BW eInk screen, it's a fail before it's even announced.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Unfortunately, Bigme's Gallery 3 device was a complete disaster, since it was billed as a tablet (including camera, IIRC) and not an e-reader, even though Gallery 3 is nowhere near good enough for a tablet.(

No, Gallery AKA ACeP is not even anywhere near good enough for an ereader. 10 times or more slower than regular eink, which is poor for a general purpose tablet (I have one and only reading ebooks & PDFs is any good).

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

It's pretty sad, since we need Gallery 3 to succeed so that E-Ink will spend time and money developing Gallery 4. Instead, we're probably going to get Kaleido 4.

No, R&D doesn't really work like that.

Colour bistable screens obviously needs a new technology. Kaleido is just a CFA (translucent printed pattern) on mono eink, which is only marginally better now than 11 years ago.

While Gallery / ACeP is a better approach being Subtractive colour link print, thus could be 3 to 5 brighter than CFA on mono, it was first announced May 2016, that's over 8 years ago, and it seems unlikely to ever be fast enough for an ereader. It's aimed at retail signage, and losing there. It seems doomed to follow Mirasol and Plasma TVs into the bin.

Kaleido is nothing new at all. Baffling why they ever bothered with Triton (except it used an original type odf LCD CFA). Kaleido is limited by three things:
1) It's just dots on a mono panel, so always 1/2 resolution.
2) It's R G B dots that only partially covering each pixel, so pastel. This is what allows a pseudo mono mode.
3) R G B dots in theory can't have a brightness better than 1/6th of mono, if perfect and covering the pixel. Physics that can't be beaten. That's why they only partially cover a pixel, to increase brightness.

They can tweak Kaleido dot density and size, but it's still only good for comics and much worse without front light than mono eink. All the advantage of eink over the best matt screen OLED, QLED and LCD panels is lost when you have to have a front light. So Kaleido is doomed. A short term attempt by companies that only do eink to have colour.

[Aleron Ives]

Yes, we already know that Kaleido is a poor technology and that Gallery 3 is slow. The question is whether good colour e-paper will ever exist. E-Ink currently has no incentive to develop Gallery 4 or anything else when people are willing to buy low-effort Kaleido devices.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Yes, we already know that Kaleido is a poor technology and that Gallery 3 is slow. The question is whether good colour e-paper will ever exist. E-Ink currently has no incentive to develop Gallery 4 or anything else when people are willing to buy low-effort Kaleido devices.

They have every incentive, otherwise they will only be able to sell shop labels and mono ereader panels.

Almost all ereaders use E Ink Corp. panels.

There used to be more companies, but most were bought by E Ink Corp and one bought by Amazon and buried.

Plastic Logic is one of the originals, 20 years ago. Their web site address redirects to e pi.
https://www.e-pi.com/displays/

The Colour panels are not as bright as the web site suggests. Allegedly UK with a German R&D.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

The question is whether good colour e-paper will ever exist.

That's impossible to answer as it probably depends on some yet-to-be invented/discovered technology or principle.

We know Fusion works. Stars at night and Sun in daytime. We think a scaled down version might be possible. But OTOH there is no indication that a bistable colour panel (aka color e-paper) fast enough for an e-reader is possible.

Meanwhile you can now read on some tablets or phones for up to 30 hours (total) and get paper-like QLED, OLED and LCD screens. Still not as good as mono-eink in decent ambient light with front-light off, but as good as mono with front-light, if properly adjusted. Also Dark mode is better.

[Quoth]

Speed issue:
The bistable displays like E ink Corp are mechanical. Admittedly the DLP system is also mechanical, but the mirrors in it are a tiny fraction of the size and not in a liquid.

The epaper/eink/ACeP panels use particles in a liquid, so they are inherently slow. The higher speeds quoted are usually without intermediate levels, simply black or white with mono ink (or colour via CFA of Triton or Kaleido). The ACeP/Gallery 3 panel cells are inherently even slower due to the C Y M W layers.

[galax]

Thanks all for the insights.

Lol, laser DLP ereader??

The question about 300ppi color eink was without an attempt to critisize current eink technology, merely about some timeline.

I am quite happy with current eink state, excellent paper-like experience, long lasting battery, more than enough for note taking, highlighting. That is that it completes both the note-taking and paper reading experiences.

Sure more resolution would be nice but the current one has achieve almost parity or at least a level of quality that's pleasant.

Whether it has stalled or not at this point, at least for me, is irrelevant.

I see many idiots on youtube and testing the color ereaders with youtube, games and crap apps from android.

Then they start making useless comparisons with smartphones about frame rates, refresh rates, 4k, and making complains and comments such as 'eink still behind led technology'. Many reviews end up with invalid conclusions.

Let's think about two things, real physical book page turn, and pen note taking. What's the refresh rate a page turn with real hands? Perhaps half a second, which is 30 miliseconds. The second matter, what's the resolution of a BIC pen or a pencil? I would say close to 8bit or 4bit a fine BIC pencil, and 1bit if not worse a pencil.

Many books <1900 with engravings technology have a superb aesthetics. And what would that be? 50ppi 1bit color equivalent?

Black and white eink 300ppi exceeds anything physical in quality so as it stands the eink technology is already sufficient. Therefore whether it has stalled to reach 4K parity and >200Hz refresh rate is quite irrelevant on the contrary it fullfils its intended purpose.

I briefly looked at matte LCD/OLED/QLED and these still need backlight plane, and perform poorly against direct sun light, let's say at the beach.

If the display doesn't look exactly like paper matte LCD/OLED/QLED will be behind eink technology, even if the color, tone of fonts change a tiny bit when moving from shade to sun that's already annoying and distracting. That puts an incredible strain on the reader eyes. I doubt matte LCD/OLED/QLED will achieve 100% color satic picture. Moreover anything shooting light inside your brain through your eyeballs will be inferior and detrimental to eye's health for long periods of reading. Nevermind the AI ambient color adjustemt madness plaguing devices and turned on by default.

Also 30 hours of battery is precarious, I doubt any that any display that relies with light to show colors will ever beat eink.

Many novels are quite long, or if the persons is reading different materials and more than one book and note taking 30 hours doesn't simply doesn't make the cut. The last thing I need is when reading and being half way the novel to worry about the 30 hours!!

Perhaps my only gripe is the little options and a bit expensive for 8", 9" ereaders devices, ideally 10" and color eink. Overall ereaders have matured and now many vendors are focusing on eink functionality like note taking and better ebooks and pdf readers.

Another trend that I've seen is some reviewers is that they expect ereaders behave like tablets with everything, bluetooth, wifi, video player, ever more crazy cameras!! They end judging an ereader by the quality and performance of all those extras rather than simply evaluating the text/note taking experience. Like half of the video checking some videos on the ereader.

It seems that the time is right to acquire a color ereader and enjoy the 'stalled' technology.

[Quoth]

Colour eink almost always needs the LED based front light, thus eink advantage is lost.
Eink refresh is 150 ms. ACeP is 1500ms. I agree 4K and sub 1ms QLED/OLED/LCD is irrelevant for reading a novel and 150ms is fine for a page turn, longer isn't fine.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by galax

Also 30 hours of battery is precarious, I doubt any that any display that relies with light to show colors will ever beat eink.

No, it's not. That's about 4 days of reading or more for most people. Charging is 45 to 50 minutes. Some eink ereaders are no better, and at typical ideal backlight levels indoors even more that 30 hours reading is possible.

OLED won't do direct sunlight well on many panels. However LCD and some OLED matt screens can do direct sunlight. The QLED needs 1/6th power for normal ambient and can do x6 brightness at same power as LCD.

Colour eink is only 135 dpi to 150 dpi and doesn't perform as well as mono eink in direct sunlight.

You'll get more listening time on most phones for Audio books than any Eink Reader, as they have small batteries and rely on partial sleep when you are reading a page.

Multi-media Interactive epub3 titles won't work either at all, or not properly on eink.

Both my OLED 6.3″ matt screen and LCD 10.9″ matt screen beat mono eink (even in mono content) if the eink front light is on. The 300 dpi mono eink only just beats rhe matt screens when ambient light allows zero front light.

I've loads of Eink from 4.7″ to 10.3". I've had loads of brands too. I read a huge amount. I do mostly read epub2 novels on an 8″ Sage, but only if ambient light allows me to have the front light off. Also it's an ideal size for me.

Colour eink is a niche for comics and doomed. Mono eink will survive as a niche.