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Bringing full colour _and_ high refresh rate would move these out of the eBook world into more into every day technology. There's definitely a market for colour eInk monitors, tablets, phones, etc. but the technology just isn't there yet. More and more people are wanting to disconnect from tech or at least minimize its addictiveness and a colour eInk screen would be a great step for people. That way they can still watch youtube, take photos, scroll their apps but the experience will feel less saturated and alluring.

50% contrast improvement is significant, but it’s from a base of only around 1:10, so will still be fairly low in absolute terms.

If you don't want colour then any discussion about the shortcomings of this tech are moot, as you will use a display with much higher contrast.

I find e-ink screens infinitely more pleasant to look at than *LED

I know that’s the point, but I also know some people care more than others. I happen to be one of those who cares a lot.

What do you mean - the color part? That is for information density.

Do you mean the e-ink part? That is for natural-light readability w/o requiring backlight, and for power-efficiency w/o requiring a heavy battery/frequent charging.

In theory they should be amazing. Full color, looks like paper, basically an interactive magazine!

In practice the color isn't great, the screens are slow to refresh in an annoying way, and the resolution is a noticeably worse than an iPad. I also find that apps not explicitly made for e-ink are generally garbage when used on an e-ink device.

So far I have personally been incredibly disappointed with e-ink devices outside of e-readers. I want them to be good but the experience is just so much worse than an iPad.

Me too. But it’s better than wanting a megayacht or some other more ridiculous affliction, isn’t it?

I justified one to myself to read papers that have colored plots. Eink performance is still so marginal that the experience is too frustrating to rely on, and I would rather use a tablet.

Maybe if you wanted to read comics that only ever had mediocre artwork?

I have one but wish I'd bought a monochrome one. I barely use the colors, but the whites aren't as white as on a monochrome one.

TRMNL made one of these, 31.5” spectra 6. will start selling in a few weeks. fully hackable

I would love this as well. I dream of a clean dashboard for things like a shared calendar in my home.

I have a Kobo Clara Color. I like the product but colors are mostly a gimmick. Useful for the occasional chart and for books cover and that’s pretty much it.

Don’t expect iPad quality color, they’re very washed out.

I think a dedicated e-reader is a great choice (I only read books, not comics or other graphics heavy documents) but for that grayscale would be more than enough and color is an extra.

I would recommend you to go to a store and have a look live at a color eink screen to get a feel for what they offer.

Personally no. I've been reading a lot on LCD screens (PDAs if you know what those were), way back before eInk existed.

First, eInk used to be glossy, and not backlit which sucked, since you needed a light source to illuminate it well enough, but not so much that it shone on the screen and caused weird reflections.

After they added backlight, it became much better, but I'm not sure how it's better than an LCD (I dont think it is).

The only thing that sucks both about the iPad and most ereaders is the lack of physical buttons to flip pages, which makes 1 handed operation clumsy at best.

Kindle's color tablets look a bit better than Kobo's, by my estimation. But neither is anywhere near iPad-level color saturation or contrast.

I think Amazon does some special stuff with the backplane or something. Seems like it's not 100% marketing gimmicks if it actually looks better.

I have a b/w page-sized Kobo, but I can tell you one nice thing vs the iPad is the weight. I don’t think the color (at lower resolution) is worth it for me.

Colors are as vibrant as late 90s cheap laptops.

Why is iPad even mentioned here? This is better than iPad in the same way as a printed book is better than an oled TV.

They're two different things for different uses, one blasts light and colour in your eyes, other has a paperly look.

> is it better than ipad?

Only you can answer that, “better” is a personal choice. A dedicated e-ink reader does less than an iPad (some see that as a bonus, others as a disadvantage). E-ink colours aren’t as vibrant and devices are slower, but the battery life, weight, cost, and reduced eye strain can more than make up for it.

If possible, I recommend grabbing one at a store nearby and playing with it a bit. You’ll soon understand if the weight, speed, and colours are enough for you.

Once I saw that Kobo was going all in on the color e-readers I decided I'm going to sit this whole trend out and bought another Aura One. Between it and the one I currently own they should carry me for a long, long time.

The Aura One is essentially perfect. The only gripes I have are the USB port and non-removable battery. It is a bit slow with the stock OS but with KOreader it runs amazingly well.

I'm in the exact same situation, still rocking an Aura One with KOReader and can't find anything with that form factor in black/white that satisfies me.

There's something to be said with a device that has a single purpose and supports custom firmware: other than the micro-USB port and the slightly shorter battery charge I don't think I will be changing it soon.

I also have a kobo aura one and was just recently researching potential upgrades and was shocked even looking outside of strictly kobo that I couldn't find anything that was a clear upgrade or equivalent on various features against it. For a product almost ten years old it's so weird.

Color is a gimmick for e-ink now? I wonder if people thought the same thing when they brought color to television.

I feel like amazon tends to wait a couple of years before using whatever the latest e-ink screen is and claim to do a lot of customization and calibration as compared to their competitors.

I would also try going the other way, and build transreflective color LCDs - those don't have latency or refresh issues, like these weird hybrids.

They also consume nonzero (but very little) power, which is a moot point imo, since most Android eInk tablets run the computer in the background, which drains the battery anyways.

You can buy a 13" color e-ink display for ~$250, or a 7" e-ink display for ~$60. These can be placed in a frame for a couple bucks more [2].

Two things that I did not anticipate:

1: Refresh time is a lot longer for color displays (~20s) as compared to black and white displays (~0.5s).

2: Stock images tend to use cartoons. There is a reason for that. These displays require dithering which seems to work a lot better with a limited color palette, flat areas, and bold edges.

[1] https://www.waveshare.com/13.3inch-e-paper-hat-plus-e.htm

[2] https://www.waveshare.com/esp32-s3-photopainter.htm

I wonder how white balance is handled across these products.

I recently bought the InkJoy frame which is similar to what's sold at your link and the white balance is _awful_ and grey.

I naively expect these to reflect light like paper photos and be nearly identical in that regard when mounted beside each other on a wall, but I've been disappointed with the results so far.

Colour depth is not _as_ big a deal to me as the image simply looking natural among printed photos.

It’s requiring all my willpower not to take out a second mortgage and build a gallery wall filled with these. That image transition is gross but I guess it takes a lot more steps to move all those pigment layers around.