The contrast improvement is welcome for sure, but it remains to be seen what difference 15% white reflectivity makes.
Previous Kaleido products are fundamentally flawed. I'd hoped they would bin it for something better rather than make incremental improvements. Think it's also debatable what value colour brings unless you are regularly reading full colour magazines, PDFs etc.
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.
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.
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.
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?
for anyone who already has a colored reader - is it better than ipad? i enjoy reading on my ipad and i can read for 2-3 hours on it daily without feeling any strain on my eyes.
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.
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.
I agree it's probably an unnecessary expense for 99% of people, but I actually find it very useful reading articles, news and academic work. Also, I really like the washed out newspaper look the colours have even though this makes them ill equipped for graphic novels.
My kids have Clara's and they love them for graphic novels. They had b/w kobo's before but would never go back (unless they stopped reading graphic novels).
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.
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.
Amazon just refreshed their colorsoft kindles with Kaleido 3 so this is an interesting development. I wonder if Amazon had a heads up, I would have buyer's remorse right now if I bought a new colorsoft kindle recently knowing that there's a better version of the screen just around the corner.
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.
They don't have a great trackrecord here with QA or any of that for all the waiting. The first colorsoft noticeably has an issue with yellow banding on the bottom edge. It's a well documented issue and if waiting was supposed to help with issues like that, it clearly did not.
Still nothing for people who don't care about the color gimmick? I mean my Aura One is still going strong, but I fear it'll never be replaced by something better (or even as good).
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.
Perhaps revisiting what "gimmick" means would help you. Plenty of people use their e-ink readers to look at magazines, comics, news. Plenty of people have a highlighting system. Arguing that color is a "gimmick" is silly considering there are practical applications of color, as we can see around us in the real world. Some of you are seriously living in the weirdest of bubbles.
Biology spent a ton of time adapting and evolving for the ability to see color but sure, it's a gimmick. I guess you should consider syntax highlighting a gimmick in code editors as well? Charts/graphs in textbooks use color as a gimmick, any book that include illustrations/images in color are gimmicks
This is their colour filtered black and white product. Quite muted colours in the past and it only really works well with a front light, which kind of ruins the point IMO.
I'm much more interested in their Spectra and Gallery displays which use color pigments. You can even buy e-ink gallery style displays for a totally unreasonable price!
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.
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.
Previous Kaleido products are fundamentally flawed. I'd hoped they would bin it for something better rather than make incremental improvements. Think it's also debatable what value colour brings unless you are regularly reading full colour magazines, PDFs etc.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe if you wanted to read comics that only ever had mediocre artwork?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Biology spent a ton of time adapting and evolving for the ability to see color but sure, it's a gimmick. I guess you should consider syntax highlighting a gimmick in code editors as well? Charts/graphs in textbooks use color as a gimmick, any book that include illustrations/images in color are gimmicks
I'm much more interested in their Spectra and Gallery displays which use color pigments. You can even buy e-ink gallery style displays for a totally unreasonable price!
https://inkposter.com/products/inkposter-tela-28-5?variant=4...
Actually to be fair that is not a totally crazy price.
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.
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 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.