E Ink, a display technology company, has unveiled new e-paper displays that offer full-color and high resolution images. These new displays are indistinguishable from printed or painted images due to their fine resolution and good color mixture. Unlike traditional displays, E Ink’s e-paper displays only consume electricity when the image content changes, making them highly energy efficient.
E Ink has incorporated four different color spheres, including white, red, yellow, and blue, into the new cells, allowing for (almost) all colors to be displayed. These displays are bistable, which means they keep the last state and only require energy when the image content changes, giving users the impression that it’s a printed product.
The basic panels from E Ink showcased at Display Week have a diagonal of 25.3 inches or 64 cm and a resolution of 3200 × 1800 pixels (145 dpi). The pixel density of the Spectra 6 panels can be increased up to 200 dpi with a different control board.
The Spectra 6 modules can be seamlessly joined together, enabling larger posters to be created from the basic displays. E Ink also plans on offering other basic sizes, including a variant with 8.14 inches (20.5 cm) diagonal and 1024 × 576 pixels.
E Ink’s displays should be operated in a temperature range between 0 and 50 degrees Celsius, making them unsuitable for outdoor use in the blazing sun. They also work at higher temperatures, but then possibly no longer produce binding colors. Color shifts in the image also occur when colored surfaces in the immediate vicinity reflect the light to the e-ink display, requiring careful consideration when placing the displays.
To increase attention, the new Spectra 6 modules have a feature called sparkling, which partially activates selected areas of the image so that they flicker a bit and attract attention.
E Ink has also developed the Kaleido family for outdoor use, with a basic module having a diagonal of 13.3 inches (just under 34 cm). The Kaleido family uses black and white beads and has a color filter overlaid on top, allowing for color displays. E Ink has also introduced another variety in e-readers, the Gallery 3 family, which uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and white sub-pixels and can switch black and white pages in 0.3 seconds, with color changes taking up to 1.5 seconds.
