Could 2023 finally be the year of the color Kindle?
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Colored eReaders aren’t new, we’ve seen quite a few of them from smaller players in the ereader market, most notably from Chinese company Onyx and Swiss-based Ukrainian brand PocketBook. We’ve even tested a few here at TechRadar, like the Onyx Boox Nova 3 Color and the PocketBook InkPad Color, but we never quite liked how the colors looked on screen.
They look very washed out and desaturated – and that’s due to limitations in the screen technology used to date. Most of today’s color e-readers use E Ink Kaleido displays, which can display 4,096 colors at a resolution of no more than 100ppi. And the reason why colors look washed out is because of filters applied to the screen.
Those faded colors on an ereader should soon be a thing of the past though, as E Ink releases its Gallery 3 screen technology (announced earlier in 2022) to be mass-produced, and this promises digital color reading a much more enjoyable experience – great news for fans of comics and graphic novels.
The E Ink Gallery 3 color screen technology can display over 50,000 colors – putting Kaleido screens to shame – and with the usual 300ppi to match the monochrome screen. Importantly, the colors look nice and bright thanks to a four-particle ink system for each pixel. The cyan, magenta, yellow and white pigments should allow for a much fuller color gamut.
And this screen is being mass-produced for general use, and PocketBook has already announced that its next ereader — the PocketBook Viva expected to hit shelves in March 2023 — will feature this new screen technology.
Viva la color
When the PocketBook Viva becomes available in March 2023, it will likely be the first E Ink Gallery 3-color ereader on the market; it’s definitely the first to be announced.
The Viva will be an 8-inch tablet, with a design identical to the rather nice PocketBook Era. And, like the Era, it will also have a built-in speaker. That’s not what got us excited to try out the Viva; we are very curious how the colors appear on the screen.
Typically, most ereader makers use their own proprietary frontlight technology on their devices. However, the Gallery 3 display comes with built-in E Ink’s own ComfortGaze frontlight technology, which promises to reduce the effects of blue light. According to E Ink, the new screen is capable of reducing blue light by up to 60% – this is important, as color e-readers don’t have adjustable light temperatures to prevent images and text from appearing… well, jaundice.
Ignite the color-reading future
PocketBook isn’t the only brand to team up with E Ink in adopting the Gallery 3 screen. Onyx has done that too, but we’re yet to hear about a color e-ink tablet that uses this new screen technology from the Chinese manufacturer. Other companies have also signed up – iFlyTek, Sharp and iReader to name a few. However, when alternatives to the PocketBook Viva will be available is anyone’s guess.
Aside from smaller ereader makers, we’ve yet to see the big players give customers a color option – so far there’s no single color Kindle or Kobo. It’s somewhat understandable that neither Amazon nor Kobo wanted to adopt the E Ink Kaleido screens and their predecessors, given the compromises.
However, with the availability of the E Ink Gallery 3 screen, we’re hoping that will change and the next e-ink device to join our best ereader roundup will be a Kindle or Kobo in color. Here’s hope.