It looks like E Ink is going to be releasing a new generation of Kaleido 4 color E Ink screens in the near future with some improvements over Kaleido 3 screens.
E Ink hasn’t officially announced the new screens yet, but there’s this post at reddit with some photos from a presentation in China where a new Hanwon M10C Gen2 device was unveiled that’s using a Kaleido 4 screen.
According to the marketing material, the Kaleido 4 screens boast a 50% increase in contrast, a 15% increase in white reflectivity, with less visible grain, and support for up to 18fps.
It sounds like a pretty big improvement on paper, and the marketing picture at the top of this post makes it look like a night on and day difference, but the comparison photos at reddit make it look like another typical E Ink generational upgrade where you can barely tell any difference when both screen generations are right next to each other, but, frankly, the photos aren’t very good so it’s hard to tell.
It’ll be interesting to see if Kaleido 4 screens are really a worthwhile upgrade or not, but it might be awhile before any new Kaleido 4 devices make it onto the market. Apparently the new Hanwon eNote doesn’t have a release date yet, and it usually takes companies a year or two to transition to new screens when they come out, and some just keep selling the old versions.
It makes you wonder if the new Kindle Colorsoft is using a new Kaleido 4 display, or a hybrid version of it. Amazon doesn’t play into E Ink’s marketing hype when it comes to new screen generations, which is respectable. In fact, Amazon completely disregards E Ink generational naming schemes altogether, as they do not specify what generation of screen Kindles are using in the product details or marketing material.
In the press release for the new Kindles, Amazon claims the Kindle Colorsoft has “a completely redesigned display” with “higher contrast on both color and black-and-white content,” among other improvements.
But the weird this is Amazon doesn’t say any of that stuff, or make any claims of an improved color display, on the product page for the new Kindle Colorsoft. They just boast about it being thinner and lighter; there’s not a single word about any improvements to the color screen so the difference it probably negligible—it’s most likely not using a Kaleido 4 screen.
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