With the ability to mimic the look of paper, E Ink screens are truly a unique concept when you stop to think about it, especially black and white E Ink screens. But how long can the technology remain viable before it gets replaced by something else?
Here we are in 2024 using highly-technical electronic devices called ereaders that are basically mini computers, and the yet the screen is only capable of displaying basic text and static black and white images. The fact there’s a market at all for that type of screen in this day and age is pretty astonishing.
I like the fact that E Ink screens are easily readable in bright lighting and how the battery can last a really long time, but do you think people will still be buying ereaders with black and white E Ink screens 50 years from now? How about 25 years from now? With the rapid pace of technological development that seems pretty unlikely.
E Ink (the company, not the screen) has been desperately trying to bring color E Ink to the mainstream market, and while they’ve improved the technology quite a lot over the past few years, it remains a very niche product category, and there’s still the fact that black and white E Ink screens still look superior when it comes to displaying regular text.
Another problem with color E Ink is the fact that battery life takes a hit with increased performance demands and having to crank the frontlight level higher because of the darker screen. Onyx’s latest color E Ink devices have similar battery life as regular LCD tablets now, negating one of the main benefits of E Ink.
There have been a number of new screen technologies over the years with similar claims of efficiency and sunlight-readable usability, but none have caught on like E Ink screens have, and yet E Ink screens haven’t really improved much over the past decade (the Kindle Voyage proves this, as it still has one of the best E Ink screens ever and it was released in 2014).
At some point something better than E Ink is bound to come along. Even now a lot of people prefer to read on tablets and phones with LCD and OLED screens. For now E Ink screens are great for reading, but it’ll be interesting to see what changes the future brings.
I think Pixel Qi may be that technology – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_Qi – it’s kind of dead right now, but theoretically, it’s owned by someone.
Whatever happened to those prpoposed graphine-based screens – similar bistablebdisplay, but supposedly we with much better contrast?
I personally like my ebook readers. I really like the e-ink screens the way they are. At my age I find for reading books I really like the Kindle e-ink screens. I have lots of issues reading from lwd or lcd screen. To be honest I world love an 8 inch Fire Tablet with a e-ink black and white screen or a kindle that can actually do text to speech the way my Fire Tablet does.
Eventually we will be downloading books into our augmented brains, reading text in our minds eye.
Ah, the lure of speculation. Eink ought to have improved the devices, but the companies want you to believe that improvements will come in small doses. I guess if the screen is gorrila glass strong, then Kobo et al will go bust ASAP.
Still, they could improve the technology to make better software or change the lithium ion battery, or make a solar powered one (reads in the sunlight right?)
If e-ink is around 25 years from now, I expect a reader to really last 2 weeks without charging.. With an unbreakable glass screen.
Geez, Charlie, what the heck are you doing with your devices? 😁My Paperwhite 11th gen that I got Dec.2021 lasts more than 2 weeks on a charge with about 4+ hours of reading a day. And I’ve only ever broken one screen. It was in 2009 when I foolishly asked my husband to toss it down the stairs to me. (I missed the catch.🤦♀️)
I have never had a battery from an e-reader lasting as well as those that you own. I read an average of 3 hours per day. Need to charge the device each 4 days.
I have a Kobo Elipsa and I charge when battery is 55ish% and unplug it when it is at 90%.
Try turning wi-fi off. Wi-fi that is not well implemented can dramatically affect your battery life.
I only get 4 days now (used to get 2-3 weeks), but that’s because my Sony PRS-T1 is 12 years old and my Kindle (2017) is 7 years old. One of these days I need to do a battery replacement on the Sony — and if I’m lucky get another 12 years out of it. 🙂
I tried turning the Wifi completely off, but the (at that instance) battery began draining faster than usual.
It would literally save me money if you or anyone has good advice about that 🙂
Charlie – Wi fi is one of those things that can use a lot of battery. Turning it off should help. Not sure what else to tell you.
You definitely have something strange going on. It almost sounds like something is wrong with your e-reader.
Look to me that the product hit the niech pretty head on, aside from not having proper color which for most book reading isn’t a big deal we are used to books being black and white even these days.
What I’d expect from premium products until the color issue is truly conquered is better batteries (quality not just adding on weight) and better construction.
The higher ppi is nice but not all that needed for reading.
Companies seem more set on making the readers more tablet like which isn’t their intended use.
Making some of us waste money on features we don’t require and can make the products less useful to us such as fast draining the battery to be able to play videos on an eink screen.
Well said. 100% agree.
If one of my e-readers goes out — my next purchase will be the basic Kindle, Nook, Kobo e-reader that has lighting. Lighting (besides the ability to read) is the one good feature — so you can read without a lamp at night.
I’ve always argued that I wish they actually tried to get the basic models less expensive and actually would love to have an easily replaceable battery. Getting around 12 years with my Sony PRS-T1 (that has page turn buttons) and it needs a new battery (battery only goes 3-4 days right now). Watched the YouTube videos and I think I can do it myself, you can still get the battery for it — will just need to break out the soldering iron. 🙂
It would be nice to have a full colour e-ink screen that can have fast updates when needed, like for video, but when no updates are needed stays rock solid without refreshes.
If they can ever make a screen like that, and they can make it affordable, that could replace all screen technology.
Problem is that until now it always seems to be one or the other: or you have screens that need to constantly do a refresh like the old CRT’s, OLED’s, LED’s, etc. and that have a wide colour gamut and can only be used indoors, or you have flicker-free eink screens, which can be used in direct sunlight but which have a limited number of colours and/or a slow update.
From the photos I’ve seen it looks like Spectra has a wide colour gamut, but then again this is very slow for updates, and comes at an extremely high cost.
So it seems it will take a lot more time before we have this dream screen technology.
I don’t see any technologies replacing e-ink for a long, long, long time. And if they do, they would have to cost less than e-ink technology (which is already pretty low). Not happening soon folks.
Color like this article said might be a niche use case — as it uses more power than B&W e-ink screens — and costs more.
On battery life, the main reason some e-rink readers don’t last for weeks is not the e-ink screen — it is the processor and other internals. That’s why I like e-ink readers that don’t have a lot of features and don’t need to process very many things. I agree with some of the posters — over time newer e-ink readers need to be charged more frequently and it’s because of note taking and other added features that require more processing power. It’s not because of the screen, unless you’re refreshing the screen a lot. Again — that’s where features like note taking impact battery life to some degree.
Increasing refresh speed seems an attractive direction – this device to 60 fps. See links to product page and ycombinator discussion here:
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/05/24/daylight-computer
Makes zooming in on PDF’s and graphics practical.
Spendy at $730, but is 10″, Android, for now includes stylus and case.
I hate to say it but the screen looks terrible and the price is insane. That’s never going to go mainstream in a million years.