Your next ePaper tablet will feel a lot more colorful, lot less like a faded newspaper

E Ink’s Kaleido line is considered the gold standard for colored ePaper displays. Kaleido displays are found on leading e-readers from brands such as Amazon, BOOX, Kobo, and others. Building on this, E Ink has now launched Kaleido 4 with richer color, snappier page refreshes, and display quality that leads to a “more detailed and fluid ePaper experience.”

In its press note, E Ink says the new Kaleido 4 displays are now suitable for a wider variety of digital content. According to the announcement, the latest version supports a color gamut twice as large, with a volume exceeding 40,000. That does not mean 40,000 colors, but without a unit associated, it’s difficult to make objective sense of the number than just saying that the display will now deliver more saturated colors than before.

E Ink also says Kaleido 4 offers 50% higher contrast than the previous generation and 15% brighter whites. That means that besides the colors looking deeper, you can also expect the blacks to look less washed out, and whites to look less gray. The display also incorporates a redesigned front light to make the display look less grainy.

Furthermore, the company adds that the new display technology incorporates a new oxide TFT layer that allows for 27% faster page turning and scrolling. Because of the quicker refreshes, Kaleido 4 allows video playback at up to 18fps (frames per second), which could feel relatively less jittery compared to previous versions — though watching videos on an e-reader is not a very rational idea, I’d tell you that.

Hanvon Technology’s upcoming M10C II will be the first e-reader to feature the new Kaleido 4 display, and we expect more e-readers to launch with it in the coming months.