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Comment by teroshan | Hacker News Reader

Know that while useful in some scenarios, I'd avoid buying a color e-ink display if you're still going to primarily be using it for B&W colors.

To quote the eBook Reader Blog [1]:

> The main drawback with color E Ink screens is they look darker than regular B&W screens because of a color filter layer that is applied over the top of the screen, which makes the contrast appear lower. Kaleido color screens are really just regular black and white E Ink Carta screens with a fancy passive filter over the top (that’s why color resolution is lower than black and white resolution).

[1]: https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2024/04/05/color-e-ink-5-t...

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It's true that the contrast is not as good, and IIRC the color resolution is also a bit lower (but is not bad overall). But people who plan to read B/W documents could still benefit from a device like this because it makes highlighting much better, and it enables color-based reading enhancements like BeeLine Reader (which improves focus while reading).

I'm certainly biased (I created BeeLine), but IMO the color screens that Kobo is using are good enough to make the tradeoffs worthwhile. It's also interesting to see innovation among one of the major players in this space. The companies that have made color ereaders before now have been a bit dodgy in some cases, so Kobo will bring a level of legitimacy to the space that's very welcome.

EDIT: the price is also very favorable compared to other color ereaders. Ones I've considered in the past were around $420, which is roughly 2x-3x the price of Kobo's new units.

> It's true that the contrast is not as good, and IIRC the color resolution is also a bit lower

It's generally halved, i.e. the display is 300dpi in mono mode, but 150dpi in color mode.

Halving the DPI in each direction (vertical and horizontal) means you end up with only a quarter of the pixels: 0.4 megapixels instead of 1.6 megapixels.

IIRC these panels are 150 DPI color, which means it's less than halved in each direction.

I thought they were 300dpi panels, but that the dpi was halved in color mode? I'm curious what color filters they have. Perhaps each 2x2 pixel has 3 filtered dots (RGB) and one fully transparent dot?

beeline readers works on kobo? Via colorizing a pdf -> kobo, or is this is just something planned?

Coloring a PDF for now...and I'll certainly be working on more streamlined options now that this is available!

I have a Boox Ultra Tab C (color) and while true I don't find it problematic in the slightest. I went down the rabbit hole of watcing video comparison etc. but in practical terms once I started using it I never once felt that I wanted a brighter/lighter screen. YMMV.

Also have the Note Air 3C (same screen iirc). Still getting uses to it (never have used eink before) but so far soon good. I don't think I'd want to switch to monochrome even if the contrast is better.

OT: How happy are you with the Note Air 3C? How long last the battery? Any Problems with the build quality? I've read a lot bad stuff about the device and have mixed feelings

I've used a Pocketbook Color for over a year now. And yes, it is a somewhat darker screen, but that mainly just means I turn on the frontlight in some cases where I wouldn't have needed to with other e-readers. I've otherwise been having a good time with it - comics and PDFs benefit greatly from the color screen, and regular text is fine too.

Agreed, I picked up Pocketbook Color for 150 Euros on a sale and it has become my main bedtime reader.

Disclaimer: I've been using e-ink based readers for over 10 years. My current lineup is Kobo H20, Remarkable2 (which I sort of love/hate), and Sony DPT-S1 (which is fantastic for bigger PDFs).

B&W is fine on color e-readers. I actually enjoy the washed out color look as well.

Fully agree here, I'm in the PocketBook Color squad since 2020 and got it at full price and absoltuley love the thing. Appart from the fact they don't sell official covers for it anymore since i seem to disassemble those regularly.

I bought a pocketbook inkpad color 3 yesterday and love it. It's good enough for displaying lego manuals.

It's a gigantic step forward in speed from my kobo reader, but that one is 7 or so years old at this point . It also crashes less.

How can an article about the contrast issues and resolution of different e-readers not include any photos other than a single promo photo from a manufacturer of one device showing only one device?

"has lower contrast" means absolutely nothing without being able to quantify it.

> Kaleido color screens are really just regular black and white E Ink Carta screens with a fancy passive filter over the top...

Yeah, and I remember an interview where they also said that is why colour e-ink's screen are not at all costly to manufacture. But adoption is slow because they sell it at a "premium" price. Even B&W e-ink can be a lot cheaper.

Does that mean these have better refresh rates than other color eink screens? Lower contrast is not the end of the world for me, but a 15 second refresh time is :)

Yeah, the refresh times are much better now. They used to be 10-30 seconds but are now manageable. I think it might be a little slower than B/W, definitely not 30 seconds. Some color eink displays even offer video, with different settings for higher fidelity/slower frame rate versus lower-fidelity/faster frame rate.

Almost sounds like Pixel Qi, the display tech for the olpc project. Did anything behind of that tech?

This is eink while Pixel Qi was transflective LCD what is sometimes called e-paper. Transflective displays are used for some smartwatches, Garmin ones have long battery life with them.

> This is eink while Pixel Qi was transflective LCD what is sometimes called e-paper.

Although “e-paper” has been used to describe transflective LCDs at times, in my experience it’s far more commonly used to describe e-ink panels, especially larger ones.

It looks blinding in the promo shot

And with a dead flat black bezel too. Likely the promo pic is not how it would look to your eyes in real life.

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