E Ink's Kaleido 4 Brings Better Color and 18fps Refresh to E-Readers

E Ink has announced Kaleido 4, the next version of the color e-paper used in most color e-readers today. Kaleido 3 is in devices from Kobo, PocketBook and Boox, and Amazon's Kindle Colorsoft uses a customized take on it.

The new panel boosts contrast by 50% and white reflectance by 15%, so plain text should look less muddy, which has been the biggest knock on Kaleido 3. Color reproduction is better too, though it still tops out at 4,096 colors and color still renders at a lower resolution than black-and-white text. A new oxide TFT backplane pushes refresh rates up to 18fps, enough to play video.

The first device to use it is Hanvon's M10C II note-taking tablet, which is China-only. Amazon and Kobo haven't announced anything with Kaleido 4 yet.

— via The Verge