The contrast improvement is welcome for sure, but it remains to be seen what difference 15% white reflectivity makes.
Previous Kaleido products are fundamentally flawed. I'd hoped they would bin it for something better rather than make incremental improvements. Think it's also debatable what value colour brings unless you are regularly reading full colour magazines, PDFs etc.
layer8 15 minutes ago [-]
50% contrast improvement is significant, but it’s from a base of only around 1:10, so will still be fairly low in absolute terms.
szundi 27 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
prometheus1992 9 minutes ago [-]
for anyone who already has a colored reader - is it better than ipad? i enjoy reading on my ipad and i can read for 2-3 hours on it daily without feeling any strain on my eyes.
MattTheRealOne 1 hours ago [-]
Hopefully this means a new Kobo Libra before too long.
abletonlive 4 minutes ago [-]
Amazon just refreshed their colorsoft kindles with Kaleido 3 so this is an interesting development. I wonder if Amazon had a heads up, I would have buyer's remorse right now if I bought a new colorsoft kindle recently knowing that there's a better version of the screen just around the corner.
real_faxenoff 47 minutes ago [-]
I've always wanted a color E-Ink tablet, but I could never figure out exactly why.
Doctor, what's wrong with me?
thmoonbus 32 minutes ago [-]
I find e-ink screens infinitely more pleasant to look at than *LED
I know that’s the point, but I also know some people care more than others. I happen to be one of those who cares a lot.
ncr100 24 minutes ago [-]
What do you mean - the color part? That is for information density.
Do you mean the e-ink part? That is for natural-light readability w/o requiring backlight, and for power-efficiency w/o requiring a heavy battery/frequent charging.
wkjagt 14 minutes ago [-]
I have one but wish I'd bought a monochrome one. I barely use the colors, but the whites aren't as white as on a monochrome one.
0cf8612b2e1e 29 minutes ago [-]
I justified one to myself to read papers that have colored plots. Eink performance is still so marginal that the experience is too frustrating to rely on, and I would rather use a tablet.
Maybe if you wanted to read comics that only ever had mediocre artwork?
qzw 42 minutes ago [-]
Me too. But it’s better than wanting a megayacht or some other more ridiculous affliction, isn’t it?
xd1936 29 minutes ago [-]
I wish there was a DIY company targeting hobbiests that sold large poster-size eInk panels with tinkering in mind, like TRMNL or InkPlate.
coinfused 8 minutes ago [-]
I would love this as well. I dream of a clean dashboard for things like a shared calendar in my home.
packetlost 1 hours ago [-]
Too bad this didn't make it into the new Kindle Colorsoft. Oh well
IshKebab 1 hours ago [-]
This is their colour filtered black and white product. Quite muted colours in the past and it only really works well with a front light, which kind of ruins the point IMO.
I'm much more interested in their Spectra and Gallery displays which use color pigments. You can even buy e-ink gallery style displays for a totally unreasonable price!
Actually to be fair that is not a totally crazy price.
bhelkey 17 minutes ago [-]
You can buy a 13" color e-ink display for ~$250, or a 7" e-ink display for ~$60. These can be placed in a frame for a couple bucks more [2].
Two things that I did not anticipate:
1: Refresh time is a lot longer for color displays (~20s) as compared to black and white displays (~0.5s).
2: Stock images tend to use cartoons. There is a reason for that. These displays require dithering which seems to work a lot better with a limited color palette, flat areas, and bold edges.
I wonder how white balance is handled across these products.
I recently bought the InkJoy frame which is similar to what's sold at your link and the white balance is _awful_ and grey.
I naively expect these to reflect light like paper photos and be nearly identical in that regard when mounted beside each other on a wall, but I've been disappointed with the results so far.
Colour depth is not _as_ big a deal to me as the image simply looking natural among printed photos.
pixelready 33 minutes ago [-]
It’s requiring all my willpower not to take out a second mortgage and build a gallery wall filled with these. That image transition is gross but I guess it takes a lot more steps to move all those pigment layers around.
BoingBoomTschak 1 hours ago [-]
Still nothing for people who don't care about the color gimmick? I mean my Aura One is still going strong, but I fear it'll never be replaced by something better (or even as good).
stuxnet79 53 minutes ago [-]
Once I saw that Kobo was going all in on the color e-readers I decided I'm going to sit this whole trend out and bought another Aura One. Between it and the one I currently own they should carry me for a long, long time.
The Aura One is essentially perfect. The only gripes I have are the USB port and non-removable battery. It is a bit slow with the stock OS but with KOreader it runs amazingly well.
teroshan 58 minutes ago [-]
I'm in the exact same situation, still rocking an Aura One with KOReader and can't find anything with that form factor in black/white that satisfies me.
There's something to be said with a device that has a single purpose and supports custom firmware: other than the micro-USB port and the slightly shorter battery charge I don't think I will be changing it soon.
jdprgm 41 minutes ago [-]
I also have a kobo aura one and was just recently researching potential upgrades and was shocked even looking outside of strictly kobo that I couldn't find anything that was a clear upgrade or equivalent on various features against it. For a product almost ten years old it's so weird.
abletonlive 9 minutes ago [-]
Color is a gimmick for e-ink now? I wonder if people thought the same thing when they brought color to television.
Rendered at 20:43:42 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Previous Kaleido products are fundamentally flawed. I'd hoped they would bin it for something better rather than make incremental improvements. Think it's also debatable what value colour brings unless you are regularly reading full colour magazines, PDFs etc.
I know that’s the point, but I also know some people care more than others. I happen to be one of those who cares a lot.
Do you mean the e-ink part? That is for natural-light readability w/o requiring backlight, and for power-efficiency w/o requiring a heavy battery/frequent charging.
Maybe if you wanted to read comics that only ever had mediocre artwork?
I'm much more interested in their Spectra and Gallery displays which use color pigments. You can even buy e-ink gallery style displays for a totally unreasonable price!
https://inkposter.com/products/inkposter-tela-28-5?variant=4...
Actually to be fair that is not a totally crazy price.
Two things that I did not anticipate:
1: Refresh time is a lot longer for color displays (~20s) as compared to black and white displays (~0.5s).
2: Stock images tend to use cartoons. There is a reason for that. These displays require dithering which seems to work a lot better with a limited color palette, flat areas, and bold edges.
[1] https://www.waveshare.com/13.3inch-e-paper-hat-plus-e.htm
[2] https://www.waveshare.com/esp32-s3-photopainter.htm
I recently bought the InkJoy frame which is similar to what's sold at your link and the white balance is _awful_ and grey.
I naively expect these to reflect light like paper photos and be nearly identical in that regard when mounted beside each other on a wall, but I've been disappointed with the results so far.
Colour depth is not _as_ big a deal to me as the image simply looking natural among printed photos.
The Aura One is essentially perfect. The only gripes I have are the USB port and non-removable battery. It is a bit slow with the stock OS but with KOreader it runs amazingly well.
There's something to be said with a device that has a single purpose and supports custom firmware: other than the micro-USB port and the slightly shorter battery charge I don't think I will be changing it soon.