New tech could bring a splash of color to your monochrome e-reader

The new technology, Advanced Color ePaper (ACeP), shares a surprising number of characteristics in common with e-ink screens on the market. The experimental panels don’t draw significantly more power than current-gen panels, for one, and they aren’t any less legible, or prone to irksome reflections. Significantly, though, the ACeP uses a layer of fluid, carefully incorporated into the microcapsules that make up e-ink screens, that’s capable of reproducing “all the colored pigments” — all eight primary colors, in other words — in every pixel. That’s superior to older methods of color reproduction in e-ink, which achieved pixel color by combining adjacent red, green, and blue hues.

The ACeP displays can reach resolutions up to 150 pixels per inch — about half the resolution of the Kindle Paperwhite, for comparison’s sake — and are less costly and easier to manufacture than other color e-ink technologies, which require multiple substrate layers.

“We expect ACeP to become the basis upon which another generation of EPD display products can be development,” said Frank Ko, chairman of E Ink Holdings.

Don’t hold your breath for a more colorful Kindle in the next few months or even years, though — E Ink’s chief was rather vague about ACeP’s near-term prospects. But the company’s produced a 1,600 x 2,500 prototype — best suited for “digital signage,” it said in a press release — that it’ll be showing during the 2016 SID Display Week in San Francisco.