Differences between E Ink Kaleido 3 and Gallery 3
Despite its slow update time, E Ink Gallery 3 shows promise
E Ink announced the release of two versions of colour E Ink – Kaleido 3 and E Ink Gallery 3. Both these updates are targeted at e-readers and e-notes. Kaleido 3 – like Kaleido and Kaleido Plus – uses a Colour Filter Array (CFA) in conjunction with a black and white E Ink film. Compared to Kaleido Plus, Kaleido 3 promises improved colour resolution (an upgrade to 150 PPI) and a 30% increase in contrast ratio. There is further improvement in the introduction of what E Ink calls ComfortGaze, which promises to reduce the front light's blue light emission:
In addition to improved color performance, Kaleido 3 uses E Ink ComfortGazeâ„¢, a new front light technology designed by E Ink's Front Light Team. ComfortGaze has been engineered to reduce the amount of blue light reflected off the surface of the display, providing further comfort while reading. ComfortGaze has been engineered to reduce the amount of blue light reflected off the surface of the display, providing further comfort while reading with reduced Blue Light Ratio (BLR) and Blue Light Toxicity Factor (BLTF) by up to 60 percent and 24 percent respectively compared to the previous generation of front light design.
Reducing blue light emission has been a trend in technology, and other vendors make similar claims by citing the TÃœV Rheinland certification. Due to the CFA, Kaleido 3 might still have the same problems as previous Kaleido iterations with a dark screen and reduced contrast.
On the other hand, Kaleido Gallery 3 does not rely on a CFA. Instead, it is based on E Ink's Advanced Colour ePaper (ACeP) platform that produces a full-colour gamut at each pixel:
E Ink Gallery 3 is based on the E Ink ACePâ„¢ Advanced Color ePaper platform. In this platform, a full-color gamut is achieved through a four particle ink system: cyan, magenta, yellow and white, which allows a full color gamut at each pixel.
The downside of using Advanced Colour ePaper (ACeP) is a slower update speed for monochrome and colour content (the colour content is much slower to update). To remedy the issue of slow update speed, Gallery 3 supports three different refresh modes: fast, standard and best colour. The central trade-off – it appears – is the level of degradation in fast mode and slow update times in general.
On paper, Gallery 3 points to a fresh direction that might eventually make E Ink colour mainstream. It does not need a CFA and supports more colours, greater colour saturation and a 300 PPI resolution. The main issue with the technology is update speed.
The Gallery 3 is very slow to refresh compared to others. On the HD setting the end result is stunning. I wouldn't use that mode for reading a book, but for rendering images that don't require frequent updates (like page turns) it is very impressive.