With color e-readers and e-note devices slowly becoming mainstream, the distinct pattern that has emerged is that almost all of the devices exclusively feature Kaleido 3 color e-paper panels. That seems set for a change with more devices based on the Gallery 3 color e-paper display expected to launch during the second half of the year. This, as the site TechBang reported, has been revealed by the senior director of E Ink, Liu Dajing during the just concluded Touch Taiwan Smart Display Exhibition.
Gallery 3 display offers some distinct advantages over Kaleido 3 even though it also has its own cons. To begin with, Gallery 3 has its origins in the Advanced Color E-paper Gallery display tech, a full-color reflective e-paper display that was primarily aimed at the digital signage solution segment. Gallery 3 happens to be the latest iteration of the display tech.
One of the best qualities of the Gallery 3 display tech is its ability to display more than 50,000 colors. It offers 300 PPI resolution in both black-and-white and color states, making it a high-contrast display having rich and vivid colors. Behind the scenes, it is a four-particle ink system at work, those being cyan, magenta, yellow, and white. This ensures each pixel has a full-color gamut, which translates to a more vibrant and life-like image than ever before.
However, one of the biggest drawbacks of the Gallery 3 display and the reason why it failed in the consumer E Ink devices segment is its relatively slow refresh rate. For black-and-white displays, it stands at 350 ms while in fast color mode, it comes to 500 ms. The refresh rate comes to 750-1000 ms in the standard color mode while for the best and the most vibrant full-color display, you will have to wait for 1500 ms.
The time duration mentioned above might not seem much when used as signage or for displaying ads but could seem like ages when used in consumer-end devices such as an e-reader or an e-note. This in spite of the fact that the Gallery 3 refresh times have improved from the 2 and 10 seconds that it took earlier for black-and-white and color displays respectively for the first gen Gallery.
With the Kaleido 3, what you essentially have is an RGB color filter array on top of the black and white particles that emulate the color effect. That way, Kaleido 3 isn’t a new display tech as such but an adaptation over the monochrome e-paper display to ensure some color effect without sacrificing the display refresh times. It is capable of displaying only 4096 colors and allows for a 300 PPI and 150 PPI resolution in color and black-and-white modes respectively.
What future Gallery 3 devices are expected to launch in the coming months? Unfortunately, that’s anybody’s guess at the moment. The first Gallery 3 device we have had is the Bigme Galy 3 which was launched in early 2023. The company however has ruled out a successor to the same. Other companies such as PocketBook, Readmoo, or iReader were supposed to launch Gallery 3 devices last year but that never materialized.
It now remains to be seen what other companies will be launching Gallery 3 devices later this year. It will also be interesting to see if E Ink managed to effectively deal with the slow refresh rate that Gallery 3 suffered from. It is only then that the technology will have any chance in the consumer devices segment. Till that happens, Kaleido 3 has a free reign at the segment.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.