Most e-reader or e-note devices that have come our way in recent times have one thing in common – they are in color and almost exclusively feature the Kaleido 3 display. That likely is set for a change what with Liu Dajing, senior director at E Ink stating there could be more Gallery 3 display-based devices slated for launch during the second half of the year, TechBang reported. The executive however didn’t have anything else to share.
So, it is anybody’s guess right now which companies would be launching Gallery 3 devices, of what sizes, and so on. It’s been the Bigme Galy that has been the first device to feature the Gallery 3 display. That was during early 2023 while more devices were slated for launch during the rest of the year. Companies like PocketBook, Readmoo, or iReader had pledged to launch Gallery 3 devices though that never happened.
One of the primary reasons manufacturers bunked the Gallery 3 display has been its relatively slow page refresh times. It stands at 350 ms for black and white display and can stretch to 500 ms in fast color mode. The same comes to 750-1000 ms in the standard color mode while the wait is the longest for the full-color display, it being 1500 ms.
Taken in isolation, these figures might seem insignificant but can seem like ages when viewed from the perspective of consumer devices such as e-readers, e-notes, or maybe smartphones as well. Still, it is far better when compared with the 2 seconds and 10 seconds that it took first gen Gallery displays to refresh monochrome and color displays respectively.
Gallery 3 display otherwise impresses with its color reproduction capabilities. Its origins can be traced back to the Advanced Color E-paper Gallery display tech which was designed to cater to the signage segment. Gallery 3 is the latest iteration of the display tech and one that has been adapted for use on e-readers as well.
The display uses a four-particle ink system comprising cyan, magenta, yellow, and white which ensures each pixel has a full-color gamut. This leads to a more vibrant and life-like image ever seen in the E Ink realm. It shows over 50,000 colors and offers 300 PPI resolution for both black and white and color displays.
Kaleido 3 displays, on the other hand, aren’t a new display tech so to say considering that it merely uses an RGB color filter array on top of the black and white particles to create the color effect. This ensures you have the same page refresh times of the monochrome displays while still allowing for 4096 colors. Also, while it allows for 300 PPI resolution for black and white displays, it drops to 150 PPI in color mode.
With this being how things stand at the moment, it remains to be seen what Gallery 3 devices will be launched later in the year, if at all. Also, it will be interesting to see if there is any improvement in the page refresh rates with future Gallery 3 displays. Stay tuned!