There’s still nothing quite like thumbing the pages of a real-life print magazine, but the latest evolution of E Ink’s color tech is creeping tantalizingly close — at least as far as my eyes are concerned. You’ve heard it all before: A lifetime of staring at screens has worn out my eyes, leading me down a rabbit hole of lifehacky solutions to ease the fatigue. Some of the tricks I picked up over the years have helped — especially the one where I simply take breaks and go for walks — but one thing hasn’t changed: I still spend more time than I’d like gazing at glossy displays. I don’t want anything less for videos or gaming, but for reading I typically ignore the latest tech and instead turn to a 2016 Kindle Oasis or old-fashioned books. My hands can obviously tell the difference between the two, but when I’m lost in a story, I don’t think my eyes can. With paper and e-paper alike, a sense of ease washes over me as I read. Is it how the light bounces off the page? Or, is it because I know ads and notifications won’t bombard me at every turn? I’m not sure, and I don’t really care why; I just prefer it, and E Ink reminded me of that when I stepped into its little conference room last week in Las Vegas. E Ink posted up at the Venetian for CES 2023, and inside its makeshift showroom, the MIT spinoff crammed its latest tech, including pieces of its wacky BMW wrap and its latest Gallery 3 color displays. The latter tech is now trickling into the market, starting with devices like the PocketBook Viva. And let me tell you, these displays look outright vivid next to the washed-out hues in E Ink’s Kaleido color displays, which debuted just two years ago. Gallery 3’s CMYK displays can spit out 50,000 colors at 300 DPI — way, way up from Kaleido’s 4,000 colors, the company said.
