Paperlike Color: Color E-Ink Monitor

This is no longer true - Gallery 3 screens are ACEP that can refresh in a second and a half. For instance the Bigme Galy is an e-reader based on the Gallery 3, and [as you can see](https://youtu.be/V3jmmo23J5w?t=1202) is perfectly functional for interactive use.

It's still slightly higher than monochrome, but only by milliseconds. IMO, fast-ACeP is the future and will eventually kill CFA/Kaleido.

>The real problem is cost of course. Part of that is e-ink is still governed under a patent you must license and pay royalties to if I recall correctly

This is a common myth that's echoed without a source. It's not patent, it's scale - there are literally 6 billion (LCD) smartphone users out in the world (it might be up to 7B by now), with lots of those users owning multiple smartphones. And of course, there are loads of other devices with LCDs: laptops, desktop monitors, TVs, self-checkout kiosks at supermarkets, smartwatches, tablets, LCDs on a fridge for some reason, etc etc etc.

E-ink is orders of magnitude lower in production scale, without a clear way of expanding the market beyond just ereaders/enotes (which are a luxury; you can read ebooks on a smartphone/tablet and most people own one of those already), and possibly supermarket smart-pricetags.

So, does that mean E-ink faces zero competition? No! DES screens are competing against e-ink with their cofferdam tech (where instead of sprinkling on microcapsules, they capsule structure is built directly onto the substrate; it reduces thickness and theoretically increases pixel density, but loses the "grain" effect of E-Ink's MED in favor of a less-aesthetic regular grid shape).

If E-Ink could improve refresh rates then they absolutely would - it's the most visible feature they could possibly add, and is directly applicable to e-readers, which are currently their biggest market. And their biggest buyer is Amazon, who have poured a whole lot of money into the tech (and who sell Kindles at-cost or below) and if it really were patents blocking faster-refreshing screens then Amazon would just buy E-Ink, outright. It's not new - look up LiquaVista; they were bought up by Amazon, Amazon's not afraid to buy up companies. Plus, E-Ink still have to compete against second-hand e-readers they've already sold; there are E-readers from 2012 that will read a .epub just fine, and that's all you really need for an e-reader.

If you're wondering why Amazon killed LiquaVista, BTW, apparently it's because shrinking the pixels horizontally causes a chromatic aberration effect when the vertical color-layers are viewed from an angle, so shrinking the pixels horizontally also requires shrinking them vertically, which makes it extremely difficult to manufacture the pixels without them leaking and causing a terribly low yield rate. Also it didn't help that a bunch of the original company's VC raising was done just before 2008.

It's a pretty good product with some mediocre software.

At the end of the day, it's extremely useful and usable for a lot of people doing a wide variety of tasks.

The hardware has some issues, but I'd say it's like 90% there. The software features that work well are rather limited, but that's an intentional design decision.

It has some limitations, but I consider it a rather good product.

That was based on my tests with color displays from Waveshare, and as we have seen in the comments here, advances have been made.

I still see multiple refresh cycles being needed for colors. The metrics are shorter, smaller on the very latest displays, and in my view fall short of motion capable in color.

We do have, and have had, motion capable monochrome for a while now, given users accept a few trade-offs.