E Ink has owned its own little niche in the the e-reader ecosystem for more than fifteen years. Now, thanks to improved capability and reduced cost, the tech is finding its way into monitors, laptops, phones, watches, tablets, and more. So what’s next for E Ink? Can it truly compete in all those different device categories? And…should it?
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00:00 E-ink has come a long way, from the earliest e-readers of the aughts to a huge array of
00:07 devices in every major category.
00:10 And soon, maybe to cars, dresses, robot pets, and more.
00:15 There's never been a better time to nerd out over e-ink tech.
00:19 But can it actually replace mainstream displays?
00:23 And do we even want it to?
00:24 First, a PSA.
00:33 E-ink is actually the name of the company that originated this tech and remains the
00:36 dominant player.
00:37 The generic term for it is "electronic paper."
00:40 It's like a Kleenex vs. tissue kind of thing.
00:43 Anyway.
00:44 E-ink was born out of the MIT Media Lab and spun out as a private company in 1997.
00:48 We were going to take over the world.
00:51 We were going to do everything all by ourselves, and it was going to be the biggest company
00:55 in history.
00:56 Then the dot-com crash happened and money was a little bit harder.
00:59 That's Tim O'Malley.
01:00 He's responsible for overseeing E-ink's North American business and has been with
01:04 the company since 2000.
01:06 He says that the first 10 years were slow-going.
01:08 E-ink tech first found its way into a Sony e-reader in 2004, but it was 2007 that put
01:15 them on the map.
01:19 When the product was launched in the U.S., Sony and Amazon Kindle, that sort of had the
01:24 magic and the next five years were 300% growth year over year over year.
01:29 It's easy to understand why the Kindle took off.
01:31 Books take up a lot of space in your house.
01:34 This doesn't.
01:35 It's cheaper than your phone and the battery lasts for weeks, maybe even months.
01:39 And a lot of these benefits have to do with how these displays work.
01:43 After the break, we go microscopic.
01:48 Thanks Victoria.
01:49 E-ink has the potential to completely change up how we work from anywhere in the world
01:52 tomorrow, but Meta for Work is already creating new ways to connect and work today.
01:57 Mixed and virtual reality helps your workers feel more connected, which in turn fosters
02:01 better learning and creative experiences.
02:03 For example, in an immersive environment, an architect can not only walk through a building
02:07 they designed, but they can also bring colleagues along the way and take feedback, all without
02:12 ever actually taking a step on site.
02:14 Now, Meta doesn't influence our editorial videos, but they do help us make important
02:17 videos like this possible.
02:19 Alright, back to the team.
02:21 An E-ink panel basically takes thousands of microcapsules and sticks them into a thin
02:26 layer.
02:27 Inside each microcapsule are a bunch of negatively charged white particles and positive black
02:31 particles, all floating in a clear fluid.
02:34 You produce an image by applying an electric field to each capsule.
02:38 A positive electric field will move the black particles to the top of the capsule, the part
02:42 you see.
02:43 A negative field will do the opposite.
02:45 Do that independently to thousands of capsules at once, and you can build whatever image
02:49 you want on screen.
02:51 The comparison that lots of folks use is this.
02:55 A magne-doodle.
02:56 And that's apt.
02:57 You can see the little hexes that contain magnet filings, and they get pulled up to
03:01 the surface when you use the stylus.
03:04 E-ink screens are just a lot denser.
03:06 Needless to say, this is a whole lot different from the way a grid of pixels lights up in
03:09 a traditional display.
03:11 So in an electronic paper display, we are physically moving particles up and down.
03:17 It's not a long distance, but it's physically moving something.
03:21 And then the trick is when it gets to its destination, we want to be able to unplug
03:25 the display and effectively keep that image forever.
03:28 There are a lot of benefits to this method.
03:30 For starters, it's not pushing light into your eyes like other displays.
03:34 It's actually reflecting the light that's around you.
03:37 That's part of why E-ink looks so different.
03:39 It is easier on the eyes and looks good at any angle.
03:43 And because you only need power to change the display, well, that's why you rarely
03:48 need to charge a Kindle.
03:50 But there are trade-offs.
03:52 Physically moving particles around liquid makes refreshing the screen a slow and strange
03:57 process compared to LEDs.
03:59 Contrast was tricky to achieve, too.
04:02 For nice sharp blacks and whites, you need all the particles in these microcapsules to
04:06 behave, otherwise you get muddy grays.
04:09 You also need them to be densely packed together, though not too densely.
04:14 You can imagine if you filled up your container with a lot of pigment, it wouldn't move.
04:19 It would be stuck.
04:20 It'd be like a rain stick that was completely full.
04:22 You turn it over, it makes no sound.
04:24 So now you can see why E-ink first flourished with e-readers.
04:28 It's the perfect device for this tech.
04:30 It's also why you see E-ink in a lot of signage at grocery stores, bus stops, places where
04:35 you need to consistently update information, but in a power-efficient way that's viewable
04:39 from multiple angles.
04:41 That's neat.
04:42 E-ink's got its little niche.
04:43 That's that, right?
04:46 Maybe not.
04:51 Since the mid-aughts, E-ink has been charging ahead with improvements to its signature tech.
04:55 Just look at how the Kindle alone has changed over 15 years.
04:59 The update time is about three to four times faster.
05:02 The contrast ratio is about three to four times higher.
05:05 And the cost is probably about five to seven times lower.
05:08 So there's been a lot of democratization of being able to bring that kind of access to
05:13 everybody.
05:14 And beyond the Kindle, E-ink and other companies have made huge strides in adding color, a
05:19 very tough nut to crack.
05:21 So we have got a cyan, magenta, yellow, white system.
05:25 So that's four particles that are shuffled like a card deck in order to get the right
05:29 color.
05:30 And they used to teach classes, this cannot be done.
05:32 It is not physically possible.
05:33 And when we started demonstrating it, it was surprising to many people.
05:37 Don't bet against the scientists.
05:38 They're pretty good.
05:39 All those advancements are sparking the imaginations of hardware companies.
05:44 Suddenly E-ink isn't confined to e-readers.
05:46 We can explore how it works on different kinds of gadgets.
05:50 And it's not bad, really.
05:51 There are E-ink monitors from Onyx Books and Dasung.
05:55 The Light Phone 2 is an E-ink phone.
05:58 Pebble paved the way for an E-ink smartwatch, and Fossil has since picked up that torch
06:02 with his own hybrid.
06:03 We've got the Remarkable for taking notes.
06:06 Books is currently killing it with color E-ink tablets.
06:09 There's also Pocketbook Color and more Kindles than I can count on two hands.
06:15 This is a CO2 monitor that uses E-ink.
06:17 Cute.
06:18 And, if E-ink has their way, this could just be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to
06:23 form factors and surfaces.
06:25 At CES 2023, BMW showed off an actual color-changing car using this exact tech.
06:31 And E-ink has found its way into a bunch of other concepts like clothing, furniture, and
06:37 this robot dog.
06:40 But as cool as all that stuff is, can an E-ink display ever really compete with your phone?
06:46 Just take a look at scrolling on the Onyx Books Tab Mini C. Sure, you can see a little
06:51 ghosting and the colors aren't as punchy as it would be on my phone.
06:55 That said, it reminds me of newspapers and that has a certain charm to it.
07:00 Look at it.
07:01 You could even watch a YouTube video on some E-ink displays.
07:05 It's obviously not great, but then again, Tim says that's really setting E-ink up for
07:10 failure.
07:11 We've shown 30 to 60 frames per second.
07:14 It's not nearly as good as an OLED though.
07:17 So while we can do some of the speeds, we can't do the quality that you're seeing with
07:21 OLED at those speeds.
07:24 And we don't have the low power advantage anymore either because we don't have it sitting
07:27 still when it's not updating.
07:30 If I was going to watch YouTube, I would probably do it on my phone.
07:33 So maybe the point isn't to replace all screens and surfaces, just the ones that make
07:38 sense.
07:39 In the case of electronic signs, traditional screens guzzle up a lot of power, which ultimately
07:43 isn't great for light pollution, electricity bills, or the grid.
07:47 Switching to E-ink might be a greener solution.
07:51 Outside of that, E-ink can also be applied to surfaces in a way that foldable OLEDs are
07:55 either just too fragile or just not suited for.
07:59 Things like your kitchen appliances.
08:01 Maybe you change the color scheme based on an event you're having.
08:04 Not something you need, but we all have favorite colors, right?
08:08 Mine's purple.
08:10 Look, there's no doubt that smartphones have changed the way that we interact with screens,
08:15 and not always in positive ways.
08:18 Being online all the time can be distracting, notification anxiety is real, and not to mention
08:24 it's not doing any favors for your eyes.
08:27 While most of us can't help but covet the latest and greatest, for some there's a
08:31 deep desire to bridge the intentionality of analog gadgets with the needs of the modern
08:36 world.
08:37 It's easy to think that we need one, maybe two gadgets to do everything, and to do everything
08:42 well.
08:43 But E-ink is a good counter-argument and a pitch for alternative technologies, even when
08:49 something better already exists.
08:52 The winning argument to me, or the winning discussion to me, has really been around this
08:56 9 to 13 hours per day in front of a screen.
08:59 There's zero chance that that's going to convert to all E-ink display.
09:05 We're not giving up our TVs, we're not giving up our computers, we're not giving up our
09:09 phones.
09:10 It's not happening.
09:11 And so we need to recognize the world that we live in, and understand the opportunities
09:16 that we have in that world.
09:18 You know why they chose me to host this video?
09:24 Because I have real ink in my arms.
09:26 Do you know how much... this hurt.