E Ink, the company that produces the vast majority of e-ink screens, is offering a new screen for e-reader manufacturers: the E Ink Carta 1300 screen.
The E Ink Carta 1300 screen
Today, high-definition e-readers mainly use the E Ink 1200 screen, which offers a high pixel density.
E Ink recently launched the Carta 1300 version, which offers a number of interesting advances, including:
- 27% faster response time,
- 20% improvement in contrast.
These data are provided by the manufacturer and, even if in practice they will probably be less visible than advertised, they may provide relevant improvements for notebook e-readers and note-taking devices.
As far as reading is concerned, the contrast of the Carta 1200 screens is already sufficient to provide very good reading comfort.
But as the Carta 1300 screen is almost 1/3 as fast, it could make note-taking e-readers more efficient and more responsive for all pen-based note-taking.
The iReader Smart X3 reader
To my knowledge, the first device to use this E Ink Carta 1300 screen is the iReader Smart X3.
The iReader Smart X3 features a 10.65" screen with an excellent resolution of 2560 x 1920 pixels (i.e. 300 PPP).
This machine has a quad-core processor, 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage. Naturally, an X-Pen3 stylus is available for this iReader machine.
To make the most of the Carta 1300 screen's performance, this iReader Smart X3 uses a specialized computing algorithm (and optimized with artificial intelligence) to achieve faster screen refresh.
Of course, all this remains to be proven, since the information is provided directly by the iReader brand. But, if the results are there, this machine could seriously compete with the Kindle Scribe, Kobo Elipsa 2E and other ReMarkable e-reader.
Carta 1300 screen: the future of e-readers?
For the moment, we have little information on the Carta 1300 screen. The E Ink website does not communicate on the subject. So it's hard to say whether this evolution will eventually replace the Carta 1200 screens.
One thing seems certain: the Carta 1300 screen enables devices with a diagonal of more than 10 inches and a resolution of 300 PPP, while at the same time improving display speed.
We can therefore assume that this technology will be found at least in future evolutions of the Kindle Scribe, ReMarkable or Kobo Elipsa 2E e-readers.
As for the 6", 7" or 8-inch e-readers, it doesn't seem technically necessary to use this new screen, especially as it's more expensive than the old version.
For example, the iReader Smart X3 will be available for around $500 to $600, a higher price than competing readers of the same screen size.
