Comment by izacus
3 days ago
I own color eInk tablet(s) and BW readers so I'm very well aware what the usability and tradeoffs are.
Right now - on smaller devices focused on books like 6-8" Kobo/Kindle devices this is primarily a gimmick used for book covers and perhaps some text highlights at best. That's what makes it a gimmick, especially since it comes with such a massive loss of contrast that you need to drive the backlight at 90-100% during the day to get readable experience out of it.
And I'm happy that Kaleido 4 improves this (it's one of the things I'm most excited with for my 10" Boox where color screen is much more useful), but even with 50% improvement the contrast is still significantly worse than on the BW readers, making the experience of reading normal books a significant downgrade in exchange for some color front covers.
Your comparisons to TV are just inane, the tradeoffs aren't even remotely similar. Noone is clamoring for rainbow letters on their Kindle.
So you're purposefully ignoring comics, news, magazines to make your point? Just because you don't read them doesn't make it a gimmick.
> that you need to drive the backlight at 90-100% during the day
Well, okay that's objectively false and anybody that has used one or owns one can tell you this.