E Ink Announces Kaleido 4 With Broader Color and Faster Refresh

Kaleido 4 starts with a limited debut

E Ink has announced Kaleido 4, its latest color e-paper technology, with company claims of expanded color and faster screen updates. As of Engadget’s October 15, 2026 report, Hanvon Technology’s M10 C II tablet was the only device officially using it, with availability limited to China.

The announcement concerns technology already used across several e-reader brands. Kaleido 3 displays appear in devices from Kobo, PocketBook and Boox, while Amazon’s Kindle Colorsoft uses a customized version.

What the color and refresh claims mean

Kaleido displays create color images by placing a color filter over black-and-white e-paper pigments. E Ink says Kaleido 4 can produce more than 40,000 colors and doubles color gamut volume—a measure of the range of colors a display can reproduce.

E Ink also says the new generation improves white reflectance and contrast. Those terms describe how much light white areas reflect and how clearly light and dark areas differ.

For moving images, E Ink claims Kaleido 4 can display video at 18 frames per second, meaning 18 image updates each second. The company attributes the faster refresh to an added oxide backplate, a component behind the display.

Text clarity still needs a direct comparison

For readers, a key question is how the new display handles text. Engadget identifies relative text fuzziness as a drawback of older Kaleido 3 displays and says comparisons are still needed to establish the extent of Kaleido 4’s improvements.

That leaves two practical limits to the announcement: the improvements remain company claims awaiting direct comparison, and the only officially identified device is a China-only tablet. The technology’s debut gives readers a concrete product to follow, but does not yet establish how much better everyday reading will look.