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E-ink Debuts New, Yellow ePaper Shelf Label at SID Display Week 2015

SID is holding its annual trade show and conference this week, and E-ink is there to show off yet another product to make ereader owners envious. The world’s largest epaper manufacturer launched a new 3-color epaper shelf label today called Spectra yellow.

SpectraYELLOW(LR)Black, white, and shades of gray are good enough for reading (most) ebooks, but retailers have been craving a better way to catch the eye of consumers. E-ink’s first step in this direction, Spectra (red), came out two years ago and enabled retailers to accent a sign with red, white, or black inks, and now the epaper maker is making a new shelf label with yellow inks.

The new Spectra yellow combines black, white, and yellow ink capsules to offer a vibrantly colorful display. When this product hits the market retailers will be able to flash one of the 3 colors and grab the attention of passing consumers.

That’s a nifty innovation but it comes at a price. Unlike the screen on your Kindle, the Spectra yellow screen can’t display shades of gray or yellow or mix the three colors; instead, it is no more and no less than a 3-color shelf label.

That limitation derives from the technical changes E-ink had to make in order to support the 3 ink colors, and until E-ink finds a way around this issue we’re not going to enjoy red or yellow epaper screens on our ereaders.

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Comments


reader June 2, 2015 um 8:20 pm

Black, white and red ink large display would be ideal for the sheet music which does not need shades of grey. Black music notation/symbols on white ePaper with red annotations/highlighting.
I would be very happy with this limitation.

This E Ink announcement is a joke – recycling years old technology. I’m expecting exciting announcement of blue Spectra in 2016 and green in 2017.

Unfortunately E Ink Corporation is just hopeless to bring Spectra or Mobius technology to the market. Listening to Mr.Peruvemba or Mr.Mancini I’m not surprised.

Look at E Ink’s – last news is from January 2014…

Nate Hoffelder June 3, 2015 um 2:39 pm

Actually, E-ink’s last news was from Jan 2015 – when they revealed the Prism wall hanging. I agree, it was just a recycling of old tech.


reader June 2, 2015 um 8:27 pm

How do we edit the posts here? Links are all garbled…

Nate Hoffelder June 2, 2015 um 8:30 pm

Oh, I thought you did that on purpose.

I cleaned the links up a little. better?

reader June 2, 2015 um 10:19 pm

Thank you. If I could preview the post before posting the comment with html… Still missing:
Im expecting "exciting announcement" of blue Spectra in 2016.

Nate Hoffelder June 3, 2015 um 2:38 pm

I’ve hd plugins like that in the past, but I had to remove them to speed up my site. Sorry.


Spectra Yellow, una nueva pantalla de E-Ink con amarillo June 3, 2015 um 8:06 am

[…] Imagen – The Digital Reader […]


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