Epson unveils ridiculously high resolution E Ink display

Engadget announced earlier in the year significant progress in e-ink technology, currently limited to ridiculously low resolutions (100-200 dpi, compared to hard copy prints, that can go as high as 4000 dpi). The problem is that eve if we get 400 dpi, we are still far from the 1200 dpi, where good quality pictures and artistic rendering starts. But we should not despair. Much is to be discovered, still…

“We’ve seen an A4-sized sheet of e-paper or two in our day, but Epson’s new prototype display features an absurdly high resolution for its size: 3104 x 4128, clocking it in at something like 385ppi. According to Fareastgizmos, E Ink‘s supplying the, um, electronic ink, while Seiko Epson built out the low-temperature polycrystal Si-TFT glass substrate medium. Yeah, we’ve got a long ways to go before we’ll all be reading the e-paper morning news on the way to work, but it can’t be that long, can it?”

To which a reader commented:

“It has been observed that the human eye can generally not differentiate detail beyond 300 PPI”

Not really.

300 DPI/PPI is where black and white text starts looking so good that the average person won’t see improvement above there, though someone who knows what to look for will (Fine lines look much better at higher resolutions, for instance).

However, when you start talking about gray scales and gradients, resolutions higher than 300 DPI make a huge difference in preventing banding and other types of artifacts. Print out a photo at 300 DPI and see what I mean. High-end photo printers do 1200 DPI or more.

via Epson unveils ridiculously high resolution E Ink display.

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