The continued increase in digital display content and greater user awareness on the importance of visual health has led to increased adoption of e-paper. According to E Ink, its reflective displays are easy on the eyes, providing a more comfortable viewing experience and without the emissive light of monitors, tablets, and cell phones.
However, existing display product standards are aimed at emissive displays such as LCD and OLEDs and are not useful for reflective displays like e-paper, making an industry standard for scientifically evaluating the performance of e-paper and other reflective display products a necessity.
E Ink and experts at TÜV Rheinland worked in collaboration for two years to develop a metric for evaluating specific optical indicators on reading comfort for paper-like display products. These parameters were then evaluated against reading comfort in conjunction with user experience to arrive at the Paper Similarity Index (PSI). PSI will help consumers select e-paper products that offer a high level of reading or visual comfort.
“TÜV Rheinland has been studying how user experience can be integrated with new display technologies for a long time,” said Frank Holzmann, global vice president of TÜV Rheinland Business Field Electrical. “The Paper Like Display standard incorporates user experience with the latest visual health research to look at their performance in two dimensions: reading comfort and safety. It provides a scientific standard for the testing and assessment of paper-like display products. We will continue to work closely with E Ink in the future to promote the development of high-quality e-paper products.”
E Ink has nine display partners making e-paper modules leveraging E Ink's unique paper-like materials. E Ink will continue to enable more applications using e-paper with partners to provide more eye-friendly, eco-friendly, and low-carbon emission display solutions.
“E Ink is delighted to obtain the first ‘Paper Like Display’ certification from TÜV Rheinland,” said Johnson Lee, CEO of E Ink. “E Ink’s products have long been associated with less eye strain, low power and these certifications are proof that e-paper is truly like conventional paper, displaying images without any backlighting. E Ink will work with our e-paper ecosystem partners to promote the ‘Paper Like Display’ certification and will continue to innovate and bring our customers the most comfortable visual experience possible.”
The new certification was awarded to E Ink’s color e-paper display using the latest E Ink Kaleido Plus technology. E Ink Kaleido offers 16 gray levels and 4,096 colors, making it suitable for rich graphical information such as graphs, maps, images, comics, and advertising. Text and detailed images can be clearly displayed even in outdoor lighting conditions. Certification testing found that E Ink Kaleido Plus delivered outstanding performance on all parameters related to reading performance. Its PSI rating of 86 is the highest of all comparable products on the market rated by TÜV Rheinland to date.