Color e-paper does not provide an excellent reading experience when it comes to  e-books.

The typical  e-reader uses an E INK  Carta e-paper display that uses black and white casings that are controlled by electricity. This gives a nice grey background and razor-sharp black fonts. This is the way e-readers have mostly functioned, but in the past couple of years, almost everything has gravitated towards color e-paper, and the vast majority use Kaleido 3.

E Ink Kaleido 3 is the third-generation color E Ink display technology, offering a significant improvement in color saturation, contrast, and eye comfort compared to its predecessors. It combines a color filter array with a grayscale E Ink panel to display 4,096 colors at 150 PPI for color content and 300 PPI for monochrome content.

To create a gray or black with a Kaleido 3 display, you would adjust the RGB color filter array and the black-and-white E Ink particles on the screen to blend and control the light to form the desired shade. You do not create gray and black in the same way you would with paint; instead, the technology uses color and grayscale settings to achieve different color and black and white images. Kaleido 3 screens tend to look more muted and washed out.

Netronix is the largest e-reader manufacturer based in Taiwan. In 2024, about 64% of Netronix’s shipments were color e-book readers, while black-and-white models accounted for 36%. For 2025, the share of color e-readers is expected to further rise to 71%, with black-and-white devices declining to 29%.

Rakuten Kobo sells more color e-readers than black and white ones. Amazon has the Kindle Colorsoft, Kindle Colorsoft Kids, and Kindle Colorsoft 16GB. At the end of the month, they are expected to release the Kindle Scribe Color and maybe a new Kindle Basic. Onyx Boox has more color e-readers than black and white ones, and ditto with Hyead, Readmoo, Meebook, and Remarkable, which uses Gallery 3 instead of Kaleido.

There are benefits of color e-paper, particularly in comics, digital textbooks, graphic novels, and webtoons. PDF files are great for e-notes, and drawing in color is a significant improvement over black and white.

Black and white e-readers do a tremendous job at reading e-books, but there is no point in buying a color e-reader just to read books. Reading books tends to look muted and washed out, which detracts from the reading experience instead of enhancing it.