The Ectacto JetBook is one of the first eBook readers with a color E Ink display. Basically it has a standard E Ink display with a filter on top which adds color without using much more energy than a grayscale E Ink screen. In other words, battery life is measured in weeks rather than hours.
Colors aren’t all that vivid on the screen — in fact, when viewed under the odd lighting of a hotel ballroom in Las Vegas, it can be hard to see the colors at all from some angles. But in direct sunlight, the colors will look more vibrant — much the way black and whit E Ink tends to look best under a very bright light.
The JetBook has a large 9.7 inch, 1600 x 1200 pixel display. That’s the same screen found on the Amazon Kindle DX. The only difference is that Amazon’s eReader can’t handle color.
E Ink says a few thousand Jetbooks are currently in use in Russian schools. There are currently no color E Ink devices available for purchase in the US, but an E Ink official told me that’s expected to change “in a matter of weeks.”
Kindle DX resolution is 1200×824 so Ectaco is definitely better.
Price is $499, including the educational textbooks 🙂
Given the text book market i suspect a bare device for home use could be brought down to the $100 range.
A price estimate would have been nice.