Low powered E ink screens were first conceived in the 1970s and monochrome versions have been available for decades. They are used extensively as e-reader screens.
Colour E ink screens have been available since about 2010, and modern versions boast a fairly wide colour gamut.
Despite their long availability and ability to operate on virtually no power, colour E ink screens have not become an everyday, mainstream item.
That may change with Samsung showcasing a range of Colour E-Paper displays designed for the commercial world as signage at the ISE 2025 show in Barcelona.
The colour e-paper screens come in 13″ (1,600 x 1,200); 25″ (3,200 x 1,800); 32″ QHD (2,560 x 1,440); and a whopping is 75″ 5K (5,120 x 2,880), the size of a large television.
Samsung’s offerings are nominally targeted at the commercial and retail world. They can display fantastically decorative menus in cafes and restaurants, and act as low-powered signage in shopping centres, exhibitions, public venues such as railway stations.
The on-screen images might seem like painstaking, decorative drawings, but are simply files uploaded from a smartphone to the screen.
Their near-zero use of power is a big drawcard. There is nominal power usage when uploading and changing images, but power usage drops to below 0.005 Watts when items are displayed statically.
Samsung says the power measurement is based on IEC62301 standards from the International Electrotechnical Commission. According to the standards, the average power below 0.005W is indicated as 0.00W.
Businesses can deploy their own solutions through Tizen Enterprise APIs.
You don’t need a power cord, and you are not limited to mounting the e-paper device near a power point. Samsung says the Colour E-Paper device has a 5000mAh battery, and two USB-C ports for charging and transferring data.
You can manage content on the device from a phone; there’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support when you need to do that. The Samsung Color E-Paper mobile app supports Android 10 and above, and iOS 15 and above on Apple devices.
You might ask whether Samsung’s new devices could be used to display art or photography on your walls at home.
At the moment, Netgear’s Meural Canvas and similar devices display can be set up to display classical artworks from across the world, but they use regular displays that draw power. You end up wanting to find ways to disguise the power cord dropping down the wall.
The ultra-low power capability of Colour E-Paper devices frees you from that problem, but the limitation is the smaller colour pallet, the resolution and the limited ability to portray textures as you can on a regular screen.
Some products, such as Advanced Colour ePaper (ACeP), uses cyan, magenta, yellow and white pigments which allow for displaying up to 32,000 colours. ACeP was announced in 2016 and began shipping on e-readers in 2023. But resolutions remain low.
Nevertheless, there may be possibilities ahead for showing some artworks on colour E-Paper screens. You could certainly display posters on these screens on kids’ bedroom walls , and periodically update the content. They would be good around homes.
