Amscreen Joins Growing List Of Specialty Display Firms Testing Large-Format Color E-Paper As High-Bright LCD Alternative

March 21, 2025 by Dave Haynes

It is likely that at some point all of the specialty display manufacturers who have long focused on LCD, and more recently dabbled in direct view LED, will add color e-paper displays to their product range – particularly in parts of the world that pay attention to pesky little issues like climate change, and energy costs and availability.

So it is not a bit surprising to see the UK manufacturer Amscreen – which has a substantial operation in the greater Manchester area – now teasing on Linkedin that it is looking at color e-paper for advertising street furniture and similar use-cases.

CEO Simon Sugar posted: Amscreen are exploring the future of sustainable screen technology with a new prototype powered by E-Ink. This innovative approach offers colourful visuals while significantly reducing power consumption, making it an exciting option to consider for energy-efficient outdoor digital signage as we test and refine the technology. 

The post does not get into specs but this would very likely be the 75-inch Kaleido unit that was shown at ISE recently by a handful of companies – including Taiwan ad display giant Dynascan, and another, smaller specialty manufacturer from that country, Agile Display Solutions. Samsung and LG also showed units in their stands. Other companies like Canada’s Praever are also tinkering with large-format e-paper.

The ones I saw in Barcelona looked OK-ish – the big issue being Kaleido only supports 4,096 colors and has a color flyer that tends to mute the visuals, making them less vibrant and saturated. The one Sugar is standing by here, to be fair, looks pretty good. Exact colors may not matter for transit shelter ads for a career college, but global brands will want near-exact color reproduction and deep saturated colors for their ads, and this variant of e-paper isn’t there yet. E Ink has a pricey line called Spectra 6 that doesn’t need a color filter and does offer rich color support, but the core technology is rated for operating in temperatures of 0-50 degrees Celsius. So that’s fine for some parts of the world, but rules out most or all of Europe, same for the US and definitely for Canada.

As evident by Geniatech getting decent video running on a smaller E Ink, third-party manufacturers are finding ways to improve and optimize these things.