E Ink Develops New Large-Format, Color-Rich Marquee Display Tech Focused On Outdoor Use-Cases

April 9, 2025 by Dave Haynes

E Ink appears to have sorted out a way to address the main criticism – apart from cost – of its push into large form-factor color e-paper displays as replacements for outdoor advertising and promotional printed posters, with new Marquee technology that uses a four color particle system like E Ink’s smaller, indoor-focused Spectra 6 displays.

The new Marquee technology will be among several advances the Taiwan-based company will be showing at next week’s Touch Taiwan trade show in Taipei.

The displays appear to support a much wider range of colors than the Kaleido tech now being touted for outdoor uses and like Kaleido have an operating temperature range between -20 and 65 °C. The company says in PR there is ongoing development focused on reaching sizes as large as 75” diagonal and updating times between 5-7 seconds. The web page for Marquee offers no detail on the color support.

“Building upon our pioneering ePaper foundation established in 1997, E Ink Marquee represents an exciting evolution,” says Edzer Huitema, US CTO of E Ink. “We expect E Ink Marquee to redefine the digital display industry and challenge people’s perception of E Ink and what is possible.”

Note the “we expect” qualifier, as this is stuff coming out of R&D and E Ink’s PR says Marquee’s roadmap is still being defined.

CEO Johnson Lee writes on Linkedin that Marquee was “designed from the ground up to address wide temperature rate for outdoor use, super low power, vivid colour and large format … Combining with our latest waveform structure, Ripple, we address the flashiness issue while the display is being updated.”

The last bit refers to how color e-paper displays glitch out for a while as images are refreshed, which I kind of see as a feature rather than a bug.

Here’s a gif that explains how Marquee’s four-color electrophoretic displays work …

There are some other notable previews planned for next week – like a 75-inch Spectra 6, which would deliver much more vivid colors for indoor posters than the Kaleidos. Spectra 6 uses a four color particle system (like the new Marquee), while Kaleido is the older black and white e-paper technology with a color filter applied – which is why color support is limited and the images are muted as opposed to much more saturated.

The preview video also suggests E Ink or a partner has sorted out how to make Kaleido displays support video. The thing with video, though, is it takes much more energy to refresh a screen numerous times per second, as opposed to once a minute, hour, day or week. Energy savings is a key value proposition for color e-paper.

The last interesting bit is that E Ink now has some 100 partners being showcased or mentioned in some way at the stand. Not going, as I just got off a plane and Taiwan is a BIG flight. But Futuresource is sending people and have promised to develop highlights it will share. Good show, though, if you are in that region – but nerdy like SID’s Display Week.

Here’s a video advancing the Touch Taiwan stand …