What Is E Ink and Is it Better for Your Eyes?

Every screen releases disruptive blue light that has a long-term impact on the eyes. It makes it hard to read words on a screen for extended periods of time. In the early ages of worldwide tech adoption, people realized this and sought to solve it. You may not even realize it, but you may have already experienced this technology for yourself. Discover what e ink is, what its use cases are, and how it impacts the tech industry.

What Is E Ink?

Electronic ink, or e ink (sometimes stylized as e-ink), is a digital display innovation invented by MIT graduates in the 1990s. It is a proprietary technology and used to fashion electronic paper. The goal was to design a digital replacement for ink and paper but give the product the look and feel of traditional paper. Many companies saw this as an opportunity, and it has expanded to numerous products over the past several decades. 

You may think you’ve never seen this before, but it is more common than you think. If you’ve ever interacted with an e-reader like a Kobo or Kindle, you’ve seen e ink in action. People are using this technology in increasingly creative ways, such as rendering the famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes into e ink formats.

Electronic paper is not a standard display, like you would expect from a television or computer monitor. On these displays, images are composed of seemingly countless pixels, rendering high-fidelity images in intricate colors. E ink uses a different method to create images and words.

How Does it Work?

E ink screens are known for their interesting texture. It’s not quite paperlike, but it is as close as it can get for being a screen. This is because there is a film layer above the particles creating the images. The particles, containing pigments, are suspended in fluid-filled bubbles that are invisible to the naked eye. 

The e ink device sends signals to these bubbles, telling the pigments which way to move to create specific images. It tells the paper which region needs black “ink” to create words or white space to make a readable, contrasting background. Even though many e-readers and similar technologies are now adopting color “inks,” this is more energy-efficient than LED displays. 

Even if the electronic paper has color, it isn’t using light as its primary source of visual splendor. The lack of light in an e-reader is why the battery lasts for so long, especially when comparing it to reading on your phone. The signals to the pigments are the main energy expenditures, which happen infrequently compared to the constant energy required to light up other screens.

Is E Ink Better for Your Eyes?

Have you ever tried to read an article or book on your phone outside, and the glare makes you feel like you need to wear sunglasses? E ink solves this problem by removing glare from the equation, making it easier to read no matter what the lighting conditions are.

Harvard researchers put electronic paper to the test to see if it was better for the eyes. Most LCD and LED screens emit blue light, which poses a lot of problems after extended exposure. It can hinder melatonin production, preventing restful sleep. It can also strain retinal cells, leading to long-term damage if leaving the eyes on time to recover. While many screens offer night modes, which change the color of the screen to reduce strain, there is still light coming off of them which has an impact on the eyes.

Electronic paper doesn’t use light, and therefore contains no blue light. The researchers observed LCDs with e-paper. Even if the e-paper had a backlight, it still had a significantly reduced impact. The e ink alternative is usable for three times as long as LCDs in harsh, bright modes before causing the same amount of retinal distress.

What Are the Other Advantages of E Ink?

As mentioned, the way images appear on electronic paper directly affects its battery life. Devices using this technology extend their shelf life and battery life cycles significantly more times than a conventional LED or LCD display.

E ink also has the benefit of reducing paper waste by letting people write on the screens as if it were real paper. Many electronic pens, when placed on the screen, even replicate the scratchy, authentic feel of writing with a pencil or pen to make the experience more seamless. It could also reduce the critical minerals needed to create other screens and technologies in time. The benefits of this type of note-taking extend beyond the environment. 

Many have automatic backups, cloud storage and syncing across devices. The convenience factor is enormous, especially if you consider how you’ll never lose notes for any thoughts ever again. Additionally, e ink permits search functionality. The screens can scan words as if you were using Ctrl+F on a computer — but on your handwritten notes. Waste less time scanning with your eyes and potentially missing information when you can implement computer shortcuts into your writing.

Finally, it reduces the harmful effects of blue light. As noted in the aforementioned research, one of the motivations of researching electronic paper is to mitigate the extensive amount of time people spend behind a screen. This is potentially 13 hours a day. Taking away the negative side effects of viewing harsh light could lead to better sleep and focus, in addition to reduced eye strain.

Inkless Ink

E ink is a wonderful yet simplistic concept in a world of grand technologies. It keeps humanity’s need to be on screens alive while making it feel more manual. Plus, it has numerous advantages over modern screens, such as health benefits and reduction of paper waste. E ink hasn’t stopped growing. Simply because it has proven its effectiveness doesn’t mean innovators are halting research into what more it could be. Keep your eyes on the industry to see how it changes.

Who knows — maybe one day e ink TVs and computers will become the norm.