Evolution of e-Ink

● Black and White: There are various names (Vizplex, Pearl, Mobius, Triton, Carta), with Carta as the latest version Carta HD is 300ppi and all the e-book manufacturers uses this popular Black & White e-paper.

● Advanced Color ePaper (or Gallery): First introduced in 2016, it contains cyan, magenta, yellow and white, for 32,000 colors. Unfortunately, it was too slow to refresh that no company uses this tech successfully – except for Remarkable, which created a custom operating system and limit some things to achieve usability. Despite having more colors, the Remarkable still doesn’t look that much better than a Kaleido 3 (with glowlight).

● Kaleido: The most popular color e-ink is Kaleido. Its latest version (3 and 3 Plus) has a limited 4,096 colors. It looks incredibly dark, due to the way the technology work (with the color film on top). You can offset the darkness by incorporating a glowlight. Basically, this looks very good, but you need a glow light.

● Spectra 6: Double the colors of Gallery and looks the best among all the color e-Ink screen. However, it’s also the slowest to refresh.

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■ e-Ink
The next generation of e-ink is here, and it is called Spectra 6. The original Spectra had only three pigments (red, black, white), but over the years, they evolved to Spectra 6, featuring six colors: red, yellow, blue, white, black, and green… and through those combinations can produce about 60,000 colors.

It’s been a while, but I bring to you the latest in e-Ink tech with its latest offering: Spectra 6. This technology is based on the old Spectra 3, which uses black, white, and red pigments. Spectra 6 uses: red, yellow, blue, and white particles to produce about 60,000 total colors.

Of all the various e-Ink versions – Spectra 6 looks the best, but unfortunately it is also the slowest to refresh the images – can take about 30 seconds, depending on panel size, temperature, and controller. That’s not ideal for reading comic books or magazines, so this tech is largely marketed for the digital signage or posters. It eventually made its way to consumers, in smaller sizes as digital picture frames.

I’ve been keeping an eye on this since May 2025, and noted how expensive the 8-inch photo frames were ($240 to $350). I just assumed the larger frame (13 inches) will be double in price ($600 and above), so I just thought I’d never buy this.

Now that the frames are out and some are discounted, just in time for Broketober, I was excited to finally own the Reflection Frame. According to the creator, it is the world’s first E Ink Spectra 6 Digital Photo Frame.

First of all, I really like the whole frame – it looks like a legitimate frame. There is no protective glass, you just have the frame and the white matboard. In one of the corners (bottom-left for portraits, bottom-right for landscape) is the NFC receiver. You use the Reflection Frame app on Android or iPhone. You select the photo you want to add to the frame and you simply tap that one corner to transfer the image.

I’ve tested out various images and here are my thoughts:

● Oil paintings look the best. Yellows and browns looks very good.
● Black & White photos look crisp and high contrast. Generally looks really good.
● Higher the resolution of the original image, the better it looks on the frame. I recommend at least 1,000 pixels.
● Color photos look okay, skin tones look off.

While I really enjoy the B&W photo, this is a color e-Ink screen, so I feel obligated to display something colorful. The colors are the best of all the e-Inks out there. It really does look almost like real print. It’s almost there. At a distance, you can’t tell the difference. It’s only when you get close to the display do you realized this is electronic.

Now for some minor negatives. The only way to transfer photos to the frame is via the NFC tap-to-transfer option. So, you need a modern-ish phone. There is no WiFi built into the unit. WiFi does drain the battery, so I can understand why it was left off.

You can only store one image at a time, so you can’t have it change automatically every 24 hours or anything. The only way to change the image is to tap-to-transfer.

The frame is permanent, so just make sure you buy the right frame. I went with the cheapest version I can get – which is walnut/light brown wood. They say the mat is replaceable, and originally it was held together by magnets. To save costs, they took out that feature, so you need to manually open up the back to change the mat. Still, I don’t think I will be doing this in the near future – I am content with the white with brown wood frames. I think it looks stellar as is. I have zero gripes about its appearance – it’s much larger than I thought, since I was only thinking of an 8×10 image… the matplate and frame makes it much bigger. It came with metal sawtooth mounted in the back in landscape or portrait – ready to hang! I like those little details; it really adds value to an electronic display.

The app works incredibly well and if you don’t have photos, it does offer some curated fine art (pre-formatted for the frame), but it is very lacking. There is no subscription fee to use the app. They also offer A.I. art, which I’m not a fan of. Do people really like A.I. art?

I’m very happy with the Reflective Frame. I really love that I can change the image whenever I get bored. I mean, when was the last time you change a picture in your photo frame? Probably never, if you’re like me. I still have some framed photos that I have in storage, they have never been opened and changed.

So, what’s the future for Spectra 6? I’m starting to see that the latest trend will be “trading cards”, similar to e-Ink badges. It’s cool, but they’re fragile that I would advised to put the card in a protective sleeve. There’s also a company called NowMean (what a terrible lost in translation name – “now mean” before they were nice) that just shipped a Kickstarter of an e-Ink calendar. The top part is Spectra 6 for image quality and the bottom is Carta Black & White e-Ink for the clock and date. It’s kind of cool, but I do wish the bottom was much larger – like for a full calendar or week (7 days).

P.S. I know when you see these photos, that you can see tiny little dots. I don’t see it in real life if I’m looking at the frame at a comfortable distance. To me, it looks great. It’s only when I get really close to the display do I notice the tiny dots.