CES 2010 has come with a slew of surprises for the e-paper fans out there, and one of the biggest is Notion Ink’s brand spanking new tablet. It’s to be the first to use Pixel Qi’s revolutionary hybrid display, that can switch between e-paper viewing (without glare and in full sunlight), low-watt hi-def display and traditional LCD display with ease. There is no name yet for this new netbook style computer, but we do have quite a few details and they do seem to be very interesting.
Small Tablet, Lots of Horsepower
The specs read like a netbook computer (like the ASUS eee-pc or the Acer One netbook) since it uses a 10″ display and has solid state hard drive with only 16 or 32GB worth of storage. Like other netbooks, it contains a webcam and the usual Wi-FI connectivity. It also has a lot of tweaks and extra doo-dads, like ambient lighting and a touch pad screen to make it seriously outshine the competition. At $300 dollars, this tablet computer will make all other machines pale in comparison, including other e-paper based devices like the Barnes and Noble’s Nook or Amazon’s Kindle.
One of the biggest benefits it gets from it’s e-paper based technology is the great battery life and low glare. In direct sunlight you can even watch full 1080 DPI HD video using the full-color transreflective display and not see any lag in the images shown. What Pixel-Qi and Notion Ink have done could completely revolutionize the netbook market, let alone the e-paper market. And it’s good to see Notion Ink getting on the ground floor and pushing out such an excellent product.
Android Inside
The operating system will be Google’s Android, which has proven to be very popular in the cellphone market, and has a few other non e-paper netbooks coming out next year. No word yet how much of the Android application framework will be supported–some devices using Android use a very small subset of tools (like the Nook) while others use all of the supported applications and software. Since it will include neat little extras like a water sensor and GPS tracking, we’re going to assume that it runs the full gamut of Android Apps.
The Competition
Even though the Notion Ink tablet will be excellent for reading books in low-light vision, we don’t see it competing directly with tools like the Nook or Amazon’s Kindle. Instead, we see it taking a larger chunk out of the netbook market, which is already pretty brutal between the different competitors.
The big competitor with the Notion Ink tablet might just be the rumored Apple Tablet, which is (according to various sources, but unconfirmed) will also use Pixel-Qi’s e-paper technology. Even though Apple brings it’s brand name and style to the table, it’s computers are notoriously over priced. And if the Notion Ink tablet can keep it’s $300 price tag, it should compete exceptionally well in a soon to be overcrowded market.
If Pixel-Qi and Notion Ink delivers the product they’ve promised, we can easily see their e-paper display taking the world of electronics by storm, and being used in many other products, like flat screen hi-def television. The benefits are huge–low battery consumption, less eye-strain, without the drawbacks of other e-paper methods like slow refresh rate and clunky interfaces.
netbook, notion tablet, pixel qi, tablet
Hi: is anyone here able to confirm Notion Ink’s presence at CES 2010? Because I can’t find them on CES Exhibitors Directory. Nor can I find Pixel-Qi, regardless what they say on their corporate website (that they’ll be “in a private demo room” … doing what? Showcasing a finished product or just another prototype?)
I’m surprised that Pixel-Qi continue to say they have an E-paper mode as this has been debunked before, even on the EETimes teardown. E-paper implies that the display, like paper, would consume exactly 0 watts when the image is static. PiQi uses a transflective LCD which can’t achieve that, all it can do is turn off the backlight and go into reflective mode. It still needs power to direct the nematic. Hence, just a transflective LCD.
@ Jaya: Epaper doesn’t necessarily mean low power. There are some nifty tricks I’ve seen on LCD displays which come under the header of being epaper, but are high power (largegly due to being backlit). There are a number of other modes which are considered to be epaper and are high power - some of the Zikon modes for example.
The essential thing is that serioius writers will be able to use word processing on the black and white e-ink type screen. This will be much easier on the eyes.
In addition, changing from the the e-ink screen for writing to the regular LCD screen for other computer functions (research, etc.) is a dream idea. It this functionality is available, every serious writer/student will want it.
This appears to be a game-changing advance in computer technology.