Just announced at Basel is an interesting advance from Seiko: a bitmapped grey-scale E-ink display with 80,000 pixels and 300 dots per inch, comparable to a good laser printer. Claimed to be a real product and not just a concept, it has amazing promise for programmable, legible displays. Photo-accurate moonphase? Graphics of twilight? We’ve liked the E-ink watches we’ve seen so far, so this is tremendously interesting, and we’ll be looking for a release date and price.
Also of note is the fact that each pixel can display four levels of grey — that’s new on watches, though the Kindle and its ilk have had it for a while.
Without giving numbers, Seiko claims it uses 1% of the power previously required, so hopefully the battery life will be at least a year. I’m not fond of watches I have to recharge every week.
By Paul Hubbard
