Why E-Ink Technology Displays Are Better For Your Eyes

There's a huge emphasis on multi-tasking electronic devices these days. Phones that have cameras are now commonplace. Many cell phones can surf the web, send and receive e-mails and even act as satellite navigation devices. Which is great. The best example is the iPhone and you can, should you wish read your Kindle books on an iPhone. You can also read Kindle books on a PC and an application to let you do this on the Mac is on the way.

It's certainly good to have the choice but, one of the reasons that we have e-book readers like the Kindle in the first place is because they offer something that devices with back-lit LCD screens such as the iPod and computer monitors cannot match. Simply put, the e-ink technology which the Kindle uses is much better for your eyes and feels much more like reading normal text printed on paper.

The reason for this is because e-ink technology is completely different to the LCD screens used in computers. It is not back-lit, which apart from making it easier to read on for prolonged periods of time, saves on power and means that your Kindle reader can go for much longer between charges than would be possible for a similar device using LCD technology.

The illustration below shows how e-ink displays operate. Hopefully it's not too technical - it's intended to be an explanation of the potential benefits for you, as a Kindle user.

The display of your Kindle has thousands of spheres, each one about the diameter of a human hair, sandwiched between the transparent screen and a layer of electrical conductors. Inside each sphere there are positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles. By passing a negative current through the electrodes at the back of the screen, the white particles are attracted downwards and the black particles are positioned next to the surface of the screen. The opposite happens when a positive current is applied to the electrodes.

And that's how your Amazon Kindle display works. No back-lit display makes it very much easier on your eyes. There is another big benefit. The e-ink technology display only uses power when the page is being refreshed - or when the page is being written if you prefer. That's the reason why your Kindle can go so long between charges - assuming you turn the wireless off that is. You can "turn" quite literally thousands of pages before you need to charge up your Kindle again.

So, your Kindle reader's use of e-ink technology is both better for your eyes and has a low power requirement. It's just one more reason to get hold of this amazing device!