When it comes to screens, e-book readers are the last bastion of the monochrome display. But that's about to change with a burst of colour being injected into one new e-reader.

Pocketbook's Color e-reader, due for release in late 2020, will display up to 4096 colours in HD resolution on its 6in display - a major step up from previous readers, limited to displaying text and graphics in grayscale on a white background.

While many have been content reading books in black and white, the benefits are more obvious for fans of graphic novels and non-fiction books.

The colour panel technology, called Kaleido, is being developed by the Taiwanese manufacturer E-Ink.

Since this manufacturer also supplies most of the greyscale panels of other popular e-readers, it's highly likely that this marks the start of a major shift to full colour screens on e-ink devices.

Pocketbook estimates the Color will cost around €200 when it launches in Europe. For this you get a screen that can handle novels just as well as comics, recipe books and illustrated non-fiction books.

Whether black and white or colour, e-ink displays have the advantage over our smartphone screens that they are extremely energy efficient because they only consume energy when turning pages.

Unlike smartphone screens, they also often don't need to be backlit to be readable. What's more, the text on the page is high contrast, making it very close to the reading text on paper.

 - dpa