E-ink is already pretty cool technology, and it’s getting more and more sophisticated. Check out the above video, where it looks like a plastic slip treated with e-ink has been grafted on to some paper-like material. It’s pretty impressive to see how resilient the physical form has been getting.

It’s not too hard to imagine this becoming widely-used in the near future – heck, Esquire even splashed it all over their front cover over two years ago – but there remain some fairly imposing barriers. Price is one, of course, albeit more to the advertiser/publisher than the consumer. But there’s also the matter of the competing fields of LCD, and more threateningly, amoLED screens. Anyone who uses a smartphone or owns a computer monitor is already used to the feel of these options, and although e-ink’s nifty electrophoretic pigments might work better in direct sunlight, sales of the iPad and Kindle are level pegging despite Kindle’s 2.5 year headstart, suggesting that the anti-glare technology isn’t going to be enough to win on its own.

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