If you’re anything like me, your tastes in art change fairly often, which can make owning actual artwork a challenge. Unfortunately, however, most smart frames don’t actually look all that realistic. BLOOMIN8, however, might have the solution with the BLOOMIN8 E-Ink Canvas.
The devices essentially use E-Ink technology to make pictures of paintings look a whole lot more realistic – and at a glance, you might not be able to tell the difference.
There are plenty of reasons why E-Ink displays look much more realistic when it comes to displaying art. The concept is simple. E-Ink displays don’t need a backlight to show an image. Instead, you can see the image the same way you see anything else in the world – through light around you reflecting onto it. That’s in stark contrast to LED displays, which need a backlight in order to produce a visible image, which is perfectly fine for when you want to watch a movie, but means it can’t reproduce a painting with much realism.
The big tech improvements here are that instead of the E-Ink displays being only black and white (like a Kindle), they’re actually in full color. They have a 200 pixel per inch resolution – which means that you won’t be able to see individual pixels without some kind of magnifying glass or without getting really close to the device.
BLOOMIN8 is selling three different sizes: small, which is 7.3 inches; medium, which is 13.3 inches; and large, which is 28.5 inches. Because they don’t have a backlight, their built-in battery can last years at a time. In fact, BLOOMIN8 says that a single charge will get the BLOOMIN8 E-Ink Canvas three to four years of usage. That power efficiency means that the devices don’t need an unsightly wire hanging out of the bottom like most other smart displays.
You can change the art whenever you want. They work with an app that lets you quickly and seamlessly change the art being displayed at anytime. Images can be stored locally on the device itself and they aren’t uploaded to the company’s servers. Plus, the device has an SD card slot that you can use to load files directly onto it. You can use the display for other things, like displaying weather, to-do lists, and calendars.
You can even customize the frame style of the displays. They’re designed to be fully compatible with IKEA RÖDALM frames, so you can get frames that you like and swap them out as needed.
The BLOOMIN8 E-Ink Canvas is being-pre-sold on Indiegogo with early bird pricing.
For more information on the BLOOMIN8 E-Ink Canvas, head to bloomin8.com.
Images courtesy of BLOOMIN8.