I’ve always said that as much as I love the electronic ink for be easy on the eyes, I wouldn’t buy a Kindle or Nook unless they come up with a color version. Reading on an LCD screen is no fun; eventually you feel like you’re burning holes in your eyes. Electronic ink reflects ambient light naturally, just like paper. And with color, suddenly it doesn’t seem like a step *down* to use one.

I can’t wait for E Ink to continue evolving so it becomes not just practical, but preferable.

To keep growing beyond 2011, E Ink and device makers need to expand into new markets, such as textbooks and perhaps newspapers with bigger displays.

They also need color devices, and E Ink is finally coming through. At the Consumer Electronics Show, E Ink’s CMO Sririam Peruvemba was toting a demo color unit with a 9.7-inch diagonal screen — the size of a Kindle DX — that displayed 4,096 colors.

It’s not as vivid as a photo in a newspaper and nowhere near the crispness of an LCD display. It also refreshes too slowly for decent browsing or video playback.

But it’s still color on the special display material that, unlike LCD, looks better in direct sunlight and uses no energy to hold an image. It draws battery only when pages are turned and a new image displayed, which helps the Kindle run for weeks on a single charge.