E Ink, the company that created the high readability displays you can find in e-readers around the world, has for some reason created a new touch trackpad. And instead of acting as an extension of your laptop screen, E Ink believes that it should be a special place to interact with artificial intelligence.
The new touch trackpad appears to use E Ink’s color display, similar to those found in the Kobo Libra Color or Kindle Colorsoft, and should offer the usual swipe, tap, drag, and click functions of a regular trackpad. When you’re not using it in this way, E Ink imagines that the trackpad offers “second-screen capabilities,” such as quick access to “frequently used shortcuts and system messages, as well as GenAI content such as text/image summaries, game tactics, or special AI tasks.”
E Ink claims to have used several different Intel technologies to prototype its AI tools, and the trackpad was specifically designed to be used even when your laptop is turned off. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the idea of squeezing a touchscreen into a laptop trackpad any less crazy.
The use of an E Ink display is certainly a novelty, but there have been many attempts to turn the seemingly unused trackpad resource into another place for content, and none of them have caught on. In particular, ASUS has repeatedly tried to use this resource with the ScreenPad feature, which it first introduced on the ZenBook Pro 15. The ScreenPad can be an extension of the main display, but it can also run simple programs and widgets. E Ink says that one of the advantages of the trackpad is that it will consume less power than previous versions, but did anyone worry about the trackpad affecting the battery life of a laptop before it became a screen?
Placing the display in the trackpad is not going to make you switch to a premium laptop. Besides, it’s just not intuitive. You have to learn to look down to see what’s on the trackpad and learn not to cover it – something your hands naturally do when using a laptop.
If you’re not convinced, E Ink hasn’t said when the trackpad will be available. However, given the use of Intel technology, there is every chance that it will appear in an expensive “artificial intelligence computer” sometime in the future.
