Although the more light that falls on the screen the lighter and whiter it looks. I suspect that if the screen really was pure white that it would be hard on the eyes. Too much contrast is bad just like too little. In my opinion they have hit on a good combination of very light-gray screen and very dark-gray text that works better than any other e-Ink reader I've ever seen. And BTW, the paper books I buy never seem to have a pure white paper. They are always dulled. If I happen to see a magazine with pure white paper it is always difficult to read--ditto for articles I print out on pure white paper.