For VLSI implementation, low operation voltage and switching current are the major concerns. Yet, none of the driving schemes published so far has addressed this combined issue. We studied the electro-optic characteristics of bistable cholesteric displays at the low transition voltage in this paper, and the effect of slew-rate on the maximum output current and average output power in a forthcoming paper. The dynamic responses were measured and an efficient scheme was devised accordingly. The most cost-effective addressing time was 4 ms/line using the low-end twist nematic (TN) or super twist nematic (STN) mixtures.