First E-Ink like color tablet with Tcl NXTPAPER technology | Hacker News Reader

First E-Ink like color tablet with Tcl NXTPAPER technology

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70 pointsteleforce42 comments

After switching to a Onyx Boox Note Air from an iPad I am so happy with this technology. Writing is truly paper-like and reading is so incredible. Latency is great, pens work nicely and are much finer and (can) have more friction than the Apple Pencil, contrast and resolution is great. And it is MUCH more versatile than a remarkable. Due to Android apps, more storage and great stock apps.

I know it is a bridge-technology at best but for me it beats any LCD/OLED screen by a mile. So I am more closely following this tech again now.

How is the general battery usage?

My Onyx Boox Max Lumi certainly has excellent battery for my purposes.

Also owner of a ReMarkable 2, will be reviewing both of them soon as I think they are an interesting niche tech, and are big investments for people.

A comparison of both would be very appreciated. I've been trying to decide which to get.

If you could also try and to a pcap to make sure nothing funky is going on with the Onyx ROM that would be amazing.

Please share here on HN when you do the comparison. This class of device (somewhere between a Kindle and an iPad) are of interest to me, but the market is a little immature and I don't feel like being a beta tester.

I also will chime in that I would like to see a comparison.

Hard to say because I have auto sync set up to keep my PDFs up to date which runs every 15mins. And Wifi is mostly on. But with that and moderte usage I may need to charge it between 7 and 9 days. But you can probably do optimize the settings more (after what time does it disable wifi when it started sleep mode, when does it start to shit itself off, front-light adjustments, etc.)

How well does it handle PDFs? Zooming and all.

It handles PDFs well, even large ones (~300MiB) but I do not zoom. It has a nice auto cropping features which allows me to read everything (including various conference paper formats) well.

I can agree that it is an amazing device indeed.

You can use any Wacom compatible stylus to replace the existing stylus and the third party stylus will probably perform better than the original based on other owners' reports.

Check these comprehensive three parts in-depth review video of the Onyx Boox Note Air by a reputable eBook reader reviewer [1].

My main complain is that it has a rather limited built-in web based app to transfer from your laptop/PC/etc to the device directly via WiFi but not the other around. If you want to transfer wirelessly from the device to your laptop/PC/etc you need to register with Onyx's portal and sync from there, thus it's a more cumbersome to use. Normally I just email the document to myself because unlike Remarkable's devices it has Android OS and normal browser being installed.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdQ5sXTJRMI

Yeah I have the Lamy, the Samsung pen that Voya is all about but I like the Staedler Norris Digital Jumbo the best. Voja‘s videos where the main reason why I cancelled my RM2 order and went with the Boox. For syncing I set up „FolderSync Pro“ to automatically sync between my WebDav server for PDFs and also automatically upload the notes folder (where the explicitly exported notes are saved). It is just too bad that the later are only rasterized PDFs whereas if you enable a sync service from the OS like Dropbox, the notes are uploaded as vector PDFs.

One thing I am not happy about is the constant phoning home to Chinese servers (multiple domains incl. alibaba) This can be disabled via NetGuard but then you also lose the ability to automatically upload the handwritten vectorized notes to Dropbox.

Could pi-hole help with this by limiting access to certain domains?

Oh for sure! I just cannot set it up where I am right now. I am sure that NetGuard may also somehow be able to block domains but I have not been able to find out how.

> My main complain is that it has a rather limited built-in web based app to transfer from your laptop/PC/etc to the device directly via WiFi but not the other around.

You should take a look at Symcthing, that's what I use to keep directories in sync across devices securely. There's a slight learning curve, but once you grasp the concept of devices combined with folders and how they interact it's a breeze. You can set it and forget it and it will do it's magic.

That has an e-ink display. This does not.

From the article, this sounds like it's an improved LCD not an e-ink alike.

Yes, it appears to be a transflective IPS LCD.

Depends on what part you focus on, it's an RLCD so it isn't based on e-Ink tech. Like an e-Ink though, it can be used in direct sunlight since it just uses ambient light. (Maybe it'll have a backlight like the Kindle Paperwhites)

I think the use case is similar enough to a color e-Ink devices.

Maybe it'll have a backlight like the Kindle Paperwhites

The Kindle e-readers use a front-light.

Thank you for the correction, I must have been on autopilot. That would be far more appropriate.

Thank you for the clarification, I wasn't able to tell from the link if it was backlit or used ambient light.

It's funny to me that they skipped over that feature, but instead talked ones that few of us here probably care about (like thickness). Just another reminder that HN is a far from average sampling of the world.

Yup, isn't this just an LCD without a backlight? What's revolutionary about that? I had a Gameboy Advance back in 2001 that had a colour screen without a backlight.

Looks like a fairly terrible product to me, having neither the advantages of a typical tablet or e-reader: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv_NksPKnuw

With a screen resolution of 1440x1080, that's a lower resolution than my work monitor, which itself (I am fond of pointing out) has a lower resolution than my phone. I can't see this being a particularly good display to read from.

I think it's just a lot more reflective. It certainly looks a lot brighter than the GBA screen which was pretty difficult to see.

Such an amazing technology.

I don't understand why they sell it as a full 'tablet' product, that I expect to be the basic tablet crap, instead of selling the screen itself to all manufacturer of devices that could be interested.

For years I was extremely interested in an e-Ink tablet for reading scientific papers, but while the technology and hardware became more and more available, I realized that there is no scenario that such hardware would ship with software able to properly annotate PDF documents in an interchangeable format (like valid PDFs f.E.). And that this would be stable and supported for some reasonable time.

Source: My experience with Android tablets, iOS and Linux PDF-Software and every presentation of eInk-tablets seen so far, where this is never really part of their pitch.

This lack of reliable handwriting is definitely an annoying point to me too. That being said, why do you think it won't get any better? Judging by their ads, Sony DPT-RP1 looked great in this respect. (I wonder if the actual experience matched the ad, though.) Furthermore, I wonder what you're referring to about interchangeability: are the current annotated PDFs somehow not interchangeable?

I have a DPT-RP1 and use it for reading (and annotating) PDFs. It's excellent provided you accept its limitations. It really is a single use device for reading PDFs. That said, I also use it for handwritten notes (easy to export as PDF) and for presenting on-line (convert slides to PDF, use the screen viewer and you can do live annotations--great for remote lecturing).

Limitations... Sony has annoyed me very much with astonishing limitations on a previous laptop. This has seriously tainted the way I see them despite the otherwise great products they build.

I got the onyx boox max 3 for a while now.

While it would run a complete Android OS, I mainly use it to transfer PDFs of papers/books onto the tablet, annotate them with handwriting and transfer the PDFs back to my laptop if needed. The annotations are stored directly into the PDF and all readers I tried it with can read it.

It was expensive, but it saves me from some Monitor time each day, which was worth it for me. Especially the A4 format of the tablet makes it very nice, it really ist just like a pice of paper with a pen to annotate it and that's why I enjoy it.

That's the exact purpose I got a reMarkable 2 for, and have been so glad that I did. It's not perfect, but it's a far better experience than using a tablet, laptop or print-out.

Me too! My rM2 has quickly become one of my most-used daily devices, between note-taking, reading/annotating PDFs, reading ebooks and doing sudokus.

I strongly suggest you try this out https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable-hacks

For me it's been a game changer

Is there any solution that allows handwritten and typewritten notes to mix?

What I'm thinking is while I'm at the computer, being able to use something like OneNote (not exactly OneNote, just for example) to be able to see and type notes. When I wander away from the computer, use rM2 and see all the notes I just typed.

I guess the idea I'm thinking of is how I can use something like OneNote on my desktop, laptop, and tablet, and enter and view notes on any of them easily.

My understanding is that even though there are ways to see your rM2 notes on a computer, it's a bit clunky and not seamless. More of an "export from rM2".

I'd love something without backlight (front light is OK and encouraged, similar to Kindle) as my main monitor. That would save me from so many of my migraines.

Dasung just announced a 25" e-ink monitor, and it looks pretty good. Expected to be pricey though.

https://www.reddit.com/r/eink/comments/kjvsoj/dasung_just_re...

They also make a 13" you can buy now, I think.

The lifetime cycle on e-ink is really discouraging me from pulling the trigger, especially at that price point.

Yeah, it feels bad, e-ink is currently too inaccessible for all but the most dedicated. But at least it's an indication of the beginning of e-ink displays coming to market - albeit it'll be probably a few years before it comes to fruition.

Don't know how to shoehorn this in, but this guy on reddit has taken a deep dive into all e-ink devices for his health (apparently LCD/LED screens cause him chronic pain), and it's been pretty inspiring, to me personally, to keep an eye out on eventually incorporating e-ink into my life. So, depending on your migraines and health prioritization, maybe worth mulling over.

old.reddit.com/r/eink/comments/f4ojmw/here_is_a_list_of_all_my_eink_devices_in/

I'm waiting for the day a phone is available with a responsive, high resolution E-Ink type of display. My eyes are so much more comfortable reading on them.

As luck would have it: https://www.e-ink-info.com/e-ink-devices/mobile-phones

Has anyone got any samples that show off the screen quality?

I'm struggling to find out who makes the screen and what specs it is.

Is it true e-ink? (as in, it doesn't need power to display images)

what bit depth is it running at?

From their keynote: https://youtu.be/Lzgij1q_W1Y?t=39

It looks like it is basically a LCD without backlight. So nothing to do with eInk technology.

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