Onyx Boox Mira Pro is a 25 inch E INK Monitor | Hacker News Reader

Onyx Boox Mira Pro is a 25 inch E INK Monitor

goodereader.com

117 pointsMatrixik47 comments

Interesting, the 13.3" version could be particularly useful for me.

Shame the company's attitude to the GPL (essentially ignoring it, and claiming "unfair anti-China sentiment" & closing off forums when people call them out on that) precludes me from considering any of their products currently.

> Shame the company's attitude to the GPL (essentially ignoring it, and claiming "unfair anti-China sentiment" & closing off forums when people call them out on that) precludes me from considering any of their products currently.

Wow you're right: https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/hsn7kx/onyx_usin...

Also, E-ink as a company in general is apparently quite nasty: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779

Oh, thanks for pointing to that. In that thread I found out about clearInk, something of a competitor; seems like an old-style reflective color LCD with long battery life. I'd love to see these in devices like the AlphaSmart Neo2

I've seen that post repeated before but there's little evidence to corroborate it. Corporate acquisitions have to be be announced (somebody correct me if I'm wrong) and there's only one acquisition that I've seen news of E-ink making. Moreover, if "forget about getting any detailed datasheets about how to correctly drive their displays to get sharp images" were true, then this product and Dasung's similar product wouldn't even exist.

> Also, E-ink as a company in general is apparently quite nasty

I work in the display industry. I haven't seen them behave in a nasty way. If you look at that comment you linked to, I questioned it and didn't get a reply. So I'm suspicious. I even saw a news article use that very same comment as a citation which is ridiculous. Then now you cite the same unsubstantiated comment as well which is worrying. I do see a lot of disgruntled hobbyists here on HN who seem to hate E-Ink, Liquavista and other new display tech manufacturers. I gather there's a feeling among these hobbyists that somehow manufacturers should be lining up to give them samples and assist them in their startup ideas. That's an unreasonable expectation.

You are actually right, there is no large evidence of particular lawsuits (outside some maybe justified ones, https://the-digital-reader.com/2015/03/02/e-ink-loses-two-ye... etc.)

As a consumer, I can't say I care. Onyx may be screwing over those who absolutely must have access to their Linux kernel. However in my case, they are the only vendor that isn't trying to lock you into their ecosystem.

- Any EMR stylus will work on their Note devices.

- They run full Android, so I don't need an over-engineered Dropbox/GDrive integration to get my files. Syncthing Fork on F-Droid does wireless sync from my laptop without a cloud-based middleman.

- I can attach a BT keyboard and do my journaling on an eyestrain-free screen. Amazon would tell me to buy a Kindle Fire if I described that use case to them.

I bought the Note Air over the Kobo Elipsa, even though it was more expensive, and didn't have domestic warranty support like the Kobo would. Why? Because Kobo only has Dropbox and Pocket integration, and supports only their own bookstore for DRM'd titles. If you have purchases saved to your Kindle account, you are SOL.

> As a consumer, I can't say I care.

As a consumer who would if possible prefer not to support companies who take what they want, however they want, for their commercial gain and to hell with the wishes (and legal stance) of the creators that says they shouldn't, I gather my priorities differ from yours.

Of course if those features truly are must haves for your work/life (and they aren't all available in one product elsewhere which I don't think they are), or you simply didn't know about these matters before purchasing, then the equation is quite different. If you have no practical other choice then you have no practical choice.

I don't need the featureset enough to ignore my objection to their behaviour with respect to the kernel's licence (and possibly the licences of other components their devices use). Until a competitor offers the same/better or they change their tune, I can live without.

It's not in a vacuum. The other alternatives are either the same or fully closed.

> The other alternatives are either the same

Or non-existent of course, as the previous poster suggests and I stated I find quite believable.

> The other alternatives are either the same

Which other alternatives are modifying GPL covered code but refusing to uphold their requirements under the license? Or the same for another license?

> or fully closed.

Fully closed but correctly licensed (their own work and/or correctly licensed software from other sources) is preferable to taking OSS and breaching the licenses. It is at least more honest.

There is also Likebook that similarly violates the GPL.

I don't think a computing prison is preferable to an OSS breach. A device with an open bootloader that will take whatever code you give it is always infinitely preferable to restrictive computing.

That's why I bought the Fujitsu Quaderno A4. I wanted the 13.3" screen, and it was basically either that or Onyx Boox. It also helps that I wanted a minimalist product, simply for note taking and reading while in a meeting/in class, but a big reason was because of how Boox acts. Though if there's a monitor now, it'd be tough to pass that up.

Perhaps I should have said "I don't draw the line there" instead of 'I don't care'.

There's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance (or callousness) required to operate modern technology while also maintaining one's personal ethical standards. After all, I purchase phones and computers that are assembled in sweatshops, using components whose raw materials are mined by children in countries with no safety regulations. I clearly haven't drawn the line there either.

Compared to that, choosing a product from an OEM that's not GNU compliant is an infinitesimally smaller ethical quandary.

Fair enough. My current phone hails from China and I wasn't careful to check who, down on the ground, suffered to make it...

Onyx uses Android, which is covered by the GPL and Apache licenses. They made changes that were subject to the Apache license, but not the GPL license.

The linux part of the Onyx OS is unmodified. They don't comply with the GPL requirement to redistribute the linux binaries...because you can download them everywhere. Yes, this is a violation of the Linux license. Good luck with getting a court to impose any sanctions for it.

And the Apache license doesn't require them to share proprietary code, so they don't share their customizations to Android.

It's too bad people go after them for minor license violations without actually understanding how the licenses work.

I'm certain that they're not using the mainline Linux kernel, so this is untrue.

If it is a simple misunderstanding like that then why don't the company put up a page explaining the matters and quote it when asked about licensing in forums, instead of closing said forums in a little hissy fit?

They did, in the forums, in that thread. People ignored it and escalating the false claims about the license violations. When one of the forum posters tried to dox the community manager, they shut down the forum.

Being reasonable only works with reasonable people. By and large, the people who rail against things they don't understand are not reasonable people.

> They did, in the forums

But nowhere in more official documentation?

> People ignored it

Ignored it, or just dismissed it because they have reason to think it is not possible to run the kernel and/or other parts on that hardware without modifications that would be covered by the GPL?

> one of the forum posters tried to dox the community manager

That is definitely not acceptable behaviour, granted. Though it isn't a reason they stated for closing the forum.

What custom code do they need?

We don't know for sure. They won't release it so we can see. If there was none at all, they could just say "there is none" instead of any of this argument (many might not believe them if they said that, of course, but they aren't even saying it so that point is entirely moot).

Certainly I expect code to optimise things for the specifics of the hardware. That would be useful to have if they stop supporting it and something needs fixing after that point in time (for security reasons for instance) perhaps the hardware can still be more than a fancy brick. That is in part where the GPL came from in the first place - RMS being irritated by a locked-down printer he wanted to add some utility to.

Was trying to find actual info on frame rate and couldn’t locate any, but I did find this demo video that makes it look to be in the 5-10 FPS range - https://youtu.be/WT031cs-tjo

So probably good enough for reading/coding/browsing static sites, but scrolling will feel laggy and videos/animations will be a hard watch.

Still a pretty significant improvement over the eInk displays you get in Kindles which can take 500ms+ to refresh.

On smaller version (Onyx Boox Max Lumi) you could play (well, almost) Call of Duty: https://youtu.be/2RQFYVfIgz0

I refuse to buy from a company that refuses to respect their customers' rights to modify their software. Remarkable are better in this regard but not by much, but at least they don't blatantly ignore copyright.

The Linux foundation should seek an import injunction.

Out of curiosity, what is it that remarkable should be doing differently? They seem to have the source code on GitHub (https://github.com/remarkable) and have ssh root access to the device usable without any major hoops to jump through (the IP and randomly generated password is in one of the about screens).

I wonder what the real experience of writing documents and typing code would be on this. Is the latency acceptable to not feel "detached"? Regardless, I am exciting because honestly my eyes are killing me staring at three or four monitors all day long.

Not trying to mom you, but have you tried turning down the brightness until it’s the same as a sheet of paper in the same location? It’s made a big difference for me, but takes some getting used to.

No. It's okay. I appreciate the advice.

I have an Onyx Boox 2 (e-ink tablet with hdmi input), and tried to code on it. Can't speak about the latency because it's not the same product. But what I realized is: you lose syntax coloring. Try to turn your monitor black and white to test if you find the lack of coloring acceptable.

This is useful advice.

The eink space is seeing a lot of new products lately and I’m super optimistic about the future.

I would sell my left kidney for a high res 60hz full color eink monitor.

Ah! They are moving into different markets outside ereaders, so then please make my dream happen[0].

They are not far removed for what I want (I use my Boox with keyboard as monitor for smaller devices connected via wifi already); faster ARM proc, more mem, more storage + sd card. Bonus points for LTE. But the biggest thing; normal OS; Linux or Windows. Then I would be done.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27513791

No mention of the elephant in the room: refresh rate. E-ink displays typically have incredibly low (full) refresh rate, which coincidentally is fine for reading. However for a desktop which may involve a lot of moving elements this seems like a major limitation.

Boox devices running Android have 3 user-adjustable levels of screen refresh. The higher you go, the more battery it uses, but higher levels let you browse the web relatively well.

And the higher you go the more ghosting you get and the contrast level drops sharply.

They increase the refresh rate by both boosting the voltage and limiting the dynamic range of the screen.

Just need to modify your desktop to work with such a display appropriately, no motion, no quick changes.

That looks like an interesting product. One spec that I don't see in the article is the number of colors that the display supports. IIRC, that's still very low for eink displays. ie, only 256 colors.

this one is still black and white. i think that the color screens have an even slower refresh still

8999 yen is less than $100. Can that be right?

edit: Realizing now that is Yuan, not Yen. Same symbol!

it’s probably cny or ~$1,400

Shut up and take my money.

That's pretty steep

> There are a myriad of operating systems it supports, such as Windows 10, MAC OS, Android, Linux.

For a site all about reading, mistaking myriad as a synonym for 'number' rather than 'many' is disappointing. Counting (GNU)/Linux twice doesn't help.

25" diagonal with 3200×1800 would be perfect for most of my passive reading activities, and the frame rate would have to be dismal for me to be disappointed. The price quoted ($1500 -- I assume USD) is stupidly steep though. As a commenter on the announcement observed, 8999 yen ~= AUD $110 ... which is stupidly cheap, if that's real.

EDIT - thank you to the three people, each 1m apart, that corrected my mistake (still present above) about pricing.

Why does it need to support operating systems at all? If it's got an HDMI connector, I'd like it to support HDMI specification signals no matter how I generate them (blu-ray player, set top box, camera etc.)

The price is in Yuan, so unfortunately the $1500 is correct. However, this being the first of its kind gives me real hope that a few years from now something like this will be affordable.

It says ships from China, so that's 8999 Yuan, not yen. Which means the $1500 is correct.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com