I picked up the Onyx BOOX Max Lumi, a 13.3" e-ink tablet and bookreader earlier this year. I'm mostly happy with it. I'm far happier with it than I have been with my earlier Android devices (10 years of phone and 6 of tablet use), though the BOOX is in fact an Android 10 device, though not fully Google-compliant. It also has 4x the onboard storage of the Remarkable2, at 64 GB rather than 16 GB (more below). That alone was the convincing factor for me.
The display is gorgeous. 1650x2200 pixels at 207 dpi 16 shade greyscale. It reads wonderfully in direct sunlight, and well under any interior lighting conditions with the "Frontlight" to assist. Unlike emissive displays, frontlight + increased room light increases readability.
The stock bookreader software ("Neoreader") is good at reading, less so at organising (more below). Well-processed books directly rendered from markup can generally be viewed landscape at 2-up, for a more booklike experience (ePubs of course as well). Even lower-quality scans of 3-column articles from before the age of computer typesetting are readable without having to zoom the page. (Most recently I've been going through the Whole Earth Catalog's back-editions --- the pasted-in layout, often with patterned or coloured overlays, is ... almost always ... readable. It's a good test of bad quality typography.)
I'd written a bit recently on the fact that tablets are for the most part not a viable device cateogory, with far too many design compromises. The notable exceptions being ebook readers, baby pacifiers, and watching videos. For any other task, a laptop (even a small and cheap one) is far more capable. See the following, most of the meat is in my subsequent comments: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/880e5c403edb013918e1002590d8e...
My principle uses are as a book/document reader, accessing my Pocket archive (more below), and some Android use (Web, podcasts, Termux). I hadn't expected to use the note-taking feature at all, but that is actually surprisingly good and habit-forming.
The BOOX is, of course, a tablet, but it's one with a few interesting twists.
- Display: Pixels are cheap, paints are expensive, persistence costs nothing, viewability increases rather than decreases as ambient lighting increases, and colours are nonexistent. (There are colour e-ink devices, performance is middlin', price is not ... too outrageous, sizes tend to the smaller.) Contrast is lower than paper, though it's good. Video is possible, if far from optimal. Issues with colour-discrimination can be an issue in apps and websites. Multiple modes trading increased quality for faster refresh. Video can be viewed, though it's not pretty. Line-art and halftone rendering is excellent.
- Battery: Claim is a month of standbye, a week of normal use. I am not a normal user, my goal was to not have range-anxiety. I can go a day or two between charges, and charging is fast (1--2 hours to full), whilst using the device for much of the day. This is more than sufficient and exceeds expectations.
- Storage: My goal is to have a portable and well-organised library (more on the 2nd bit below). I have well over 64 GB in texts alone, and also use devices for podcasts. I've already chewed through most of the capacity of the BOOX (system and apps also require some space), and would prefer a 128--256 or larger storage option. The fact that Remarkable2 is limited to 16 GB given the pitifully low costs of storage, for a device principally aimed at reading, is ... inexplicable.
- WiFi: 2.4G & 5G (unsure what specs). Slightly less range than my earlier tablet, though still adequate and reliable.
- Bluetooth. Mostly for the optional $35 keyboard, though also capable of sharing audio to speakers.
- Touch: Works better than expected. Note-taking in particular is excellent. The display depth is slightly increased (due to various layers?), so drawing may be difficult, but for text notes and rough diagraming, it's actually pretty addictive.
- Audio: Two speakers and (counter to my initial belief) an onboard mic. More than sufficient for listening to podcasts.
- Camera: None.
- Security: A mixed bag. Device password is only available with Onyx's Cloud service, which is inexcusable. No device encryption. I treat the device as largely untrusted.
- Interface: Usable, with some kinks and personality. Occasional instances of Engrish / Chinglish.
- Android: On basis, this was a strike against the device, though given it's reasonably Google-Free, the Google App store does not work, and F-Droid offers a useful selection of much-better-behaved applications, a feature. Access to some Android settings (e.g., device UUID reset) aren't provided. The device is actually a rather better tablet than I'd hoped (which increases distractions).
- Stock apps: The bookreader, storage manager, a web browser (re-badged and e-ink optimised Chromium AFAICT), clock, calendar (with no alarms!), calculator, and a few other stock apps exist. Most are specifically designed for e-ink and benefit by this. Features are fairly spare.
- Note-taking: Surprisingly good. This wasn't a key interest, but the ability to simply write what I want to capture, as well as diagram and annotate freely, makes up for much of the keyboard lack.
- Apps: Supposedly the Google App Store can be enabled, though I've found this doesn't work. I consider this to be a feature. Instead I rely on F-Droid and APK Mirror to install Fennec Fox, EinkBro (a browser, more below), Pocket, Termux, a Feeder (RSS), VLC, Wikipedia, and a very small handful of other apps.
- EinkBro Browser: (Additional install, not stock.) This is a web browser specifically engineered for e-ink devices. It features full-screen immersive mode (no app or device menus), paginated navigation (fewer paints), a Reader Mode, print-to-PDF, a verticle-text mode (for Japanese text). It is lacking an Incognito mode, and some of the features are rough (adblock, JS, and cookie whitelists can be added, but not edited or individually removed). For pages which are painful in Fennec Fox, it's a very handy fallback option. I still principally use Fennec as a browser. As an exemplar of eink-aware UI/UX, it's excellent.
- Pocket: Installed via APK Mirror (the F-Droid version is woefully obsolete). All my standard frustrations exist, though at least it's available. See: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_... (HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763106) But at least it's there.
- Termux: The Linux-environment-on-Android utility lives up to its reputation of the one Android App That Does Not Completely And Specifically Suck. It also continues to be periodically garbage-collected by Android, though that's not Termux's fault. There's a black-on-white eink display style which suits the BOOX wonderfully, and "Speed Mode" display seems to work best on text. The Onyx hardware keyboard does NOT include an "esc" key, which is quite frustrating for this vim addict.
I do have some complaints.
Storage. I'd prefer 128 GB -- 512 GB available -- enough to store thousands of books and audio episodes, without any concern for running out of storage. It's less a factor of "what's sufficient" and more "why allow a few dollars in cost stand in the way of sufficient storage?" 512 GB microSD now costs about $50. I paid more than that for the cover for the device.
Root. I'd prefer a rootable device. AFAICT the BOOX is not.
The bookreader and storage utility don't facilitate organising and managing content. This seems to be a weak point of many ebook tools. In particular:
- I'd like to be able to edit / add metadata to documents from within the document itself, based on the Dublin Core metadata + tags. I'm mostly be interested in title, author, publication, and date, though other fields also prove useful. Search should be metadata-aware. The storage utility should also provide for metadata managment. I'm interested in media / library management tools that integrate with tablets.
Android management tools are generally lacking. Onyx's rebranding of Android removes most of the configuration tools.
Instability. The device does crash and kill apps from time to time. That's probably on Android, but increases certain types of anxiety. Restarting every few days isn't a bad idea. No worse than any other Android device I've had. But I've rarely had printed books crash on me.
Keyboard: Please include "esc" on tablet keyboards.