I’ve got a large collection of e-books, but I’ve always just read them on my phone. Finally broke down and bought a proper e-reader with the nice e-ink display. Why didn’t I do this forever ago?
It’s got a backlight, but using it under a lamp with reflected light is just so much easier on my eyes and feels more like a paper book. I also haven’t read a book written on dead trees in a good minute, so sitting under a lamp just brings back a missing piece of the experience I didn’t even know was gone.
I also just can’t get over how “fake” the display looks. Fake is usually not used to describe something positively, but in this case, it’s a huge praise. The text and book cover images just look like they’re printed on a sheet of paper and slipped inside to make the device look functional…like a movie prop. Turning the backlight on diminishes this effect somewhat, though (which is another reason I prefer to leave it off).
I also love that I can just set it down and not worry about coming back to a dead battery, lol. The reader app on my phone is set to prevent it from going to sleep or turning off the screen, so sometimes I’ll set it down to go take care of something else, forget, and come back to a nearly dead battery.
To everyone who has recommended these gizmos to me, I finally get it. I know I said reading books on my phone was good enough, but I was wrong.
Color page on boox ultra tab c. They (and basically all manufacturers with kaleido3) do post processing on marketing images that make things look more vibrant. It’s fine for manga and I like it but it’s definitely underwhelming and washed out.
Additionally the color filter lowers the contrast of the display and makes the image overall dimmer. Like op I think it looks best with no front light but this one is so dim i often have it on unless I’m under intense light (reading outside for example). I can’t upload a second image with my app but it looks good, just dim
The color also increases ghosting. This is remedied by refreshing the screen fully on page turns but this eats up battery. Heavy reading (like 10+ hours a day) gets me 2 days at most. If I read more typically, like 2-3 hours a day, I get 4-5 days. The huge battery makes it heavy
Also fwiw boox is a mixed bag. The device itself is nice but their customer service is dogshit. I broke the panel, which is very easy. Mine broke from a roughly 1 foot drop onto carpet. The panels are much more fragile. Getting it fixed was expensive, over 50% of the cost of the device. That’s not their fault, of course, but then on top of that I had to pay shipping to them. Again, smaller company, but also a $600 tablet. Then the repair literally took 8 weeks and they gave me replacement panel with 5 dead pixels and 3 pixels “stuck on” that are super distracting, but they only define dead pixels as a problem if it’s in a small box that is the dead center. They don’t have enough panels, which is why the repair took so long, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are okaying shit panels because they are scarce. They also broke the fingerprint reader during the repair. They did offer to fix what they broke for free but I still had to pay to ship to them again (its like $30) and wouldn’t have the device for god knows how long again. I just use it without a fingerprint to unlock but typing the passcode (or anything) is a pain because of the latency for the screen to update.
On the other hand their software team is great. The software has some rough edges but it runs mihon fine and when the software has issues I report them and often get an update on how to fix and occasionally have gotten feature suggestions implemented even.
My go color doesn’t look like that.
You need sufficient light to get appropriate color saturation, but in daylight I think it looks pretty damn good. In darker settings you need to kick the front light up more than you would for black/white.
This is inside, but with the front light up
the picture was taken indoors under warm lighting. I do keep the front light at about 30% or ideally off because it strains my eyes when reading a lot (which I do, I use this thing several hours a day)
but I think that’s fair because I do the majority of my reading in this scenario, indoors under warm lighting, and I’d imagine many are in the same boat
I also have a 7 year old phone that I used to take the picture, and that part may be unfair. I’m actually getting a better phone soon and can maybe take a new shot
Software does make a difference though and perhaps go is doing more. With the boox you can use adb and surfaceflinger to increase the color saturation, but this doesn’t persist through reboots and is finicky to tune so I haven’t done it recently
Also fwiw as mentioned the replacement panel was not of the best quality. I mentioned the dead pixels but what I didn’t mention is when I got it the panel overall seemed warmer/redder in hue. This could all be in my head because I didn’t have it for 2 months while they were repairing it, but it could also be that some panels are better than others. They’re basically all kaleido3 panels, I think there are only 2 acep panel readers and one was that bigme kickstarter that they never actually sold, only ship to backers then basically abandoned. But maybe the limited production capabilities and somewhat high demand for panels means they’re rushing them out? I got the device on release so the initial panel was an early one and the replacement was about 2 years later. But again this could all be my in head
I’m not trying to say there’s anything wrong with showing your experience; I’m just showing mine for comparison. I do turn the front light up extra for color, but personally I think it adds a lot.
The go color 7 is also boox. Outside of setting apps to regal mode I haven’t really tuned anything. Regal seems to also help with both color and b/w contrast, but it’s persistent and doesn’t need to be changed repeatedly.
Oh i didn’t think you were saying anything, just providing additional context to anyone looking at the pictures
Fwiw I would definitely get a color ereader again. It’s not the most incredible color but I think it’s worthwhile to have especially for the price to get color vs non color. But if you’re only reading text with no images (like my mom only ever reads novels on her kindle) I think the non color is the better option bc the contrast is higher
It’s a shame this is such a niche market to eink and that they’re so focused on signage. I get that’s a much larger market but it still sucks. The newest panels like the spectra have pretty amazing color but the refresh time is even worse than the acep/gallery3 panels, which were outright rejected by boox despite having more vibrant color bc of the slow refresh rate. A spectra panels performance with kaleido3 or better refresh would change the game and imo make color e ink readers/tablets way more viable for more people
Damn, that looks better than I expected.
I think his picture is probably in lower light, without turning the front light up to compensate. The color really needs light to look good, and it takes more than the black and white does. It might also be something with the color formats his example is using. I don’t think it’s differences in the screen unless his is defective, because I think his is using the same screen tech. (I’ve thought about getting the tab ultra c, but I’ll just feel like I wasted my money when they finally manage a 13"). I think the pictures are pretty representative of my experience, but it’s also possible the processing my iPhone is doing plays a role. It’s why I try to leave a little background in for comparison.
Because a crappy phone camera makes it look like the black and white isn’t great, I’ve taken pictures of that in the past too, including a close up of the text:
Black and white