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I have a kaleido3 e reader and I like it but I do not understand how they will overcome the limitations of the panel with “xRapid” My tablet is the boox ultra

I have a kaleido3 e reader and I like it but I do not understand how they will overcome the limitations of the panel with “xRapid” My tablet is the boox ultra tab c. I’ve put about 350 hours of reading into it since I bought it in July. It’s pretty handy for reading manga, comics, and books. It’s a bit heavy but the screen is nice, the battery lasts a while. E ink color is a mixed bag. I like having it but I can definitely see how it would not be for everyone. I have major eye issues that make back and front lighting physically uncomfortable after about 45-60 minutes so this is a good way for me to be able to read ebooks. The color can’t compare to oled but it’s still pretty decent; I liken it to newsprint. That all said the refresh rate and ghosting issues are noticeable. I use it purely as an ereader and still notice it. When I first got it I played around with a few games, YouTube, Firefox, etc and found them very difficult to seriously use most of the time. Boox has an option to put a button on the screen to force a screen refresh for when you notice ghosting. This is mildly annoying but workable for ebooks. I wish they would allow you to just make a setting on page turns. For some reason they really don’t want that page turn screen flash even if you turn it on manually so they begrudgingly force it into a button that you press as needed. But that’s where I question the validity of this project: when you force the refresh of the screen it once again looks beautiful and the ghosting is solved. However, this is a relatively slow process. The full refresh takes a noticeable amount of time approaching a full second, maybe even over a full second. So they aren’t just doing that, obviously. Everything else I’ve seen from boox that increases the refresh rate greatly increases ghosting. Like insanely and very noticeably. From what I’ve read this is not a boox issue. Other vendors, including bigme, have the same problem with kaleido3 panels and modes that do not force a full refresh. So I have to assume their “xRapid” is probably a lot of hype. I hope it’s not, and I hope it inspires boox and other vendors to improve the software of their products, but I genuinely believe this is a limitation of the panels Long story short I’m betting the people who buy these will be pretty disappointed. Maybe I’m wrong and bigme is about to seriously overcome the issues these panels have seen to date but I certainly wouldn’t bet my $1800 on it

zeagle 3y ago
I have one too and while it's great to just OK for the use cases I purchased it for but I can't feel but disappointed in myself for the price. For me it was similarly intentional to get avoid a media consumption device and encourage reading. For anyone whose considering a the highlight is the pen: it works great so I am writing notes on call and then sync them to my phone easily, I read articles/pdf textbook chapters and annotate,and sketch with a android app. Other tablets have nice pens but it works well here. The downside: smaller text in periodicals like Boston globe, retrogamer, or guardian weekly through pressreader is on the edge of readability without zooming in. Regal/ultra settings don't do anything in the app. The screen itself is limited: without forcing a refresh any images are quite artefacted. If you have it on ultra/regal mode the automatic regular refresh is jarring. I suspect the next generation of this tech or 2" bigger screen will solve the issue but this ain't it for ~$1000 cdn all in. Any suggestions for software? Eink bro is a better eink browser than the ones you mention. Press reader, sketchbook, read by qxmd I find work great.
- hellotheretoday 3y ago
  Well I use it almost exclusively as a reader. I genuinely think that’s why I’m happier with it; I don’t know why boox, bigme, et al keep trying to sell these screens as tablet/phone replacements. I just don’t think the panels are ready for that The main apps I use as a result are Tachiyomi, the included boox neoreader, and kuro reader for vertical scrolling and some formats neoreader struggles with. Because of my vision problems I have things zoomed in and text size pretty large so smaller text is not really an issue. Do you use the nav ball? I have that setup with the force refresh button and that’s made quite a difference for me. Having that on screen at all times so I can quickly refresh the screen is the biggest help regardless of app or setting. I am kind of hoping for a firmware update too that could improve things a bit. If you play with adb you can increase and lower the color saturation and I’ve found that increasing the color saturation can improve the image quality. This is great for fixed images like reading where I do forced refreshes regularly because it also worsens image retention noticeably. But on the other hand you can reduce the color saturation which makes things a little less interesting to look at but does appear to improve the ghosting a bit. See https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/13ue3ip/guide_increase_or_lower_saturation_on_boox_tab/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/13ue3ip/guide_in... for info on the procedure. Whatever changes you make do not persist through reboot but I still wouldn’t go to crazy especially with pumping the saturation up. Hopefully boox releases a firmware that gives more options on this front. I’m not holding out a ton of hope here though, they don’t seem to release tons of updates for their products unfortunately
  - zeagle 3y ago
    Thanks! I appreciate that. The lack of firmware/android updates really does hamstring their appeal.

zeagle 3y ago

I have one too and while it's great to just OK for the use cases I purchased it for but I can't feel but disappointed in myself for the price. For me it was similarly intentional to get avoid a media consumption device and encourage reading. For anyone whose considering a the highlight is the pen: it works great so I am writing notes on call and then sync them to my phone easily, I read articles/pdf textbook chapters and annotate,and sketch with a android app. Other tablets have nice pens but it works well here. The downside: smaller text in periodicals like Boston globe, retrogamer, or guardian weekly through pressreader is on the edge of readability without zooming in. Regal/ultra settings don't do anything in the app. The screen itself is limited: without forcing a refresh any images are quite artefacted. If you have it on ultra/regal mode the automatic regular refresh is jarring. I suspect the next generation of this tech or 2" bigger screen will solve the issue but this ain't it for ~$1000 cdn all in. Any suggestions for software? Eink bro is a better eink browser than the ones you mention. Press reader, sketchbook, read by qxmd I find work great.

hellotheretoday 3y ago
Well I use it almost exclusively as a reader. I genuinely think that’s why I’m happier with it; I don’t know why boox, bigme, et al keep trying to sell these screens as tablet/phone replacements. I just don’t think the panels are ready for that The main apps I use as a result are Tachiyomi, the included boox neoreader, and kuro reader for vertical scrolling and some formats neoreader struggles with. Because of my vision problems I have things zoomed in and text size pretty large so smaller text is not really an issue. Do you use the nav ball? I have that setup with the force refresh button and that’s made quite a difference for me. Having that on screen at all times so I can quickly refresh the screen is the biggest help regardless of app or setting. I am kind of hoping for a firmware update too that could improve things a bit. If you play with adb you can increase and lower the color saturation and I’ve found that increasing the color saturation can improve the image quality. This is great for fixed images like reading where I do forced refreshes regularly because it also worsens image retention noticeably. But on the other hand you can reduce the color saturation which makes things a little less interesting to look at but does appear to improve the ghosting a bit. See https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/13ue3ip/guide_increase_or_lower_saturation_on_boox_tab/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/13ue3ip/guide_in... for info on the procedure. Whatever changes you make do not persist through reboot but I still wouldn’t go to crazy especially with pumping the saturation up. Hopefully boox releases a firmware that gives more options on this front. I’m not holding out a ton of hope here though, they don’t seem to release tons of updates for their products unfortunately
- zeagle 3y ago
  Thanks! I appreciate that. The lack of firmware/android updates really does hamstring their appeal.