4 ms·

I bought a Boox color e-ink tablet last year. I wanted something different enough from phone and laptop that I could read books without feeling like I am stari

I bought a Boox color e-ink tablet last year. I wanted something different enough from phone and laptop that I could read books without feeling like I am staring at screens every waking hour. I also liked that it ran full Android so I can put whatever app on it. While the color screen is a neat trick, in practice, in an e-reader, for this purpose, I have to conclude the colors (which are faint) were not worth the sacrifice of grayer screen background, less resolution, and slower/more complicated refresh. All that is to say, my experience with the Boox tablet makes me feel like this Daylight Computer is on the right track with its design choices. While I don't quite have the disposable income to turn around and purchase another tablet so soon after spending my money on a different tablet, if I could do things over (or if my current e-ink tablet broke), I'd definitely buy this Daylight Computer. Hopefully the company that makes this is successful and continues to expand and support the device. That's the other issue with the Boox tablet; I read on Reddit that there will not be new Android versions for it because the company is part of a culture of moving on to new hardware and abandoning support for deployed hardware quickly.

avhon1 2y ago
Just to be clear, the daylight computer does not use e-ink. They call it an e-paper display, and it's basically a reflective LCD.
- jacknews 2y ago
  If I understand some of the videos correctly, their innovation seems to be in the diffusion layer, which makes the LCD appear paper-like. One video mentions quite a few technical details in this area (sub-wavelength nanoparticles, dichroic dyes, etc), so much so that I can't decide if I'm impressed, or that it's just moat-signaling technobabble. But the devices look great in either case.
alisonatwork 2y ago
It seems like all of these eink devices are designed that way. I really soured on the Kindle experience when I bought a second one years after my first and discovered you still had to jailbreak it just to set a wallpaper. I think they might finally have fixed that, 10 years later, but not before losing one customer of the devices who still buys books but now reads them painfully on a phone screen instead. Nowadays the hip devices for eink nerds seem to be the Hisense range, which are no longer supported by the manufacturer, and you need to root them, and install your own ROM, just to get a recent Android. It's hopeless. All that said, recently I've been tempted to try again by picking up the cheapy Inkpalm device, which is stuck on Android 8 but it's cheap enough that perhaps the antiquity won't annoy me? I don't understand why eink has never taken off. I just want a small, cheap, light device that I can use to read novels - sure - but also mostly-text online content like HN, newspapers, blogs and email newsletters. Hey, let's do my Anki flash cards on it at the same time. I spend at least a couple hours doing all that stuff every single day and surely doing it on eink would be better for my eyesight than a phone screen. Much better battery usage too. I can't be the only one?
- erikw 2y ago
  >> It seems like all of these eink devices are designed that way. After going through 5 Kindles, I got a Kobo reader a few years ago, and couldn't be happier. It is more expensive than the Kindle because the price isn't subsidized, but the physical design is great, and I haven't broken it yet (I broke 4 Kindles through normal use). They support loading your own software on without any "jailbreak", and I use Plato (https://github.com/baskerville/plato https://github.com/baskerville/plato), which renders documents significantly faster than the stock reader.
  - alisonatwork 2y ago
    Can you read Kindle books directly on the Kobo? I know I could use Calibre to rip/convert/sideload all my books, but that feels like such a pain. I did it that way first time around when I jailbroke my Kindle and it felt like I was spending more time faffing about with software than actually reading books. The whole point of getting another eink device for me would be to just read without having it feel like my day job, so I'd hope everything was just click and go, a slick, Steam-like experience. That's the thing that has me worried about the Inkpalm - no Gapps without hacking it, which makes the Palma seem more appealing since at least it's just a normal Android with Gapps. I'd probably still put F-Droid on there because I prefer open source if the option is there, but I don't want to do any kind of messing around like rooting it or pairing it with a computer or setting up a new account to sync with some third-party service just to read books I already bought on Amazon. You're right about the fragility of Kindles by the way, both of mine eventually got smashed, which is how I ended up doing all my reading on my phone with the Kindle app instead.
    - lidavidm 2y ago
      You can't without de-DRMing. That's basically the point, right? Amazon has locked you in to their ecosystem.
    - magnetowasright 2y ago
      Switching away from kindle is going to require some initial amount of faffing about, no matter what. I feel your pain. Once you've done the initial annoyances of deDRMing your kindle stuff, you can use the kobo account and store. I know that's another account which you understandably don't want. I've never used a kindle but my kobo is amazing. I do use the store but I do deDRM my books on a computer before putting them on my reader, which is not necessary lol
sqeaky 2y ago
But why the hate for blue light? When you look at this on the manufacturer's web page they advertise that like preference wouldn't be nice. ”100% amber”, "blue free!”, gross! I won't be doing that for any reason. If someone else wants amber, fine but why not an option?
- joshspankit 2y ago
  It's a misinterpretation of the work underpinning f.lux. We went from "avoid blue light after sundown to help keep your natural circadian rhythm" to "blue light bad! Buy this product!" Now we're too far down that path with customers specifically avoiding devices that give off blue light whether or not they understand why. Companies like that are just taking the safe bet by avoiding blue light
  - adolph 2y ago
    The sum of all physiological knowledge will end with watering plants with Brawndo because electrolytes.
  - sqeaky 2y ago
    I've heard that, but I still think the amber light is disgusting and gross, I'm not buying a device that only has that. I even recently broke my old Kindle, I'd already heard of daylight computer tablets but the amber light was a main factor and why I just bought another Kindle. I would like high FPS and fully unlocked Android, but all I really needed was some way to read a bunch of digital books. The new Kindle also has an Amber mode, but I keep it off I like the blue light I think green would be better) fall asleep reading just fine.
- e-_pusher 2y ago
  The device does have white LEDs too. So you can adjust the color temperature. It is just that most of the marketing materials are done to highlight the amber display feature.
  - sqeaky 2y ago
moritonal 2y ago
Before you get too much buyers remorse it's worth appreciating the Boox will have a much greater battery life.
- phaedrus 2y ago
  Thanks for reminding me of that. Honestly the battery life on the Boox Tab is great. I've never had it run out on me.
- bigwheeler 2y ago
  I get months out of my boox tablet, it’s incredible.
zeagle 2y ago
I regret getting my boox enough to pipe in to ward others off. I bought into the hype but the colors are very muted as a gimmick and the device is essentially DOA planned obsolescence eewaste with minimal software upgrades planned and no major Android versions. Battery life is good as a pure ereader but I mainly use pressreader/Libby through my local library for magazines. I came back to edit this post 30 min later and dropped 6% with wifi and full backlight reading. I use it for meeting notes and some journaling where it does sound but it also does not like my screen protector with poor touch sensitivity on the bottom half the screen with one on. The boox push software isn't bad either but OneNote struggles so I stopped using it. The resolution/size is just a bit small for pdf textbooks so an iPad or expensive Samsung tablet at the same price point would have served me better.
m463 2y ago
I got a kobo (6") and liked it a lot. You can set sideloaded=True and never hook it to the internet. It has dark mode. I wanted a bigger screen though, and recently got a fairly inexpensive pocketbook inkpad lite with a 9.7" screen. It's actually quite good. No internet connection required, you can just take it out of the box and copy files to it via USB-C. 8gb of storage is plenty, but it also has micro-sd. One nice surprise is that it reads all kinds of formats, including not only pdf and epub, but azw and mobi.

avhon1 2y ago

Just to be clear, the daylight computer does not use e-ink. They call it an e-paper display, and it's basically a reflective LCD.

jacknews 2y ago
If I understand some of the videos correctly, their innovation seems to be in the diffusion layer, which makes the LCD appear paper-like. One video mentions quite a few technical details in this area (sub-wavelength nanoparticles, dichroic dyes, etc), so much so that I can't decide if I'm impressed, or that it's just moat-signaling technobabble. But the devices look great in either case.

alisonatwork 2y ago

It seems like all of these eink devices are designed that way. I really soured on the Kindle experience when I bought a second one years after my first and discovered you still had to jailbreak it just to set a wallpaper. I think they might finally have fixed that, 10 years later, but not before losing one customer of the devices who still buys books but now reads them painfully on a phone screen instead. Nowadays the hip devices for eink nerds seem to be the Hisense range, which are no longer supported by the manufacturer, and you need to root them, and install your own ROM, just to get a recent Android. It's hopeless. All that said, recently I've been tempted to try again by picking up the cheapy Inkpalm device, which is stuck on Android 8 but it's cheap enough that perhaps the antiquity won't annoy me? I don't understand why eink has never taken off. I just want a small, cheap, light device that I can use to read novels - sure - but also mostly-text online content like HN, newspapers, blogs and email newsletters. Hey, let's do my Anki flash cards on it at the same time. I spend at least a couple hours doing all that stuff every single day and surely doing it on eink would be better for my eyesight than a phone screen. Much better battery usage too. I can't be the only one?

erikw 2y ago
>> It seems like all of these eink devices are designed that way. After going through 5 Kindles, I got a Kobo reader a few years ago, and couldn't be happier. It is more expensive than the Kindle because the price isn't subsidized, but the physical design is great, and I haven't broken it yet (I broke 4 Kindles through normal use). They support loading your own software on without any "jailbreak", and I use Plato (https://github.com/baskerville/plato https://github.com/baskerville/plato), which renders documents significantly faster than the stock reader.
- alisonatwork 2y ago
  Can you read Kindle books directly on the Kobo? I know I could use Calibre to rip/convert/sideload all my books, but that feels like such a pain. I did it that way first time around when I jailbroke my Kindle and it felt like I was spending more time faffing about with software than actually reading books. The whole point of getting another eink device for me would be to just read without having it feel like my day job, so I'd hope everything was just click and go, a slick, Steam-like experience. That's the thing that has me worried about the Inkpalm - no Gapps without hacking it, which makes the Palma seem more appealing since at least it's just a normal Android with Gapps. I'd probably still put F-Droid on there because I prefer open source if the option is there, but I don't want to do any kind of messing around like rooting it or pairing it with a computer or setting up a new account to sync with some third-party service just to read books I already bought on Amazon. You're right about the fragility of Kindles by the way, both of mine eventually got smashed, which is how I ended up doing all my reading on my phone with the Kindle app instead.
  - lidavidm 2y ago
    You can't without de-DRMing. That's basically the point, right? Amazon has locked you in to their ecosystem.
  - magnetowasright 2y ago
    Switching away from kindle is going to require some initial amount of faffing about, no matter what. I feel your pain. Once you've done the initial annoyances of deDRMing your kindle stuff, you can use the kobo account and store. I know that's another account which you understandably don't want. I've never used a kindle but my kobo is amazing. I do use the store but I do deDRM my books on a computer before putting them on my reader, which is not necessary lol

sqeaky 2y ago

But why the hate for blue light? When you look at this on the manufacturer's web page they advertise that like preference wouldn't be nice. ”100% amber”, "blue free!”, gross! I won't be doing that for any reason. If someone else wants amber, fine but why not an option?

joshspankit 2y ago
It's a misinterpretation of the work underpinning f.lux. We went from "avoid blue light after sundown to help keep your natural circadian rhythm" to "blue light bad! Buy this product!" Now we're too far down that path with customers specifically avoiding devices that give off blue light whether or not they understand why. Companies like that are just taking the safe bet by avoiding blue light
- adolph 2y ago
  The sum of all physiological knowledge will end with watering plants with Brawndo because electrolytes.
- sqeaky 2y ago
  I've heard that, but I still think the amber light is disgusting and gross, I'm not buying a device that only has that. I even recently broke my old Kindle, I'd already heard of daylight computer tablets but the amber light was a main factor and why I just bought another Kindle. I would like high FPS and fully unlocked Android, but all I really needed was some way to read a bunch of digital books. The new Kindle also has an Amber mode, but I keep it off I like the blue light I think green would be better) fall asleep reading just fine.
e-_pusher 2y ago
The device does have white LEDs too. So you can adjust the color temperature. It is just that most of the marketing materials are done to highlight the amber display feature.
- sqeaky 2y ago

moritonal 2y ago

Before you get too much buyers remorse it's worth appreciating the Boox will have a much greater battery life.

phaedrus 2y ago
Thanks for reminding me of that. Honestly the battery life on the Boox Tab is great. I've never had it run out on me.
bigwheeler 2y ago
I get months out of my boox tablet, it’s incredible.

zeagle 2y ago

I regret getting my boox enough to pipe in to ward others off. I bought into the hype but the colors are very muted as a gimmick and the device is essentially DOA planned obsolescence eewaste with minimal software upgrades planned and no major Android versions. Battery life is good as a pure ereader but I mainly use pressreader/Libby through my local library for magazines. I came back to edit this post 30 min later and dropped 6% with wifi and full backlight reading. I use it for meeting notes and some journaling where it does sound but it also does not like my screen protector with poor touch sensitivity on the bottom half the screen with one on. The boox push software isn't bad either but OneNote struggles so I stopped using it. The resolution/size is just a bit small for pdf textbooks so an iPad or expensive Samsung tablet at the same price point would have served me better.

m463 2y ago

I got a kobo (6") and liked it a lot. You can set sideloaded=True and never hook it to the internet. It has dark mode. I wanted a bigger screen though, and recently got a fairly inexpensive pocketbook inkpad lite with a 9.7" screen. It's actually quite good. No internet connection required, you can just take it out of the box and copy files to it via USB-C. 8gb of storage is plenty, but it also has micro-sd. One nice surprise is that it reads all kinds of formats, including not only pdf and epub, but azw and mobi.