Onyx tab ultra, worth to upgarde?

[plusz]

Hello,

Apologies if there was a thread discussing this, my searching skills are not so great...

I currently own Onyx Max 2 and Hisense RLCD tablet. Truth be told, both have shortcomings. The Max2 is good only for using at your desk as it's too big and doesn't have any light for using in bed. The Hisense is only good for summer outdoor use (but it's awesome in this conditions), however it's rather hard to use in normal indoors condition, I really have to adjust the light and head position to see it uniform-clearly when using at home.

I've just seen an Black Friday ad for Onyx tab ultra. I wasn't following any e-ink news, etc, but a short video about this one caught my attention:
- it has front light
- it has improved refresh speed (on a video comparing it with Air Note 2 Plus was like 2 times faster in web browser)

However reading reviews I've seen a battery problem is emerging in most complaints. Some people say it's roughly 1 week, but others who claim to use it for note taking and web browsing exclusively say it last no more than a day. What's the truth?

Moreover, I've started thinking about buying Boox Nova Air 2 plus. People say it holds the battery for weeks, so much like Max 2, whilst have a front light.


What's your opinion, if you own any of the devices, should I forget about changing my reader in favor of any ow the two? If you own Tab Ultra, are you annoyed about battery life (and is it really faster...)?

Lastly, I've learned that there is already a Tab Ultra C, a color e-ink version. However it seems it has half of the resolution in color mode, but it's hard/impossible to control it so in practice the half-resolution is the norm. Looking at some YT video it also appeared to me that there is a heavy ghosting in color mode (also ghosting of b&w content on color page). I can see such only if I turn my Max 2 in the fastest refresh mode.


Many thanks

[Renate]

Once again Onyx (Boox) confuses the heck out of me with their almost arbitrary spread of products.

TLDR: "Plus" means a 25% bigger battery than the non-plussed. They can probably get that small a jump without increasing the volume of the battery. So they don't even have to change the case.

I would guess that the dividing line between "frugal" and "greedy" battery consumption would be whether the device uses "BSR", the "Boox Super Refresh".

I've speculated before that the Mira displays had to implement a way to take in HDMI video and display it on Eink. That's a bit different than an ereader where you already know that this button changed and there is an rectangular update area. I'm guessing that the BSR in tablets was taken straight from Mira. It should give a performance benefit, but possibly using almost twice as much power. I'd sure like to measure it.

[BanditoB]

I have both the Tab Ultra and the Tab Ultra C. They are both very nice devices. The TUC obviously adds color to the mix, which while very muted, is still nice to have. Only the colored portions of the screen are 150 dpi. The black and white portions of the screen are always 300 dpi, so for general reading you will always have the full 300 dpi resolution.

The TUC has somewhat shorter battery life because you have to keep the front light at a higher setting when indoors as the color screen is a bit darker than the black and white screen of the TU. They both, in my opinion, have a decent battery life and will generally get you through at least a couple of days worth of usage. It will really depend on how long you use the tablet and what you do with it. If you’re just reading, they’ll run quite a while. If you’re browsing or writing a lot, you’ll get less time on the battery as these actions require more energy.

There is also now a Tab Ultra C Pro edition available that features a faster processor and a newer version, 12, of the Android OS, as well as a flash for the camera. Something to consider.

[Renate]

For me, progress is mostly improvements in the Eink display.
Newer versions of Android are mostly just more hassle.
Super partitions and apex modules don't make my life any easier.
And I can't think of any "feature" in Android 12 that I need.

[plusz]

Originally Posted by Renate

I would guess that the dividing line between "frugal" and "greedy" battery consumption would be whether the device uses "BSR", the "Boox Super Refresh".

That's perhaps it.

Originally Posted by BanditoB

I have both the Tab Ultra and the Tab Ultra C. They are both very nice devices. The TUC obviously adds color to the mix, which while very muted, is still nice to have. Only the colored portions of the screen are 150 dpi. The black and white portions of the screen are always 300 dpi, so for general reading you will always have the full 300 dpi resolution.

Many thanks. I must have misread some thread on Reddit. However it seems people are still turning on monohromatic mode via developer settings to get better quality.

I'm somewhat leaning towards not buying anything...

For test I've spent this morning reading web on Max 2. Surprisingly it wasn't the e-ink ghosting but the overall browser speed which makes me not to use it for that again. Navigating links, switching to completely different webs, all that was so slow. However I've learned that in this use case the battery went down to 50%, so it's not much different from the reports about Tab Ultra. If you want to use it like a tablet than it'll drain battery like a tablet...

Still, I would need to have one in my hands to decide if the web browsing is convenient on Tab Ultra.

Second feature which made me look at the new device is the front light, but that's also hard to say how it'd work in practice. I had Kindle paper white but I didn't like the front light. I kept it on at ~10% to kind of brighten the screen a bit, however the surrounding light had to be the main source of light for reading comfort. On the other hand I can comfortably read an OLED screen in semi dark conditions.

Well, I guess I'll stay with using Q5 with RLCD for morning web reading. The one thing which perhaps would work better on Tab Ultra is the screen ratio. Q5 is 16:9, whilst the e-inks are 4:3 generally


Meh, it's all about the old silly dream of having one device for all tasks, to read in bed at night, to read on a sunny beach, to surf the web...

[plusz]

You know what, Max 2 has arm32 cpu. I couldn't care less, but I was failing to copy Microsoft Edge to it from my phone, and just being curious I decided to activate Google Play services on the tablet to download it directly from Play Store. To my surprise Play store says Edge is not compatible with the device. Digging more I eventually discovered that all my other devices are arm64.

What a surprise...

[Renate]

Originally Posted by plusz

What a surprise...

You can always:

ps -e | grep zygote

Some 64 bit devices don't support 32 bit zygote at all.
On some you can enable it.

The converse problem is 32 bit devices and the app doesn't have any 32 bit libs.
Presumably your Edge has no 32 bit libs packed in it.

[plusz]

No the problem was the other way around, it seems Edge is available only for arm64 where Max 2 is arm32 (Rockchip RK3288).

Yet it really surprised me that corporations already dumped arm32 on Android.

[BanditoB]

Apple surprised the world by releasing the 64-bit A7 in 2013. It pretty much left all of the 32-bit processors in the dust. Within 3-4 years, everyone switched to 64-bits to try to match the A7 and later A-series processors’ performance.

I’m not surprised that most software is now 64-bit only.