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azw409 · 03-04-2015, 07:00 AM

Hi All,

I received my M96C today from EReader Store and I thought I'd share my first impressions.

Firstly, it feels reasonably solid and not too cheap. It it is quite heavy and overall feels similar in size and weight to an iPad although it is plastic, of course, rather than metal.

The screen is disappointing, the home screen has plenty of contrast but if you use a standard Android app like Google Play Books or GMail, it's fuzzy, indistinct and lacking in contrast. Trying the A2 refresh mode makes it even worse in that the text becomes illegible and often the screen doesn't even update. I don't really know the purpose of this mode as it seems like you'd never want to use it.

The finger touch system is very poor in that it's fussy and generally unresponsive - you have to press several times before it gets a hit on things like form fields. It's particularly bad around the margins of the screen e.g. on the status bar. I thought I'd try the Android recalibrate option but, for me, it always fails when I touch the first calibration point. I will try a stylus and see whether that helps.

I updated the firmware to the latest on the site 'Update 2015-02-04' which all went well but I didn't really notice any appreciable difference in responsiveness.

I uploaded my books from Calibre and then tried using the built in library and book reader. These worked reasonably well and had much better contrast than Play Books. A large PDF book that I had, opened no problem and fitted on the screen nicely. The text rendering wasn't great though and smaller text was difficult to read - probably as a result of the relatively low resolution of the screen. Opening an ePub and the text was good and it was good to get more text on the screen than with my Kobo touch.

Overall I'd say the touch system was noticeably worse than the Kobo Touch, the screen maybe marginally clearer, the Android better but stock Google apps are disappointing.

If you want a large screen, my recommendation would be to go for the M96 with stylus rather than this one. I'm hoping that a future firmware update, for the M96C, will improve the touch system and contrast but both are not good considering this is a $350 device.

Hope that's useful to others.

03-04-2015, 07:00 AM	#1
azw409 Connoisseur Posts: 70 Karma: 14760 Join Date: Jan 2015 Device: Solar powered Kobo Touch running Android, Onyx M96C, Likebook Mars	Onyx Boox M96C First Impressions Hi All, I received my M96C today from EReader Store and I thought I'd share my first impressions. Firstly, it feels reasonably solid and not too cheap. It it is quite heavy and overall feels similar in size and weight to an iPad although it is plastic, of course, rather than metal. The screen is disappointing, the home screen has plenty of contrast but if you use a standard Android app like Google Play Books or GMail, it's fuzzy, indistinct and lacking in contrast. Trying the A2 refresh mode makes it even worse in that the text becomes illegible and often the screen doesn't even update. I don't really know the purpose of this mode as it seems like you'd never want to use it. The finger touch system is very poor in that it's fussy and generally unresponsive - you have to press several times before it gets a hit on things like form fields. It's particularly bad around the margins of the screen e.g. on the status bar. I thought I'd try the Android recalibrate option but, for me, it always fails when I touch the first calibration point. I will try a stylus and see whether that helps. I updated the firmware to the latest on the site 'Update 2015-02-04' which all went well but I didn't really notice any appreciable difference in responsiveness. I uploaded my books from Calibre and then tried using the built in library and book reader. These worked reasonably well and had much better contrast than Play Books. A large PDF book that I had, opened no problem and fitted on the screen nicely. The text rendering wasn't great though and smaller text was difficult to read - probably as a result of the relatively low resolution of the screen. Opening an ePub and the text was good and it was good to get more text on the screen than with my Kobo touch. Overall I'd say the touch system was noticeably worse than the Kobo Touch, the screen maybe marginally clearer, the Android better but stock Google apps are disappointing. If you want a large screen, my recommendation would be to go for the M96 with stylus rather than this one. I'm hoping that a future firmware update, for the M96C, will improve the touch system and contrast but both are not good considering this is a $350 device. Hope that's useful to others.