[bit101]

Well, I've had the Nova Pro for about 4 days now and after a bit of a strange start, I'm really loving it.

The "strange start" really just comes down to the fact that I've had various Kindles since... whenever the Kindle 2 came out. Kindles are pretty simple devices and the user interface is super slick and polished and very minimal and mostly well thought out. Whereas the Onyx take on things is... more complex. And there is very little documentation on how things work or how to do things, so the learning curve is rough.

But at this point, I do really love the device. All I really wanted was the 7.8" screen and the note taking ability. The screen is as nice as the Kindle Paperwhite, imo, and the custom light color is really nice. The 7.8" screen is fantastic for reading. It makes such a difference to have a page that really holds about the same amount of text as a page of a physical book.

For turning pages with a tap, the screen is WAY less sensitive than the Kindle PW. In fact, I would say my latest Kindle was too sensitive, especially with the flush screen, I was accidentally page turning constantly. With the Nova Pro, that will never be a problem. A quick tap does nothing. I really have to kind of press down a bit to turn the page that way. Not sure if it's just my device, or all of them. However, I've taken to just swiping instead for page turns. That works perfectly. No extra pressure at all needed, just a light swipe, so I don't think it's a hardware problem on my screen. And everything else works well.

[edit] I guess I have to take back some of the previous paragraph. I've been swiping all the time, but just went and tested tapping to turn, and it works just fine with a light tap. Still more than needed on the kindle, but no need to press down like I said above. Really just about right. Not sure what I experienced early on. It's fine now.[/edit]

There are a zillion options and settings, and it literally took a few days to start to feel like I really understood most of what it could do. Still learning in fact. It's worth taking some time to explore. Way, WAY more options than the Kindle. Overwhelmingly so, but I like it.

I plugged it into my computer and Calibre recognized it and I transferred well over 100 books to the Nova in just a single click. Super easy. And I haven't run into anything that it hasn't displayed yet - epub, mobi, pdf, azw3, txt.

One of the things that really confused me was the power options. Again, I'm used to a Kindle, which is either on or sleeping. You never turn it off. But this is a full Android device and defaults to turning completely off after a certain amount of time. I've set it to an hour, but you can disable that if you want. Mine takes about 35 seconds or so to boot up when it's off. I'm starting to get used to that, since it's not so often. But I may try to have it stay on and see what that does to the battery life.

Speaking of battery, it seems acceptable, given that it's an Android tablet. Definitely much better battery life than a regular tablet, but nowhere near that of a regular Kindle. I've been doing quite a bit of reading today (Saturday). it's 3:30 pm and it's down around 84%. I could probably get away without charging it for days on regular weekdays when I don't read quite as much. But I just plug it in when I go to sleep anyway.

The note taking app is really nice. I'm really impressed. I was expecting much lower quality drawing, a lot of lag, etc. It totally exceeded my expectations. Zero lag at all. Super smooth drawing. The pressure sensitivity is great. I love this aspect of the device and use it a lot. It syncs straight to DropBox, so I can see my notes on other devices as well.

I've installed a few other apps from the onboard store and the Goodereader store. Really just Dropbox, Pocket and Instapaper though. I roll my eyes at the thought of playing games or watching videos on this device, or doing any kind of serious browsing. That's not why I bought it, and while it's totally impressive that you CAN do some of these things, it's not going to be the best experience, and I have other devices at hand that will do way better at all that stuff.

I also haven't tried the TTS, audiobook, music or anything that requires bluetooth headphones. Similar to the above, I have other devices are way more suited for all of that stuff.

If anyone else has any other questions, I'm happy to answer.