My Onyx Boox 60 just arrived!

[luag]

Finally! After years following the e-readers technology. I finally decided that Boox is going to be my first e-reader. Not that I haven't tried to buy one before, but it's difficult to obtain in Indonesia, and it's finally available here.

So, after waiting anxiously throughout the weekend, it arrived yesterday afternoon!

Haven't played too much with it, but I'm totally in love with the screen
This is my first time seeing an e-ink display with my own eyes. After reading dozens of ebooks on pda and smartphone screens, I must say that e-reader display is much, much more comfortable to read on. Although my smartphone still wins in terms of compactness and its ability to read in the dark.

Packaging is OK, but seriously, someone needs to design a better box for this gadget IMO. The design on the box kind of make it feel cheap.

Build quality is very nice. It feels solid and the design is very iPod-y (might be a minus for some people, but I personally don't really care). The white leather case supplied is also very nice and fits the white Boox nicely.

UI is pretty simple and straightforward. I can understand it fine in a pretty short amount of time without consulting the manuals.

Sound quality is very good. Sound is clear, but I need to listen to it with a better headphone to hear whether it has hiss or not. Will update soon.
What boox need is an audiobook player

Wifi works fine. I only tried to open wikipedia though. But it's a nice feature to have.

Battery life. Just fully charged it last night. We'll see how long it will last A friend of mine who also owns Boox, said that it can lasts for more than a week.

Anyone in Jakarta wants to buy Onyx Boox 60, just contact me
If anyone wants to see the device and I have some free time, maybe we can arrange a meet up.

Cheers.

Update 1: The firmware seems to be very stable, I think I've tried most of its features and it never crashes

Update 2: I find that boox is not very good for viewing manga full-screen (fit to page). The anti aliasing is pretty bad. The lines are too jaggy, and it makes the texts hard to read.

Update 3: I charged my Boox on Monday, around midnight, so it should be fully charged by Tuesday morning. Today is Friday and my Boox only has 1 bar left. Admittedly, I haven't done much reading. I remove the SDcard often, experimenting with different formats, so I open and close many books many times too. That probably use more battery rather than just reading one book at a time. I probably have to recharge it tonight.

I also found something interesting: Boox can read ebooks from zipped files, but it treats it as a different format than what is contained inside. For example, I converted an ebook to epub with Calibre and it resulted in 1 epub file, 1 jpg, and 1 opf, I zipped all those, and when I opened it with Boox, it treats the ebook more like an html file. The menu is different from what you'd get if you open an unzipped epub.

I only get roughly 4-5 days with the way I use boox so far. I also never turn my Boox off, only stand-by. After my next recharge, I'll try to turn it off every night or use the auto turn off feature and see if I can get a longer usage time / charge.

So my next suggestion is if Boox can add an auto turn on/off based on time. Say, I want my boox to automatically shut down every midnight and turn on automatically every morning at 7 o clock. I wonder if that is possible

[Bremen Cole]

Congrats! Sounds like a cool reader..... enjoy!

I too made the jump from reading on PDA's, laptops and such..... the eInk screen is great.

[Sweetpea]

I agree the e-ink screen is great, but I still prefer my transflective LCD screen of my PDA (I want a 5" PDA with a transflective screen!)

[luag]

@Bremen Cole: Thanks

Sweetpea: This one looks interesting

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/m...back-color-vi/

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by luag

@Bremen Cole: Thanks

Sweetpea: This one looks interesting

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/m...back-color-vi/

It requires no backlighting whatsoever, and instead relies on ambient light to show its stuff.

The Pixel Qi screen is what I'm betting on... I like backlights as I read most of the time in bed. But I also want to read in normal lit rooms (which is why I have two readers I regularly use now)

[luag]

Yeah, PixelQi looks good too

A little update about Boox: The firmware seems to be very stable, I think I've tried most of its features and it never crashes

[MikeOnyx]

Originally Posted by luag

Finally! After years following the e-readers technology. I finally decided that Boox is going to be my first e-reader. Not that I haven't tried to buy one before, but it's difficult to obtain in Indonesia, and it's finally available here.

So, after waiting anxiously throughout the weekend, it arrived yesterday afternoon!

Haven't played too much with it, but I'm totally in love with the screen
This is my first time seeing an e-ink display with my own eyes. After reading dozens of ebooks on pda and smartphone screens, I must say that e-reader display is much, much more comfortable to read on. Although my smartphone still wins in terms of compactness and its ability to read in the dark.

Packaging is OK, but seriously, someone needs to design a better box for this gadget IMO. The design on the box kind of make it feel cheap.

Build quality is very nice. It feels solid and the design is very iPod-y (might be a minus for some people, but I personally don't really care). The white leather case supplied is also very nice and fits the white Boox nicely.

UI is pretty simple and straightforward. I can understand it fine in a pretty short amount of time without consulting the manuals.

Sound quality is very good. Sound is clear, but I need to listen to it with a better headphone to hear whether it has hiss or not. Will update soon.
What boox need is an audiobook player

Wifi works fine. I only tried to open wikipedia though. But it's a nice feature to have.

Battery life. Just fully charged it last night. We'll see how long it will last A friend of mine who also owns Boox, said that it can lasts for more than a week.

Anyone in Jakarta wants to buy Onyx Boox 60, just contact me
If anyone wants to see the device and I have some free time, maybe we can arrange a meet up.

Cheers.

Hi,

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Mike Hu. I am in charge of US Sales for Onyx Boox. I like to spend some time on this forum to really get to know the eReader community since we really want to make Boox as user friendly as possible.

First of all, thank you for the great review. Even though I have heard many praises about the Boox, it still never gets old.

To add, Onyx has been in talk with a company for a follow along audiobook reader. So as you listen to the audiobook, it goes along with the ebook. Hope this creates a little excitement for you guys.

If anyone has any suggestions, we are always open to them, so I give out my email freely, mikehu@onyx-international.com.

[luag]

Originally Posted by MikeOnyx

Hi,

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Mike Hu. I am in charge of US Sales for Onyx Boox. I like to spend some time on this forum to really get to know the eReader community since we really want to make Boox as user friendly as possible.

Hi Mike, nice to meet you

First of all, thank you for the great review. Even though I have heard many praises about the Boox, it still never gets old.

You're welcome. I'm glad I choose Boox as my first e-reader, the experience so far has been great.

But please do something about the price hahaha

To add, Onyx has been in talk with a company for a follow along audiobook reader. So as you listen to the audiobook, it goes along with the ebook. Hope this creates a little excitement for you guys.

This sounds awesome. Btw, when will text to speech feature comes to Boox?

If anyone has any suggestions, we are always open to them, so I give out my email freely, mikehu@onyx-international.com.

Sure

[carlobee]

wow! seems like a really good one! congratulations!

[GyGeek]

Originally Posted by luag

Btw, when will text to speech feature comes to Boox?

Yeah, I think I saw this in the manual, but isn't on my device.

[MikeOnyx]

Text to Speech will come out with version 1.5 along with Handwriting Recognition.

[k1r0]

Originally Posted by luag

Battery life. Just fully charged it last night. We'll see how long it will last A friend of mine who also owns Boox, said that it can lasts for more than a week.

I'm interested in the Onyx Boox, but what bothers me is the short battery life (4 days). The wifi and the Wacom screen are using the energy. I wonder if you can extend battery life by not using wifi and by using the button instead of the stylo. And how long the battery lasts in that case.

[GyGeek]

Originally Posted by k1r0

I'm interested in the Onyx Boox, but what bothers me is the short battery life (4 days). The wifi and the Wacom screen are using the energy. I wonder if you can extend battery life by not using wifi and by using the button instead of the stylo. And how long the battery lasts in that case.

Turning the wifi switch off does extend battery life, there is a noticeable difference.

[pietvo]

Originally Posted by MikeOnyx

Hi,

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Mike Hu. I am in charge of US Sales for Onyx Boox. I like to spend some time on this forum to really get to know the eReader community since we really want to make Boox as user friendly as possible.

Hi Mike,
As you probably know, BeBook will come with a rebranded Boox, the BeBook Neo. I suppose the hardware is the same and they only differ in software. Do you know what the differences will be? As BeBook is a wellknown brand in my country and Onyx is much less know there would be a natural tendency to get the BeBook Neo instead of the Onyx Boox. Are there any advantages to get the Boox instead? Other than it being available NOW.

[Dulin's Books]

Originally Posted by k1r0

I'm interested in the Onyx Boox, but what bothers me is the short battery life (4 days). The wifi and the Wacom screen are using the energy. I wonder if you can extend battery life by not using wifi and by using the button instead of the stylo. And how long the battery lasts in that case.

whenever the Stylus is stored in the slot the wacom is off. you'll get far longer than 4 days just reading with it.