TOPjoy launch kickstarter for new colour ereaders

[MarjaE]

Thanks!

[BoomStickMuppet]

I've preordered one of the 7.5 inch Topjoy ereaders. I'll be happy to give my thoughts on it when I receive it.

[franzli]

Originally Posted by BoomStickMuppet

I've preordered one of the 7.5 inch Topjoy ereaders. I'll be happy to give my thoughts on it when I receive it.

Cool, I'll be curious to learn more about it (but not curious enough at this point to order one myself).
Fingers crossed you'll get it around the time they promised.

For what it's worth, I've had a decent experience with crowd-funding the TopJoy Falcon, an 8 inch laptop. When I received it, I had already gotten a smaller device with a faster CPU, so I have the Falcon away afterwards and have no long time experience. But for the few weeks I played around with it it seemed decent. There was probably some delay with receiving it, as is common for crowd funding, but I don't remember anymore, so it probably wasn't terribly long for me.

[BoomStickMuppet]

Originally Posted by franzli

For what it's worth, I've had a decent experience with crowd-funding the TopJoy Falcon, an 8 inch laptop. When I received it, I had already gotten a smaller device with a faster CPU, so I have the Falcon away afterwards and have no long time experience. But for the few weeks I played around with it it seemed decent. There was probably some delay with receiving it, as is common for crowd funding, but I don't remember anymore, so it probably wasn't terribly long for me.

Yeah nice! I did a bit of research on the company before (not terribly much though) and I found they had generally been successful with their previous Kickstarter. If it was their first I probably wouldn't have backed.

I have one other experience with Kickstarting. I Kickstarted the Unihertz Jelly 2 phone. That went well so I am hoping this will be similar.

I plan to use Koreader on the Topjoy ereader for reading my ebooks, as I already use it on my phone and my kindle paperwhite.

[Lynx-lynx]

I'm curious, will this device allow for side loading ebooks, eg from calibre?

And will google try to prevent ebooks that aren't bought through its store from being loaded? (Perhaps questions of a premature nature at this point)

Edit
The only time I allow my kobo ereader to be on the internet is during the initial setup, I update the firmware using the cord, and looking at all the info on this device it seems to have a greater net dependence than I'd want. What a pity, I'd love a colour dedicated ereader.

[BoomStickMuppet]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

I'm curious, will this device allow for side loading ebooks, eg from calibre?

And will google try to prevent ebooks that aren't bought through its store from being loaded? (Perhaps questions of a premature nature at this point)

Edit
The only time I allow my kobo ereader to be on the internet is during the initial setup, I update the firmware using the cord, and looking at all the info on this device it seems to have a greater net dependence than I'd want. What a pity, I'd love a colour dedicated ereader.

Well, if it is like any other android device I don't think so. I use the koreader app on both my Android phone and Android tablet and I can load whatever books I please. According to a review of the device by goodEreader you will be able to side load whatever apps you please.

But I will let you know for sure when I actually receive the device. At this point they haven't even asked for my address yet.

[slm]

Looking at the specs, it appears to run Android 11 and have a USB-C connector.

This should mean that you can side-load through the USB-C port because the device should appear as a drive of some sort when connected to a computer. It probably means that you can also load through Calibre, either via the USB port or over a local wi-fi connection.

I guess we'll see.

[franzli]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

I'm curious, will this device allow for side loading ebooks, eg from calibre?

And will google try to prevent ebooks that aren't bought through its store from being loaded? (Perhaps questions of a premature nature at this point)

Edit
The only time I allow my kobo ereader to be on the internet is during the initial setup, I update the firmware using the cord, and looking at all the info on this device it seems to have a greater net dependence than I'd want. What a pity, I'd love a colour dedicated ereader.

In addition to what has already been mentioned, as far as I understand the device doesn't actually have Google services installed, so they shouldn't be able to block anything anyway. (If anything, there might be Chinese spyware checking you don't read stuff on subversive issues like "Free Tibet" or the Tiananmen massacre, as was allegedly discovered recently on some Xiaomi phones. Apparently you'd have to read that in Chinese though.)

[Yassréveil]

hmm.. intéressent ..

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by franzli

In addition to what has already been mentioned, as far as I understand the device doesn't actually have Google services installed, so they shouldn't be able to block anything anyway. (If anything, there might be Chinese spyware checking you don't read stuff on subversive issues like "Free Tibet" or the Tiananmen massacre, as was allegedly discovered recently on some Xiaomi phones. Apparently you'd have to read that in Chinese though.)

the subversive in me mentions Tiannamen, Tibet, Dalai Lama, Paddington Bear images often

[BoomStickMuppet]

Well, the project was supposed to be shipping in November. To be honest I didn't really think they'd make that deadline when I first backed it so I wasn't really upset when they missed it.

The last update we got was in January, they showed a bunch of photos of some units being assembled but they've kept mum ever since.

Looking at their last campaign (their Falcon Laptop) it appears that one shipped five months behind the estimated shipping date.

In both the current campaign and the previous one I'm seeing a lot of impatient backers calling TopJoy scammers and demanding a refund. At this stage I don't think it is a scam, but that may just be the optimist in me.

[kyôdai]

In recent updates the company announced that mass production has started this month (June) and that they plan to ship every order within next month (July).

Yesterday they released a video showing off the color display of the 6" device:

-> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects.../posts/3542609

It looks similar to E-Inks Kaleido displays, maybe slightly better colors. (Though that is hard to tell without a direct comparison.) Response time seems allright.

[Quoth]

I'd say the front light is on or the screen would be a lot darker.

For actual eink type mono panels with colour filters you can have between very dark saturated colours and pale pastel colours (still a lot darker) and only about 4,000 shades/hues because the cells only do blackish, whitish and 14 greys. Even rubbish LCD does about 200,000 shades/hues.

So a niche for comics, yet 6" is a bit small.

A video is a useless guide.

[BoomStickMuppet]

I've gotten an email last week that apparently they are shipping the devices. When I get mine I'll post pictures and whatnot, but I don't have another colour e-reader to compare. I feel I'll be using it for comics and manga quite a bit. Books I'll probably just keep using my Hisense A5 pro.

[kyôdai]

Yeah, according to the comments under their latest update, today the first bakers started to get a tracking number for their shipment.

So it seems a solid year after the start of the Kickstarter campaign and 10 month after the promised november 2021 delivery date, people are finally getting their hands on this thing.

Now it remains to be seen how well it performs.