Onyx Boox as monitor

[whopper]

Originally Posted by mdp

Which device? I am uninformed. You linked to a Dasung monitor, then write «another manufacturers launching devices with everything included», and a Dasung monitor contains (does) a fraction of what an Onyx tablet does... Where's this competition.

I'm talking about the likebook mimas, mars, eewrite pad, etc devices with android big screens and powerful hardware also. It's just matter of time they release a 13.3" now that the "13.3 can't have light because no light diffuser works for that size" mantra have been proved false and onyx just didn't want to release it so fast so they could do it in the distant future to make customers purchase new products every 12/18 months. They've been doing this for years.

Other manufacturers are forcing onyx to release huge upgrades to their devices faster than expected like the new pro lineup with flushed screens, 4gb of ram, light, that otherwise they wouldn't have been release for another year or longer.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by whopper

I'm talking about the likebook mimas, mars, eewrite pad, etc devices with android big screens and powerful hardware also. It's just matter of time they release a 13.3" now that the "13.3 can't have light because no light diffuser works for that size" mantra have been proved false and onyx just didn't want to release it so fast so they could do it in the distant future to make customers purchase new products every 12/18 months. They've been doing this for years.

Other manufacturers are forcing onyx to release huge upgrades to their devices faster than expected like the new pro lineup with flushed screens, 4gb of ram, light, that otherwise they wouldn't have been release for another year or longer.

The Likebook mimas with a light is certainly a unique device but it is no where near 13.3". It is 10.3" which is only incrementally larger than 9.7" Even today, only Likebook has managed to make this screen lighting. E Ink, where Onyx gets their screens does not make a lighted screen on screens larger than 9.7" Onyx and most other reader manufacture's don't have this technology and are not likely to develop it on their own. If you want to holler, holler at E Ink. Putting a glass screen with dual touch screen and other features is no small task on the bigger devices. Many have been announced that never saw the light of day. It isn't even clear that the market is there.

Dale

[whopper]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

The Likebook mimas with a light is certainly a unique device but it is no where near 13.3". It is 10.3" which is only incrementally larger than 9.7" Even today, only Likebook has managed to make this screen lighting. E Ink, where Onyx gets their screens does not make a lighted screen on screens larger than 9.7" Onyx and most other reader manufacture's don't have this technology and are not likely to develop it on their own. If you want to holler, holler at E Ink. Putting a glass screen with dual touch screen and other features is no small task on the bigger devices. Many have been announced that never saw the light of day. It isn't even clear that the market is there.

Dale

I mean, now dasung too is making it on 13.3" and dasung is clearly much smaller than onyx, so onyx can make it happen too and hopefully onyx or likebook will do it sooner than later.

flushed screen, light, 4/6gb of ram, a slightly better cpu, android 6 or more and they can ask me 900€, I will pay it gladly. It's the device i've been dreaming for over 10 years.

max 2 is really good, but needs those small improvements to be a god tier device and now we have confirmation that can be made.

[rkomar]

The front light layer needs to be perfectly flat to work properly. For that, you need an E-Ink display with a glass substrate. For that, you need to make the case very stiff. For that, you need to use a lot of steel in the case. So, large E-Ink displays with a front light are much heavier and more fragile than those with a plastic substrate and flimsy case.

My old 9.7" PocketBook 902 with a glass substrate weighs about 500g. Double it's size to a 13.3" screen and you are looking at a reader that weighs about 1kg (maybe more if the case needs to be even sturdier to keep the device from twisting). There is a good reason why E-Ink does not even produce a 13.3" screen with a front light layer.

[whopper]

Originally Posted by rkomar

The front light layer needs to be perfectly flat to work properly. For that, you need an E-Ink display with a glass substrate. For that, you need to make the case very stiff. For that, you need to use a lot of steel in the case. So, large E-Ink displays with a front light are much heavier and more fragile than those with a plastic substrate and flimsy case.

My old 9.7" PocketBook 902 with a glass substrate weighs about 500g. Double it's size to a 13.3" screen and you are looking at a reader that weighs about 1kg (maybe more if the case needs to be even sturdier to keep the device from twisting). There is a good reason why E-Ink does not even produce a 13.3" screen with a front light layer.

boox note pro have light, glass 10.3" screen, and weights 390gr.

They can do it around 600gr max, probably even less. I mean, the ipad pro weights that and have much more on the inside, starting with a 10.000 mah battery vs 4000 on the max 2.

[mzan]

Originally Posted by tomat

Hello.
I’m considering to buy a Boox Max 2 but I’m hesitating because of the blurriness issue.
Did anyone try Microsoft’s solution succesfully?

I tried to force the correct resolution using NVIDIA drivers, but it does not solve the problem. Fonts must be scaled, contrast increased and so on. Probably the reported EDID settings are correct in the end. I installed mods using the screen with gray-scale instead of black and white. It improves many things but it is too much slow.

My impression is that Boox Max 2 can not be used as monitor in a productive way. At least not for programming. Maybe only for certain limited tasks (e.g. writing text) and after investing some time understanding some configuration tricks.

It is instead an exceptional PDF and document reader (I use with Calibre, and it is good also for HTML documents not converted to EPUB). The stylus is working perfectly. I suggest to buy a screen protector if you use it for taking a lot of notes, because otherwise the screen will accumulate scratches.

I like it very much, the product is wonderful, but it is not a computer monitor IMHO.

[whopper]

Originally Posted by mzan

My impression is that Boox Max 2 can not be used as monitor in a productive way. At least not for programming. Maybe only for certain limited tasks (e.g. writing text) and after investing some time understanding some configuration tricks

I use it in a productive way to read long pages from articles moving the browser to the max monitor, just not using hdmi but with spacedesk and full resolution. But while I agree that I can use it, sometimes it can lag a bit, so for coding or non static things can be a hassle sometimes.

[tomat]

Originally Posted by whopper

I use it in a productive way to read long pages from articles moving the browser to the max monitor, just not using hdmi but with spacedesk and full resolution. But while I agree that I can use it, sometimes it can lag a bit, so for coding or non static things can be a hassle sometimes.

Dear mzan, dear whopper,

many thanks for your help!

[Spectralis]

I've tried Spacedesk on Win 10 laptop with the Max 2 and with Likebook Mars. In my experience Spacedesk has virtually no lag on the Mars for some reason. Plus the Mars has front lighting which makes everything clearer even at low lighting levels. I'm wondering if the Likebook Mimas and the Boox Note Pro with Spacedesk are a better option - 10.3" screens with front lighting. Perhaps the Mimas will have no lag like the Mars? Anyone tested these two with Spacedesk?

[tomat]

Originally Posted by Spectralis

I've tried Spacedesk on Win 10 laptop with the Max 2 and with Likebook Mars. In my experience Spacedesk has virtually no lag on the Mars for some reason. Plus the Mars has front lighting which makes everything clearer even at low lighting levels. I'm wondering if the Likebook Mimas and the Boox Note Pro with Spacedesk are a better option - 10.3" screens with front lighting. Perhaps the Mimas will have no lag like the Mars? Anyone tested these two with Spacedesk?

I tried Spacedesk on a Boox Note and compared it to a Dasung Paperlike (2nd generation). When typing there is some lag on both devices:

• Fastest is the Dasung in A2 or Floyd mode. There is minimal lag of fractions of a second until the letters appear. It's fast enough for typing. But there is some ghosting.
• Second fastest is the Boox Max running Spacedesk. It needs a little bit longer until the typed letters appear.
• Slowest is the Dasung in A16 mode. The lag is to long for my taste and makes this option unusable for typing.

[elementarythree]

Every few months I come back to this device, after the last round of testing to get more out of it proved hack-y and unfruitful. In some other thread I posted that I actually got linux working straight up on the device, but the included Mali drivers make it more or less useless. I assume Onyx hasn't released the kernel sources and/or unlocked the bootloader?

Every few months I also repeat this advice - The best way to use it as a second screen is to use it like a terminal in the old days and capitalize on it's linux roots. Text only, curses-based editors, monochrome terminfo. Perfectly fine since it can't display colors to begin with anyways and this makes most graphical user interfaces just look bad. I even played nethack on it that way. Doable and termux is reasonably quick and fonts are nice. SoC has enough omph to run applications itself, so you don't even need a computer, just a keyboard. If no webbrowsing is required, (I would not advise letting the thing on a network, it has some serious and old linux-based exploits that make it very easy to hijack it and do things like gain root) 2 GB is plenty. Via USB reverse connection and termux API you can combine it with your PC and script it a little, for example open a .pdf or picture on your computer and have it automatically uploaded and displayed on the reader. It's also possible to run a linux distribution and even an X server directly on it with lots of hacking but there's little point to it, termux & android gives you more. If you get one of those bluetooth to serial dealies or set a usb debug connection up, you could even use it as primary screen in the dumb terminal (or I guess in it's case, smart terminal) sense and forego a monitor on your computer of choice. That's possible with GNU screen. It's HDMI connector is absolutely useless. There's no way to force the right resolution and at this point I believe the hardware simply cannot do it. No idea how they screwed that up.

I've had very conflicted feelings regarding this device (Didn't have such since the Amiga 1200 in the early 90s) but I ended up making my peace with it. It works well as terminal and pdf/picture viewer. It has an advantage over the Dasung since it contains a computer that let's you do some nifty things. It's disadvantage is that it's not really usable as a graphical screen with a computer without some serious downsides, but like I said, I think it works best as terminal.

[plusz]

Originally Posted by elementarythree

I ended up making my peace with it. It works well as terminal and pdf/picture viewer. It has an advantage over the Dasung since it contains a computer that let's you do some nifty things. It's disadvantage is that it's not really usable as a graphical screen with a computer without some serious downsides, but like I said, I think it works best as terminal.

I agree with you completely. Funny thing, recently I work a lot on remote AWS instances and from some time I decided to go back to terminal workflow, just got tired with all the hiccups you need to do to work in graphical IDE and compile & debug your code on EC2 instance. Since I'm almost proficient in vim again I've just thought I should try Max for the task

[tjw321]

I've been using emacs and ssh on the Max since I got it. It works well enough for me (but I am not a very good typist so what lag there is doesn't bother me - YMMV).
But I'm old school - emacs is an IDE by my standards . The minor inconveniences are worth it so that I can work outdoors.

[Randy11]

Originally Posted by elementarythree

... The best way to use it as a second screen is to use it like a terminal in the old days and capitalize on it's linux roots. Text only, curses-based editors, monochrome terminfo. Perfectly fine since it can't display colors to begin with anyways and this makes most graphical user interfaces just look bad. I even played nethack on it that way. Doable and <b>termux</b> is reasonably quick and fonts are nice. SoC has enough omph to run applications itself, so you don't even need a computer, just a keyboard. If no webbrowsing is required, (I would not advise letting the thing on a network, it has some serious and old linux-based exploits that make it very easy to hijack it and do things like gain root) 2 GB is plenty. Via USB reverse connection and termux API you can combine it with your PC and script it a little, for example open a .pdf or picture on your computer and have it automatically uploaded and displayed on the reader. It's also possible to run a linux distribution and even an X server directly on it with lots of hacking but there's little point to it, termux & android gives you more. If you get one of those bluetooth to serial dealies or set a usb debug connection up, you could even use it as primary screen in the dumb terminal (or I guess in it's case, smart terminal) sense and forego a monitor on your computer of choice. That's possible with GNU screen. It's HDMI connector is absolutely useless. There's no way to force the right resolution and at this point I believe the hardware simply cannot do it. No idea how they screwed that up.

I've had very conflicted feelings regarding this device (Didn't have such since the Amiga 1200 in the early 90s) but I ended up making my peace with it. It works well as terminal and pdf/picture viewer. It has an advantage over the Dasung since it contains a computer that let's you do some nifty things. It's disadvantage is that it's not really usable as a graphical screen with a computer without some serious downsides, but like I said, I think it works best as terminal.

Hello,

I've downloaded Termux (https://f-droid.org/fr/packages/com.termux/) and copy the file to the Max2. I've installed the 'apk' from the Max2's GUI, but when I launch it, I have the message :

Unable to install
Termux was unable to install the bootstrap packages.
Check your network connection and try again.

How to install and use Termux without any Internet connexion on the Max2 ?

[tjw321]

Termux is overkill if you just want to use it like a terminal. I use JuiceSSH because I'd already paid for it for another device because it worked the best with that device's keyboard, but almost any SSH client will do. Termux is a (near) complete linux environment and is excellent if that is what you want (I use Termux as well).

I did a quick google and this article seems to mention a few ssh clients that I have used in the past with success (I'm at work so haven't read the full thing - sorry if it proves useless).

https://techwiser.com/android-ssh-client/