Onyx Boox M96 vs M92

[polocanada]

I'm wondering how is the experience with own PDFs uploaded to Google Play Book. Does it do Text-reflow for the PDFs with embedded text? Can the Google Play Book app rotate to landscape?

[ayush]

Originally Posted by machinogodzilla

Hi derball,


I couldn't resist and took the plunge, M92 waits for a new home in an auction now :-)

It's been just a few days and I haven't had that much time to fully explore and unearth the bugs but I skimmed through the functionality of M96. I run it with the 2014-07-01 firmware.

I must say that even though I was excited I was also sceptical. Then the reader arrived in a very short time (great service from Booxtor). First blow - what have they done to the cover?! It looks and feels much nicer than the horrible faux leather of M92 cover but they moved the stylus holder from the inside of the spine to the top of the side where the reader sits. If you are a frequent stylus user you will feel the pain, I do. Then another blow. I was trying to update with OTA and it didn't find any updates, I had to do it manually. Not a good start.

But if you forget about these two initial problems, the reader itself feels much sleeker now. The outside, case, buttons etc., there is no difference from M92 but the inside... it feels soooo much more usable. First, the menus are nicer and the keyboard is nicer too. The pages turn very fast in the so called quality mode and almost instantaneously when you turn on the mysterious 'A2' refresh mode. Not only that, but this mode also removes flashing as you turn pages. Wow! If you are in that fast mode the quality degrades beyond the acceptable level occasionally but I haven't figured out when exactly. When it happens long press (about 1 second) of the home button does a full refresh and brings the quality back to normal.

Then there is the scribble function. It's very sleek. In M92 I had an impression that I was scribbling with a nail. The lines had rough edges, it was usable but far from pretty. Now the lines are very smooth, I think it makes my handwriting looks better than it actually is

You can use Google Play store to install apps. I haven't had any problems so far although I've only installed about a dozen of different PDF readers to try them out. All of them installed fine and none of them crashed during use.

Finally the web browser. It was barely usable before. Now it just works! I browsed this forum and I browsed the BBC pages without a glitch. Tabs work, bookmarks work, connection to wifi works.


My initial impressions are very positive and I'm happy I've upgraded. There are some problems (here is an example, watch this thread for specifics) but I remain optimistic that with Booxtor in charge they will get ironed out sooner rather than later.


I hope it helps a little. If you have any questions, shoot, and I will try to help. It's a bit like walking in the dark as there is no manual apart from the quick start booklet, same old story...

Hi Machinogodzilla,

Thanks for sharing your experience, I need your suggestion as I am planning to buy M96. How do you find its web browser, is it really worth it. Does it flicker while using it or its quite stable. Does it reflow when we move the webpage up and down having finger pressed on it.
I know it works really well with PDF, but I am keen to know about its usability with web browsing.
And How do you find its web browser compared to KOBO AURA-HD, which one do you think is better.
The best thing about kobo is 'Pocket' feature, where you can integrate all the pages for later reading, which I am sure must not be there on M96.

Thanks
Ayush

[japinder]

Well, as an e-reader, the M96 is good, accessing & opening the files, page turns, zooming in/font size increase, cropping on the basic black & white ebooks is okay.

However, the current 16 greyscale e-ink technology has issues with properly rendering color, which could result in a good reading experience. When I try to display PDFs with color backgrounds with patterns it, or colorful webpages, or maybe even some grey text, it does not result in a good reading experience.

If one can remove the background somehow, & more importantly, force colored/grey text to be displayed as black, then it can be made to work. That's another 'optimization' which can be added to the wishlist.

Its just a matter of understanding the screen technology's limitations & working within those limits.

Yes, Pocket works & we can save pages for reading later, but it still suffers from the same limitations of color rendering as above.

[mohammad.8112]

hi
Is frequent use a2 mode is problematic for ereaders
This means that if ever I use a2 mode does not hurt?

[Xen]

Here's my question - can you REMOVE GOOGLE PLAY and all its nasty little kin from the M96 without breaking it?

Because I can't remove it from my Android phone.

Or better yet - is it possible to jailbreak the M96 and install a (known good working) version of Linux instead?

If not, does Android require you to hook into the googleplex, like my cell phone does? I could not activate a lot of things on my cell without providing a g-mail account. Which is just one more thing for me to forget and lose track of since I won't use it for anything whatsoever.

[Rosa_WM]

After rooting the device it's possible to get rid of Google Play and Google Services, either by disabling or removing them. I can add that both options speed up the M96 quite considerably and don't do any harm.

[Xen]

12345

[Rosa_WM]

You'll find everything here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=256283

Kuskro is recommending there last year's firmware but the 1.7.3. update from September is works fine as it is.

I wouldn't mind if the M96 was a faster device, but it's good enough for the pdf's I'm reading. I guess a fast and responsive large screen e-ink tablet is still to come.

[Xen]

12345

[nknouf]

Do you have any thoughts as to the maximum number of books and/PDFs you can put on the device before it starts getting bogged down? I have my entire collection of ebooks (~500) and a couple thousand PDFs on an external sd card. I don't have my M96 index the PDFs, but I have horrible problems with crashing. I also use the device for note taking in Papyrus, as it's a perfect size. But no matter which firmware I use, which software for keeping the screen on I use, which methods I follow in various threads on this forum, I still can't get the device to not crash at least once per day, and can't get the battery to last beyond a couple days of moderate use. I just don't know if I have a bad device, and I'm not willing to spend hundreds of dollars to buy a new one to find out.

[machinogodzilla]

Originally Posted by japinder

When I try to display PDFs with color backgrounds with patterns it, or colorful webpages, or maybe even some grey text, it does not result in a good reading experience.

Perhaps converting to DJVU format would help with reading complex PDFs. Enable only the layer the device is capable of displaying properly and you should be good to go. Similarly in case of overly colourful websites you can disable the CSS to get rid of that colour.

Originally Posted by nknouf

But no matter which firmware I use, which software for keeping the screen on I use, which methods I follow in various threads on this forum, I still can't get the device to not crash at least once per day, and can't get the battery to last beyond a couple days of moderate use. I just don't know if I have a bad device, and I'm not willing to spend hundreds of dollars to buy a new one to find out.

I've been using the FW 2014-10-16 since, well, 2014-10-16 (probably) and I haven't experienced a single crash, so definitely there is something not right there. A little note, though, I have a mere 400 PDFs (up to 150MB each) on mine and I always turn it off before going to sleep.

If you notice battery drain then something keeps either the CPU or WiFi busy. To troubleshoot go to:

Apps -> Settings -> Apps -> Running

and look for anything suspicious there. Or to:

Apps -> Settings -> Battery

and see what keeps your reader busy (you will probably see, unless they fixed it in newer firmware, a "cell standby" line, but I think it's just a bogus entry). Most of the time I use Onyx Neo Reader and it is there and nothing else.

You could also start from scratch with new firmware and then not install anything just add a handful of books, test it over a few days and see if it behaves any different. If the situation improves then it's either some of your apps or the number of books. So start with the books first. Load the device with your whole library and again test it for a few days. If nothing changes then it must be one of your apps.

That's how I would test it anyway. Good luck and let us know how it went.