Boox C67ml Carta2 preliminary review

[polemarkh]

Greetings all,

Before making my most recent reader acquisition, I looked through this forum to see if anyone else had any experience with the C67ml Carta2, without finding anything. As such, I thought it might be useful to post my own first impressions.

To give some idea as to where I'm coming from, I have in the past, owned a number of ebook readers. Sony PRS-700, PRS-350, Cybook Opus, Kobo Glo and Aura H2O (the H2O remains both in my possession and functional, and so far as I know the Glo is functional though not in my possession).

I chose the Carta2 because I wanted an ereader that had an SD card slot, a high resolution screen, a smaller size than the Aura H2O, and (preferably) some variety of reader application that would synchronize with both iOS and Android (I fairly quickly got frustrated with Kobo's sync only working for purchased content).

The Carta2 cost ~$200, shipped from China. I ended up buying from <http://beststore-online.com>, and they included a case (which I hadn't expected) (I'm not endorsing the store, just noting that their Carta2 is indeed labelled correctly). I ended up using NovaLauncher as my launcher application, swapps as my quick launcher, Calibre Companion as my book storage, and Mantano Reader as my reading app (of those that offer both iOS and android versions, it did the best synchronization, gave me the most display options, and let me turn off the animation on the Carta2).

The good:

• Beautiful screen
• CalibreCompanion integrates well with Mantano
• Front light comparable to my Aura H2O in quality and brightness
• Easy to turn wifi on for sync and then off again for power saving
• Runs for about a week on a charge if I'm mostly using it for reading
• Hardware forward/back buttons are nice
• Sleep/wake case works well
• Decently small size and light weight

The not-so-good:

• If wifi is left on, the battery drains very quickly
• Powering up takes a long time, so the "turn off after n minutes of sleep" feature is pretty much useless for me (on the other hand, the power drains quite slowly during sleep with wifi off)
• No way to get the Onyx launcher to recognize Mantano as the reader app
• A2 reading most, whilst faster, is hard to use with Mantano reader because it doesn't refresh the UI elements
• Not being able to upgrade Android beyond 4.2.2 is annoying but not crippling (especially since I spend very little time connected to the internet)

Overall the Carta2 works well for me, and I'm glad I ended up with it. If you prefer high-resolution displays for reading, and (especially) if you occasionally open books at very small font size in order to maximize screen space, I think that the better screen is definitely worth the price increase over the Carta. I don't yet have anything to say about durability, but I hope to post again in a few months with an updated report.

[bulek]

Thanks for sharing... the device looks interesting. Can you tell me how much free space do you have for apps? I's like to check if they finally granted more space than for roughly 5 apps. Did it come with google play preinstalled?

[polemarkh]

Looking at the app settings, the main storage has the usual ~350MB of app storage, and the internal SD card has ~6GB. Thus far I haven't tried moving anything to the SD card. Google Play is pre-installed. I assume that I could probably get more app space by rooting it, but thus far I haven't needed to (honestly I want just enough UI to let me store and read books).

From what I can see of the Onyx website, the one you want if you're looking for a lot of app space is their new (web page first appeared within the past couple of weeks) Kepler Pro. It looks like it has the same screen, and it specifically mentions having more internal app space (and about twice the battery).

Sorry I can't give you any better news about storage space on the Carta2.

[bulek]

The information on Onyx pages are not always accurate. They once put in the changelog of my device firmware that now apps can be installed on the main device storage (where you put all books typically). They withdrawn from this after I clarified with them that they simply meant "move to SD card" option which of course works but it's not the same.

Kepler Pro... who knows.. maybe it would have more space. It looks like a step back though with pearl screen and Android 4.0.

[Hrafn]

I'm fairly sure the Pearl screen on the Kepler is a misprint, given that it's meant to be 300dpi (which I haven't seen on anything less than a Carta screen). The apparent lack of page-turn buttons does give me pause however.

[Addendum: closer examination of the pictures on O-B's site reveal that, although it does not have obvious page-turn buttons on the front, there are a pair of small page-turn buttons approximately three quarters of the way up each side.

Further scratching around reveals that there will be three Kepler models: the Kepler Lite, the Kepler and the Kepler Pro, only the Pro will have the page turn buttons. Also, according to this video, one of the models will be water-proof.]

Additionally there's disagreement between the English and Chinese sections of the site as to what type of touchscreen it has -- the Chinese section Google-translates as "Capacitive touch (supports 2-point touch)", the English section as "Digitzier with stylus".