Boox Page
Boox Page
So, I've got a 9th generation Kindle Oasis and its battery is really starting to show its age. This is also one of the models where it is damn near impossible to replace the battery. Any attempts that I have read about online resulted in broken screens and sadness.
I'm not too wedded to the Amazon ecosystem, but I do like being able to borrow library books, which my local library allows in the form of sending them to your amazon account. I have a few books from the kindle store, but not a ton.
I've been looking around online for a replacement e-ink reading device, and the Boox Page has caught my eye. I'm curious how those have been performing for anyone who's got one here, since they've been out for a while now. I like the idea of it not being tied to any particular vendor's store, and the fact that I could install the Kindle and Libby apps on it, along with, apparently, pretty much anything else available in the Play store.
Important things for me are battery life and having physical page turn buttons, as well as a built in light so that I can read in bed without bothering my wife with a table lamp or something.
I would love to see some feedback from people who own these devices.
Also, does anyone know how often the Boox store restocks them? It's been showing as unavailable every time I check over the past few days.
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I have Boox Page. The killer features are Android with its Play Store and the page turn buttons. Having all those apps instead of being limited to the few features that dedicated e-readers like Kindle has is simply great. As for the page turn buttons. It's nice to be able to use the device one-handed and turn pages by pressing a button instead of needing two hands to touch the screen. But the real killer is the long press functions you can bind to the buttons. If you are using one of the faster refresh modes, pretty much required with some apps, the screen can get messy fast. Being able to refresh the screen by just pressing 0.5 seconds (duration can be adjusted) the button your finger is already resting on is extremely convenient.
Also, if you are planning on using the Kindle app, those page turn buttons are almost mandatory. If you use the touch screen to turn pages, the Kindle app will animate page turns. There is a setting for page turn animations, but that only toggles between two different animations. The animation is fine if you use a faster refresh mode. Those refresh modes render the screen in lower resolution, causing text to look pixelated. “Normal” refresh mode renders the screen at max resolution, so text looks crisp, but it's slow. Page turn animations look horrible in that mode. The only way to avoid page turn animations in the Kindle app is by turning pages with a button.
I think the biggest downside is that Onyx decided not to include built-in support for dark mode. Android supports dark mode, and as such many apps have choices for Light, Dark and System, where System will automatically follow system's mode. Because the system doesn't support dark mode, the System setting in apps is always light mode. Which means, that if you want to toggle between light and dark mode, you need to use the apps' controls to do so. That means that you need to navigate some menus, and have to remember how and where the mode can be changed in each app. It would be so much more convenient if you could just pull down from the top and touch a button, like you can do on Kindle, for example.
I bypassed the Dark mode limitation, at least while reading, by using KOreader. This little ereader allows to bind settings toggle and other utilities to taps in the corners, thus I toggle the Dark mode by a single tab. I can not recommend KOreader enough for a Boox tablet, Neoreader is good but KOreader is on another level completely. Also way faster than anything else I've tried. It may have a steep learning curve but it's 100% worth it.
That sounds great, page turn buttons are absolutely a must-have feature for me. I have them on my Kindle Oasis and do use them for one-handed reading all the time. The lack of dark mode is kinda disappointing but not a dealbreaker. Now if only the Page would come back in stock...