Onyx is demoing some new products at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, where they’re showing off some interesting new E Ink ereaders for a change (new E Ink devices used to show up at CES but it’s been a non-event in recent years).
Onyx has a new 10.3-inch Note Pro and a 7.8-inch Nova Pro coming out in 2019, and both feature color-adjusting frontlights plus capacitive and Wacom touchscreens, a combination that Onyx previously hasn’t offered.
Lots of folks will be happy to hear that Onyx is going to finally be offering a 10.3-inch Note model with the option for a frontlight.
Aside from the frontlight, the Note Pro is basically an updated version of the Note Plus, which has a flush glass screen on the front, but the Note Pro doubles the storage space and RAM up to 64GB and 4GB respectively.
The 7.8-inch Onyx Boox Nova Pro is basically a smaller version of the Note but with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage space. It also has the color-adjusting frontlight with a capacitive screen and Wacom screen to use with a stylus.
Both new devices run Android 6.0 like Onyx’s other ereaders.
It’s good to see Onyx coming out with new models but you have to question their strategy of continuing to release like ten different versions of the same model, each with minor differences. It makes people hesitant to buy if they think it’s just going to get replaced in a few months with a newer version.
Plus Onyx still isn’t even selling the regular Nova from their Amazon store and it was released awhile ago now, so who knows how many months it will take for these Pro models to show up.
This or Likebook Mimas?
It’s going to come down to price and availability. I think the onyx book note pro will be much more expensive than the mimas 450 $ retail price, judging from their pricing in the past year. Plus I really like the physical buttons on the mimas, and the fact that boygue is a little bit the underdog in this contest, so it is clear that the weapons it has to use to wage this war are innovation and pricing, a bit like Apple’s position against Microsoft in the 80s and 90s of the 20th century when the personal computer tech industry was still in its infancy ..
What about software? The PDF reader on the Boox seems more advanced, and note-taking seems more integrated.
This is what I gather from researching e-readers the past couple days. I’m also deciding between these two for reading technical texts and would like to hear more points of view.
Likebook Mimas has buttons, no glass screen (more durable against drops?), 4700 mAh battery and weighs 430g, 8-core and 2G ram, micro SD card slot
Onyx Note Pro has more advanced software like the PDF reader, glass cover (protects against stylus scratches but also breakable on drops), 4100 mAh battery and supposedly weighs 370g, 4-core and 4G ram, no micro SD
Boyue Likebook Mimas has glass screen. Weights 430grams. There’s no way to distribute frontlight with no glass.
Sony’s 10.3″ DPT-CP1 is 241grams with no glass and can be rooted.
I’m a big fan of Likebook and Onix devices, but I am really hate their product strategy. If the Note, Note Plus, and Note Pro, and other variants came out at the same time, the people would have gone for the Pro without hesitation.
And the people say that they offer 6 inches ereader, with basic colors. It’s interesting 10,3inch color touch, light, and pen. Do you know something about?
Does anybody have an idea about how any of these e-readers handle Microsoft OneNote? I’m quite heavily inegrated into that ecosystem, albeit knowing that it’s not the best notes app out there (so don’t tell me so please!!! 🙂 )
There’s too much latency with 3rd party note apps unfortunately.
Thanks, that’s helpful to know. Suppose I can always just take notes and export them as PDFs to my files or OneNote. Thanks again!
NATHAN: “There’s too much latency with 3rd party note apps unfortunately.”
How do you know for sure when these devices haven’t been released yet? Could you elaborate what you’re basing that on exactly Nathan? THX
The software on the Note Pro is the same as the software on the regular Note, which I installed OneNote on, and as others have reported there’s a lot more latency with 3rd party note apps because they weren’t designed to work with E Ink screens, and there’s no getting around that from the outside so that’s unlikely to change.
I can confirm this is the case on the mimas