Onyx has started accepting pre-orders for the new Boox Picco from their website. Unfortunately the price is higher than we were led to believe, especially after you add shipping (you can get an Xteink X4 Pro for about $20 less), and since Onyx’s return policy is notoriously sketchy I’m going to wait to order one from their Amazon store instead.
The release date for the Boox Picco is still unclear; they say it will ship “around October”, regardless of which warehouse you choose, so it could still be a month away or more.
Onyx has updated their product page for the Boox Picco, and it confirms a major flaw with the software that everyone seems to be overlooking. If Amazon did this same exact thing with Kindles the ensuing outrage would short-circuit the internet, and people’s heads would start exploding.
The Boox Picco does not support transferring files to the device locally offline.
You read that right. You are required to use an app or a website (that requires an Onyx account, btw) to transfer ebooks to the Picco. You can’t load ebooks via USB or by putting them on the microSD card. You are 100% dependent on an app/website and Onyx’s servers remaining online for as long as you own and use the Picco. That is completely asinine!
Onyx is the type of company that drops features and services and devices anytime they feel like it at the drop of a hat, without any explanation or heads-up they are doing so, and people are going to trust them to keep the Picco’s ebook conversion/transfer system in place forever? Do you really think it’s still going to work 5 or 10 years from now?
The whole thing is ludicrous. And don’t expect Onyx’s army of social media influencers to point out negative things like that when sponsored reviews start showing up everywhere next month (that’s one of the many reasons why I refuse to accept review units). They’ll just gloss over having to use an app to transfer files like it’s no big deal.
The one thing that’s going to save the Picco from Onyx’s obtuse file transfer setup is CrossPoint, and its many derivatives. The CrossPoint website is already advertising the Boox Picco so they’ll most likely have custom software available for it by the time it starts shipping. CrossPoint supports wireless transfer and local offline transfers so it’s a lot easier to get ebooks on the device, and they aren’t being converted to some other mystery format along the way. Plus new features are getting added all the time, and it’s even possible to read Libby ebooks using CrossPoint now.
It’s good to see that Onyx is releasing a mini ereader of their own to compete with Xteink’s devices, and the Picco looks like a promising ereader, but loading ebooks and files onto an ereader shouldn’t be locked behind an app or a website, especially DRM-free ebooks. Speaking of which, the Picco does not support ebooks with DRM, and it does not support apps like Onyx’s Android devices, so getting ebooks onto the device is going to be problematic in more ways than one.
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