Sony’s specialized DPT-S1 E Ink PDF Reader has been on the market for a couple years now. It was the very first 13.3-inch E Ink ereader to get released, and as it finally starts to get some competition from other companies, the Sony DPT-S1 still remains a popular choice.
I thought that once the 13.3-inch Onyx Boox Max got released with a bunch of upgrades over the Sony no one would care about the DPT-S1 anymore, especially considering that the Max is quite a bit cheaper.
If you just look at the specs and software the Onyx appears to have a major advantage.
The Max has a lot more features, like audio support, Bluetooth, more storage space (16GB vs 4GB), open Android 4.0 software to install apps, and support for a number of ebook formats, whereas the DPT-S1 only supports PDF format.
The Onyx Boox Max looks like the obvious choice on paper.
As it turns out, that’s not necessarily the case at all. Even though it has a limited feature set the Sony device still has some advantages over the Max.
The Sony ereader has a finger-friendly capacitive touchscreen, whereas the Max’s touchscreen only works with a special stylus. The Sony device is also a lot lighter at 12.6 ounces versus the Max at 17.5 ounces.
Plus user reports seem to suggest that Sony’s software works better and is more refined when it comes to reading PDFs and adding notes than Onyx’s software.
Unfortunately there aren’t any comparison reviews directly comparing the Sony DPT-S1 with the Onyx Boox Max, but there are a few comparisons between the Sony device and other Onyx ereaders, which have the same software as the Max.
The video below compares the Onyx Boox M96 with the Sony DPT-S1. There are more comparison videos on YouTube.
Same price as a 32GB 12.9″ ipad pro. Aside from battery life, I can’t think why you would want this.
I made the same comparison once and a lot of people disagreed…
Viewing LCD screens can cause eye-strain for many people (including myself) where we are interested in using “a tablet” without having burning, red eyes after 20+ minutes of use. Eink does not cause eye discomfort. Viewing a grey-scale, slow-refresh screen is worth the trade-off of eye discomfort for many of us. Boox totally blew it by not including a capacitive touchscreen with the Max. I would have bought the device in a heartbeat, but without the pinch & zoom capabilities, what’s the point … especially if you happen to lose the stylus.
Aside, the little dealers of Boox aren’t reliable: they might not provide after sale services after a couple of years, unlike Sony, that is large and well established company
Reading in direct sunlight. The market for large e-readers is very niche. Basically reading PDFs or very die hard readers (that want a large screen), however for those use cases the iPad Pro is a poor substitute.
Yes I agree why would you want a iPad?
Try reading any Tablet in sunlight and you will get your answerer.
If you cannot understand why someone would spend $700 on a large format ebook reader, then it’s probably not the device for you.
That ipad is also twice as heavy, which makes it terrible for holding and reading from for any length of time.
Popular perhaps, but still discontinued
Sorry, no links to those scammers aloud. They flat out lie and make stories up just to get attention so you can never trust anything they say. But it wouldn’t be surprising that it’s been discontinued by this time; Sony clearly has no interest in continuing to develop it since nothing has changed in over 3 years.
I love mine! I read pdf articles on it all day long and my eyes don’t tire. If you’re the kind of person who needs to print a long document to read it, try one of these instead.