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Onyx Boox Max 3 - 13.3" e-Ink Tablet - REVIEW
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Jun 22, 2024
The Onyx Boox Max 3 is a pretty amazing piece of technology, reflecting a decade of Onyx developing e-Ink screen systems. It's like the world's biggest Kindle and while it has a slow screen refresh and is only black & white, it's also a wonderful device for reading books, magazines, online content and even your own reference PDF documents. But the Boox Max 3 has some limitations too, and offers up some features that just don't make sense with the technology included, as tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ explores in this video review. Btw, I misspeak when I say that Onyx is a Russian-based company. It's actually a Chinese company and this product includes some custom software for the Russian market. Sorry 'bout that! Check Onyx out at https://shop.boox.com/products/boox-max3 You can also find the product on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2YJxHK5
View Transcript
0:00
It's an enormous e-ink tablet with lots of cool features. Let's check it out
0:12
Dave Taylor here, and I'm having fun with this This is the onyx books max 3 it is a 13.3 inch
0:22
Tablet, but with a very big difference. It's running e-ink screen technology
0:27
So this is the same screen technology they use in the Kindle And it's very interesting because it only takes energy when you change screens
0:35
So here I have my drawing if I push the button. It's now
0:40
Generating power or using power I should say because it's actually going to different places in the operating system as you can see
0:48
It also has a touchscreen interface So the screen itself is an e-ink mobius 13.3 inch touchscreen at
0:58
1650 by 2200 pixels which is 207 pixels per inch so it's not high-density
1:05
Much more importantly it's not color, so this is not a color tablet
1:11
But the whole point of the e-ink is that it uses extraordinarily little power
1:16
So I'm only using power when it's actually changing what's on the screen
1:21
So when it's sitting like this it can sit like this for literally weeks and zero power has been consumed
1:27
Which gives it this ridiculous actual battery lifetime so has a 4200 milliamp hour battery
1:34
And that gives you a month of usage now where this really shines is as a
1:40
Consumption device not with movies, but with text so I can go to for example
1:47
BBC News and Here's a BBC News article, and I can scroll by simply
1:54
Scrolling right and you can see when you're done with that screen you scroll to the next one
2:00
When you're done with that you scroll to the next one and so on and it's a little funky obviously the pictures
2:07
Don't look anywhere near as good as they would on your nice big bright color screen, but that's not its purpose
2:13
Where this is even more cool is let me go back to
2:18
The Amazon Kindle because this runs Android so I can run the Kindle app so this now becomes this
2:25
Wonderful big-screen Kindle, and if I want to read a book all I have to do is have had it downloaded and look at that
2:32
That is a glorious way to read books or any Moby or a pub or PDF or HTML document it even has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
2:43
So you can actually go online, but to me. This is just absolutely the best use case this
2:48
I mean this screen is just gorgeous for reading. It's nice and bright and crisp
2:54
It's a reflective light as opposed to something that is emitting light
2:59
So it's very different in terms of its fatigue with your eyes. You can read this for a long time
3:04
That's why the Kindle is so darn popular now what also is interesting is it's actually a dual layer screen
3:11
So it's using two sensor systems and one of them is actually a Wacom
3:16
Touch layer so Wacom is really well known for doing like Tablets that you can use as an artist to work on
3:24
This has a processor, and it runs okay But it's really nowhere near fast enough to be actually like an art input you saw my doodle
3:33
But if I was going to do serious art, I don't think this thing can keep up having said that it is an unspecified
3:41
Octa-core CPU running at 2 gigahertz with 4 gig of RAM and 64 gig of storage now
3:47
they also include this interesting little doohickey, which is usb C and
3:52
Micro SD so it's a micro SD card reader so you could put a micro SD card in here
3:58
Plug it into the usb C at the bottom, and then presumably you would have access to more storage
4:03
So if that 64 gig isn't enough this gives you other options. No and look. It's giving me a very
4:11
Attractive illustration, I'm not sure what that's about there you go. Sorry lots of reflections
4:16
But having said that actually this is very non reflective. I just have a lot of lights pointing at me
4:21
So it makes it a worst case So this actually gives you a little bit of a clue as to the heritage of the device the onyx is actually a Russian tech
4:31
Product and you know that because it is a built-in English Russian dictionary
4:36
Which I thought was kind of interesting not sure I have a lot of call for that
4:39
But it's nice to know that it's built in right so I think what that did is I actually turned it off
4:45
So there's a power button on the top, so let me give you a little tour on the top is a power button
4:50
There's nothing on either side. There's no volume controls in hardware, and then on the bottom are two plugs
4:58
there's usb C which you use for charging and Obviously you use that for external data and devices, and then there's this sort of micro usD
5:08
Or micro HDMI I should say and that's an interesting one Comes with this cable, which is the micro HDMI
5:18
I don't even know what this interface is called it might be a custom interface and any other end
5:22
It's just a regular HDMI and the intention is that you can use this as a second monitor on your computer
5:28
But that's a pretty wack idea because E Ink is a slow refresh screen
5:33
And it doesn't make any sense to be sending it data 1 60th of a second or 1 30th of a second
5:39
So you can use this hooked up to your computer. I have absolutely no idea what that use case is I didn't even try it
5:46
It just doesn't make sense to me, and I will say with my experimentation that boy it eats up battery super fast
5:52
So if you are going to use this as a second monitor Which is one of its capabilities then number one you really probably want to just show text on it
6:01
so maybe it's a reference document while you're working on your computer and
6:05
Number two leave it plugged in or you will be very sad that it will run out of battery super fast
6:10
So also includes this stylus Disappointingly no extra tips so if this tip gets damaged you have to go back to Onyx and get another one which apparently is a bit
6:20
of a chore It's a fairly straightforward stylus. You could probably use a third-party one just as well. There are no buttons on it
6:29
There's nothing special. It doesn't seem to have any proximity It is literally a push-and-drag sort of stylus which is fine. That's you know for this purpose
6:38
It does have the ability to sense over 2,000 degrees of pressure
6:42
So presumably if you do want to try to use this for art Then as long as you can handle the slow screen refresh
6:49
then you could actually get a lot of variation and a lot of control over what you're trying to develop so
6:56
Not much else to tell you I love this thing I love I mean having this for Kindle books is just spectacular. This is so nice
7:07
But I will tell you I'm gonna give you a couple of screenshots and I'll just hope that they come out pretty well so
7:14
It gives you basically Android and Android gives you the Play Store
7:18
But a lot of apps aren't gonna work very well And obviously you don't want to get anything like a game because it's gonna just crush this thing
7:25
And if it's refreshing all the time you're just gonna eat up all your battery, too, so this is good for maybe things like
7:34
Grabbing a project Gutenberg document right so you can get like Alice in Wonderland off of their resource
7:40
so I can go to the library and then I already have Alice's adventures in Wonderland, which is a free download and
7:48
Then here you have it You know so this is the cover art which obviously is gonna look a lot better on a color screen
7:54
But so be it and then let's see if we can actually get into the book
8:00
Project Gutenberg is a free archive of material unfortunately It doesn't generally tend to be very well formatted as text, so let's see if there's more to it than this hopefully
8:16
Well there's lots of content you can see and this is just out of the books max three library
8:23
But if I jump back, then I also get there's a shop that I can buy some content
8:29
It does have speakers so you could use it for audio books or audio narration on a book you're reading
8:36
The notes gives me access to create art, and you know as I showed you
8:41
Here's one. I know this is a suboptimal angle, but you know
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I can do this and you can see it tracks things and then it's a typical sketch app
8:53
so I can pick different colors which end up being different shades of gray and
8:58
Different thicknesses and I can do an erase and save it as different formats and so on and so forth so that's pretty fun
9:07
You're gonna do great art on this I'm guessing probably not But then you get into apps and apps is where it's kind of fun
9:14
So apps you can get a lot of stuff things like I have BBC News
9:18
I just showed you that the New York Times any newspaper any magazine
9:21
They're all gonna look really good on this because it's text right. This is a great text device the Kindle app is fantastic
9:28
That's by itself if you have someone who complains their Kindle You know screen is too small something like this would be a fantastic solution
9:37
It's so big and so nice and you make the ticks the text super big
9:41
Or you can just have a lot of text on the screen, which is really good
9:45
This would also obviously be a great reference document for Scientists or lawyers or anyone that needs to be constantly referencing other works
9:53
that would be very handy and you can pick up a Case for it and all sorts of stuff off of the sort of Amazon ecosystem and off of even the onyx
10:03
Ecosystem itself there's various stuff you can buy and what's interesting is you can buy an external
10:09
Keyboard or mouse and then they plug in via that USB C and you could use those too. So I don't see this as much of a creation or input device
10:18
it's much more to me a Consumption device and again for text content. This is fantastic
10:25
But if you want to try it out, there's definitely some options you can use Now not much else. I want to talk about not much else to talk about, right
10:33
So you got that HDMI interface if you want to try that it comes with this funky micro SD card reader
10:40
comes with a USB C charger comes with the stylus and Of course comes with the screen and it does have a screen protector that comes with it
10:49
But it doesn't have a case and it feels pretty solid I don't feel like this is quite as flimsy as say the Sony document or the Sony device that's similar
11:00
But I would not carry it just like this I would definitely buy a case for it or something or even just put it in a manila folder
11:07
So speaking of which so let's talk about the dimensions of this So this is twelve point two inches by nine inches by a quarter inch thick and the whole thing is
11:19
17.3 ounces it is an amazing piece of technology in a whole lot of ways
11:23
It's really just a screen and it's a really lovely screen E Ink is a really fascinating technology because it has such low power demands
11:33
So if you're doing something that is black on white or white on black or something like that where it's just crisp and you don't
11:40
Need all sorts of colors and everything. This can be a great technological solution
11:44
So this is a really cool device Which means the only thing we need to talk about is the price because it comes with a pretty hefty price tag
11:52
But before we get to the price tag, let me ask if you can subscribe to my channel
11:57
I get access to a ton of interesting technology and I'm very candid about what's good and what's not good
12:03
So you should subscribe so we can stay in touch awesome. Now this
12:08
Let's see. Let's get it over to apps This is the onyx books max 3 and it is
12:17
$859 but when I checked it might be a holiday pricing thing
12:21
But it was down to seven hundred and seventy five dollars at onyx books calm
12:26
That's still pretty darn expensive. But oh if you're used to using a little tiny Kindle screen or something
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This is like a whole nother world Such a different experience and if you can figure out how to pay for this thing
12:40
It is definitely worth it. And with that I am actually gonna go back to my book. So I will catch you in my next video
#Computers & Electronics
# Consumer Electronics
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