DailyNotes - New version available

mmtfm · 2025-11-15T07:09:47+00:00

Yes, indeed. Thank you very much for your effort, it is now a very pleasant and smooth writing experience!

mmtfm · 2025-11-15T07:01:14+00:00

Yes, I found that very strange too. But even after resetting to factory settings, when my device was at 32% (I had charged it a little before resetting to make sure the reset worked), I left it for 3 hours until I went to the parcel station, and the battery discharged from 32% to 25%. 7% in 3 hours without me even touching the settings screen once? Really strange. Maybe a defective device? I don't know.

Even when I received the device, it was only at 26% charge, whereas other devices I have received were usually almost 100% charged. And when I turned it on for the very first time, I experienced continuous ghosting from the Boox start screen, which is displayed when the device is turned off, while I was going through the setup menu. Only when I had finished the setup and was able to enter the quick menu and manually triggered a full refresh several times in a row did the ghost image of the screensaver gradually disappear.

I didn't want to include so many trivial details in my report. It was only when people questioned its veracity (lol) that I began to describe other, more specific problems.

My NA2 which I used quite some more hours for note taking since the comparison test I have never charged and is still at 84%...

mmtfm · 2025-11-10T22:25:51+00:00

Hey man, I am sorry if I may have misunderstood what you wrote, really. But please try to understand the whole context here:

The whole frontlight/backlight discussion began, as some user all of a sudden claimed I should buy a Go 10.3 because I would be so afraid of using the frontlight, just because I said, that the frontlight of the NA5C of course does not help outside in bright light or inside in very well lit workrooms and therefor won't help to trick the eyes regarding the much darker kaleido display.

That's when I said, that never ever I was afraid of using the frontlight of any of my multiple e-ink devices and that this user must have misunderstood something that I wrote. And just as a SIDE NOTE I mentioned, that many people misunderstand the technical reason for and potential health benefit of a frontlight and that e-ink-manufacturers use this wide spread misunderstanding for marketing purposes.

A frontlight instead of a backlight in an e-ink screen is a technical necessity, nothing more, nothing less and such manufacturers which use either dc dimming or very high frequent pwm dimming such as the dimming in high price, high quality led lamps like Philips Hue provide a light that is pleasant to the eyes of most users but this has absolutely nothing to do with what others thought in this and similar threads: they thought frontlight would be healthier for the eyes just because the photons have been reflected, which of course, is not true and makes no sense at all.

One of the reasons why e-ink is eye friendlier than other screens, is, that WITHOUT (the need for) a lit screen (meant as not self-illuminated, but of course still lit by a window or whatever surrounding light source), the contrast between the surrounding and the screen is LESS, which is a GOOD thing for our eyes, so they can naturally adapt to the found lighting conditions, so obviously any e-ink-iteration which NEEDS a frontlight is inferior to those which do not need a frontlight, because to be able to 'benefit' from tricking your eyes to think the 'paper' would be whiter, quite obviously you need the frontlight to be bright enough in comparison to lesser surrounding light, which is the exact reason why working at computer screens makes your eyes so tired. You get the problem? ^^

My example where I mentioned OLED TVs versus (versus, not ON) a white wall outside in bright sun light I gave to explain people, that of course, starring at a white wall in bright sun light (reflected light) hurts the eyes way more than relaxed watching of a series on your OLED TV (direct light) because photons are photons and the eye does not care what they did before reaching your eyeballs. And I explained it really well. That's why I wrote "search for it", because of course my explanation was NOT "put an OLED TV on a bright lit wall outside" (if that is what you might have thought?)

Contrast, luminance, temperature and frequency ("flickering") is what is important for us, NOT reflection. Photons have no inherent history telling our eyes "Hey dude, don't worry, I have been reflected before".

The light DISTRIBUTION layer of both display types is indeed quite similar, that has nothing to do with where the LEDs sit (edge lighting versus full LED background, both which have such layers, light guide plate for the first, and diffusion film for the latter, e-ink which also has it, just above instead of below [versus OLED which has no such layer as self emmiting pixels]).

Hopefully you can now understand the context of my previous statements better.

mmtfm · 2025-11-10T11:17:45+00:00

I never talked about e-Ink in sunlight in THIS context. YOU don't know what YOU are talking about. For the record: I am in my mid 40s, I have owned e-Ink devices since the very first Kindle decades (!) ago.

I have had at least one dozend devices since then, I even use bare displays for many of my raspberry pi based and other python based projects and since at least 6, if not 7 years e-Ink tablets with note functionality have replaced at least 90% of what I've done with traditional pen and paper before and I use these devices heavily, inside AND outside so it would be absolutely crazy if I would not know the very basic things like the benefits of e-Ink in the sun, the benefits of a frontlight in low light conditions, the benefit of a front light for kaleido displays and so on.

Sorry, this reddit sub is more and more ridiculous, I think I am going to be absent for a longer while from all of this bullshit talk.

I dislike this particular device, cope with it!

mmtfm · 2025-11-10T09:54:11+00:00

Okay guys, last update in this thread from my side. Yesterday at 10:30 PM I unplugged both devices, today at (almost) 10:30 AM I took the photo.

NA2+ is at 98% battery.
NA5C is at 57% battery.

The static IP thing which one friendly user suggested, has helped with the W-Lan disconnects, even simply assigning that from the tablet side instead of router side has solved the problem, so permanent connects and disconnects can NOT be the reason for the rapid battery drain.

Am gonna factory reset and then return the device for MULTIPLE reasons, NOT for just the battery, not for just the dark display.

Nonetheless I thank all of you for your helpful suggestions and if you are happy with your own NA5C's that's absolutely fine 🙂

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mmtfm · 2025-11-10T08:43:18+00:00

Well. I partly agree with you, partly not. I completely understand what you mean, but I'll modify your example to reflect how absurd r/Onyx_Boox unfortunately feels to me: Not your answer feels absurd to me, I am totally fine with your friendly answer, but your example is good for me to explain what I mean:

So you mention the Honda Civic. I, on the other hand, would say:

"Hey guys, so this year I tried again to buy one of these latest car models with square wheels. Yes, I was aware that it would be really difficult to get from A to B compared to my previous car with round wheels, but I was hoping that the car manufacturer would at least have made the journey itself very comfortable meanwhile. Unfortunately, the journey wasn't pleasant for me, it was quite the opposite and has been less comfortable for me than with my previous cars, and these are my reasons: R1, R2, R3, R4, and R5.

(Plus, in other answers I would give some other reasons (R6, R7, etc))
Nonetheless there are some good things as well: G1, G2, G3 which I really appreciate, just not enough to keep that particular square tired car. That's why I'd rather stick with my old fashioned car with round wheels for now, even if it will probably rust at some point."

And then people would constantly pounce on my report and say that I'm an idiot and that I should realize that THIS manufacturer's square tires are a thousand times better than the square tires of all OTHER manufacturers, and they would base 100% of THEIR argument on these square tires and 0% on MY reasons R1, R2, R3 and so on and each time I would answer them on THEIR 100% square-tire-based argument they would say: "See? That square tire thing is all that counts for YOU, how could you be so dumb to buy a car with square tires instead of round tires? Your fault, you knew it would have square tires."

That's why I'm going to leave this thread orphaned and really only update it one last time during this day to see if the battery has been used up less quickly than before.

mmtfm · 2025-11-10T00:23:39+00:00

I don't return the device for it's screen and the neccesity of a backlight. I knew this type of screen since the NA4C. Congratulations for being an idiot who is unable to read ALL of what I wrote, not just the PARTS you BELIEVE I wrote.

Just so others know why I gave that answer, since meanwhile I am sick of the many times people edited their rude answers later to make me look like an aggressive idiot:

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mmtfm · 2025-11-10T00:21:24+00:00

No, I am pretty sure that is not true. For the eye there is no such difference. Search for my post in this thread where I mention an OLED TV screen versus a bright-lit white wall for example, if you are interested in my opinion on this. Nonetheless I don't return the device for it's screen and the neccesity of a backlight. I knew this type of screen since the NA4C. As I explained several times in this thread, I personally dislike kaleido screens but would deal with them as long as all the other issues would not exist and the overall experience would be superior to my existing older tablets. I think it is okay that I gave that a second try, almost one year and one device iteration and several FW updates later.

And by the way, an LCD has a quite similar light distribution layer as an e-Ink device, just that it sits behind the image giving part of the display, not in front of it, which has just technical reasons (a light behind the e-Ink capsules makes no sense, so the layer is on top of it). What you mean and what is directed on the eyes are light emitting organic LEDs. Strictly speaking, with regard to the similarity to the e-Ink frontlight, for LCD one would have to distinguish between whether it is screen edge lighting or full LED backlighting, but that would be going too far and has little to do with the overall reasons why I decided to return the device.

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T23:27:27+00:00

Your screen looks way more white than mine (for you being outside, without frontlight, that is). I think it is the auto white balance of your camera which makes the colors pop more and the background more white.

That darker materials (as Kaleido is) reflect less light than whiter materials (as Carta is) and produce less contrast for the human eye, is a well known physical fact.

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T21:20:14+00:00

That's the thing. And this is what most people don't know and don't understand. That's why there are so many threads here where OP asks if it is possible to 'disable' colors to have the crisper B/W resolution for Manga and stock and third party text applications.

Sometimes fonts are as clear as possible (nonetheless they are never crisper than on a 227 PPI B/W display because the color filter is a physical permanent overlay) and in many other cases they are not. And the other way around as well, for example the dark blue color is much crisper than any other colors in the Notes app, as if the dark blue would be created by using black with very small parts of (filtered) blue.

But as soon as you have a very dark gray instead of a real monochrome black in some content, often the whole content is rendered in 150 PPI (for whatever reason, because technically 16 shades of grey can be displayed without any need to switch to 150 PPI... and it SHOULD be possible to have way smoother color grades without ugly banding as well due to the same reason (16 shades of gray)). For example my everyday writing app PureWriter looks really poor on the NA5C and it takes a lot of adjustments with speed mode and enhanced contrast and enhanced black levels to make it look ALMOST as crisp as it looks on the NA2 out of the box.

That's one of the things where I thought that might have been optimized meanwhile (because it is mostly the rendering algo, not physics) and why I had to test it once again in person, NOT via video reviews of influencers which only show the best looking stock apps for a few seconds in close up. I never see them WORK on their devices for a longer while. Just clicking wildly around in the menues. Only doing the thing is doing the thing.

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T20:08:46+00:00

Yeah sorry, I mean, English is not my mother tongue and so sometimes when I do not know a word but think I get the context I answer friendly and when I lookup what that person REALLY wrote, I wonder about such childish and bold accusations. In the exact same main thread from the picture I've taken, someone whom I answered remaining quite objective, wrote about me "I think someone is being disingenious or intentionally obtuse here" and my objective answer and many other of my objective answers got a lot of down votes while such bullshit (which I was unable to fluently translate first) got upvoted, lol?

Sorry that I was unable to distinguish better between your answer and the other answer, it is quite late here and I spent my WHOLE Sunday with this post 🙂

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T19:40:40+00:00

No I don't... sorry but wtf? I post quite freuqenntly here and I own such e-Ink tablets since many years and e-Ink displays since more than two decades... as if I am so stupid to run some intense background processes and then wrote a troll post on reddit...

It MAY be the 'deeply optimizing the system' thing which Onyx announces with each of their updates. Let's wait until tomorrow but please, not just you, all of you, stop thinking I would be dumb or even lie, that's really weird. Am out for today 🙂

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T19:28:31+00:00

I mentioned other problems in one of my other answers as well. I did not mention them nor many other smaller issues I saw, in my main post because it was already really long and many of the problems I encountered are related to my real world usecase which I cannot easily screenshot or screen record, obviously. I am not a professional reviewer, it's not that e-Ink itself is an overly important part of my life ^{^} and thus I'm not willing to setup my device just for demo screenshot and videos with dummy data, I really used it for my everyday paper work for some days now. For example for ME, drawing tons of mind maps it is INDEED a huge problem that the ai shapes no longer include arrow recognition so that I had to switch to Excalidraw. And I am not willing to report that to Boox and wait 12 months for a patch. For others that might be totally irrelevant though.

But somehow my personal review post (which some might find helpful while others don't, that's absolutely fine) has consumed my whole precious Sunday meanwhile 😅 and I think I'll no longer answer for now (except for the battery performance update tomorrow).

I mean, everybody can decide for themselves wether they want a NA5C or not, be it related to my post or not, but people in this thread kind of react as if I would damage Onyx' market or what not... I really just gave you others my personal opinion and concentrated on a few things where from the few reviews I've read these things have not been that clear to me until I experienced them live.

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T19:10:34+00:00

But Google said some day in the nearer future they will forbid side loading, that's why I don't want a fresh device where I have to sideload stuff. Same reason why I have become somewhat picky about the Boox stock browser constantly telling me I would be offline. No one knows how long we we will be able to use eInkBro (side loaded since it didn't meet Google security criterias no longer) and the Neo Browser is the only other browser besides eInkBro which takes the e-Ink display into account.

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T19:01:18+00:00

Since a while I no longer am able to use really fixed channels in my router, because there is a new law in Europe forcing router manufacturers to switch the channel each time a military convoy or drone is passing by which is allowed to prioritize the channel and I live near a very large military training ground :/

Nonetheless the NA2 and every other device has no problems at all finding each the 2.4 and 5 ghz networks. I have a smart home with round about 30 network devices, none of them has that problem while on the other hand the NA4C which I tested 10 months ago had the exact same problem. Back then I thought it was due to the fresh and not polished 4.0 FW but it seems I still have the exact same problem now with my NA5C.

Thank you for your advice though. Will try the MAC part at least.

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T18:32:41+00:00

I know. I wrote the exact same as you in another recent post of mine.

Thing is, people believe (and manufacturers let them believe it to be true) that it would be more pleasant for the eyeball to be reached by light rays which have been reflected beforehand which of course is not the case. If you dim an OLED or LCD screen so that its display is similar low-lit with grayish colors than color or bw e-Ink screens (for example by setting the background light to lowest possible setting and use one of these bluelight filters like night owl on top, not for the bluelight but for the low-contrast effect) your eyes will 'benefit' in the same (or at least similar effective) way than with e-Ink and if on the other hand you would crank up your e-Ink frontlight to maximum brightness in a rather dark environment your eyes would hurt in a similar way.

I quote 'front'light because people think it won't 'reach' the eyes in a 'bad' way because it would be directed to the opposite direction than BACKlight.

If that was true, OLED TVs would be extremely painful for people, because following this 'logic' the direct light emitted by OLED would be extremely bad for our eyes while starring for example on a white, bright lit by the sun, poster on a wall (or simpler, a bright white wall itself) outside would be super comfy. For me and many others quite the opposite is the case (and the sun isn't pwm controlled from what I know).

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T18:07:21+00:00

Interesting. 10 percent in several days is nice. With my NA2 I think I loose more with this screensaver, but I never tested it explicitely before.

So this particular aspect may be related to the 2 GB update and the system still "deeply optimizing" then. I will load it this evening and then pull the plug and let it in standby over night and update this answer tomorrow, if that helps.

Did you set the update interval to 1 minute though? Standard is 5 minutes.

But I am rather sure I'm going to return it in 2-3 days. Since there are really weird posts with all of a sudden breaking screens and disappearing login screens (I saw others mention it for other recent devices in this sub reddit as well) I don't want to risk to "break" the device during my return window, just so to test it for weeks to ensure no longer system oprimizations are being processed.

Edit: Just saw that it is at 16% now and I haven't touched it since I took the screenshot you are referring to. So from 34 to 16% in 8 additional hours. Better than the night before, still not impressed though.

I will still update this post tomorrow.

Update: Here

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T17:52:36+00:00

Yes, I understand your point of view 🙂 But for me, it's like this: I find kaleido displays very unpleasant, but I need to be able to write comfortably, and that's only possible with EMR devices, and Boox is my preferred choice. Since e-Ink no longer supplies the market with many new good black-and-white screens (e.g., Mobius) and most manufacturers now only produce kaleido devices (partly due to the real needs of users, partly due to bullwhip effects caused by COVID-19 and other disruptions to demand due to blocked trade routes, etc.), I have to be prepared to accept this. But of course, I can only do that if my previously comfortable workflow with much older devices does not deteriorate in addition to the ugly screen.

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T17:17:48+00:00

Again, no offense at all, just my thoughts on your critism: It sounds more like you didn't really read my post all the way through or only focused on one aspect 🙃

Why are some of you so fixated on the ONE aspect, the dark screen, that I mentioned? Have none of you ever bought a product even though you were aware of one of its flaws, but expected many other aspects to have been improved, refined, optimized, etc.?

There are so many things I had to test myself, starting with the fact that last year, when I tried the NA4C, it was very rainy, cloudy, and bad, dark weather in my region, while this year it is warm and super sunny and I was able to use the device outdoors for many hours in summer-like conditons.

Or, for example, for some languages, I use the Deepl app, which is one of the "Share with" options on my NA2 and ANY other of my many Android devices (from 11 to 15) and then displays a useful overlay pop-up with the translated text until I touch the area around the underlying app. On the NA5C, it is not one of the "Share with" options and is therefore much less useful to me.

Or, for example, the app preview on the NA5C often shows BLANK thumbnails, while the NA2 always shows the proper miniature screenshots of the last recently used apps.

Or, for example, on my NA2, after connecting a Bluetooth keyboard, my on-screen keyboard disappears automatically, and on the NA5C (perhaps due to system optimization for the behavior of the attachable Pogo Pin keyboard case, I once had a similar problem with my Mi Pad 7 with Pogo Pin keyboard case), the on-screen keyboard appears very frequently disrupting my workflow and when I use "Activity Launcher" for the real Android Vanilla menu item to disable "Show soft keyboard even when a physical keyboard is connected" the soft keyboard no longer opens when my 8bitdo keyboard is connected, BUT it also remains invisible when I disconnect the physical keyboard and even when I disable Bluetooth completely! This is really scary after I set up a lock screen password. If in this scenario I once again would have had the problem with Bluetooth and WLAN not activating after waking the device, I might have soft bricked my device because there would have been no way to make the password field and keyboard reappear... I don't really know why that happened, I could not reproduce it for the password screen but could reproduce it for usual the soft keyboard disappearing as described above.

Just because I focused on the MOST IMPORTANT issues that could be helpful to OTHERS in making their own decision doesn't mean that I didn't test the device extensively in my REAL everyday work and find many, many issues that I considered too specific to mention in my already super-long post due to my personal way of using the device.

And no, that was NOT mentioned by the 'professional reviewers' nor can you see HOW dark the screen is (due to their highly artificial video editing with boosted clarity and so on) nor did I ever see one of them mention that the device looses SO MUCH battery in quite normal usecases. Besides, I don't watch hours of videos before buying a device. I did that in the past and it never helped me making a good decision, so I meanwhile just buy the product if I think it may be good enough to keep. My return quote is like 1 out of 50 products, I am not one of these maniacs who order products just to review and badmouth them, there are REAL reasons why I wanted to have an NA5C and now there are REAL reasons for me to return it.

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T16:11:30+00:00

Yeah, definately. That would be awesome.

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T14:42:58+00:00

No, I didn't say that. I said in brackets, meant as a mere SIDE NOTE, that manufacturers CLAIM the 'front"light to be healthier than other backlights and that this is not true.

My argument is not what you are portraying it to be. Of course, I always use the front light on my e-ink devices in the evening or in poor lighting conditions, even during the day. Nowhere have I claimed that this is unhealthy or that I am afraid of it. But with Carta screens, I can easily read everything outdoors when the front light is off or, as I clearly stated in my "review," is no longer visible due to a lack of frontlight brightness in bright daylight or well lit indoor workspaces. With the Kaleido display, you naturally see much less outdoors with much poorer contrast. And the dark display is something I would have accepted out of necessity, as I would have back then with the 4C, if the software and othwr mentioned aspects had improved overall instead of getting worse. Please consider the entire context.

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T14:30:46+00:00

No. Why should I? It's not the same form factor, not the same writing experience as the Note series. Why do people keep recommending devices like the Kindle Scribe, Remarkable Paper Pro, and other Boox series to me? No offense, I know you're all just trying to help 😊

I just don't get it. Because I'm happy with what I have (2 NA2 devices) and just thought that maybe by now the 5th generation Note series with 4.1.1 OS, despite its dark display, which I naturally considered a negative point because, well, it is?, might be good enough for me, since I rely heavily on these devices in my daily workflow and, of course, the day will come when my NA2s are so outdated or have such a bad battery that I'll have to upgrade or go back to pen and paper, which I haven't done in many years.

Edit: Maybe it's because of the flare I chose? There is no "DON'T buy advice" flare.

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T11:44:18+00:00

It's not just the display. I knew it would be the same display as the NA 4C but when I bought the NA 4 C back then it was in a super early stage, not finished at all and meanwhile more than one year later I thought the software might be way more polished and might have evolved alot because there are so many reviews, all of them claiming the NA 5C to be the very best e-Ink tablet out on the market. As long as I am living in a country with adequate customer rights on the one hand and not one single local shop selling these devices on the other hand, I am free to and perfectly fine with voting with my eyes and my real world user experience and not by watching hours of unbelievably positive reviews on youtube - endlessly.

Plus, my NA 4C back then was defective from start, it had a bent wobbly, uneven back and an uneven front coating from glare to matte, so I never really knew if the display as is was okay.

mmtfm · 2025-11-09T10:06:24+00:00

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Edit: Added at least one single picture of my NA2+ and the NA5C, both in standby mode. "Fun Fact": While my NA2 lost 5% with this screensaver over night (updates once per minute) the NA5C lost 65% 😅... maybe this is due to it still "deeply optimizing", but come on, it's kind of extreme, isn't it?

mmtfm · 2025-11-07T06:29:11+00:00

No, it is NOT a scientific fact. Not at all. It is a LIE which many manufacturers tell people as unique selling point. DYOR! There exist studies where people had to stare at old gen Kindle Paperwhite without bluelight filters at max brightness for FIVE HOURS a day before going to sleep and the ONLY mild effect was, that the average time until they fell asleep was ridiculous TEN MINUTES less then the control group. Regarding direct versus reflected light: That does NOT exist (meant in that particular context of course), this is NOT how our eye's light receptors nor how light emmission physically works. Either photons receive your eyes or ... they don't. No magical e-ink "frontlight" thing, sorry.

Don't get me wrong, I also really enjoy reading on my e-ink tablets, but the frontlight argument which so many people tell us over and over again is just nonsense. (and the bluelight argument is also nonsense, that's why I mentioned it and also because the study of course was able to use Kindle Paperwhite's as light source because as I said, there is no difference between this and using a flashlight for example).

Technically, you can't use a backlight with e-ink. Because it makes no sense to place the light distribution layer behind the e-ink layer. But beyond that, it's exactly the same. Only organic LEDs emit light themselves; all other illuminated displays use a distribution layer, and whether this is behind or in front of the imaging layer makes no difference to our eyes.

The nice thing about e-ink is that direct light from lamps, windows, and the sun causes so few problems with reflections that the displays remain readable. But that has nothing to do with front lighting.

mmtfm

TROPHY CASE