My Onyx Boox T68 has Arrived – What Should I Do With It?
After waiting nearly 8 months, I finally got my hands on the Onyx’s 6.8″ ereader.
The Onyx Boox t68 Lynx marries the 6.8″ screen from the Kobo Aura HD with Android 4.0 running on a 1GHz CPU with 512MB RAM. It has a screen sharper than on the Kindle Paperwhite, a capacitive touchscreen, frontlight, 4GB storage, and a headphone jack.
I pre-ordered mine from Arta Tech, Onyx’s retail partner in Poland, and it arrived today.
At $250 (prices plus shipping to the US), it’s a very pricy ereader. So rather than put readers in my position of taking an expensive gamble on an unknown device, I would like to help everyone make an informed decision about this ereader.
In short, what would you like me to try and comment on?
The T68 ships with Google Play, so if you suggest an app I will try to install it and then report back. I can also answer questions about Onyx’s software.
So far I have only set up the Lynx, added a few ebooks, and configured my Google account, and my first impressions are not favorable.
Update: But that changed as I figured out more of the settings and quirks of the T68.
I don’t think this will prove very useful as an E-ink Android tablet, and it’s a good thing I had already tried the Sony Reader PRS-T1 and found that device workable as an E-ink Android tablet. Otherwise the poor performance of the Lynx would be enough to make me give up on the idea.
The stock settings on the Onyx reading app combine illegible text with badly rendered images. And while I fixed the issues with the text I don’t see a way to get the T68 to render images properly (see below).Google Play and a lot of other basic Android features are nearly unusable due to poor graphics; apparently no one at Onyx thought that it was necessary for color menus to be legible on grayscale E-ink.The Kindle app crashed. I also cannot get it to sync correctly or download ebooks. Update: Changing the refresh mode fixed the issue with the Kindle app.
Onyx has been making ereaders for 5 years now and working on Android on E-ink since 2012, but I can’t see that technical expertise in the T68 Lynx. The software is best described as rough. If you plan to get one I would wait until after the next major update.
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