ONYX BOOX i86 plus E Ink Touch Screen, Built-in Light Wi-Fi Android 4 System Google Store Ebook Reader

I have had this ereader for ~1m at this point and have used it EXCLUSIVELY EVERY single day since receiving it.As a background I started ereading with a palm IIIx back in the day, tried various pocketpcs/color palms(doesn't work well color's no good in either broad daylight nor pitch black of night), franklin ebookman(815? 810 backlit 16MB one my 2nd favorite after the IIIx to this point), rocket book REB1100, sony prs-505, misc kobos(crap build quality and crap firmware beware as they like to commit suicide), nook simple touch, then several kindles ending up with the voyage.OK. So immediately prior to receiving this I had moved EXCLUSIVELY to the voyage(the paperwhite BTW is utter BS unless you blast the lighting at max, which I rarely do and even then it's not 'white' just more white than earlier eink readers not really a feature IMNHO BUT the increased ppi is). For a general simple/fiction/pretty much books with fairly simple formatting(single column) these were all great readers, but heaven forfend if you attempt to read a PDF. I knew that going into eink that it would not be even close to optimal for PDFs given the screen size and ppi plus general pokey performance such that pdfs would require reflowing, etc which is just not at all fun on these devices. Enter the i86hdml+ noticeably larger and 'higher resolution' but LOWER ppi, I figured might finally be enough for reading some PDFS, and well it is but it is still hampered by slow hardware and so I was stymied to a point in this regard. Tablets really still are best for PDFs or your desktop or notebook. Personally I really don't like reading much beyond some manual(reference only) on my desktops/notebooks and certainly NOT fiction or any textbooks. This does do PDFs but again even with the higher resolution screen it's a choice of VERY small(still readable to me) text or VERY SLOWLY panning around like on other ereaders.That said I can go to fairly low, certainly much lower than my 6" reader's font sizes and still be able to read comfortably in GOOD lighting. Once it starts getting dark, e.g. overcast a switch to larger font sizes is in order BUT it is NICE to be able to have more text on a single 'page'.Build quality: it's OK. Better than many China products, but not truly in the e.g. Kindle class but it shouldn't just fall apart on you.Software: well, there haven't been any updates since October last year IIRC although IIRC there was an experimental build for a newer version on android, still old, but the next version up from what ships on this. You CAN access the play store from this(I've added some other readers, e.g. moon+ pro but generally use their shipped reader, yes it's an 'app'). I've used the browser to access my calibre library, which works about as well as it would on a kindle(w/a browser) or any other eink reader w/a browser(most of them now) but never visited any 'real' sites. I've heard of others using it to read news sites. It's fast enough for reading and I'd hazard comparable in reading performance to the voyage.I'm still using this daily as mentioned above I LIKE being able to have MUCH more text on screen via a smaller yet still readable font size. That said, I don't think that it's really worth the asking price. IF it were closer to the voyage in price I'd give it 5 stars, but not at it's current asking price.There's rumor of a 13" reader(by Onyx) with an even 'higher res' screen but the rumored price is even more insane, $700. IMNHO at that point buy a M$ surface pro table, or one of the others with core m cpus or the Y variants of i3/i5/i7.[EDIT=04/02/16]Battery life: seems to be pretty good. I've recharged it for a total of 3 times since receiving it a month ago, and I read c. 2-3h per day. While it has been a bit less over part of the period I'm expecting to get about 1.5w between charges at that usage level. NOTE: I DO power it OFF rather than letting it sleep, and while I have NOT tested sleep personally I have been told that it actually DOES enter a deep sleep(very low power draw) mode OTOH it takes a few seconds to boot and generally speaking when I'm going to use it soon I start it booting up and finish whatever else that I am doing and generally by that time it's already back to the screensaver.uSD: I have a 'TEAM' 64GB uSD card installed in mine which works fine.Google market as I believe that I mentioned above works however MANY apps are listed as not compatible which isn't bad considering that many WILL BE UNUSEABLE on an eink display.A bad point: The backlight. It is DIM(@ MAX) BUT it still works well enough for me BUT don't go expecting paperwhite/voyage brightness OTOH I NEVER used max brightness on either of those devices using IIRC 16 or 17 as the max and 5 or 6 when in a room that was just dim enough to need some backlighting. The i86 IIRC has c. 10 levels and I use 3 in those just dim enough rooms and MAX in dark rooms.I'd recommend picking up the official case as well. It's pricey for a chinese product but it one of the best quality chinese cases for the china market that I have EVER seen. The color is ugly(orange) but it seems to be of MUCH higher quality than almost any other case that I've had from China. The exceptions being the cases that I purchased for my dell venue pro 7140(core m) and cube i7 stylus cases. The Chinese cases that I have purchases for my paperwhite/voyage/etc. have all started falling apart or the top layer peeling off w/in a month of purchase while the hybrid tablet cases and the i86 cases are holding up very well. I use most of these products on a daily basis although I do admit that from time-to-time I use the 7140 with the keyboard w/extra battery -> needs to be removed from case as the cases really are meant for tablet 'mode' use.[/EDIT]

Likes: size, weight, square screen, comfort to hold, light not bad - comparable to early paperwhites, easy and quick set up, found wifi with no problems and connected quickly.Dislikes: contrast very low in apps that have dark backgrounds. I loaded the kindle reading app and could barely see the words in the library no matter I had the light adjusted. The kindle app kept crashing and I could not get a book to download. I also installed the nook app which loaded and synced very quickly and though i was able to download a book some of the print showed oddly with some letters on top of each other. This app also kept crashing. It has been boxed up to be sent back. I am someone who just wants a larger e-ink screen and to be able to have all of my books in one place all without having to tweak a device. Someone savvy with hacking would probably like this device. I was very disappointed in the choice I made. I was going to give this 2 stars but it did have a nice build and feel and the home screen with the pre-installed apps was very clear. I really wish Amazon and BN would do their research and realize that there are a lot of people out there who want the larger screened reader. I have a DX and love it except for it not having a built in light.

Had both high hopes and low expectations for this reader. Let me explain: Android based would mean flexibility with reading apps, content sources, etc. It has a relatively large screen for an e-reader with lots of pixels, which should mean better PDF reading experience than other devices. These sorts of features were in the "high hopes" category. However, I had realistic, "low" expectations for the device -- I expected it to behave like a high-powered e-reader, which I expected to be somewhat below a low end tablet. Yes, I expected slow screen refresh rate, issues with controls without enough contrast to display properly, and fewer app choices due to older android OS 4.0, and did *not* expect a good web browsing experience or even most apps to come close to being usable. I did, however, expect many reading and non-scrolling, non-dynamic content apps to work fairly well.In practice, the reader was painfully slow. Not just because of the e-ink screen (I expected that part and was happy to live with screen refresh limitations -- this is an e-reader, not a standard android tablet, after all). No, it was more than that -- everything was just *slow*. Responding to touch/taps, loading apps, even loading the next page. Again, not just the screen flash and redraw time -- there was an additional system delay in most cases, which made for a mediocre reading experience when using the built-in reading apps and a pretty painful one when using third-party reading apps or text-based apps. I was resigned to live with all of this and just be underwhelmed, but fortunately for me, my unit had a manufacturing defect with the screen that lent itself to a return.Other cons to the device design:- The bezel around the screen: Within minutes of taking the reader out of the box, hair and lint were getting caught between the bezel and the screen surface, resulting in clutter hanging out over the screen. To clean it, you'd have to put the device into standby and try to pick/wipe them away, but within minutes more would seem to accumulate. I don't even know where all the hair/fuzz came from. It's like the edges were electrostatically charged and pulling nearby floaters out of orbit and sucking them to the screen.- As others have said, the ribbed design of the left edge with the page turn buttons was a little weird. The texture itself didn't bother me like some others, but since the page turn buttons were merely "soft spots" in the ribbed edge that you could push down to activate the page turn button, finding and pressing them required looking for them (i.e. there was no tactile feedback that your finger was on a button until you actually pressed down on it and it moved.)- Even for the size of its screen, it feels bulky. For a device made in 2015, it just seemed to have an enormous bezel, especially to the left and bottom, which made it feel like I was lugging around some ancient piece of tech and made it less enjoyable to carry around and use.As I said earlier, my device had a screen defect -- the bottom several rows of pixels were dead. It was enough that the status bar of several of the reading apps I tried was cut off due to the dead rows. This prompted me to return the device for a refund. Combine that with all the other disappointments, and I went back on the hunt for a different model. I ended up settling on a smaller, lower resolution screen, but am much happier with the overall design, fit and finish, and user experience of the Energy Sistems ereader pro HD. Unfortunately it's not (yet?) available on Amazon so I ordered directly from them. [...]

I bought this to READ, not surf the internet. If you want surf the net get a tablet that has a lcd screen not e-ink paper. It was easy to get the kindle on this e-reader. I posted a image with a size comparison with my 6 inch kindle. This great reader if you want a bigger screen

not very efficiency on searching the internet