Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “I’m switching to e-ink!”.
Editor editor go in my face to start and then I’m reading this so show this pretty quick. Okay, books, hey everybody! It’S a books make a different in the world, make a different product, which is what the books is. I can’t say the name of the product without laughing books. Really it’s a variant on. It must be like book, because if you don’t know this product is a tablet, it’s an Android 11 tablet with an e-ink screen. So I guess you know, obviously when you think eating screened, you think e-readers reading. What do you read? You read books books are spelled with a KS, let’s change it to an X for fun books. I actually was interested in this product when it popped up in the queue, because I’m like listen, I’m the iPad guy right. This is a tablet, but it’s got an eating screen, that’s very interesting, and but it’s got also an iPad like keyboard folio.
It’S called the tab Ultra, which is a Samsung thing. We got Apple in here we got Samsung, we got Kindle it’s all the same. Okay, this is kind of cool packaging. I like that it feels premium wow, it’s got It’s kind of Hefty, I mean.
Apparently it’s only 6.7 millimeters thin, but how much does it weigh that’s my question? Apparently it’s 480 grams. So that’s something, but before we get deeper into there, let’s uh, let’s dive deeper into the box. Okay, we got a stylus that I will look closer at later.
We got a USB, a to c chord, quick start guide. Now I’ve ignored the quick start guy before to my Peril. So I’m just going to take a quick, quick Gander.
Okay, nice. I read the quick start guide, so hopefully this thing will go smooth as a baby’s bub bottom. Now we also have before I really get into that. We also have the fancy iPad cover. Are they gon na sue me for saying that come at me boots? This immediately feels very similar to the iPad one. Oh nope, it’s got more of like a leathery feel. Oh, you know what I was viewing this product in such a derogatory way.
I was like who’s gon na buy. This thing like I thought it was kind of cool, but, like you know, a lot of the times, I’m interested in kind of Niche Tech products that a lot of people aren’t, but now I’m looking at it and I’m like yo. This looks premium.
If there’s a different colored key, that’s really the main contributor. To me changing my mind about this. I have to have a specialized. Oh, oh now, it’s dirty okay, uh, the the stylus I got ta say right off the bat, though it feels nice. It’S like the apple pencil in the sense that it is like the actual real size of a proper pencil once again, like I’m sorry, I’m sorry books for making fun of you in the beginning, because this feels this feels nice 600 for the tablet, the folio, the Stylus and if I spent 600 on that – and I got this – it feels premium – I mean we got to this – like kind of like metal brushed metal type of thing going on in the back. They say it’s an anti-fingerprint coating, although I do see some marks on it already on this side.
I don’t know if that counts. As the bottom we got a uh, I’m not gon na call it a SMART connector. I guess Pogo pins, oh, and it also tells you how much how fast it can charge as well: five volts at 3 amps, that’s 15 watts, okay, and on the I guess, on the left side. Looking at the screen we got. I guess that must be the power button and a fingerprint reader it is.
It is a fingerprint reader nice. This is a speaker. This might be a mic. I think this is an indicator light perhaps but we’ll find out when we turn it on. On this side we have oh, this is the magnetic mount for the stylus boom.
Just like an iPad look at that. Once again, I feel taken care of oh, if I did it like that, it would come off the iPad too. I think the real test is whether you can shake it up and down like, oh, ah, I had it on wrong Jake. I had the pen on wrong it’s doing great now and on the I guess, right side we have another speaker, uh stereo speakers, nice and a SIM card slot. Oh my bad! This is not a SIM card slot. It is a SD card slot which they call a TF card slot and agree to disagree.
Oh a USBC right, which is why the the card came with that and on the back of that camera module. I don’t know what the specs are right now. I will find out later after this word from our sponsor you, like that this video is brought to you by manscape. You know, Christmas is right around the corner and their new performance package 4.0 will make a great gift for your partner. The package includes their waterproof and cordless lawnmower 4.0, their weed whacker ear and nose, trimmer for tricky trimming and they’re crop preserver and crop reviver for your deodorizing and hydration needs for a limited time. You’Ll also get two free gifts, the shed travel bag and the manscaped anti-chafing box of briefs.
Don’T wait, go to manscape.com and use promo code short circuit for 20 off plus free international shipping. Go turn on. Oh man. That really made me feel like I was about to play some Pokemon, I’m intrigued by the idea of e-paper tablets, but I think that there’s a reason that they haven’t become incredibly popular, except as e-readers, which is primarily the fact that you know.
Oh, the backlight kicked in that’s cool the fact that the refresh rate necessarily has to be lower for an eating screen than it is for, like you know, an LCD, a regular type of screen, but books apparently has multiple refresh modes where there’s like an HD mode For reading books with a low refresh rate and then there’s a balanced and high refresh rate and super high refresh rate, as I swipe nothing’s happening until I complete the swipe and then it decides to refresh. But I’m gon na want to go into the settings right away and try and get to the faster refresh rate. Just like scrolling a little bit like that, I’m skipping past, like four items, here’s power power is going to be at the bottom, even if I just scroll like a little bit.
So that’s something that’s kind of annoying to me right off the bat I want to be able to like just adjust a little bit. The other thing that’s jumping out to me is this is Android 11, but this looks like iOS there’s a sidebar with all the categories and then over here you’ve got once you click into a category. It’S going to show you the options. Anyways display full refresh frequency. What does that mean? Oh every five Taps, it’s gon na fully refresh the screen, instead of like partially refresh it there’s gentian impact on here I mean it is on Ultra fast okay, so you can set specific apps to have certain types of refresh rates.
We’Ve got HD mode, balanced mode, fast mode and Ultra fast and Ultra fast has even heavier detail loss but suitable for like playing videos. Oh my gosh wow. So this is an ultra fast mode and even just when nothing’s happening on screen, it degrades the quality. In order to have that higher refresh rate so, like I had to like look close to like see that this this text looks pretty rough, I mean, like I said: okay, so right from the control center, you can get right into like refresh modes, and you can.
I guess you can change it while you’re, actually in the app I’m opening the books website and I’m scrolling. Okay, we have finder control over scroll. Okay, let’s see fast. Is that better? I can’t even tell I think it’s like a little bit better, but not that different. Let’S go to ultra fast. I mean okay, so that’s noticeably smoother! That’S interesting! So if you just go to the control center, you can oh okay, you can.
You can adjust the backlight, it’s not just on, and off there’s like levels to it, that’s pretty cool. What’S the moon thing, wait? What oh? It is dual tone, that’s what they mean by dual tone. Light is that you have a backlight that is cool and you have a backlight. That is warm, oh, you can have them both at Max for, like a mix, can I zoom in oh look at this I’m zooming in on paper, but actually so I’m in Ultra fast mode, I’m going to switch real, quick to HD and see if that makes The image look, any better he’s got ghosting lines. Oh I’m the ghost of Linus Sebastian. Can you see the that’s weird because I had it set to five Taps it? Let me kind of like tap around five times before it like did a full refresh and got rid of the ghost image.
So if I zoom in here, we have that ghost image there until I do a number of TAPS and then is it going to do a full refresh? Maybe it like knows when I just like stop touching it for a bit Yeah and then it’s like. Okay, lay off for a second, so I can do the full refresh I’m fairly happy with the like browsing experience, especially it’s like scrolling like this. This is an eating screen. That’S pretty impressive! This thing has a 1872 by 1404 resolution and it’s a 10.3 inch screen, which I never said, although you should be able to tell based on you knowing exactly how big my hands are: okay, we’re back to the super premium feeling keyboard.
This thing is about to go from janky E Ink tablet to the most premium ooh, so you can set it to auto rotate like a normal device, or you can set it to only auto rotate to the flipped orientation that you’re that you that you desire for It it’s kind of Awesome. It is kind of cool if you’re like I’m, only using this to e-read to read books, and I only read books like this, so I only wanted to know if I like in in my bed and I have my phone upside down or something okay, I’m in The keyboard folio and now this is interesting, unlike an iPad or I turned auto rotate off. Oh keyboard Access, Auto landscape and they may have keyboard shortcuts cool. So I guess it’s saying when you connect it into the keyboard.
Folio it’ll automatically go to landscape, but it wasn’t. I thought it wasn’t doing that, but you got keyboard shortcuts here, which is actually pretty cool, that they tell you right up front, but it only applies to the Onyx official keyboard, which is this thing, so you can use other Bluetooth keyboards with it. Although it comes with it, so that might be kind of weird, but Oh I thought that was part of the crab Rave, but no that this is so funny, because I’m also there’s also ghosting hello. It sounds a little less offensive when you turn the volume down.
A little bit and it’s not trying so hard at max volume that definitely sounds obviously distorted. It doesn’t sound very well uh, very good, just the fact that this is an e-ink tablet and I’m playing a video with sound on YouTube is kind of. That’S that’s fun. That’S fun by itself this entire time the video has been playing the ghosting from various other things, app icons, the control center Reddit pinch to zoom. That’S all there. If I was using this for either work or for reading – and someone sent me a video – and I wanted a chickly chickly and I wanted to quickly check it – I get the gist of what was going on very blurry.
Okay, now, just for just for Giggles Jake humor me, I’m gon na play the video in HD mode, which is the lowest refresh rate. Okay, do you see that uh, the speakers weren’t incredibly impressive, but you know they’ve they’ll. Do the job a big use case of this other than just reading books is taking notes.
They have the pen and everything – and you know, I’m sure, that’s part of the marketing is that like? Oh, this is a device you could get take nice notes with. So, let’s open the notes, app, I’m guessing! This is books’s own Notes. App if I put my hand on nothing wait, but I thought we were not.
We were just in regular HD mode, hello because, like it, it seems pretty responsive for like an eating screen. Honestly, that’s crazy. The stylus apparently has 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity, which is a number that I remember being associated with other styluses that I’ve used. So I’m going very lightly, it’s a thin line and then I press it gets thick thin, thick yeah, nice.
The notes app seems cool, real, quick. I want to see the multitasking huh. Is there no multitasking menu, even when you set the default like home, screen refresh speed to ultra fast when you scroll on something like this, it doesn’t scroll like the web page incrementally it just jumps which is annoying, but this is kind of cool when you swipe To the right from the home screen, you get this little like launcher place where you got your library with a number of books that I imagine that you might be reading recently. Let’S go back to notepad because there’s a couple features.
I just want to look at hello, nice bro Brew with two o’s nice, but if I wanted to actually type with the keyboard typing, experience is pretty good. The key keys feel kind of mushy yeah, there’s not as much of a tactile bump as I would like. They definitely feel I think at first glance you feel them and you’re kind of like oh, that feels kind of tactile, but there’s a lot of travel distance, there’s more travel distance than I would like she’s like. Oh, you want to press me, okay, so on the back, there’s a 16 megapixel camera, but I couldn’t find a camera app, so it might be that it’s called the smart scanner because it’s only really meant to be used to scan documents.
That’S so funny. Okay, uh smile. Here’S your photos! What do you want to do with it? I can import it. I can go to the next step.
All right here we are crop it. You can rotate it. You can hand, write on it. Add text you can detect text in the document it right here on the tablet and then send it to your notes, app or to or to create a PDF.
Okay, I can send to a node. I can send it over Bluetooth use onyxmail nearby. You can use nearby share like Androids feature yeah. This is like the default Android nearby share, so it’s like airdropping, but for Androids.
The problems of philosophy give me a little sample boom. How do I change the view and stuff? I don’t know how people use I’ve. Never used an e-reader this big, so I don’t know how people like read.
I would want the text to be smaller and I’m there must be a way to do that. I don’t know how to do it, though anyways the reading seeps fine, but what I’m really interested in is gaming on the e-ink on the books, tab Ultra because yeah this thing has we installed gentian impact on it. Can you play that with just the touch controls? I’Ve never played this game, they don’t say in the specs page what the actual CPU is.
It just says: Qualcomm octa-core, there’s four gigs of lpddr4x RAM and 128 gigs of storage. Okay, will it go in the background if I go to the home screen? Hopefully, okay uh – this is I’m. This is me gaming uh. We wanted to open genjen impact for the memes, but that didn’t really work out. In conclusion, I came into this thinking that this was just gon na, be like a janky uh. You know like fun.
Little tablet, but this is like a full-featured Android tablet, with the whole app ecosystem, with the refresh rate that actually makes it usable in some cases that you wouldn’t expect the e-ink tablet to be able to be usable in. Overall, I’m pretty impressed with with the usability with the build quality more impressed than I thought I’d be thanks for watching Short Circuit. That’S us! If you want to watch more videos, click this one somewhere to watch the one of my iPad ones, and I love you and uh. Never leave .