[JensKa]

Hey folks,

about 2 months before getting hands on the Onyx Boox Max, I was able to acquire a Sony DPT-S1. Nevertheless I wanted to order a Onyx Boox Max to see which device I actually do like better and report of my experience here.

As one of the first pre-orderers of the Max at ereader-store.de I got the device at the beginning of May. Unfortunately the device was flawed - in an area of about 1 cm width spanning the screen vertically from top to bottom, the handwriting did not work. So I sent the device back (at ereader-store's expense!) and one week ago I got a new and working device of the second batch.

Today I finally had a chance to test both devices side by side.

As for the speed of opening PDF-files, there is not really much difference between the two devices although sometimes the Onyx Boox Max seems to be a bit slower. However page turns seem to be equally fast on both devices.

The depiction of pictures embedded in PDFs is better on the Sony DPT-S1. I tried several settings of contrast on the Max and the quality never was as good as with the DPT-S1. See the picture below as an example. I also tried it with a different document - the result was the same.

As for the contrast of the text, it is almost the same on both devices - maybe the Max even is a little bit better here. And of course on the Max you can easily have the font's boldness changed for the entire PDF-document, which can also improve the reading experience (depending on the font of course).

What I found the be rather annoying on the Max is the ghosting. While in a document, you can set the screen refresh rate as you like it, so you can pretty get rid of the ghosting. This however isn't true for navigating through the menus. The DPT-S1 handles this better and seems to generally have a bit less of ghosting effects. Why that is I wouldn't know.

Something else I tested was the browsing experience. The Max is definitely better here - it loads the site correctly including ads and does so significantly quicker. Nevertheless I still wouldn't really want to browse the web a lot with it.

As for doing a lot of handwriting, I cannot really recommend any of the two devices - it's simply not nearly the same as writing on paper with a ballpen. Doing some small annotations and taking little notes in a PDF-document is okay - but at least in my opinion you certainly wouldn't want to trade your notebook for any of the two devices: Your movements simply will not be registered as good as with pen on paper no matter what you do or how slowly you write. You can see a comparison of my normal handwriting on both devices (DPT-S1 on the left, Max on the right) below. As you see, it's horrible on both devices. My handwriting is also bad using pen and paper but it's still more readable.

However what most keeps me liking the Sony DPT-S1 better is the considerably less weight and the touchscreen. Maybe I wouldn't miss the touch (turning pages, pinch&zoom) so much if I never have had it in the first place, but I guess we will never know.

Actually I think that the Sony DPT-S1 and the Onyx Boox Max are a lot like the iPhone 1 and Windows Mobile Devices back in 2007: The iPhone 1 really had good handling and design, but the Windows Mobile Devices back then were a lot more powerful (remember, back then the original iPhone did not even have a copy and paste-function, lol) and cheaper. And with the two readers it's in my opinion just a similar thing. The Play Store on the Onyx Boox Max, the multi-format support, the built-in speaker (which does a better job than I expected) and the bluetooth ability make it much more versatile than the DPT-S1. However if limited functionality in the sense of just reading and editing PDF-files is all you need, you'll most likely find the DPT-S1 to be the superior device.

Personally I really hope for a multi-format colored 13,3 inch eReader to show up some day. But that certainly won't happen anytime soon. Until then I'll be happy with the DPT-S1. But I can also understand anyone who would rather go for the Max.

Kind regards,
Jens