TCL NxtPaper 11

[DrChiper]

Originally Posted by Quoth

@DrChiper: Your stand looks posh!

The actual one is made of cheaper materials, and I've several of them laying all around and used by the family for smartphones, e-readers and tablets. They can be had on several web-sites for a small price.

[DrChiper]

Originally Posted by DrChiper

Funny fact: when I connected the NxtPaper 11 to a PD-only charger, the NxtPaper showed an info message, stating: Very slow charger. Please use another charger like the one provided with the tablet. The NxtPaper has power management beyond my smartphone

The Nxtpaper 11 seems to use AI: today I tried charging for the first time since the above message and the Nxtpaper seems to refuse flatly any PD capable charger I tried. It starts charging, beeps 2x, stops charging and repeats this sequence over and over again. Somehow the PD charging is detected/remembered. Using the normal supplied QC charger from TCL it just works as expected. Also other QC capable chargers are working just fine, but all in "normal" charging mode, not "fast" charging.

[Quoth]

In general I find devices charge best with supplier charger, if one is supplied. Historically, of course, you generally could only use supplied charger. Even similar model Dell laptops you sometimes could use the higher power laptop's charger on the lesser laptop, but the newer laptop only charged at all with older charger if it was off.

[Quoth]

The official TCL cover came today and as expected it's really only landscape on a desk or table. However it's much easier to hold the tablet in Portrait Mode in the cover.

• It does sleep/wake perfectly.
• The pen holder is like an after thought.
• It's much lighter than the rather crazy cover that came with the original Kobo Elipsa, though it is (badly) designed for Portrait Mode only.
• It's only good for Portrait Mode on a surface near eye level!
• There are holes for the mics, speakers and rear camera.
• It's thick enough at the rear so that the camera glass cover isn't going to so easily get scratched.
• The power and volume buttons still work easily even though the case has those rather than holes. I've had phone cases where I had to cut holes because the plastic was too stiff.

[JohnCheese]

Well lads,
After 1 weeks use I have an entire row of dead pixels. It shows up as a black line, on white it turns orange. I called TCL and they had me ship it to a repair center. Feeling a little bitter since I need to wait a few weeks to get it back.

[patrik]

Ikea has several similiar stands that may work.

[SomeSteve]

Originally Posted by JohnCheese

After 1 weeks use I have an entire row of dead pixels. It shows up as a black line, on white it turns orange. I called TCL and they had me ship it to a repair center. Feeling a little bitter since I need to wait a few weeks to get it back.

They should have sent you a new one express delivery and had you return the defective one at their expense and your convenience.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JohnCheese

Well lads,
After 1 weeks use I have an entire row of dead pixels. It shows up as a black line, on white it turns orange. I called TCL and they had me ship it to a repair center. Feeling a little bitter since I need to wait a few weeks to get it back.

Depends on country, but in the EU and quite a few other countries your contract is with the seller, who is obliged to sort it.

[Quoth]

A second TCL has arrived. Oh, setup of any OS to have all your preferences, switch off data slurping, install the apps and change their defaults is so tedious.

<rant>
Years ago we rolled out NT4.0 "images" using SMS. But the 450 workstations had to be individually installed with all the correct changes to Regional Settings, network and services.

"Don't forget the Regional Settings!" Why does so much sold worldwide have USA Date, Letter size instead of A4, US Keyboard etc, when they are less than 13% of the population and it's a locally bought item?
</rant>

At least you can clone SD cards for a Raspberry Pi.

The Lady may stop using the duplex colour laser printer if this suits.

[JohnCheese]

Originally Posted by SomeSteve

They should have sent you a new one express delivery and had you return the defective one at their expense and your convenience.

I tried but unfortunately in “the land of the free” it just means companies are free to screw you.

[plusz]

Hi, maybe a silly question, but have you tried OLED tablet for reading?

I really like my Hisense RLCD tablet, but it's only perfect for outdoor use. I hardly use it at home. For books, it's no brainer I definitely prefer e-ink, but I also like to read some news directly from the web.

This switching between multiple devices e-ink, tablet, laptop, annoys me a little, so I've been wondering about OLED. I can use my phone, with OLED, with ease. The reflections don't bother me at all. Maybe it's because of the perfect black or maybe it's because of the size, it could be that it's easier to find a good angle to avoid reflections with a small screen.

Nonetheless, I just came to this forum to read some reviews about NXTPAPER, as I've just seen this tablet in local shop. I guess I'll go and try it. Worst case I can return it to the shop (there's only a 10% penalty if returning in perfect visual condition). I'm a bit disappointed with the screen ratio, I'd prefer something more squareish like 4:3

[Quoth]

The issue with OLED is that like most tablets they have a glossy reflective screen. The reflections on ANY glossy screen will give a headache due to unconscious changing of focus between reading distance and how far away the reflected object is, which can even be your face as it's twice the distance in a reflection.

OLED has other issues. It is not real LEDs, but diode like electroluminescent dots that give a violet light. Red, green and blus phosphors are used and, unlike a filter, they wear with use or sunlight. They wear out at different speeds too. There may also be a filter. An LCD panel might last 20 to 50 years or more, but OLED wear out. Cheaper ones also can fail due to moisture getting in. The life of an OLED maybe be less than 5 years with colour (hue) shift before that.

The black isn't perfect, except in the dark, due to reflection.

[plusz]

I don't care about OLED wearing out. Had one of the first phones with OLED for about 5 years, the phone died because of water dip, but no changes to the screen. I'm using now LG OLED TV as a monitor since a year, no sign of wearing out, and mind you I do use it ~10 hours a day.

I don't know how they achieved that but the blacks on OLED are perfect, despite "glossy" finish. Sitting in front of OLED screen is like looking into a black hole, I can only see a faint ghost of me but heavily blurred and "deep in the black shadows".

Ideally, I would like to get a mate glass for an OLED screen

[Quoth]

The oled dots are light emitting. They are off when off.

LCD backlight is always on. If it's set too high then there is still slight light leakage through the polarised LCD panel.

Some very expensive Sony TVs have X Y array of LEDs or even R G B LEDs and turn them off on black areas of the screen.

BTW, white LEDs don't exist. They are blue, violet or near UV with phosphors. You can see the yellow phosphor on the "stick" filament type LED lamps and they light up when you shine UV on them. Also yellow visible on some other LED lamps.

The OLED do shift in colour. It's so gradual you may not notice and some systems count run time and compensate. Plasma panels and colour CRTs also shift but could be recalibrated.

LCD needs two optically perfect accurately spaced panes of glass. OLED can use any insulating substrate and the top layer is to keep out moisture. That then has another layer if a touch screen is needed.

So no mystery as to the OLED blacks. Also most people have the LCD brightness (backlight) far too high. The blacks on my LCD phones and monitors are as black as friend's OLED.

Also many LED and OLED TVs are LCD but LED or OLED backlights. The QLED TVs have LCD panels, pure blue backlight and so called "quantum" dots for red or green that change the blue light to red or green. The Black to White and greys of the polarised LCD thus vary the R, G and B (red and green frequency changing dots and clear squares for blue).

Marketing is driven by fashion, not reality.

Flat black tinted matt surfaces were on high end CRTs 40 years ago. Been on very few laptops.

Shiny screens are a fashion and also the absolute cheapest. The ereaders have expensive matt surfaces because the panels are x5 price of LCD or OLED and they are promoting the "paper" experience. There is a fashion for glossy paper photos since mid 1960s. They were matt before that and also glossy paper fancy books. Novels are printed on matt paper.

It's a shame all phones and laptops and monitors over the last 25 years are not matt. It's greed and fashion. Not any technical difficulty.

[plusz]

Going that deep, I believe the black level difference stem from the fact that on OLED screen you can only see reflections from the surface, whilst on LCD you can see reflections from the surface, plus reflections from the bottom of the LCD coming back through the inner layers.

Much to my annoyance, 99% of anti-gloss screen covers are glossy. They are designed with the matt surface pointing towards the screen (or have it in the middle layers), so they do stop reflections from the back of the LCD, but do nothing about reflections from the surface. It's a very mediocre effect. By many such trial and error, I found this one https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000777080317.html really good, as it's sticky even the other way around with the glossy surface to the screen, rather than the matt. Since then, I always buy it when I need some smaller matt cover and trim it to the size myself. That way I have the best matt screen for Onyx Boox Max (Even the original Boox one was mediocre). By the way, in hindsight I regretted upgrading from the original non-touch Boox Max to the touch one. The screen resolution is way better, but the glossy touch surface was annoying. Luckily, I eventually solved the problem.

Interesting discussion anyway. I agree with you about the matt vs glossy surface, absolutely. My subjective observation was, however, that glossy OLED wins against glossy LCD in terms of reflections (thus comfort of use).