TCL Nxtpaper 14 review

[DrChiper]

Came across this review: have not watched it myself yet.
Seems to have 2 front cameras.

[Quoth]

Why two front cameras?

No idea when I can buy one?

I watched half. Really the incompetance of the average YouTube review is amazing. My French is terrible for reading and non-existent for listening.

[DrChiper]

They didn't say (or I did not understand it well enough ). I just noticed the screen was scratched (well, it's a demo device anyway, but evidently it does seem possible to do it), you get a 33W charger for the 10000mAh battery, on which it runs for about 9 hours.
I think it is huge, and not my cup of tea anyway. 10"+ is more than enough for me. Certainly now new kobo's are coming up

[plusz]

They said it's going to be available this summer in France. It's NXTPAPER 3.0, and they included some eye tracking feature, so the tablet is going to remind you periodically to look at something else to relax your eyes.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by plusz

… they included some eye tracking feature, so the tablet is going to remind you periodically to look at something else to relax your eyes.

I hope that can be turned off. A gimmick.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DrChiper

I think it is huge, and not my cup of tea anyway. 10"+ is more than enough for me.

I'd only want something that size to proof two page PDF spreads closer to actual size, portable video and reading old scanned magazines.

The 14 is too big for notes or reading ebooks. Even the 11 is a little large for notes, but far better than the 8″ Sage, which is great for novels. The 7″ Libra 2 is also a good size for novels, but I prefer the 8″. An 8″ 4:3 Nxtpaper would be great for notes. The eink is far too slow for writing or typing compared to LCD. I'd be happy to have three sizes of Nxtpaper for different applications.

[plusz]

Maybe one day I'll buy it to replace my laptop, if they also make a nice keyboard for it, something like the Surface Pro from Microsoft. But let's wait and see the price first. I'm afraid it will be a bit overpriced since they've stuffed it full of high-end internals, which in the end I won't care about.

[plusz]

I just tried to use my NXTPAPER 11 as a screen for a laptop. I don't know why, but the miracast wasn't stable. The screen had a lot of artifacts from time to time. Next I tried Microsoft's remote desktop app, and it ran much smoother, with no artifacts or other glitches, but you know it's RDP, so I had to use the tablet instead of the laptop's keyboard.

Anyway, I've learned that 11" is really too small to replace laptop.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by plusz

I just tried to use my NXTPAPER 11 as a screen for a laptop. I don't know why, but the miracast wasn't stable..

Miracast is Tablet to TV and not called that now. The Laptop to Tablet is RDP (Windows only, though might be possible on Linux where VNC is more common), nothing to do with screecast/miracast/mirror to TV screen, which works flawlessly for home screen, apps, web, video etc to our TV (via direct WiFi).

Yes, 10.9″ is just a bit too small for a laptop screen.

I've used both very nice BT and USB small keyboards on the NxtPaper that are better than the overpriced Surface and Apple official keyboards. But I've found that nebo with a pen, or Gboard Handwriting conversion (both real time preview) is faster and more accurate than my typing, even using a fingertip on Gboard. Do check ALL its settings!

[plusz]

You missed the feature then. Open the settings drawer and look again, there is "Cast" button which let you miracast your tablet screen to a TV, and there's "Second Screen" button which let you miracast to the tablet. Enjoy if you find it useful.

[Quoth]

I presume "Second Screen" is Windows Remote desktop, RDP. It's only for Windows. It's not Miracast to the Tablet, unless they added that to windows and I missed it.


No, I know about the button.

Edit:
I'm wrong and you are right. It is miracast, in reverse for the tablet.

[Quoth]

I tested it out on my retired Nov 2016 Windows laptop running current Win 10 and used ethernet for Internet.
It works fine, (no glitches or artefacts) but pointless unless your laptop is smaller than 10" screen. Windows calls it a "Wireless Display", but I don't what that is. I guess your WiFi isn't fast enough or congested, because actual RDP is adaptive to suit the available speed.

My current laptop and desktop runs Linux. It has a thing called KDE connect that can work with Android and let you do SMS from PC if the device is a phone or has phone features.

I looked it up and it is indeed reverse Miracast. It needs a lot of bandwidth and processing and it GARBAGE compared to an HDMI cable.

Most TVs and Tablets I've tried are a nearly useless for Miracast compared with my ancient Sony Z1 running Android 4.1 which can play HD Video from SD card or WiFi to an HD TV via an HDMI cable with micro HDMI adaptor. I guess some projectors stupidly use Miracast from laptop, and an HDMI cable makes more sense.

Edit:
Both send and receive using direct Wifi is an option on Linux called "Gnome Network Displays". Really screencast/miracast is inferior to HDMI cables (or other screen sharing that uses regular networking as there is no control over it and it's peer to peer Wifi). A zero cost way to share a phone screen instead of a cabled HDMI connection. It's particularly pointless for a laptop to projector or TV compared to Display port or HDMI. Some systems have the equivalent of HDMI on USB-C and there are actual "USB Video Displays" for USB-A and USB-C.

[plusz]

My WiFi seems fine, I've tried on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz mode but I don't really know how Miracast works, do the wireless packets travel through the router, or do the antennas talk with each other directly.

Never mind, it's useless for me. However, the experiment changed my opinion about suitability of the 14" as a laptop screen. Theoretically it would be great, but with such quality of Miracast it's not suitable for normal work.

[Quoth]

It's direct (peer to peer) and you can't choose band or channel. I have never added my 15" Win10 laptop to any WiFi, it has no passwords. Yesterday was the first time WiFi was even enabled on it.
Because Miracast is WiFi and not adaptive for channel size and congestion the two ends ideally need to not be using WiFi for anything else. Also WiFi is a shared resource so if all the surrounding neighbours (and yourself) use WiFi for TV streaming, laptops, printers, scanners, tablets, security, cameras, phones, baby monitors, tablets, Set box extenders etc then Miracast will be jerky. It's a terrible system.

You can change the regular connection of WiFi on the laptop or Tablet to use 2.4 GHz or 5GHz (to WiFi Point/Router), but I see no settings for Miracast at either end. I've 3 Wifi points. One is dedicated in my son's bedroom for his phone & tablet. The other two appear on 2.4GHz and 5GHz as a single Airpoint and they communicate over 1GBps ethernet via the switch. They automatically chose which Wifi Airpoint and band a client connects to. They will change to narrower bandwidth on 2.4GHz (WiFi modes use 1, 3 or all the channels to get more speed, but sometimes one interference free channel is fastest). Most WiFi is simplex (take turns to TX or RX) and a single device at a time taking turns. MIIMO often is unusable due to neighbours or locations. There is a lot of hype both on Mobile 4G / 5G and on WiFi (version level).

Also I was looking at TV streaming for Tennis here and found that the TV HDMI streaming sticks all seem to be WiFi only and the boxes with ethernet don't support the service.

I can get over 500 Mbps on Wifi in view of the router and no-one else is using Wifi. But if I'm in another room and everyone is using it then the speed drops to 20 Mbps to 70 Mbps. The Ethernet cables go to a switch and can manage multiple streams to server, 500/50 Mps fibre broadband, peer to peer laptop to workstation, connection to secondary NAS etc. Even the Nintendo switch can use ethernet on its dock in HDTV mode or with a USB-C 3.0 ethernet adaptor (which also works on the TCL Nxtpaper11 without any additional adaptor. I have also USB-A 3.0 1Gbps ethernet, which allows the OTG adaptor with USB-C power feed.

Even with a direct cable a 14″ screen would only be use on a 13″ or smaller laptop.

Anyway, perversely miracast from Win10 to tablet in library was perfect, like a cable, but a noticeable increase in latency (affects local audio from laptop and mouse) and perfect in the lounge to TV, even streaming using Wifi on the tablet. Likely wasn't a very intensive web video, but ethernet could be used. A tennis app sub is available on Android, but she'd only watch on TV.

[plusz]

It's true, Miracast works also if devices are not connected to a wifi at all, it's sufficient to have the wifi radio on. I've tried it again in the garden. This time it definitely worked better, but there was still a noticeable input lag. Such screen is not suitable to be used with a mouse.