Boox Palma settings?

devilgrove

Hi everyone, just purchased a Boox Palma and looking to optimize the experience. It's still causing me some eyestrain, so I was wondering if anyone on here was able to come up with some settings to make the device work for them. Thank you!

jordan

devilgrove when I asked their support how to make it flicker less they said to do this. https://help.boox.com/attachments/token/1OshnMRy9rK4EqKEjb7LNAOYm/?name=95375.mp4

(Video)

I ended up selling mine I still found it flickery. I'm personally waiting on my "minimal phone" to ship soon which is eink.

Btw try it without the front light on and see how it feels with natural light

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

devilgrove

To reduce the flickering, make sure to disable Display Enhancement within each app

Repeat for ***every*** app you use:

Control Center -> E-Ink Center -> the […] button next to Refresh Modes -> Balanced -> Turn "Display Enhancement" OFF

If this is off for a given app, it will ensure the screen is still when you're not interacting with it, instead of subtly flickering when idle to "clean itself up". The compromise is scrolling will now leave a lot more ghosting, you'll need to manually refresh more often.

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Anti-flicker, in the same menu, is useful for making the dithering that happens when you're scrolling less annoying. Setting it to 10 is best for most apps. It basically smooths out the transition time of each pixel. Kind of like a backwards version of overdrive on LCDs -- increases the response time by making pixels "fade" instead of "instantly switch".

Unfortunately the current state of e-ink tech basically requires dithering to achieve high FPS, as the "fast" modes are physically limited to only "pure black" and "pure white" pixels. All shades of gray are entirely made out of dithering.

At least, if Display Enhancement is off, this makes the dithering only move while actively interacting. Won't move when you're idle.

The only ways "around" dithering are to only use the HD mode and deal with lag -- or maybe write your own app for Boox that uses no shades of gray at all, for example using a pixelated-style font with no anti-aliasing instead of a normal Android font

Unfortunately no one seems to have written any apps like this yet, as of today, even though IMO it's a really obvious way to improve the e-ink experience. I'm thinking of trying at some point

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Personally, Boox Palma is only strain-free for me in direct sunlight. The matte coating they used on the panel is honestly pretty low quality and make the image a lot more "blurry" while indoors, even if you have e.g. incandescent lighting.

The haze only seems to go away in direct sunlight, or directly in front of a window -- it then becomes very sharp/clear/comfortable.

But indoors, all but the most perfect lighting conditions will result in hazy text. I honestly wish Boox just went with a glossy coating instead, I feel like it would have avoided this problem.

The backlight is also pretty subpar, I don't think it's really something like flicker that's the problem here -- but more that the color spectrum of the backlight is very artificial-feeling, e.g. the warm lighting still has a large blue component to it.

With the Display Optimization trick, I've made Palma really nice for me outdoors, so overall the device is worth it for me.

But it's true that the indoor experience is not that great (mostly due to the physical quality of the display, like the fuzzy matte coating)

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

jordan ended up selling mine I still found it flickery. I'm personally waiting on my "minimal phone"

I've pre ordered this in addition to the DC-1 tablet. Once they ship, will also post my own reviews of each + whether I keep or return them

devilgrove

jordan Thank you! I'll try this out. I also believe the backlight is disabled already, I just turned the brightness and color temperature all the way down.

devilgrove

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs I'll make sure to do this as well, thanks! It's disappointing to hear that the Palma is only best for you in direct sunlight, though. I wonder why that would be, considering that (in ny head at least) the Palma's screen without dithering should theoretically be equivalent to black ink on a page. I'm surprised it's been causing me this much strain as well…

Rowe

Are you using it with the built in lighting? I found the Palma built in light intolerable, but using natural light or a good lamp fine.

I've got the Hibreak Pro on order, which is supposed to have DC-dim lighting like the Hisense ereaders.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

Rowe The one way I've managed to get the built in light "working" for me when I need it is to wear red color filter glasses -- the more intense kind of ones that make everything monochrome and red (not the usual blue light glasses)

By doing that, it seems to reduce the amount of bluish and greenish tint to the frontlight. Filtering everything red seems to prevents the light from causing the text to seem to glow.

Then, I can use Palma indoors with backlight a noticeable amount more comfortably.

Also, I only set frontlight to about half. Even though a lot of us here have a habit of using max backlight to reduce PWM, max frontlight on the Palma is wayyyy too harsh IMO and it feels better at half.

However, if I'm not wearing the red filter glasses, I can only reliably use Palma outside or directly next to a window.

For reference, Kindle Oasis, the latest one before it was discontinued, seems much more comfortable indoors (and unlike the other Kindles, the Oasis actually lets you turn off the backlight entirely). It's disappointing how I can't use the Kindle's much sharper panel to run Android apps

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

devilgrove I think it's mainly because of the matte coating that makes everything fuzzy if the lighting isn't perfect, plus the low-contrast appearance compared to paper where you're reading "dark gray on slightly lighter gray" instead of "black on white" like paper.

Finally, the main difference I've noticed compared to paper is that E-ink looks more like a digital clock LCD, where the black ink is physically "in front of" the background by a slight amount, and casts a shadow at some angles, instead of totally flat.

This is what makes it not feel truly paperlike, because it doesn't succeed at replicating the feeling of "text printed directly on the page"...

(Fortunately, this difference in depth is consistent and the depth doesn't "change depending on what content is on the screen", unlike many of the displays that strain us here)

Before I noticed this and adjusted to it, the Palma was actually worse for me because I was trying to read it "like paper" assuming that the background was at the "exact same" depth as the text. It got a decent amount better once I realized that I needed to focus "behind the text" to look at white backgrounds.

However, the low quality matte coating is still the thing that seems to be interfering with it the most.