Ereader

I have Boox Page. The killer features are Android with its Play Store and the page turn buttons. Having all those apps instead of being limited to the few features that dedicated e-readers like Kindle has is simply great. As for the page turn buttons. It's nice to be able to use the device one-handed and turn pages by pressing a button instead of needing two hands to touch the screen. But the real killer is the long press functions you can bind to the buttons. If you are using one of the faster refresh modes, pretty much required with some apps, the screen can get messy fast. Being able to refresh the screen by just pressing 0.5 seconds (duration can be adjusted) the button your finger is already resting on is extremely convenient.

Also, if you are planning on using the Kindle app, those page turn buttons are almost mandatory. If you use the touch screen to turn pages, the Kindle app will animate page turns. There is a setting for page turn animations, but that only toggles between two different animations. The animation is fine if you use a faster refresh mode. Those refresh modes render the screen in lower resolution, causing text to look pixelated. “Normal” refresh mode renders the screen at max resolution, so text looks crisp, but it's slow. Page turn animations look horrible in that mode. The only way to avoid page turn animations in the Kindle app is by turning pages with a button.

I think the biggest downside is that Onyx decided not to include built-in support for dark mode. Android supports dark mode, and as such many apps have choices for Light, Dark and System, where System will automatically follow system's mode. Because the system doesn't support dark mode, the System setting in apps is always light mode. Which means, that if you want to toggle between light and dark mode, you need to use the apps' controls to do so. That means that you need to navigate some menus, and have to remember how and where the mode can be changed in each app. It would be so much more convenient if you could just pull down from the top and touch a button, like you can do on Kindle, for example.

I don't have the page specifically. I have a boox Max 3. But Android is a game changer, and Boox does a better job on the custom version than others I've tried (though apparently they're bad at fulfilling their obligations from licensing Android? Presumably that means source code. I see it mentioned sometimes but haven't looked hard at it). But a variety of different reader apps and stuff like Libby and ~~Scribd~~ Everand to get libraries from different places is nice. I also use EInkBro as a web browser, and it has an easy short cut to save an article as an epub for later.

It obviously isn't a direct comparison because it's a different size and presumably a bigger physical battery, but I've left it for weeks and come back to 30% battery. WiFi and backlight are your biggest draws, though, and that varies on how you use it.

If you're in the US you might have luck at Best Buy. I've been considering the Poke or Page as more portable options for when bringing a 13" reader is less convenient. I definitely miss the page buttons from my Oasis, too.

I bought a Boox Poke3 a couple of years back and it's honestly the best purchase I've made in a long time. I previously used a cheap Tolino e-reader so I have some experience in the difference between an e-reader and an e-ink tablet with android. In all, I consider the tablet to be well worth the money I payed for it. Regarding the battery life, while it is true that the tablet does not last for as long as an ereader, the battery capacity is still large enough so that it only requires charging once in a week under heavy use. That is unless you use the wifi, which will drain the battery quite faster. For comparison I charged the Tolino once every three weeks. Having the ability to install Android applications is a game changer in my opinion, especially if you wish to use a unified method of reading articles (like Instapaper or Pocket). E-ink Bro is extremely useful too. The Boox tablets have a magnificent way of side loading books (and files in general) called Boox Push which allows for direct control of the tablet filesystem from the browser of another device, phone or computer. Just scan the QR code with the phone and you can transfer, move, rename, etc any file you wish to. I can not stress how convenient this is since it works with or without an account, it can connect using the local IP of the table and transfer files over the local network. The backlight options are also great, Boox tablets can control the warmth of the backlight to reduce eye strain when reading at night. Another great feature is that the tablet is extremely light, making holding it very convenient. I think that the Page model is bigger though so I don't know about that. As far as I can see the Page has physical buttons too while the Poke doesn't. Finally, the performance of the tablet is good as far as I can tell but I have heard from others that generally Android tablet are a bit slower than ereaders. I use KOreader though which is very snappy.

Also, does anyone know how often the Boox store restocks them? It’s been showing as unavailable every time I check over the past few days.

I bought mine over a local vendor and not from the official Boox store so I can not answer you that, my guess would be that depending on your location this will vary. I would suggest that you check some reseller company in your area.

Update for those who are interested: I bought a Boox Page from B&H photo in New York, and received it today. Spent probably far longer than I needed to fiddling around with the settings and loading content onto it, but it is now ready to rock and roll. I really like the Boox Drop feature - just wirelessly dropping files onto it through a web browser on my local network rather than having to rely on a cloud service (while also still having that available as an option) is cool.