I want to take it as a tool for reading/writing/studying and super basic browsing. My phone just broke, chat control just got approved and I’m sick of proprietary shit: I decided I’m not gonna buy anything which doesn’t hold free software anymore.
I love e-ink and I love Linux, but how usable is the pinenote with Linux? How hard is the install process? Can an average Linux user/self hoster use it daily? How’s battery? Couldn’t find many reviews online…
I have one, I wrote a small review for it last year: https://domistyle.gitlab.io/pinenote-2024/ (enable autoplay so the videos play).
You can test Xournal++ and KOReader on any Linux desktop, it’s what works best on the PineNote right now.
They also have an active Matrix group where the main developers are present.
I also have one and agree with your conclusion. My PineNote is so cool and really fun to use!
I use mine most often for displaying and editing my character sheet while playing tabletop RPGs.
The display looks great and mine doesn’t have the stuck pixel or the buggy lines issue you experienced, though I do have very noticeable ghosting artifacts. Probably this is because I mainly use the “performance” optimization setting rather than “quality”. Animations play very poorly, so I found it necessary to use extensions to disable animations wherever possible.
Also, of course, the screen is only black and white so sometimes you lose out on information. E.g. if my GM says “the goblin that stole the flask is highlighted yellow. The one highlighted pink is standing his ground. What do you do?” I would not be able to tell them apart.
I get acceptable but not fantastic battery life. Usually after about 3 hours I’ll have around 60% life left. It would probably be better if I was using a lighter program than Firefox. Mine also has phantom battery drain and loses maybe 15% battery life per day if left unplugged while suspended.
I paid $460 USD for mine, shortly before the import tariffs were implemented.
Overall, I would recommend it for someone who meets these criteria:
I would not recommend it to most people because it is an enthusiast Linux device with an e-ink display. If you’re the kind of person that specifically wants an enthusiast Linux device with an e-ink display then I think you’ll love it
They have since fixed that.
Unfortunately just the nature of the technology. If you’re just reading, DU4:3 works the best, for manga I use the full G:4 mode with screen refresh for every page flip enabled.
I wrote some custom profiles for each (Default, Book, Manga, Notes, Notes (Landscape) which I have on my desktop, I can send you the scripts if you want.
Couldn’t find a good way to use browsers on it yet since they all smooth scroll instead of jumping in fixed intervals.
For web browsing I can navigate alright using spacebar to scroll. Naturally, that works best with a bluetooth keyboard attached, but you could resize the window and use the soft keyboard if you prefer. The “vimium” extension for Firefox makes keyboard navigation much nicer.
It’s 610€ for me. Isn’t this thing coming from China? Why is it so expensive in the EU? 🤔
The EU store ships from the EU with warranty, support, etc. for quite a hefty premium. I ordered from the global store which ships from Hong Kong. Paid ~500€ a year ago (including taxes).
thanks for this, so it’s not that bad and it seems to be working fairly good enough… Mmmh I might think about that, how’s the battery life? How long do the tips last? The pen is active or passive?
I left mine running over night with KOReader open, Nextcloud in background, no suspend and it took 20 hours and 10 minutes to go from 100% to 10%.
As @poweruser@lemmy.sdf.org wrote, there is a pretty significant phantom drain where it loses about 15% per day when suspended.
I have used the same tip for a year and it’s still fine. It also comes with 2 tip replacement and all of the generic pens for EMR screens work on the Pinenote.
Can’t say much about the battery life but I’m going to leave it running once it’s fully charged and report back.