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:

• is a Linux enthusiast comfortable with the command line and willing to read and follow various guides (there’s a long README that opens on boot which has crucial information in it, like how to fix critical bugs)
• wants to avoid proprietary lock in wherever possible
• wants to avoid shovel ware and use mainline Linux
• wants to support FOSS development and doesn’t mind paying extra to do so
• understands the severe limitations of an e-ink display

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