I nearly went down this route, with an old, cheap, hacked, reader-only e-ink device with all the cleverness done on a different machine and the output pre-optimised for the specific target device.
However, when I looked into it, I found that buying a Boox with a recent version of Android on it, meant that I could replace most of that with apps on the device itself, including borrowing DRM'd books from my local library, which is handy sometimes.
And the price difference didn't actually seem that bad, once I took into account my desire for a warm backlight. Maybe if I already owned a simpler device with that feature, I'd have hacked it instead.
Having said that, I don't have quite the same aversion to short length reading on e-ink, so I also use Pocket and even a browser (Firefox mobile with DarkMode addon in "light" mode) and so I'm probably getting more use out of that side of things for my money.
I have heard very good things about KOReader, but the standard Boox reader is also pretty great, and integrates with the device well (e.g. the default launcher lists books from that reader) so I've not had reason to try anything different.
As someone else has mentioned, the only bad thing about Boox I've found so far is that they seems to be withholding their Linux modifications. Doesn't affect me directly in practical terms at the moment, but it's the principle of the thing.
Oh remembered, one other potential bad thing, there are apparently core apps that phone home. People have workarounds involving fake VPN apps that block specific urls.
Note that netguard (a vpn firewall solution) is not active at boot. It gets kicked well after wifi comes up.
My tcpdump tests showed a few seconds of traffic before it started blocking. This is a known thing, but it is time enough that I watched loads of traffic phone home on boot.
Another thing, is that the wifi connectivity test/beacon has been modified to point to the boox store url.
This is not blocked by a VPN, and thus, anything could be happening.
To be fair, once netguard was up and running, it did block all but that, and I ran tcpdump over several days watching.
Of course, if you want any part of the Boox ecosystem, you have to let it phone home.
My particular Boox is a small 6 inches, so it's not ideal for that use case, and I think there's only one model that has an actual physical HDMI input but yeah I'm pleased enough with the reading experience that I may upgrade to a larger one that can be used as a coding screen, pen input tablet etc.
Again, with screensharing apps, or terminal apps as others talk about in this story, it's possible to do certain things of this nature without the HDMI cable too.
However, when I looked into it, I found that buying a Boox with a recent version of Android on it, meant that I could replace most of that with apps on the device itself, including borrowing DRM'd books from my local library, which is handy sometimes.
And the price difference didn't actually seem that bad, once I took into account my desire for a warm backlight. Maybe if I already owned a simpler device with that feature, I'd have hacked it instead.
Having said that, I don't have quite the same aversion to short length reading on e-ink, so I also use Pocket and even a browser (Firefox mobile with DarkMode addon in "light" mode) and so I'm probably getting more use out of that side of things for my money.
I have heard very good things about KOReader, but the standard Boox reader is also pretty great, and integrates with the device well (e.g. the default launcher lists books from that reader) so I've not had reason to try anything different.
As someone else has mentioned, the only bad thing about Boox I've found so far is that they seems to be withholding their Linux modifications. Doesn't affect me directly in practical terms at the moment, but it's the principle of the thing.
Oh remembered, one other potential bad thing, there are apparently core apps that phone home. People have workarounds involving fake VPN apps that block specific urls.