Announcement. Onyx Boox Viking - A Tale of Lost Modularity

About a reader called Onyx Boox Vikingspoke a year and a half ago. The Onyxes then brought a concept to a certain exhibition and presented it as a “modular reader”. With a set of Pogo contacts on the back. What for? The idea was curious, albeit somewhat strange. We put a cover in the kit, we make control buttons on the cover. The cover and Viking are connected through these Pogo contacts and the buttons begin to work. Who cares - here is a video from Notebook Italia (in English), everything is well shown and explained there.

Image borrowed from Notebook Italia

But something went wrong. A device called the Onyx Boox Viking really came into being. Only now there is no Pogo connector that is visible anywhere.

In general, if you believe the pictures and official specifications, the Onyx Boox Viking is almost a copy of the Onyx Boox Monte Cristo 5 reader announced in April. Only the screen resolution is slightly lower.

Briefly about the characteristics.

The reader is positioned as premium. First of all, at the expense of materials. Aluminum alloy body, Asahi protective glass, rich looking cover. If without a cover, it is thin, only 8 mm. But who uses e-readers without covers?

Touch control. On the sides there are touch-sensitive paging buttons. Under the screen there is a touch button "Back" combined with the logo. Well, the screen itself is also a touchscreen.

The screen is a classic six-inch ink screen. E-Ink Carta with illumination of the latest generation Moon Light 2. The resolution is not bad, 758 × 1024 (212 ppi). But today it can no longer be considered high.

The chipset has not been officially announced. Most likely good old Rockchip RK3128. By the standards of modern Android devices, it is weak and boring, and by the standards of e-books, it is not bad at all.

Memory. One gigabyte of operational, 8 GB of constant. There is support for memory cards.

Onyx Boox Viking runs on Android, but the versionvery ancient, 4.4. There is support for Wi-Fi, a browser is preinstalled. It is argued that the performance is quite sufficient in order to calmly navigate the sites. Honestly, I don’t believe it.

The battery is not bad at 3000 mAh.

There is a Bluetooth module, which means, if you wish, you can send sound to headphones or a speaker. But there is no classic audio output.

Onyx Boox Viking is almostpresent on sale at Palmstore. It's not that cheap - ₽13,990 ($ 181). However, everything is logical. Onyx Boox Monte Cristo 5 with its slightly higher resolution is exactly a thousand more expensive.

Addition

In fact, I just poorly studied the materiel, alas. I apologize. Everything went like this. Just under a different name. The device, which was once called the Viking, was released in late 2019 under the name Onyx Boox Livingstone. Yes, right here with pogo contacts and a special case included. And then, with the same pogo contacts, they released the Onyx Boox Volta reader (but they did not put the case in the kit). And then they released Onyx Boox Volta 2, which is the same as a simple Volta, but with a case ...

Key features of Onyx Boox Viking:

Grayscale screen, E-Ink, 6 ″, 758 × 1024, 212 ppi, 16 colors, touch, capacitive, multitouch, backlight, SNOW Field, MOON Light 2, ASAHI
Iron? Rockchip RK3128
1.2 GHz, 4 x Cortex-A7, Mali-400 MP2
RAM RAM 1 GB, ROM 8 GB, Micro SD
BatteryLi-Pol, 3000 mAh
Dimensions158.9 x 114 x 8 mm
Weight205 g
Cameras
Navigation?
OSAndroid 4.4 KitKat
USBMicro v2.0

George Kiselyov