I had a specific desire: an A4-page-sized way of displaying song
sheets, that would work well out of doors.
The obvious answer for a big display is a tablet, but they're
very expensive at that size and often poor in bright sunlight. There
are eReaders which are only a bit smaller; the largest display I found
is 13.3" diagonal, which is about 88% of A4 paper area, and an aspect
ratio of 4:3, which is closer to the ratio of US Letter paper (1.29)
than to A-series (1.41), but probably not by enough to notice.
So I bought one. Specifically a Boox Max Lumi, which was released in
2020 and has been long since replaced by newer and shinier models.
Normal People care deeply about how fast one can turn pages, and
annotation, and colour; only the first really has any importance to me
for this. (If it turns out I really love being able to take notes and
want it to work better, I'll think about buying a later device.)
Apparently it can even work as a supplemental monitor, and has an HDMI
socket. I'll have to try that some time.
On a technical note, it doesn't present a mass storage interface or
anything else on USB, though it's running an old Android version
(sometimes this is very obvious, as in the controls to toggle the
wireless network and Bluetooth on and off) and is apparently
susceptible to ADB. (It can be a USB host, if you have a storage
device with a USB-C plug on it, which I don't though I could cobble
something together with adaptors.) What they want you to do is
synchronise to one of the big cloud services, or the one they run for
only a small fee. Fortunately one of the options is WebDAV, for which
I already have a server set up on the local network. (This is actually
better than the Kobos I've had, which can't be set up without creating
an account with them.)
It sits on my music stand reasonably well, though it doesn't feel
terribly secure, and the display is plentifully clear even without the
backlight. I have ordered a clamp (why do most clamp vendors not
bother to say maximum jaw opening size?) and plan also to try a band
wrapped round device and stand. None of this will help much if someone
knocks the stand over, of course, but at least I can grab the stand
and have a reasonable hope the thing will stay attached.
Here it is in recent bright sunlight:
(Page from Jon Hancock's Cliff Edwards Project.)
Unlike the various Kobos I've had, it clearly uses enough power at
idle that by default it has not just a five minute sleep timeout but a
fifteen minute power off. Nothing I play off a single sheet is likely
to last fifteen minutes, but I've extended the sleep just in case.