Hi Some of you already know me as Im a regular on the Discord for this little community…
But for those that dont know me. Im Mangy Dog, Im a maker and a UI developer whos been on the scene for a good number of years now…
While far from a top level expert I do know a thing or two about electronics, I also run a blossoming you tube channel that follows my projects, which you can find here… https://www.youtube.com/MangyDogBuilds
I have worked freelance for custom UI design and hardware creation, so when I come into a topic like this I know what I’m talking about…
I’m also very experienced with Nextion displays and how they work… most of the time…
So I hope you can accept what Im about to say as a professional who knows his stuff…
I’ve been scammed by Nextion and so have you, and they dont want you to know about it…
So here’s the thing. My grievance with nextion is not new… I first started playing with some nextion panels as far back as 2016… It was soon after Nextion did there kickstarter.
And the displays and concept were for the most part not too bad… Not amazing but achieved most of what it set out to do… which was provide a way to make UIs quickly.
But it became apparent to me that things were not great from pretty early on. I would regularly find bugs or issues with the system. Objects would not render correctly and features you would expect in a UI design are not implemented. Such as spawning objects at run time or being able to animate object locations.
Each and every time I would make a post in the tech support forum at the nextion site a “user” Patrick who at the time claimed was not a staff member but just another user like us all would regularly shoot down any negative comment about the display. Heres the thing. As we all know now, Patrick is the owner/front for Nextion, the west distribution for these TJC displays. The exsact details of the relationship between Nextion and TJC is still not entirely clear, but lets just go with what we know. Patrick runs Nextion and has done from the start.
But for a long time he posed as a member of the public and would often defame people who would raise any issues they found with the displays.
This should firstly start off to show the kind of person Patrick is… Dishonest.
As it has been noticed already he regularly comes here and poses as other regular people and tries to even incriminate other members here… Really this guy can not be trusted.
So now I say I have been scammed, and so have you… Heres how… In particularly the 2.8 inch Basic display, which is a rather popular model.
(I cant say for the other models, as as this is all I’ve used)
I moved away from nextion after all the BS from Patrick in the official nextion forums, but I ended up using one of the displays in a prop project of mine. The Unused Voyager Tricorder… I had the unit lying around doing nothing so I decided to use it in this prop. And it served its purpose… I only needed to run some basic animated timed loops of UI elements flashing over graphics i have prepared… This was using the version of the model still currently shown on the shop site.
Note the most obvious thing about this is the small side mounted ribbon cable…
Now we have all known for a while now that Nextion is a western front for TJC, so I cant entirely say I’m surprised this has happened. But it is still dishonest and selling misrepresented items, so this is still a scam under any legal definitions…
For a while this 2.8 inch model differed from the TJC variant.
You can clearly see the differences here… One most notable difference is the quality of the LCD panel used.
While certainly not a IPS display, the original LCD used in the old nextion display I had did have a reasonable viewing angle range. Not the best but not the worst either…
Where as the TJC display had viewing angles of LCDs from the mid 90s… Truly terrible.
However it seems Nextion had changed the 2.8 inch display and are now completely identical to the TJC display
Sadly this includes the terrible viewing angles…
I have uploaded a video comparing the old nextion display in my prop to the one I recently received.
Why is this a scam? I still have a 2.8 inch display. Yes I do… But I do not have the 2.8 inch display I was led to believe I was ordering. This is dishonest. At some point TJC/Nextion have drastically lowered the quality of there product but kept the price up, doing this without telling anyone, yet again dishonest. Selling goods via deception.
They still show the model I previously used in the description of the sales website.
If i sold you a laptop that was touted as having a 4k IPS display, but only fitted a 4K TN panel youll be screaming the house down… This is basically what Nextion has done.
I in fact today made a polite post about it on the Official nextion forums. Luckily some one took a screen grab of it…
I am not rude or impolite, just stating the simple fact of the matter…
I say I’m lucky some one took a screen grab because, about an hour after I posted, my nextion forum account was banned and the post deleted.
Nextion are now out right scamming its uses by selling inferior products than what they claim to be selling. And they ban and delete posts of anyone trying to speak up about it.
I honestly dont know what else to say.
Im not going to tell you not to buy TJC or Nextion displays. Personally I more for advocating reverse engineering and improving the things as an open source community led project. That way us as the users can pick and choose the quality of components we want in our projects based out our needs and budget. And not rely on the lottery of quality fade from some very dishonest and unscrupulous people.
The TJC/Nextion project is great in principle and concept. Shame the people behind it are not.
