I was scammed by Nextion, and how Nextion dont want you to know about it!

I think that it was not optimal to ask my question in this thread since I wanted rather to understand better the general unsatisfaction with Nextion which is often expressed in these forums (and which are sometimes opposed to my professional experience).

Well like I say, no self valuing hardware manufacture that I’ve ever known of would ever use a nextion display in there own product. Esp when it’s a realitivly easy thing to make your own HMI workflow from scratch as Im currently doing.

Nextion in concept of making uis simple and quick is a good concept. So mockups might be used on it. But full blown applications would not.

No manufacturer will put there product on the line by allowing them selves to be at the whim of a third party product like this. Esp if 1 the third party is Chinese, and 2 has this reputation.

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I honestly can’t think of a single mass-produced product in North America or Western Europe that uses TJC/Nextion in any capacity. If the product has any degree of complexity at all, there will be an MCU somewhere already, which means you don’t really need the Nextion MCU. That pretty much just leaves the touchscreen itself.

I am as small-time as it gets and I sell a handful of devices on Tindie, and for my volume the tradeoff between development time and device cost makes the Nextion feasible. But that math only works out if you’re running extremely small volumes.

For example, say I can get a Nextion 2.4" Basic for $10 in volume. A similar 2.4" touchscreen can be had for < $2 without the TJC/Nextion bits. TJC/Nextion provide a very nice development environment that any idiot can use (I’m exhibit A here). That $2 touchscreen is going to require more work from the development team. If I’m going to sell 100,000 units, that’s $800k I could spend on a development team, or more realistically, $50k I could spend on development and $750k I could put in my pocket.

There’s no way for the math to work out in TJC/Nextion’s favor when there’s any sort of scale involved. The product development environment is well suited for rapid development, but the pricing and limitations of the environment mean it’s only suited for prototyping or short-run projects.

Further, you have the issue outlined in the OP. No organization can be confident that the part they spec from Nextion today is going to be the part they receive in their next order. If you question Nextion about it, they’ll stop communicating with you and ban any accounts you’ve opened with them. These sorts of supply chain issues mean NOBODY in their right mind would spec this part. It’s single-source, and the single source is not trusted or accountable.

That’s why it’s so hard to understand the overall posture of the Nextion team w/r/t the hobbyist/enthusiast community. They’re convinced that they have a industrial/commercial part that they’re selling, and so they actively push away hobbyists and prototype shops while chasing after commercial users. Unfortunately, due to the issues outlined above, nobody in industry would consider this platform for anything that would be produced at scale. So what they’re left with are commercial users who either can’t get their shit together to develop against the bare LCD, or who operate at very small volumes.

I know that those users are out there, and according to @Fjodor there apparently are several in Eastern Europe, but man it feels like Nextion is missing a major market, which is the only market where their products make sense, simply by being jerks to anyone that isn’t in the commercial space.

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Not that we all need to but its good to remind ourselves if nextion was the bastion of productivity and development, we wouldnt have this forum in the first place. This place exists because the people behind nextion are; 1 toxic to any possible negative comment even if its constructive criticism or hardware suggestion, 2 actively work to drown out and ban users who have any kind of criticism of there product, 3 treat there loyal users with contempt, 4 have clearly shown to introduce quality fade while keeping there prices high…

Also One other criticism i have is directly connected with my display quality issue… They dont even want anyone to know what LCD panel they use. So I cant even find a pin and chipset comparable panel that I may fit myself.

Adding to what luma said and what I alluded to previously. One of the major things any hardware developer will make sure of, is they have control of the supply chain… They will need to know each part and where it comes from and know that the part they have picked will be the part they get. Nextion can not guarantee that.

For instance as Luma and a few others know I recently made a small embedded graphics display dev board. The LCD is from buydisplay and I know the exsact model and pin out of that display. I also know if buydisplay went under in all likelihood I will be able to find an alternative supplier as the pinout is fairly common.
I used an STm32 micro controller. And sure while ive had to tackle with fake chips as Im going basement bargain prices, there are tons of places I can go to to get that micro controller. And the same with the graphics co-processor. Its a part that nearly all major electronic component stockists have.

I control the supply chain. I know the parts i’m getting and i know that 99 times out of a hundred those parts will be what theyre meant to be and match the spec I ordered them as, and if something went wrong Im able to go elsewhere for the part.

It is the same for nearly all major hardware developers. Sure the development time might be a bit longer making a complete UI from scratch with no dedicated IDE (though theree are other development options too that adds IDEs and what not) but its robust. if it breaks i know what to look for, rather than being left guessing with Nextions shoddy support and documentation, or just left wondering if its just a bug in there system… (there’s plenty of them)

Like I say nextions strong point right now is rapid prototyping… Mockups… something to get an idea on before you take it to full development with proper dedicated hardware.

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Recently I had a comparison test between the basic 3.2 lcd (blue pcb) with an enchanced lcd (black).

The old buy of the blue was far better in luminance and of course viewing angle.

Too disappointed…
Ioannis

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