If you’re into crypto you certainly know Ledger, the company currently leading the hardware wallet market.

I bought my first Ledger in 2017 and found tremendous value in it. The feeling of truly owning your digital assets while keeping them hack-free is just priceless.

However, I’ve never enjoyed using my Ledger Nano S. Mostly because of its poor design’s usability — a tiny screen and two buttons for navigation — and the need for a desktop app to use it.

The ledger Nano X fixes the latter issue, which is why I recently purchased it. Thanks to its Bluetooth capability, it is now easy to make transactions on the go using their companion mobile app Ledger Live.

Let’s see how I experienced its unboxing and onboarding.

The Ledger Nano X comes in a box with a packaging artwork that is on par with their rebranding back in November 2021.

Surprisingly, Ledger opted for a bilingual packaging copy which makes the back side very busy and unpleasing to read - probably due to regulations like Canada that requires both French and English copy to sell in retail.

The box looks clean and minimalistic, but it doesn’t feel great to hold it because of the black sleeve’s sharp edges. These edges feel sharp mostly because the sleeve doesn’t fit the white box tighly.

Opening only one side of the sleeve (the bottom side for instance) would have added extra space to declutter the busy packaging copy on the back and even leave rooms to write getting-started steps.

Removing the black sleeve gives us a clean white box with a recessed Ledger outline on the top side. It looks premium and Apple-like.

However, opening this white box feels very cheap. There isn’t any anticipation effect whatsoever. It opens too easily in my opinion - I would have kept the side walls of the top lid go all the way down to give it more travel when opening it.

The Ledger Nano X feels great in hands. The extra weight coming from the battery and the larger hinge makes the device feel much more valuable than the Nano S.

One criticism: the two buttons don’t have the same click quality. The button on the steel hinge is firm and has a confident click. The one on the plastic body feels quite cheap. It gives a strange asymmetrical design usability.

The hinge is crafted from a piece of stainless steel with a sandblasted finish and a laser-engraved logo, giving it an Apple-like touch.

Ledger’s website claims that the steel has a brushed finish, but its uniform matt surface indicates it has been sandblasted.

The light leakage all around the 128x64px screen makes it look even cheaper than it already is. I’m surprised that Ledger didn’t manage to fix this since the release of the Nano X in 2019.

Overall, I really enjoy using the Ledger Live app on iOS.

The user interface is clean and easy to navigate. I never feel struggling to find what I am looking for in the app.

The device onboarding process is simple and straightforward, with an extra quiz to ensure you understand what the device is meant to do.

I noticed a little error at the start of the onboarding process: the app stated it would take 10 minutes to set up my Nano X, but then 30 minutes on the next screen.

This is probably the worse part of this onboarding: writing 24 words on a piece of paper. It removes all the magic. After more than 10 minutes writing these words on the recovery sheets, I still need to spend time figuring out where to store them securely.

Once your Ledger is set up, the app has a clean and pleasing navigation experience, in contrast to the firmware UX which is not very intuitive.

One bad note about the app: I find it a little confusing to read "Add Account" when trying to add a wallet, as this could lead users to believe that it means adding a user account.

On my first attempt to install the account the app failed at finding my Ledger. It worked on the second try.

Developing a seamless experience using Bluetooth is definitely challenging, especially for Android devices with their diversity of hardware and OS.

Considering that hardware wallets are meant to always be used near a phone, an NFC communication would have made more sense for transaction signing.

In overall, Ledger Nano X and the Ledger Live app do the job really well. It is a delight to finally be able to use my iPhone to secure and manage my digital asset.

On the downside, this 24-word backup process is what makes Ledger not suitable for the masses. It is such a terrible experience to have a state-of-the-art encryption device in your hand, while still having a backup of it on a piece of paper that any thief could use to steal your valuable cryptos and NFTs.

I’m surprised to see that Ledger still didn’t want to tackle this problem with Ledger Stax. A multi-sig wallet could be the solution to this seed phrase problem.

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