BOOXTablet Note Air 4C 6G 64G E Ink Tablet Color ePaper Notebook

First, it's a bit of a stretch to call this a "tablet". Yes, it runs Android. Yes, it's the size of a tablet. But if you buy this thing hoping to watch Youtube videos, you'll be sadly mistaken.However, if you're looking for a device that works as an eBook reader, note-taking device, and news/email reader, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it.I come to the Books Note from the Kobo Elipsa. Both were bought for the same reason. I wanted a large screen book reader that would also allow me to take notes for work in PDF format that could then be uploaded to my work computer. The Elipsa was a good ebook reader, but the note-taking functionality was painful. There was a significant amount of lag in the stylus while writing, and the stylus was battery powered (and required "AAAA" batteries, which can be challenging to find).Let me preface this by saying that, yes, the Note Air is at least one (or maybe two) generations newer with its e-ink technology. Which leads to smaller/thinner screens, performance enhancements, etc. It feels surprisingly thin in the hand, but it has a good heft to it, and the "build quality feel" (highly subjective), "feels good." Even though the screen sizes are similar, the Note Air feels significantly less bulky. The screen pixel size spec is identical to the Elipsa when in black-and-white mode, and is twice the size of Elipsa pixels when in color mode.In most ways that's where the direct comparison ends. The Note Air gives you so much more control over how the screen operates that it's almost scary. As we noted above, since the Note Air runs a modified Android, you can actually go to the Play store and download apps. The Note Air allows you to individually configure how the screen works with each app, how frequently it refereshes, etc. You can also force an immediate refresh if you're seeing ghosting.The eBook reader app works very well. I left it on default settings and the font was easy to read, linespacing did not appear cluttered and refresh going from page to page was NOTICEABLY faster than the Elipsa. The one gotcha is DRM. I'd expect most people reading this to know, but the built-in eReader app for the Note Air doesn't work with DRM'ed epubs. There are multiple ways around this, however:1. You can go to the App Store and download the Kindle, Nook, or Barnes & Noble reader of your choice, synchronize all of your books, and away you go.2. As the wise say, you can become familiar with Apprentice Harper and his facinating work.The note-taking app, on the other hand was just out-and-out phenomenal. When I first opened the stylus that came with the Note Air, I looked for a battery level, couldn't find one, and hoped that it had enough battery left to let me test. And then I found out that the stylus was Wacom-compatible and was completely passive. No need to charge the stylus. Having used active styluses on iPads and Pixel tablets, this was more of an earthshattering revelation than it should have been. The digitizer on the Note Air is FAST and accurate, and it feels like I really am writing on paper.The only gotcha with the stylus is that, since it's passive and requires neither circuitry nor battery, it's very light, and I dislike the longitudinal lines or ribs they put on it. They reduce comfort in long writing sessions.Battery life is great - I use the thing probably 3 - 4 hours a day as either an eReader or a note taking device, and I can comfortably get 3-4 days out of a battery charge. I know some have complained about the Boox cover/sleeve/case, as it does not have a hole in front of the charging port. This means you need to either leave your case open (or remove it altogether) for charging. I expect they did that to prevent accidental damage to the USB4 port, but regardless, it's not a big deal to me.Last, color - the color accuracy/saturation is very good for an eink device, but that's damning it with faint praise. When it comes to eink technology, we're still in the 1990's dithered era of digital images. Even though I'll freely admit that a picture on my Note 4 doesn't hold a candle to the same picture on my Pixel Tablet, it's better than any color picture I've ever seen on any other eink devices. However, when it comes to things like cover art for my library, things look perfectly fine.Last thing is synchronizing content to and from the Note Air. The easy path is to go to the referenced boox website and set up an account. You only need either a cell number or an email. It wants you to give both, but one or the other will work. Once that is done, you can open your Note Air on your home's wifi system, and drag-and-drop content to or from the tablet to your desktop. Note that this is browser-based, so it works on all operating systems (Windows, MacOS, and Linux). Supposedly, there's a better synchronization app available for Windows only, but that's not an option for me.Bottom line: if you want an ebook reader that you can take notes on (and can annotate books), this is the device you've been waiting for. If you want a regular tablet, you'll hate this device.

I had been looking at the Boox Air4C for a while. I had a Kindle Scribe, and I wanted integration with Cloud storage and a better way to organize notes than the Kindle's folders.I got that with the Boox. It runs almost any Android app (except Amazon Shopping, for some reason), and the built-in handwriting Calendar and Note-taking apps are great for replacing paper notes. I finally got rid of my paper notebook and exclusively use the Boox. The speed is good, and the writing recognition surprises me. I can have a handwritten note and search for a word I wrote, and it finds it - and my handwriting is pretty poor.The only two things that aren't the best are the screen and battery life. The screen is more "dull" than the Kindle display. With no backlighting, the Kindle display is crisper than the Boox. I believe this is because of additional color filters on the screen. As a result, I need to use the backlighting all the time to get a good display. That then results in suboptimal battery life. If I use the device for an hour, the battery usually decreases by 10 to 12%. I wish Boox had an option to turn the backlight off sooner than the display going to sleep, and have it so that when you touch the display, the backlight comes back on. Now, when the screen times out, it goes to sleep mode, and you need to press the power button to bring it back on. The operation is quick, but not as convenient as tapping the screen. Now, when it is in sleep mode, there appears to be almost no battery drain, which is impressive.I had tried using an iPad as a paper book replacement, and the battery life was always an issue. Boox, while not perfect, fulfills the need for a paper book replacement with many additional features.

First, the hardware is overall quite good, with the exception of the battery life. Because this generation of color screen requires a backlight to see indoors, the battery life is actually pretty poor. You can get 1-2 days of heavy use out of this thing--not the 2 weeks that eInk readers commonly achieve.More troubling is the security risk posed by being forced into Boox's Chinese apps that transmit telemetry to their servers and require syncing with their cloud. You can pretty much bet that they are using GPT AI to mine and train on all of your notes, personal information and business information. I also read, but didn't confirm, that the device doesn't support encryption of the data, like virtually every other Android device does today. So, if you lose it, identity thieves are going to have a field day. Also, they heavily customize the OS, but refuse to release their changes back to the open source community as required by the GPL. Thus, it's impossible to verify that their base OS software is secure. Even if it is secure (doubtful), it's still storing all of your data on their servers if you use their cloud for sync and backup. They also wouldn't legally need to release the code for their apps, regardless.Another issue with this tablet is that its stuck on Android 13, even though Google is dropping security updates and support for that soon. Boox is also constantly playing a cat-and-mouse game with Google to retain access to the Google Play app store because of the security, privacy and GPL violations. It seems the reason many of these Chinese tablets are stuck on Android 13 is because there were significant security, privacy and compliance improvements made in Android 14 that make it hard for them to update.When I purchased the device, my intent was to strip out as much of the Boox apps and software as possible, firewall the rest of it and use Microsoft or other 3rd party apps like Nebo or OneNote for notes. Interestingly, Nebo does not work at all--the pen input does not seem to register outside of the "test" panel. OneNote works, but the Android version lacks most features. This would force me back to their built-in apps.You have to decide whether the security risk is worth it for you. If you are a poor student using this for taking notes and reading novels, perhaps its fine. If you are a business professional with financial assets and sensitive information, it likely isn't worth the risk.In summary, I was hoping to de-sinofy this tablet and use the underlying hardware and base OS for my purposes, but for various technical reasons, that just wasn't practical. So, it's back to the two-device solution: the Kindle or the Remarkable and the 2 in 1 laptop, iPad Pro or Microsoft Surface tablets for everything else.