Boox Note Air4 C Review: A Colorful Blend of E-Ink Tablet and E-Reader

As an avid book collector and insufferable neat freak, I have a strict rule against marking up pages in my physical books. That’s why the Onyx Boox Note Air4 C, a $500 digital notebook and annotation tool, offered an alluring alternative: Mark up e-books and PDFs as much as you want — and in color. I was intrigued.

But first, I had to figure out how to navigate it.

Despite paper books being my preferred method of reading, my 2022 Amazon Kindle Paperwhite e-reader has become a constant travel companion. Yet Kindles are known for their intentional limitations; if you want to do much more than download and read books, you’re out of luck (the Kindle Scribe being the exception). Which, of course, makes using the device pretty straightforward. 

The Boox Note Air4 C opens up a world of possibilities but also adds some complexity, given the plethora of onboard capabilities. Along with jotting down notes on a paper-like, 10.3-inch display, you can download all your favorite apps, thanks to Android 13 (my thoughts on whether this is necessary are forthcoming). You can also transfer files across your tablet, computer and phone and sync your notes to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or Onyx Cloud. The best part: No subscription is needed (take note, reMarkable). 

Overall, once you overcome a slight learning curve and adjustment period, the Note Air4 C is an impressive device that packs a range of customizable functions in a sleek, lightweight design. Here are my key takeaways.

Smooth writing, impressive color display

Color is obviously what makes this E Ink tablet pop. The Note Air4 C features a 300 pixels-per-inch display for black-and-white content and 150ppi for color. There’s a solid range of font and color options for marking up documents, which you can do using the accompanying pen. And although colors end up limited to softer hue across apps, that more subdued appearance ends up being easier on the eyes. In most cases, there’s no need for the comparatively vibrant colors you’ll find on a phone or iPad, but if you’re looking at a photo or video, you’ll undoubtedly notice the discrepancy (more on that later).

Speaking of easy on the eyes, you can control not only the tablet’s brightness but also how cool or warm the display’s colors are. That can make late-night reading or writing in bright sunlight more seamless. 

The Note Air4 C’s display and accompanying stylus offer an authentic paper-and-pen-like experience, and at just over 10 inches, the display replicates the approximate dimensions of a standard sheet of paper or notebook. Writing feels natural, and the pen glides effortlessly across the surface. The tablet is 5.8 millimeters thick and weighs 420 grams, making it easy to toss into a tote bag or backpack. (If you want to fit this in a purse, you’ll need to reach for one of your larger options.) 

The pen attaches magnetically to the side of the tablet, though you’ll want to use the accompanying case to ensure it stays secure. It’s comfortable and easy to hold and use, and a cap keeps the tip from getting damaged. I do wish there was an eraser function at the other end, but that’s more of a nice-to-have perk I can live without. The on-screen eraser function otherwise operates smoothly and can remove markings with a simple stroke, compared to the reMarkable Paper Pro’s more granular approach, in which each area needs to be passed over. More critically, there isn’t any noticeable lag when writing, which really helps to sell this as an alternative to traditional notebooks and paper. 

When jotting down notes, there’s plenty of fun to be had when it comes to choosing different fonts, colors and brushstrokes. And being able to blend typed and handwritten text makes everything from filling out to-do lists to marking up recipes and PDFs more versatile. 

Another favorite functionality is split-screen mode, which makes tasks like jotting down ideas while reading and comparing documents easier. You can also drag the dividing bar to adjust how much of the screen each app takes up. 

And now, onto e-books.

Read — and write — between the lines

Perhaps the biggest learning curve was sorting out what the Note Air4 C can and can’t do when it comes to reading and marking up e-books. The tablet has some preloaded books that can be accessed via the NeoReader, which allows for handwritten and typed annotations, highlights and zoom capabilities. But many of those books are, shall we say, vintage — think Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The good news is you can download books (and documents) and transfer them to the tablet using a USB or Boox Drop, which can then be accessed via the NeoReader. But unless you have a way to (legally) download said books, you’ll have to make do with what’s already on board the device or use a third-party reading app.

I downloaded both Kindle and Libby, but because there’s no native capability to leave handwritten annotations within those apps, they very much functioned the way they would on a phone or Kindle. For instance, I could still highlight text in my Kindle books, but that’s a standard function I’d already have otherwise. You could use split-screen to display a notebook on one half of the device’s screen and your book on the other, but I’m not sure that’s as helpful as having the notes directly on the page. 

I did play around with the FreeMark tool, which, as the name suggests, lets you mark up any part of the tablet, from the home screen to a web page to a Kindle book. But those additions are simply saved as screenshots in the Gallery, which I suppose is better than nothing. 

Ultimately, when it comes to a digital reading experience, I’m more likely to reach for my smaller, lighter, more straightforward Kindle. But the ability to switch between notetaking and reading is still an admittedly handy capability if that’s of interest. 

You can do a lot — perhaps a little too much

Access to a world of apps via the Google Play store is super handy; I particularly appreciated emailing and downloading documents and accessing all my Google Drive files. If you’re taking notes and need to look something up, you can just pull up the on-device browser, all without switching gadgets. But I’m not sure there’s a need for every app on here. 

Just for the heck of it, I downloaded TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, though I was under no illusions that an E Ink tablet would offer an ideal viewing option for these platforms. While the ability to access the apps is impressive, the actual experience is not. Videos lag, and colors are too muted to decipher everything being shown. Admittedly, I was impressed with its smooth navigation and scrolling, but that’s not enough to justify using social media apps on a digital notebook. 

To mitigate lag and ghosting, the term for when traces of the previous page still appear on screen, the Note Air4 C features different refresh modes, including an HD display that’s ideal for reading, a Balanced display for moving through documents, Fast Mode for browsing sites and an Ultrafast Display for playing videos. Those options can help optimize for different functions like reading or TikTok scrolling and make quite a difference.

Still, I’d say if you’re looking for a doomscroll reading break, it’s best to reach for your phone. 

Storage and battery

The Note Air4 C packs 6GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage and also features a microSD card slot for expandable memory. There’s also a 3,700-mAh battery, which lasts through several days of regular use. There’s a USB-C port, inconveniently on the left side of the device, meaning you’ll need to remove the cover when it’s time to charge. I also regret to inform you that while the device comes with a charging cable, it doesn’t include a power brick — a sign of the times. 

Final thoughts

The Boox Note Air4 C is one of the most versatile E Ink tablets on the market today. It’s made all the more colorful by the range of available writing and annotation tools. It has a long-lasting battery, a satisfying paper-like display and a natural-feeling stylus with no noticeable lag. 

The presence of Android 13 makes this a genuinely multipurpose tablet, though it has its fair share of strengths and weaknesses (TL;DR: do your social media doomscrolling somewhere else). 

While I appreciated the range of annotation capabilities across books and PDFs, I wish that extended more to third-party platforms like Kindle — though I understand that’s on them to enable. But with its limited preloaded library, unless you have means of (legally) securing PDFs of your favorite books, there’s not much more you can do on the Note Air4 C from a reading standpoint that you couldn’t do on a plain e-reader. That said, having the option to quickly hop between a novel to a digital notebook to a web browser — or to enable split-screen mode and multitask — is surely an impressive capability.

Altogether, the Note Air4 C is a highly capable and customizable gadget for readers, notetakers and multitaskers alike, though to varying degrees, depending on the platform and task at hand. 

Watch this: New 2024 Kindles Just Announced: Hands-On With All of Them

06:07