This Android-powered e-ink tablet is better than a Kindle, but it’s still niche in my life

Summary

The Note Air4 C benefits greatly from Android, since you can access books, documents, and more from virtually any source, unlike Kindles.
Even websites and apps are pleasant to read on the tablet’s 10.3-inch color e-ink display, which Amazon has yet to match.
The Air4 C is also excellent for sketching and note taking, but you may still find yourself using other devices unless you’re committed to taking handwritten notes every day.

For a while now, I’ve mostly been an iPad person when it comes to tablets. I have problems with iPads — which I’ve talked about at length — but for portable entertainment and a few light productivity tasks, they’re tough to beat. Indeed, while I got a Kindle Paperwhite as a gift in 2012, I stopped using it for reading just a few years later. I had to make a conscious decision to use it, whereas I often already had my iPad with me, and a slow black-and-white screen didn’t lend itself to reading websites, comics, or graphic novels. I was willing to put up with the weight and eye strain of Apple’s hardware for its advantages.

That’s why Boox’s recent collection of e-ink devices caught my eye, particularly the Note Air4 C. While it still shares a lot in common with Kindles, it’s easily more useful than most. I put it to the test for a few weeks to see if it could fill in some gaps in my tech life — particularly, encouraging me to read more and take handwritten notes.

Brand: Boox
Screen: 10.3-inch 2480 x 1860 pixel resolution(300 ppi) Kaleido 3 (4,096 colors) Carta 1200 glass screen with flat cover-lens
Storage: 64GB
OS: Android 13

The 10.3-inch Boox Note Air4 C features a color ePaper Display and support for a stylus.

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What a big difference Android makes

No going back to exclusive e-readers

If you’ve already got a collection of e-books linked to a particular platform, be it Kindle, Kobo, or something else, it might not seem like a big deal to switch to an Android e-reader. Once I made the leap myself, though, it felt ridiculous that I’d previously been limited to a single store. I’ve accumulated books from a variety of sources over the years, and having access to anything on the Google Play Store means I can read nearly all of them. I never want to be chained to a single storefront again, since now, there’s nothing stopping me from reading God’s Problem on Kindle, then jumping to V for Vendetta in Google Play Books.

Well, almost nothing. Boox uses custom software to optimize apps for its e-ink technology, and if an app isn’t optimized, you can get sub-par performance in areas like refresh rates. Thankfully, I never dealt with this for too long — everything I downloaded got the treatment quickly enough, and you can always tweak e-ink performance on the fly using a swipe-up control panel.

I never want to be chained to a single storefront again.

Oddly, something I really enjoyed was scrolling through the Reddit app, at least after adjusting its settings to minimize embedded media. I browse Reddit more than I post on it, and an e-ink display makes long threads easier to consume. I also found myself less distracted by other apps, a topic I’ll return to a bit later.

Are there downsides to the Air4 C’s use of Android? Absolutely. For one thing, you’ll want to stick to Boox’s proprietary notetaking/drawing tools, since input lag with third-party apps can be intolerable, and none of them are designed around e-ink’s limitations. Likewise, you can forget about playing most games on the tablet, or watching any video. It just isn’t built to handle those things — sure, video will load, but even a high-performance e-ink screen can’t keep up with the framerates or color gamuts of modern video. It’s like watching a muted impressionist painting.

Remember also that the tablet uses a custom fork of Android 13, which is two versions behind the latest public release for phones. That’s good enough, but don’t expect all the latest conveniences, especially anything connected to Google Gemini.

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Sketches and notes in an e-ink wonderland

More appealing on paper

Sketching using the Boox Note Air4 C's built-in notetaking app.

I can confirm that the Note Air4 C’s built-in note taking tools are both useful and practical. Boox’s interface isn’t that intuitive at first, but it only takes a few minutes to figure out the basics, such as creating notebooks and changing pen shapes and colors. Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, there are also a variety of templates you can use, such as grids, lines, and daily/weekly planners. If you like, you can import custom templates via PDFs and other images.

I suspect that you have to be committed to making handwritten notes a lifestyle, and that’s just not me.

Personally, I only ever needed a lined template, which I used to create a brainstorming notebook. It was surprisingly rewarding to jot down ideas this way — removing distractions forced me to concentrate, and using the tablet’s bundled stylus was pleasing on a tactile level while “connecting” me better to the ideas I was working on. The pairing of a stylus with paper-like screen texture even encouraged me to draw a bit, which is something I hadn’t done in years. I can imagine artists with actual talent wanting to do sketch work with the Air4 C, even if they’d ultimately want to transition to a device with more advanced tools. I’m just impressed that there are layering and lasso selection options.

Ultimately, I didn’t end up taking as many notes as I expected, despite flexible export options and how pleasing the experience can be. As with a tablet like the Remarkable Paper Pro, I suspect that you have to be committed to making handwritten notes a lifestyle — and that’s just not me. My job demands maximum efficiency to get articles submitted on time, and even after work, I often have little incentive to go grab an e-ink tablet and stylus when tapping in my iPhone’s Notes and Reminders apps will do.

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The beauty of reading again

Doing one better than Amazon

Reading V for Vendetta outdoors on a Boox Note Air4 C.

The good news is that I did find myself engaged by reading on the tablet. Even on a purely technical level, it’s no wonder why — an e-ink display is less eye-searing than LCD or OLED, and Boox’s 10.3-inch color screen is more versatile than anything you’ll find from Amazon. Sure, the Kindle Colorsoft can handle comics and graphic novels, but it’s often too small to do them justice. The Kindle Scribe is appropriately sized, but without color technology, I might as well be reading on my old Paperwhite.

Reading on the Air4 C feels like an antidote for what ails me. My life is pretty stressful, if I’m honest — I need to consume a constant flood of information about the tech industry, and on top of that, I have a wife, child, and two physically demanding hobbies. Being able to immerse myself in a book with minimal distractions is calming, especially if I can do it outdoors on a sunny day. It’s possible to do that on an iPad or iPhone, of course — but those devices inevitably bombard me with notifications, not to mention the temptation to switch to something like Words With Friends or YouTube. I need something that can entertain me without worsening my already fragile attention span.

If the idea of combining paper-style note taking with a large color e-reader is deeply attractive, there’s little else that can compete with the Air4 C.

Would I recommend the Note Air4 C to most people? Probably not, since a lot of what you’re paying for is its sketching and note taking abilities, and $530 would go a long way towards buying an iPad with an Apple Pencil — which you can use for a lot more purposes. Alternately, if what you mostly want is an e-reader, it might be worth sacrificing on size to get something cheaper, like Boox’s own Go Color 7 Gen II.

If the idea of combining paper-style note taking with a large color e-reader is deeply attractive, though, there’s little else that can compete with the Air4 C, particularly given its support for Android. As I mentioned before, I’ve been spoiled — I can’t go back to a device that traps my library within a single store, e-ink or not.