Onyx Boox Nova Air C review: color E Ink on an ambitious tablet

Some folks use camomile tea, others use respiration workouts, however, for me, essentially the most dependable tactic for attending to sleep rapidly is to keep away from screens earlier than mattress. But, really doing so requires some creativity if I need to sustain with information on-line. My present system includes saving articles to the read-later app Instapaper, which sends a every day digest to my Kindle every night. But it surely’s a hacky method the place articles usually aren’t formatted correctly and typically don’t seem in any respect.

I might change to a Kobo, which affords native integration with rival read-later app Pocket, however the Onyx Boox Nova Air C affords a way more tantalizing various. Not like both a Kindle or Kobo, its E Ink show is able to displaying colours, and it’s working a modified model of Android that means that you can obtain and run a wide range of apps that go far past studying ebooks. It opens the door to quite a few read-later apps in addition to full-on phrase processors and third-party note-taking software program. It even features a stylus for handwritten notes.

At $420, it’s dear in comparison with Amazon’s Kindles, which regularly value properly underneath the $200 mark. However that worth will get you one thing nearer to a full-on Android pill than an e-reader. It’s only a disgrace that the whole package deal doesn’t totally ship on the promise.

The Onyx Boox Nova Air C is an unassuming system, with large bezels round its 7.Eight-inch display and a typically plastic-feeling building. Its energy button is on the highest left, whereas a USB-C port is on the underside alongside a pair of downward-firing audio system. They’re roughly as unhealthy as I anticipated them to be, nevertheless it’s higher than nothing. (Amazon’s Kindles haven’t included them for years.) Internally, the Nova Air C is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 processor with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.

The principle attraction right here is the colour E Ink show. The Nova Air C is provided with E Ink’s Kaleido Plus display, which makes use of a colour filter layer on prime of a extra typical E Ink panel to supply four,096 colours. The method comes with some apparent drawbacks. For starters, the display can’t show colour content material with the identical decision as black and white, so whereas the show reaches 1404 x 1872 in black and white (300ppi), it’s restricted to a paltry 468 x 624 (100ppi) when displaying colour. And even then, the colours are way more muted than what you’d get from even an affordable LCD panel, whose vary of colours may be counted within the hundreds of thousands — not the hundreds. My former colleague Sam Byford described the colours on the same Kaleido-equipped PocketBook Shade as like “a newspaper that’s pale over a couple of days,” which felt like a really apt description of the Nova Air C.

And but, even fundamental colour is best than no colour in any respect. The Nova Air C’s colours may look washed out and low decision, however the essence of the picture stays — in contrast to on a Kindle, the place colour imagery simply seems damaged. I’d virtually liken utilizing the Kaleido display to watching a international film with subtitles; you miss out on lots of the subtlety, however you’ll be able to nonetheless basically perceive what you’re .

I briefly tried watching video on the Nova Air C’s display by way of YouTube, however I wouldn’t advocate it. Content material seems extremely juddery because of the display’s low refresh price, colours look washed out, and there’s an enormous quantity of ghosting. You’ll be able to see what’s happening in a pinch, however I’d fairly watch video on actually every other display.

Regardless of the colour, the pill retains the advantages of an E Ink show. I had no situation studying the Nova Air C in shiny daylight, and, with a small enhance to its display illumination function, I used to be additionally in a position to learn it in low mild earlier than mattress with no eye pressure. Battery life can be as spectacular as every other e-reader. I’ve been utilizing the pill on and off for the higher a part of two months, and its battery stage remains to be sitting at 55 %.

That stated, a part of the rationale for this spectacular life is prone to be the Nova Air C’s aggressive energy administration settings, which, by default, see the pill totally shut down when you don’t use it for simply 15 minutes. This could imply ready round 27 seconds for the pill besides up each time you need to use it. I’d counsel adjusting the “Energy-off timeout” in settings to at least one and even two days, which can permit the laptop computer to wake in a few seconds while you need to use it. However be ready to sacrifice somewhat battery life for this improve in responsiveness.

The spotlight of the Onyx Boox Nova Air C is its built-in note-taking app. Handwriting notes feels nice with the included stylus, with pen strokes showing on the display near-instantaneously and four,096 ranges of stress sensitivity that provide lots of versatility. There are a number of various brush types and colours, and the software program can try to transcribe your handwriting into typed textual content and even emoji.

This character recognition labored okay in restricted instances however struggled with prolonged passages. As soon as written, it’s simple to export notes to a PDF or PNG file by merely scanning a QR code together with your smartphone or sharing them to a different app on the pill. All of it makes the Nova Air C an important system for taking notes by hand.

However making an attempt to make use of the pill like a standard e-reader is extra sophisticated, and also you’ll have to leap via extra hoops than on competing gadgets just like the Kindle. Though the Nova Air C technically comes with a built-in “Retailer,” in observe it appeared to be crammed primarily with public area works, and I couldn’t discover any of the fashionable books I hoped to learn.

That leaves you with a few different choices. You’ll be able to obtain ebooks from elsewhere on the web after which switch them to the pill, and it helps a great vary of filetypes, together with PDF, ePub, TXT, RTF, and MOBI. However, once I really bought an ePUB from eBooks.com and tried to load it onto the Nova Air C, I found that it doesn’t assist the Adobe DRM the shop makes use of. (The one DRM the e-reader helps is the Chinese language-focused JD DRM.)

Fortunately, Onyx is utilizing a closely modified model of Android 11 as software program on the Nova Air C, which suggests you’re not restricted to utilizing its built-in software program. You’ll be able to obtain and set up most apps from the Play Retailer as if you have been utilizing every other Android pill, together with, crucially, Amazon’s Kindle app. Getting Google Play Companies arrange on the system is a little bit of a bizarre course of that requires you to hop via a few unusual hoops. However, as soon as I used to be arrange, it was comparatively simple to profit from my preexisting Kindle library. Whereas I used to be there, I downloaded a few different Android apps: Instapaper for studying all the net articles I bookmark for studying later all through the course of my day; Obsidian for note-taking; and Comixology for studying comics.

That is what I hoped could be the Nova Air C’s superpower: the power to obtain and set up no matter Android apps I needed.

Take note-taking. The Nova Air 2 comes with a good note-taking app that works very properly with the stylus. But it surely works much less properly for typed notes, which you may need to do when you have a Bluetooth keyboard to pair with the pill.

So, as a substitute, I downloaded the note-taking app Obsidian. It labored properly, permitting me to sort up notes far sooner than I might ever handwrite them. And, in contrast to when utilizing a laptop computer or my cellphone, I might fortunately accomplish that late at night time with out having to take a look at a shiny display. You may use no matter phrase processing or note-taking software program takes your fancy — as long as it has an Android app. It’s additionally doable to obtain various stylus-compatible apps, however my expertise was a bit hit or miss. OneNote labored properly, however INKredible felt laggy with Onyx’s stylus.

I used to be additionally in a position to get Instapaper up and working with minimal problem. I had full entry to all my saved articles prepared for me to learn with out having to undergo the clunky sync course of that Instapaper’s Kindle integration requires. Comixology labored okay for studying comics, however the display was simply barely too low in decision and small for it to really feel like I used to be getting the many of the expertise.

However, in a short time, I began encountering points with these apps that had clearly by no means been designed with E Ink screens in thoughts. You management apps on the Nova Air C with a mix of faucets and swipes, similar as you’ll on every other Android pill. However its E Ink display is a lot much less responsive than the 60Hz LCD or OLED panels present in most different Android gadgets that it’s exhausting to “really feel” your method round every app. You’ll be able to’t half-swipe to verify what a full swipe may do; you must totally commit and hope you bought it proper.

Issues really feel loads higher while you begin utilizing bodily buttons to manage the pill, which is made doable by way of Onyx’s magnetic Nova Air case. This not solely provides a protecting cowl to the pill but additionally features a pair of bodily quantity buttons, which many reading-focused Android apps will allow you to remap into page-turning controls. In case you’re going to select up a Nova Air C, I’d strongly advocate getting this case for it. It’s offered individually from the pill for $59.99, which feels costly given how vital it’s.

I had very excessive hopes for the Onyx Boox Nova Air C. I needed it to have the ability to do all of it: learn books; learn on-line articles; and act as a repository for all my notes — all in a type issue that I might fortunately use late at night time with out eye pressure.

And, sure, it will probably completely do all of these items. However the extra I requested of the pill, the extra I might really feel its E Ink display creaking underneath the stress. E Ink panels are greater than responsive sufficient for studying books utilizing software program designed particularly with them in thoughts. However throw in an app designed for a 60Hz touchscreen, and it may be a battle to make use of. And packing on this a lot performance signifies that the Nova Air C struggles to match a easy Kindle with regards to merely with the ability to flip it open and instantly begin studying. You must select the app, and presumably even the e-book, first.

I needed loads from the Nova Air C, and at $450, I feel it’s affordable to anticipate it. Amazon’s Kindles value roughly half of what Onyx is asking, and you’ll even get an alternate e-reader with a colour display from PocketBook for $234. Or, in case your priorities are much less about having an E Ink display and extra about having the performance of a pill, you possibly can get an iPad Mini with an Eight.Three-inch display for $499 or a base stage iPad with a 10.2-inch display for $329. None of those gadgets will tick all of the bins. However, then once more, neither does the Nova Air C.

Images by Jon Porter / The Verge