This Android-powered e-ink tablet has a lot to offer

I’ve loved my Kindle—it’s probably the best purchase I’ve ever made. It’s a great e-reader, but Amazon has kept the Kindles very simple. It was only recently that I learned about Boox and its effort to push e-ink readers into the Android realm; it both made sense and not-so-much sense simultaneously. Then I used the Nova Air for a month and now I get it.

The Boox Nova Air is a $350 e-ink tablet that runs Android (man just how flexible this OS is!) and offers way more than a Kindle ever can — I can play Spotify on this while reading a book! I can even tweet and play some basic games, too, but that’s a constant reminder of the limitations of an e-ink display.If you’re looking for a versatile e-reader/note-taker, there’s a lot to like here. But you’ll have to be sure of what you’re getting into because there’s a learning curve.

Thanks to Android, the Boox Nova Air is far more useful than a Kindle can ever be and the bundled stylus makes this a great device to take notes on. However, know that Android on an e-ink display is a different ball game altogether — you need to be patient.

The Nova Air is a breath of fresh air in a market that’s been captured by boring, plastic devices. It’s wrapped in metal and has an understated grey colorway, contrasted by a shiny silver plastic strip at the back. The metal also has “natural spots” that look like they were spray-painted by a toothbrush. I like the look.

Unfortunately, it only took a few weeks of use to get several noticeable scuffs on the back. I’ve been gentle with it and used it with a case for at least half of that time. This might not be an issue for you depending on how picky you are. If you choose to not use a case, you’ll really appreciate the fact that it weighs 235 grams and is only 6.3mm thin. I can hold it for hours on end and not want to put it down to give my wrists a break.

This iPad-mini-sized tablet doesn’t have slim bezels, but that’s not bad because it gives your fingers a place to grip. The 7.8-inch e-ink grayscale display sits flush with the surface and comes with a pre-installed film which makes writing on it feel almost like writing on paper. The Nova Air lets you control the cold and warm LED lights independently, allowing you to adjust for maximum comfort. There’s an intuitive touch panel that runs along either side of the display. Swiping on the left one controls volume while swiping on the right one controls the brightness.

There are two speakers if you ever want to play music while reading, but they aren’t great and don’t get loud enough (I mostly pair my headphones over Bluetooth). I’m just happy to see them on an e-reader though.

The Nova Air comes with a pressure-sensitive stylus and replaceable nibs, and it’s unpowered so you won’t have to recharge. It snaps to the right edge of the device with the help of some powerful magnets. The stylus has ridges that run the length of its body for a better grip. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a built-in eraser.

There’s only one button on the device: the power button at the top. If you’re bent on getting page-flipping buttons, you might want to opt for the $389 bundle that comes with a magnetic flip case. It has two buttons to change pages, and it works perfectly.

If you care about what’s inside, the device runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 octa-core processor that’s paired with 3GB of DDR4X RAM and non-expandable 32GB eMMC storage. It supports both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz WiFi networks and has Bluetooth 5.0. There’s no headphone jack, so you’ll get a lot of use out of Bluetooth if you want to listen to audio on the Boox.

One thing I wish Boox took care of is water resistance. With the device being so capable, I don’t want to be limited by where I can use it; be it by the pool or while I’m taking care of my morning routine.

The tablet runs Android 10 with a custom interface on top and the e-ink makes things feel...slow. I mean it’s not actually slow; the internals are decent and apps seem to run fine on it. But in the world of high-refresh-rate displays, using Android on a low-refresh-rate display is an exercise in patience. You can bump the refresh rates (there are four modes to choose from), but the resulting ghosting is high enough to be bothersome. In its default state, the Nova Air lasts weeks on a charge.

The most obvious advantage of running Android though is the Google Play Store, but it’s not pre-installed. You’ll have to jump a few hoops to get it to work, but Boox does offer instructions to get you started. Once set up, you can do anything from writing tweets, accessing your cloud drives, to streaming music on your e-ink tablet. You can even install the Amazon Kindle app to access your existing library or get new books.

However, the experience is nowhere close to smooth and problem-free. It’s great to listen to music on Spotify and have access to files from Drive, but there’s no denying that e-ink displays can’t reproduce media well enough. This makes apps look all weird and some elements even illegible. It’s annoying and there’s nothing you can do about that.

The user interface is pretty straightforward. There are six main, self-explanatory, tabs that are all snapped in a sidebar: Library, Store, Notes, Storage, Apps, and Settings. The Library stores all your books and documents and stacks them on a virtual bookshelf, whereas Storage is a basic file manager. Boox also includes its own book store on the device but it’s chock-a-block full of royalty-free classics. Apps is where all pre-installed and third-party applications rest; it’s a pity you can’t pin any of these apps on the sidebar.

The in-built reader is feature-rich and there’s probably every format setting that you could tinker with to make reading comfortable on it. The in-build reader supports 17 file formats, including epub, rtf, ppt, pdf, cbz, and it makes file conversion a thing of the past. You can use the stylus to scribble over any of these files. The settings and rendering quality of the built-in reader trump running an app like Kindle on the Boox, but you will have to manage your library of DRM-free books the old-fashioned way. There’s the spit view feature too, in case you want to read and jot notes at the same time (or open any two apps) but the display is too small to do productive work. You can make it work, but it’s hard.

That brings us to the note-taking experience on the tablet. Writing on the Nova Air with the bundled stylus feels a lot closer to writing on paper than writing on an iPad or a Galaxy Tab feels like, and palm rejection is great. The pen is pressure-sensitive so it can help reproduce a bit of the distinct look of writing on paper, too. It’s a bummer that it lacks a button or surface that could let you quickly erase instead of having to change it manually on a not-so-responsive display. This was one of the biggest hurdles to taking down notes effectively. Things move quickly in lectures and meetings, and having to do three actions to erase something is not very efficient. It’s also a bit of trouble accessing documents in the middle of a lecture, but I learned to avoid that struggle by preparing beforehand.

Fortunately, Onyx is unveiling two new styluses that will be compatible with the Nova Air. One of them, the Pen Pro, has a grippier nib, and a built-in eraser at the top. We don’t have details about the pricing yet.

The notes can be sorted by notebooks and you can even set custom covers for each. I also like that you can have these notes sync to your laptop or tablet with the help of a built-in syncing service. Alternatively, you can use Evernote, Dropbox, or OneNote.

Diving a bit deeper into the writing experience, you can switch between a few kinds of pens. Inserting lines, shapes, and images is also a pretty straightforward experience. There’s an AI tool that can help convert your handwritten notes to clean documents with the help of OCR. However, the performance is shabby because it’s not particularly great at identifying things like bullet points and small diagrams that end up creeping their way into most notes. When it works, it’s neat, but you better write legibly.

There’s even an option to record audio while taking notes, in case you might want to review a lecture or a meeting but, shamefully, it’s no good. I recorded an entire lecture only to realize that the only noise it had picked was that of the stylus scribbling on the display.

Yes, if you’re in the need of a powerful e-reader or an e-ink productivity device. For all the limitations the e-ink display brings, the “slow” experience unexpectedly helped me be more productive. Since I couldn’t switch between the note-taking app and Twitter in a jiffy like I can on a tablet, I was forced to think twice before I opened Twitter — “I just checked it 5 minutes back. Should I really check it yet again? Maybe in five.” In a way, this completely summarizes the device and its use case. If you’re looking to buy a note-taking/e-reader that’s capable, but not capable enough to distract from the task at hand, the Nova Air is definitely something you should consider.

With Android behind it, it’s so much more useful as an e-reader than a Kindle can ever be, and Amazon’s device is already a great e-reader. At the same time, the $349 you’ll have to spend to get it should really make you wonder if this is really for you. The regular iPad, at a slightly lower price, can offer multimedia and everyday experiences that are multitudes better. You won’t get the weeks-long battery life of the Boox, though.

The software experience on my 5-year-old Kindle has scarcely changed over the years, and I wasn’t expecting much different from the Onyx Nova Air. However, this device is more a tablet than an e-reader, and that means updates are on the table. Only a few months after its launch, Boox has rolled out a new system update (v3.2) that offers visual tweaks and adds a plethora of features that further refines the experience. Unfortunately, it doesn’t bring with it an Android update; the

The first and probably the most noticeable change is the introduction of a revamped notification panel. It takes up less space than the previous one and allows you to quickly edit the toggles, which wasn’t possible earlier. This interface can be accessed with a swipe from the right half of the status bar, whereas notifications reveal themselves with a swipe from the left. The app icons have also been updated to look a bit modern, for the lack of a better word.

Boox also introduced its all-new file-sharing feature dubbed BooxDrop (I wonder where it got its name from) that is much, much quicker than the previous solution. Sharing files from your computer, laptop, or smartphone is now instantaneous irrespective of whether both devices are on the same network.

In the initial review, I mentioned that using the stylus with any third-party app was a no-go, but that’s now been addressed. Onyx has optimized the experience for Evernote, WPS, and OneNote, and the responsiveness of the stylus has surely been taken up by a notch. This is a relief for those who aren’t fond of the stock note-taking app. Speaking of which, there are a few updates here as well.

The Notes app now supports copying and pasting hand-written notes from one notebook to another and it’s possible to even merge two notebooks into one. These handwritten notes can now be exported as vector PDFs, ready to be edited on your PC. There are a few other tweaks, too, including the ability to add up to five custom brushes and an easier way to insert images. However, there’s one downgrade that’s worth noting. Onyx no longer offers cloud backup, so you’ll have to resort to integrated third-party solutions from Dropbox, Evernote, or OneNote.

The built-in NeoReader has also gotten a visual overhaul in the new software, and it looks cleaner than before. Apart from cosmetic changes, the V2 engine powering the reader now supports more formats like epub, mobi, word, and html. That means you can now see the original font, font size, and margin settings in these files for a better reading experience.

Another meaningful addition: you can now open split-screen windows in vertical orientation, which is a lot more practical than the horizontal option we had previously. Documents are a lot more legible in this setting, and it’s more comfortable than ever to jot down notes while reading.

Long story short, the new update has made the Nova Air a lot more useful than it was, and that’s commendable. It’s reassuring to see such commitment on the software front from Onyx, especially considering the premium you’re paying for this device over something like the Kindle. For this reason, I’m bumping up my review rating to an eight. There’s a lot to like here and I’m surely not looking back at my Kindle. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go back to finish the five books that I started but never completed.

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Prasham has been writing about technology since 2015 and has regretted not sharing affiliate links with those who have asked for his recommendations. Oh, he was also an urban farmer once, but you better not ask him what crops he was growing. He is currently a freelance writer and focuses on how-tos, guides, reviews, and editorials at Android Police.