Skip the ReMarkable: This color ePaper tablet does more for less money

ZDNET's key takeaways

The Boox Note Air4 C is a color ePaper tablet for notes and reading, available for $500It's easy to take the Boox Note Air4 C anywhere I go where I want to read, take notes, catch up on journaling, or keep tabs on my calendar; the tablet's display is crisp and paper-like, and the included pen is accurate and pressure-sensitve, making it easy to create highly detailed sketches.That said, the Note Air4 C isn't cheap, at $500, its AI features can be buggy, color E Ink is still limited to some colors, and the included pen is much thicker than the tablet, so it falls off easily.

I've used the Boox Note Air4 C tablet for over a week as my go-to digital notebook. This tablet is the perfect companion for those who like taking notes on the go, but it's also become an effective substitute for my bullet journal.

Writing on the Boox Note Air4 C tablet feels similar to writing on paper, though it's never exactly the same. However, the included pen is fast and responsive. Though pressure-sensitive, the Boox pen is unforgiving, providing a contrasting experience to the Apple Pencil Pro. 

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I've been using the Apple Pencil Pro on the iPad Mini 7 and found that it makes calligraphy easy, disguising mildly uneven strokes and making most handwritten cursive font look appealing. The Boox pen on the Note Air4 C is better than the Apple Pencil Pro for more precise, meticulous work, like sketching and drawing. The pressure-sensitive mechanism also works beautifully for calligraphy, but it sometimes fails to transition smoothly from thick to thin lines. 

I'm an avid bullet journaler -- I love the freedom of creating calendar and page layouts that suit my needs. Naturally, I transitioned to making the Boox Note Air4 C my new journal, especially because bullet journaling is a wonderful hobby that's hard to maintain, with work consuming a lot of my time and kids consuming my pens.

The Boox Note Air4 C's 10.3-inch display is a Kaleido 3 color E Ink screen. This display's black-and-white resolution is 300 ppi, but its color resolution is only 150 ppi. Color images won't appear crisp and detailed on the Boox Note Air4 C; instead, they look slightly blurry and noisy. 

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The Kaleido 3 display, also used in the Kindle Colorsoft, uses a base monochromatic E Ink layer with electrophoretic technology that renders sharp detail at 300 ppi. But adding color is done through a color filter array layered on the black-and-white screen. This divides each pixel into RGB subpixels, each taking up the space of a single pixel, halving the color display's resolution. 

Aside from photos often looking unintelligible from up close, this display also shows some color images with a denim-like texture, which bothers some users. The Boox Note Air4 C colors are also limited, so you don't get a full spectrum of over 16 million colors, and they look more muted than on traditional tablets. The same applies to other color ePaper devices, like the Kindle Colorsoft and reMarkable Paper Pro. 

Though muted, I like the Boox Note Air4 C colors because they keep the same aesthetic throughout my work. I like having a dedicated note-taking tablet, so I don't mind the limitations of color ePaper. 

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Performance-wise, the Boox Note Air4 C runs on Android 13, with an octa-core processor and 6GB of RAM. It has up to 64GB of internal storage, expandable up to 2TB with a microSD card. Don't expect it to be as fast as an iPad, though. While you can speed up its refresh rate considerably by changing its settings, the Note Air4 C is sluggish compared to a traditional tablet -- but is not as slow as a Kindle. 

Some ghosting issues are common with E Ink tablets, including the Note Air4 C, when switching from one page to another, but this didn't bother me.

My bigger complaints with the Boox Note Air4 C are highly specific. Depending on the content, each page takes a long time to render, up to 30 seconds, which can get annoying. The display's palm recognition fails when I've zoomed in to work on detailed drawings, shifting my image with the accidental touch of my hand and causing the tablet to pause to render for a few seconds.

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The Boox's AI features have a lot of room for improvement, but that's common across many companies' AI offerings. I tried all the features and found they failed so often that it was best to keep them toggled off. The most glaring one was when the tablet automatically "corrected" my drawings, inadvertently deleting part of my work.

I also wish handwriting optical character recognition (OCR) was possible by default, but it's included as an AI feature and isn't very accurate. Handwriting conversion tends to require computer resources that are often beyond a tablet's capabilities, which may be why the Boox Note Air4 C, like the reMarkable Paper Pro, doesn't offer it as a default feature.

The Boox's pen attaches magnetically to the side of the tablet but is prone to falling off, likely due to the tablet's 5.8-mm thin profile. I recommend buying a case to keep the pen attached when transporting. The pen works with electromagnetic resonance (EMR), so it doesn't need charging; it attaches magnetically for convenience. 

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The Boox Note Air4 C works wonderfully as a bullet journal, especially because the pen is accurate and responsive, making precise drawing or coloring easy. I can save all my pages in a single, lightweight device and don't have to lug around a pencil case full of pens and markers when I want to sit down and catch up on my journaling. I also like the bonus of adding external files, like photos, to add memories without printing them out. 

ZDNET's buying advice

The Boox Note Air4 C is great for professionals and creatives. It's not a productivity tablet or one to replace a laptop, but it is perfect for note-takers who like handwriting, journalers, reading enthusiasts, and even designers.  

Aside from other Boox tablets, the only real competitor for the Boox Note Air4 C is the reMarkable Paper Pro, a color ePaper tablet that retails for $629. Though both tablets share similar shortcomings, I'd choose the Boox Note Air4 C of the two. Aside from being $129 cheaper, the new Boox is an Android tablet and doesn't require a paid subscription to access extra features, as reMarkable does with the Connect membership.

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Like any traditional Android tablet, the Boox Note Air4 C lets you download any apps available in the Google Play Store, like games and social media apps. But those looking for a device focused on writing and reading can keep their Boox tablet distraction-free. I downloaded the Kindle app and OneDrive to transfer files and add photos to my notes, keeping my Boox Note Air4 C as a dedicated device.