Onyx Boox Note Air 3C: Until a few years ago, the world of reading devices was split in two. On one side were the actual e-book readers, and on the other were tablets, iPads at the top. However, technology and software interoperability have allowed the two categories to be mixed, resulting in interesting hybrids, including this Boox Note Air 3C. As per the short but intense history of manufacturer Onyx, the desire is to create a device that serves as an ally for all major digital activities of modern users. Reading a book, listening to an audiobook but also surfing the web and writing notes and memos.
Not surprisingly, this new tool is sold already with its nice ballpoint pen, with which to trace drawings and words, on a display that is no longer monochrome but in colour. The background still remains e-ink technology, so “in colour” takes on a somewhat different meaning than in comparison with a real tablet, but in your hands, you get a device that tries to stand out among the crowd, with some peculiarities.
What it looks like
The Onyx Boox Note Air 3C features a 10.3-inch Kaleido 3 e-paper display with 4096 colors and a 1200-ink panel. The screen is made of glass and is flush with the frame with a flat-top lens. The black-and-white resolution for text is 2480×1860 with 300 PPI; this is one of the few 10-inch e-paper displays on the market with such a high PPI level; the other is the Amazon Kindle Scribe. The device is equipped with Palm Rejection technology, and more than 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity are available when drawing. The more you press, the thicker the lines become. There are about 16 colours to choose from when editing files, freehand drawing or creating to-do lists.
Under the hood is a 2.4 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 octa-core processor, 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage. Should this not be enough for all the files and apps, there is also support for a MicroSD up to 2 TB. Oh yes, because another peculiarity of this reader is the presence of Android and the Play Store, with the opportunity to download all the apps normally available for a tablet running the open-source OS. Of course, with limitations: you can’t play almost anything on here. However, it is also logical: it is still an object designed for reading and listening to books, so it will be good for any reading app and browsing favourite sites without much pretension. It is powered by a respectable 3,700 mAh battery with USB-C input.
The software part
Boox Note Air 3 C runs Android 12, making it one of the few e-note or e-readers on the market to have such a recent version of the platform. This includes not only performance increases but also important security updates. Onyx is one of the few companies to include Google Play and Play Services on all its devices. Users can log into their account and start downloading apps that have already been downloaded or purchased on other Android phones or tablets. Onyx runs Boox OS, a custom launcher, and an optimizer for e-readers, e-notebooks, and tablets. The company constantly updates firmware to refine reading, writing, and overall performance. According to Onyx, support is guaranteed for at least five years, greatly extending such a device’s life cycle.
Navigation in the user interface and settings menu is lightning-fast. What’s more, we can adjust quality and speed, including refresh rate, to balance performance depending on the apps being used. Over the past year, Onyx has revised its user interface and made it more user-friendly. The navigation bar is at the bottom, and the UI elements change depending on what you have open, such as note-taking, reading, Google Play, or an internet browser app. The home screen provides links to the library, note-taking app, file browser, and settings. Being compatible with any app in the Green Dot ecosystem, the users can take advantage of cloud hosting to access their files on the cloud, a major limitation peculiar to Amazon and an aspect shared by a few other products in the same category.
Reading and notes, with a dash of AI
The e-reading experience begins with the stock Neoreader app, where you sideload all content with many options for size, font, alignment, line spacing and margins. It supports PRC, RTF, Doc, Text, DJVU, PDF, Mobi, FB2, EPUB, CBR and CBZ. CBZ and CBR support is excellent for sideloading Manga files since this is the most popular online format. This device excels at reading PDF files and writing, including signing a document to be later emailed. As anticipated, the Note Air 3C greatly extends the possibilities of using an ebook reader precisely because of the presence of the Google Play store. And that is why the Note Air 3C is not advertised as an e-reader but primarily as a paper replacement and note-taking device. With a battery that lasts for weeks, not days, it makes sense as you use it.
Onyx Boox Note Air 3C
With Note Air 3C, you can take notes with ease, drawing even freehand and benefiting from some features that, frankly, are only seen in photo editing software, such as the Adobe suite. One example out of all? Access to the layers of a graphics file, with which people can work on their creations almost professionally. As if that weren’t enough, the Air also has screencasting to play content on a PC, a handy option during meetings and for showing sketches and projects on a larger surface instead of having to gather everyone around the device’s screen.
If Onyx had included handwriting recognition with AI on previous models, here we go even further, with suggestions provided by a kind of on-board artificial intelligence. For example, while reading Mark Twain’s Adventures, it is possible to activate the assistant to get more information about the book and the author, story, and related works. All this, in a split view, without leaving the main reading.
A verdict
There used to be only a handful of ebook readers on the market. Today, however, we have a good variety of brands and models to choose from, which can make the final decision complex. Onyx is not a well-known brand in Italy, but it is becoming one thanks to its products’ excellent value for money, despite the fact that they are not cheap. This Note Air3 C has a price tag of 549.99 euros with a pen and magnetic cover already included. Is it worth the purchase? The answer is yes if your priority is reading your favourite books and listening to podcasts, breaking away from your smartphone for a while.
Same thing if you want a multipurpose tool with which to draw and take notes, and if necessary, with a keyboard connected via Bluetooth. It’s another matter if you plan to take home an Android tablet: here we have the whole plethora of software from the Play Store whose fruition, however, cannot be compared to what you would have on a tablet with a traditional screen and not e-ink. A point that could work against Onyx and instead represents an additional asset in terms of autonomy and health for the eyesight.
