The best color E Ink tablet I’ve used isn’t a Remarkable (and it’s almost $200 cheaper)

ZDNET's key takeaways

• The Boox Note Air 4C is a color e-paper tablet designed for note-taking and reading, available for $500 with a deal.
• The tablet's display is crisp and paper-like, and the included pen is accurate and sensitive, making it easy to create highly detailed sketches.
• The Note Air 4C isn't cheap, at a regular price of $530, and the included pen is much thicker than the tablet, so it falls off easily.

For months now, I've used the Boox Note Air 4C tablet 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 the best substitute for my bullet journal.

Writing on the Boox Note Air 4C tablet feels similar to writing on paper, though it's never exactly the same. However, the included pen is fast and responsive. The pressure-sensitive 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 iPad Air, and it makes calligraphy easy, disguising mildly uneven strokes and making most handwritten cursive fonts look appealing. The Boox pen on the Note Air 4C is superior to the Apple Pencil Pro for more precise and meticulous work, such as sketching and drawing. The pressure-sensitive mechanism also works beautifully for calligraphy, but it sometimes fails to transition smoothly from thick to thin lines. 

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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 Air 4C my new journal, especially because bullet journaling as a hobby is hard to maintain, with work consuming a lot of my time and my kids consuming my pens.

The Boox Note Air 4C'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 appear slightly blurry and noisy on the Boox Note Air 4C, lacking crispness and detail. 

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The Kaleido 3 display, also used in the Kindle Colorsoft, features a base monochromatic E Ink layer with electrophoretic technology, rendering sharp details 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 occupying the space of a single pixel, thereby 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 Air 4C 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 e-paper devices, such as the Kindle Color E-Reader and reMarkable Paper Pro. 

Though muted, I like the Boox Note Air 4C colors because they keep the same aesthetic throughout my work. I appreciate having a dedicated note-taking tablet, so I'm not bothered by the limitations of color ePaper. 

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Performance-wise, the Boox Note Air 4C 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 considerably speed up its refresh rate by changing its settings, the Note Air 4C 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 Air 4C, when switching from one page to another, but this didn't bother me.

My bigger complaints with the Boox Note Air 4C 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 zoom in to work on detailed drawings, causing my image to shift with the accidental touch of my hand and causing the tablet to pause for a few seconds while rendering.

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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) were possible by default, but it's included as an AI feature and isn't very accurate. Handwriting conversion often requires computer resources that are beyond a tablet's capabilities, which may be why the Boox Note Air 4C, 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 operates using electromagnetic resonance (EMR), eliminating the need for charging; it attaches magnetically for added convenience. 

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The Boox Note Air 4C 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 appreciate the bonus of being able to add external files, such as photos, to preserve memories without needing to print them out. 

ZDNET's buying advice

The Boox Note Air 4C is great for professionals and creatives. It's not a productivity tablet or a replacement for a laptop, but it is perfect for note-takers who prefer handwriting, journalers, reading enthusiasts, and even designers.  

Aside from other Boox tablets, the only real competitor for the Boox Note Air 4C is the reMarkable Paper Pro, a color ePaper tablet that retails for $629. Although both tablets share similar shortcomings, I'd choose the Boox Note Air 4C over the other. Aside from being over $100 cheaper, the new Boox is an Android tablet that doesn't require a paid subscription to access extra features, unlike reMarkable, which does with the Connect membership.

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Like any traditional Android tablet, the Boox Note Air 4C allows you to download apps available in the Google Play Store, including games and social media applications. However, those seeking a device focused on writing and reading can keep their Boox tablet distraction-free. I downloaded the Kindle app for reading, Google Docs for work, and OneDrive to transfer files and add photos to my notes, keeping my Boox Note Air4 C as a versatile device.

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