tablet with e ink and lcd screen brands

If you"re someone who loves to write notes by hand, an E Ink tablet could be a good fit. Not only do they provide an excellent reading and writing experience, they also boast a long battery life, while letting you save paper in the process. An E Ink tablet combines the distraction-free and easy-reading environment of a Kindle-style

The ReMarkable 2 is the best E Ink tablet for students who love to take lots of handwritten notes. It is only 0.19 inch thick and 0.88 pound, which makes it light and easy to carry in your backpack.This 10.3-inch tablet uses a monochrome digital display with a resolution of 226 DPI. The writing and text looks clear and sharp, and you can choose from over 40 different page templates for notes, including seven options just for musical notation. The software is easy to use, with clear buttons at the top for you to add notebooks and folders. It has 8GB of internal storage and now includes handwriting conversion and Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive integration. Those services used to be part of ReMarkable"s Connect subscription, but are now included for free with every device. The Connect subscription itself still exists, but now costs $3 a month instead of $8. It offers a ReMarkable 2 protection plan, along with unlimited cloud storage and the ability to add notes in your notebooks when you"re on mobile and desktop devices.

The included stylus doesn"t require pairing or charging but supports tilt detection and a standard 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity. Practically speaking, it offers the most realistic writing experience of any tablet I"ve ever used. The screen has a paper-like feel, which gives the pen a level of friction that feels incredibly true to life.

The ReMarkable 2 also shines with PDFs. Highlights automatically straighten themselves and turn a legible shade of gray without any needed adjustment. You can add pages to PDFs for extra notes or write in the margins with ease. The ReMarkable"s thinness, two-week battery life, pen input and PDF management capabilities made this E Ink tablet my favorites.

That being said, the ReMarkable 2 isn"t without faults. The biggest issue is that it lacks any kind of backlight, which could be a deal breaker. Much like an actual book or notebook, this device requires an external light source to use in the dark. Even the cheapest Kindle now has front light illumination for night time use. It also doesn"t function particularly well as an e-reader, as the only formats it supports are PDF and unprotected epub. That means that you won"t be able to access your Kindle content or any other epub books with digital rights management software, which includes almost all legally purchasable ebooks on the market.

Ultimately, I found this tablet to be incredibly useful. This is the cheapest E Ink tablet on our list, but it"s still essentially just a PDF and note-taking device.

The Boox Note Air 2 is the most tablet-like E Ink device I tested. This 10.3-inch tablet features a resolution of 227 DPI, runs on a customized version of the Android 11 operating system and even has its own app store, where you can download third-party apps that have been optimized for the device. And yes, while it doesn"t come pre-baked into the system, there is a way to access the full Google Play store – though I wouldn"t recommend it for anything other than downloading an e-reading app, as the Boox still has an E Ink display and isn"t made for games or video. A step-by-step on how to get the Google Play store installed is in this hands-on review of a previous model.

Also, the Boox comes with only 64GB of nonexpandable storage, so you don"t want apps filling up your system. The company does offer 5GB of cloud storage from its own service for free to help transfer documents to the device, though you can also use Dropbox, Evernote and OneNote.

The biggest benefit of the apps store is that you"ll have access to your entire collection of books from your Kindle, Nook and Kobo library. You can also download the Libby app for library books, and Marvel Unlimited users can download the app and read comics, though not in color. The Note Air 2 includes speakers and a microphone, allowing you to listen to audiobooks from Audible or other audiobook apps.

This is a great selling point of the device, but I found the in-app experience to be less than ideal. Many of the features that make the Note Air 2 unique are disabled in third-party apps. For example, you won"t be able to use the pen to take notes or highlights in books on the Kindle app. Instead, you"ll have to type in notes you want to take, like using the app on any other tablet. To write directly onto books, you"ll need to have them in DRM-free ebook format. Luckily, the Boox supports a wide range of formats including PDF, epub, DOC and Mobi.

Note-taking and PDF management are strong on the Note Air 2 but not as seamless as on the ReMarkable 2. Highlights aren"t automatically straightened, and users have to choose the color and width of the marker. The Note Air 2 provides 16 options of grayscale color, but they all look the same on the device, leaving highlights looking dark and messy. The included stylus also features 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity but lags ever so slightly when writing across the page. On the plus side, you can include audio recordings for more accurate retention. The Note Air 2 also lets you open a PDF and notebook at the same time in a split-screen view, giving you the ability to read and take notes all at once.

Like the Kindle Paperwhite and Oasis, the Boox Note Air 2 comes with a warm and cold front light to help make the screen easier on the eyes and give it a more paper-like look. You can easily adjust both lights with a swipe-down menu. Plus, it also measures its battery life in weeks, not days.

You might see that the company has recently announced a Note Air 2 Plus. I haven"t tried that one, but it"s almost identical to the original Air 2 -- just with a bigger battery, which also makes it very slightly heavier.

Kobo might be a smaller company than Amazon, but it"s been making e-readers for just about as long. While Amazon once made a 9.7-inch Kindle, the product never offered natural input with a touchscreen or stylus and was discontinued in 2014. More recently, Kobo was first with a waterproof e-reader, and it"s the first of the major e-reading players to make a 10.3-inch device with a stylus.

Like most Kobos, the Elipsa is an excellent e-reader and offers battery life measured in weeks, depending on use. Unlike Kindles, Kobos have a seemingly limitless ability to customize the reading experience. You can play continuously with margins, line spacing, fonts and font size to get a page that looks exactly how you want to, no matter the size of the screen. The included stylus can be used on any PDF or Kobo ePub, so it works just as well on library books as it does on books from the Kobo store.

Speaking of the library, Kobo is known for its deep integration with the ebook library service OverDrive. You can easily access, browse and download library books directly from your device, so long as your local library uses OverDrive. Borrowing an ebook from the New York Public Library was a seamless experience and one that makes all Kobos a must-have for library lovers.

Unfortunately, the Elipsa"s note-taking capabilities are lacking. There is a noticeable lag when writing with the stylus for any length of time, and the notebook features are fairly basic. Only four templates are available in the basic notebooks and only a single lined template in the advanced notebooks. Advanced notebooks do let you insert drawings, diagrams, math equations and a free-form section, while also offering the ability to convert your handwriting to text. There are only a few pen types to choose from and only five pen brush sizes.

The Kobo Elipsa has 32GB of storage, a resolution of 227 DPI and a blue front light, but it lacks the warm light of the Boox. While this E Ink tablet misses the mark on long-from writing, it excels as a large-screen, library-friendly e-reader with the ability to scribble in the margins.

The Kindle Scribe comes with a fantastic 300 ppi, 10.2-inch display that is evenly lit and perfect for large-format reading. The writing experience is also very pleasant and natural, but the Scribe"s software limitations keep this device from soaring.

The Scribe looks and feels like an extra large Kindle Paperwhite or Oasis, though it lacks the physical page-turning buttons of Amazon"s premium e-reader. Words look crisp and clear, while the device itself is fast and responsive.

The Scribe"s notebooks are easy to use, but lacking in features compared to other E Ink Tablets. You can export your notebooks via email, but there"s no Dropbox or any other third-party support. There are 18 notebook templates available, including six lined options, graphing paper, musical notation and to-do lists. All of that is great, but these notebooks lack any smart features. For example, there"s no way to insert equations or convert your handwriting to text.

Similarly, writing in books and documents is too limited to be useful to serious highlighters and doodlers. That"s because Amazon doesn"t actually let you write directly on the page in anything other than a PDF. Instead, you"ll need to write on "sticky notes" if you want to handwrite a note in a book or even a Word Doc. Not only does this prevent you from scribbling in the margins of books, it also means you"ll need to take a separate action to start writing at all.

The sticky notes are then collected automatically in your Notes and Highlights section, where they are presented without any of the context in which you wrote them. It does allow you to jump to the page on which a note was written by tapping on your markings. This is great in theory, but is confusing if you have more than one note on each page, as it doesn"t pinpoint the exact location where the note was created. The Scribe also doesn"t let you write any kind of notes at all on manga, comics, graphic novels, magazines or newspapers.

Currently, you are allowed to write directly on the page in PDFs, but the experience isn"t great. The pen itself works well, but dealing with documents is more difficult than it should be. When you"re in a PDF, you aren"t able to adjust the font size or layout, so instead you have to pinch to zoom in order to enlarge or reposition the document. That part works well, and it"s not too hard to find a level that works best for you. However, once you"re positioned in your PDF, you can"t stay there. The Scribe makes it impossible to maintain your current zoom levels from one page to the next. Instead, you have to zoom all the way out again in order to swipe to the next page, just to reposition it all over again. This is a huge pain and makes reading long PDFs cumbersome and frustrating.

Ultimately, the Scribe is great if you want a large-screen e-reader or are eager to handwrite sticky notes in Amazon books. But it just isn"t quite good enough at either PDFs or in-line note-taking to recommend it as anything other than a gigantic, but excellent, Kindle.

Every E Ink tablet undergoes extensive hands-on testing. In this case, each tablet was used for one week of rehearsal in a professional theatrical production. This involved evaluating the set-up process, loading PDFs and books onto the devices, and using both the device and included stylus as a script during full six-hour days of rehearsal. Tasks included highlighting, taking notes in the margins, and creating and taking detailed notes in notebooks. We also downloaded ebooks onto the device and used it as a recreational e-reader.

Anecdotally, we considered the hardware design and features, stylus capabilities, overall ease of use, effective UI layouts, notebook settings, E Ink settings, PDF markup capabilities, e-reading settings and format compatibility, app support and performance, and the overall speed and reliability of the system.

Both e-readers and E Ink tablets use E Ink technology to render words and images on the page. They both offer a distraction-free experience that"s easier on the eyes than a traditional LCD color screen.

E-readers tend to be smaller than size and focus only on the experience of reading a book or PDF. E Ink tablets offer e-reading features but also include the ability to use a stylus to write notes in a digital notebook and/or in the margins of PDFs and ebooks. Since handwriting is integral to the E Ink tablet experience, the devices themselves tend to be bigger in order to more closely approximate the size of a sheet of paper.

E Ink tablets are best suited for people who enjoy writing notes or sketching by hand and who need to read and markup lots of PDF or DRM-free ebooks. They could be a particularly good fit for students, lawyers or any other professional in need of a digital, distraction-free note-taking device.

E Ink tablets are a weird breed. Most people associate them with the best e-readers, but some of the best electronic ink tablets offer a host of assorted functions. Modern paper displays have advanced beyond the confines of limited usage and now many can be used for writing, reading comic books, and even drawing in color.

The best E Ink tablet that offers all these features in one unified body is the Onyx Boox Nova Air C. It has a large and beautiful screen that can display color and has writing functionality that delivers a pen-and-paper feel. If you love the look and feel of traditional reading and writing mediums, this tablet will surely capture your heart.

While most E Ink displays tend to focus on doing one thing, the Onyx Boox Nova Air C does it all. This display incorporates the latest Kaleido Plus technology from E Ink Holdings, the creators of the tech. This allows the Nova Air C to display 4,096 colors on its 7.8-inch display which is unusual for most E Ink tablets. Comics can be viewed in full color and you can even draw, highlight, or jot down notes in different shades thanks to the accompanying stylus. The Nova Air C"s touch function for the stylus is powered by Wacom, the company that makes the best drawing tablets. It imitates the true blue traditional feel of writing on paper with a pen.

Onyx Boox really took things to the next level by adding more gear under the Nova Air C"s hood. This tablet runs Android 11 out of the box so you can actually install and use apps from the Google Play Store. It has 3GB of RAM, 32GB of onboard storage, a USB Type-C port that supports fast charging, and a set of speakers. Amazingly, the 2,000mAh battery can last for weeks with the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned off. The Boox Nova Air C is the complete package, it is almost a full-blown Android tablet.

Unfortunately, if you want the complete package, you"ll have to pay for it since this tablet isn"t exactly cheap in comparison to normal tablets. It also lacks water and dust resistance, which is a bummer, and E Ink displays are famously dim in the sun. We believe you can live with these shortcomings as the combination of features in the Nova Air C is just too good.

For many years, Amazon has dominated the e-reader market with its Kindle line of reading tablets, and for good reason: Kindle e-readers are excellent devices and their displays have LED backlighting. The Kindle Paperwhite is the absolute best Amazon Kindle e-reader, which makes it the best E Ink tablet for reading.

The 2021 iteration of the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite has IPX8 waterproof certification so you don"t have to worry about getting it wet. You also get five adjustable LED backlights in the Kindle Paperwhite so it"s fairly bright in sunlight. Its 6-inch 300ppi E Ink screen is a delight to look at and replicates paper very nicely. Audible integration makes it the perfect companion for lazy beach days when you want to sunbathe with your eyes closed. You can connect a pair of Bluetooth wireless earbuds and listen to audiobooks in peace.

If you"re searching for a more writing-focused E Ink tablet the ReMarkable 2 is your best bet. Built from the ground up for this purpose, the ReMarkable 2 offers a premium writing experience. It has a 10.3-inch e-paper display that cannot display colors beyond black and white. It has Wi-Fi, USB Type-C charging, 8GB storage, a 3,000mAh battery, and a cool magnetic accessory dock where you can store your stylus. Notes and other documents can be saved over the cloud, although the companion apps are a little buggy.

The software caters to handwritten notes and processing them for multiple purposes. You can take notes directly on PDF files or use OCR to scan your notes taken down by hand. To jot down digital notes, you need to use the compatible stylus. There are two options, the Marker or the Marker Pro, and they both need to be bought separately. The Marker Pro has an advantage over its regular sibling as the back of it acts like an eraser and it"s extremely fun to use.

Color E Ink tablets are hard to come by, especially at a reasonable price. The PocketBook Color sits nicely in the mid-range price margin but the specs it touts are upper-tier. It has a 6-inch, last-gen Kaleido E Ink color display as opposed to the Onyx Boox Nova Air C"s Kaleido Plus variant. You get support for a huge variety of files, including audiobooks and common comic book formats like CBR and CBZ.

Graphic novels and comics tend to take up a lot of space so PocketBook has 16GB of onboard storage that is expandable up to 32GB via microSD, which is a great feature. The PocketBook Color doesn"t run Android, you get Linux instead. It may be unusual but the software is still great. There are still plenty of apps for things like notes, games, dictionaries, an image gallery, a calculator, and even a text-to-speech function.

E Ink tablet lovers out there on a budget can still get one for a nifty price. The entry-level Amazon Kindle (2022) is a budget e-reader sporting a 6-inch 300ppi e-paper display. It hasn"t got many fancy features like a waterproof rating or Sudoku, but it can support a healthy number of file formats and looks brilliant.

It isn"t that bright in sunlight but the adjustable front light is handy for late-night reading. There basic Amazon Kindle has some more no-nonsense specs like 16GB of storage, an insanely good battery life, Wi-Fi, and audiobook support. If you don"t want to use the Kindle app, you can transfer files to the Amazon Kindle (2022) e-reader from your PC.

In comparison to almost every other e-paper device out there, the Amazon Kindle is the winner hands down when it comes to the price. The base model Kindle performs a tad bit slower and it doesn"t have waterproofing, but it is still the best E Ink tablet for reading on a tight budget.

After staring at bright screens day in and day out, your eyes really need a break. The best E Ink tablet will not only provide relief but also allow you to carry out various tasks. The Onyx Boox Nova Air C is the best E Ink tablet owing to its fabulous soft colors, extremely lightweight build, and multitasking capabilities. It isn"t limited to just being an e-reader, but if you want you can use it for that purpose. But if need be, you can also use it to take down notes, sketch some lovely drawings, or underline passages of text.

The Nova Air C accommodates office use as well as home use. You don"t have to sacrifice battery life or connectivity. It even has a speaker, something that no other electronic ink tablet on this list offers. What"s even more brilliant is its ability to run almost any Android app. You can actually use it as a full-fledged tablet for most tasks related to reading and writing. The Nova Air C pushes the boundaries of an E Ink tablet in the best sense, and that is why it is the very best one you can buy.Round up of today"s best deals

Whether you’re making the switch from pen and paper to a digital note-taking system or you’re simply looking for a good e-reader to finish your reading list, the best e-ink tablets have easy-to-read screens and offer a wide range of functionality, for everything from reading, to note-taking, to drawing. But the way you want to use your tablet will largely decide which one is right for you. And as with any tablet, battery life and storage size are also considerations to keep in mind as you shop.

Since e-ink is taking the tablet world by storm, you’ll have a few great options when making this investment. If you’re looking for a reading tablet, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better e-ink option than one of Kindle’s offerings, namely the Kindle Paperwhite, Amazon’s newest design. The Paperwhite makes it easy to download eBooks from both the Kindle store and the library, and is even waterproof for reading outside.

However, if you’re looking for more functionality, you’ll also find e-ink tablets that let you take notes. For pen-and-paper loyalists who are looking to make things a little more digital, an e-ink tablet with a great stylus and the ability to digitize handwritten notes is definitely the way to go. Even better if those tablets come with an Android operating system, so you can use third-party apps and access a wide range of eBook stores, right from your device.

The Onyx BOOX Nova3 is great for reading, drawing, and note-taking, and has a major benefit when compared to other note-taking tablets on this list: It operates on Android 10, which allows you to download third-party apps like Kindle or Chrome via Google Play once you’ve enabled Wi-Fi. While e-ink enthusiasts argue the different experiences of using the two note-taking tablets on this list, the general consensus is that the Nova3 offers a lot more functionality, not only in its operating system, but also in its note-taking features. Not only does it have handwriting recognition that allows you to digitize your notes, but it also has a built-in microphone you can use to convert words to text, and that can be used for voice chat on third-party apps like WhatsApp. You can also search the device for text you’ve written and digitized, a notable feature missing on the reMarkable tablet, below. And, this tablet comes with Bluetooth, so you can connect to wireless headphones.

The Nova3 allows you to access a wide variety of file types including PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and Word files. While there’s little to want for in the functionality, its battery life and storage capabilities are more limited. It offers one day of battery life, and has just 3 gigabytes of storage (though, it can easily be backed up to the Cloud to limit storage needs). Lastly, many reviewers prefer the pen-like writing experience of the reMarkable tablet to the Nova3, which is something to consider if you plan on writing or drawing a lot. The Nova3 is also considerably smaller than the reMarkable tablet, which may be important to you based on your needs.

Positive Amazon review: “A color e-book reader is awesome. The e-ink is very easy on the eyes, even in the dark, yet clear and visible, even in bright light (but not daylight). As a note-taking device for work, this has been a great go-to. I can pop open different notebooks (Discussion, Team Meetings, Action Items, etc.) and quickly jot down notes, even in stand up meetings. This goes with me everywhere.”

For note-takers or anyone who likes to draw, reMarkable’s e-ink tablet is another great choice. It comes with an impressive stylus, the “Marker,” which offers a pen-like experience that reviewers often call out as unlike any other stylus they’ve used before. Using the stylus, you can annotate documents, book pages, and other files in your own handwriting. Those notes can then be converted to typed text, provided they’re written in one of the 33 supported languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Greek, and Italian. You can also use the tablet to draw or write on blank or lined pages, or even use one of the page templates including storyboards, checklists, or gridded paper. It has 8 gigabytes of storage, which far exceeds the Nova3 above. It has a battery life of two days, which pales in comparison to a Kindle, though it does outperform the other note-taking tablet on this list.

Once you’ve set it up and enabled Wi-Fi, it will automatically back itself up to the Cloud and you can email notes or documents. One obvious drawback? Its price. For the money, you’ll get a lot more functionality by opting for the Nova3. That said, for note-takers and doodlers looking for the most similar experience to pen and paper, this is a standout choice. One final caveat: While you can download eBooks to this tablet, it is not compatible with the Kindle store, though it is compatible with common textbook format, EPUB, as well as PDF files.

Positive Amazon review:“The experience of writing on the reMarkable is...remarkable. As a designer, I can comfortably say it’s the best tablet writing surface around. I got the tablet for my writing hobby, but I sketch and take notes all day at work, so I will be using the tablet for that purpose as well.”

With a slimmer and larger design than Onyx’s other tablet on this list, the BOOX Note Air is just 5.8 millimeters in thickness. For those who want both the pen-like writing experience of an e-ink tablet and the thin, paper-like feel, this thickness of the tablet matters and this is thinner than both of the other tablets above (the Remarkable is 6.7 millimeters in thickness, and the Nova3 is 7.7 millimeters in thickness). It features some of the same hardware as the Nova3, so it has the same Bluetooth functionality, Android-app compatibility, and 3-gigabyte storage space as the best overall on this list. The size of the Note Air’s screen puts it more in the same camp as Remarkable’s tablet — they’re each 10.3 inches. Ultimately, this Note Air offers a good mix of features from the two tablets directly above it, a larger screen for better note-taking, an Android operating system, and an even better battery life than the Nova3 (according to reviewers, who say with daily use it can last up to a week).

Positive Amazon review:“This is wonderful little device! I am a grad student who has to consume a lot of journal articles and books. I love that the Onyx Boox tablets are running Android so that I can install and use many of the apps in the Google Play Store. The Note Air itself is beautiful (in shape, size, and color) and feels good to hold even one-handed.”

If you’re just looking to read, the Kindle Paperwhite is definitely the best e-ink tablet you can find. Not only does the newest version come with a waterproof design that makes it one of the best tablets for reading outdoors, but it also features easy-to-read e-ink font you can adjust to the size you want. It has adjustable brightness, and it’s Wi-Fi-enabled so you can connect to Amazon’s wide eBook store. It even syncs to the Libby and Overdrive apps on your phone so you can download library books to your tablet. While this lacks some of the extra note-taking or drawing features of tablets above, you can highlight and leave notes on passages as you read. And, while its functionality is more limited, it has a weeks-long battery life. This is available in two sizes (an 8-gigabyte and a generous 32-gigabyte model), as well as four different colors.

Positive Amazon review: “Loving this! I have had other e-ink readers and non e-ink readers/tablets and this one is my favorite so far! It"s the perfect size, feels good in my hand and while I have only owned it a week the battery has a 90% charge with every day use and WiFi on. Pretty good in my book.”

Unlike its pricier counterpart, the original Kindle lacks waterproof capabilities, and isn’t quite as thin as the Paperwhite (8.7 millimeters and 8.2 millimeters, respectively). But for readers looking for a basic e-ink e-reader, this has everything you need. With a weeks-long battery life, 8 gigabytes of storage, and the ability to download books from Kindle’s eBook store as well as your local library (provided they use Overdrive or Libby), this e-reader is a standout choice. Newly upgraded to have a built-in front light you can adjust to your reading preferences, this is a super affordable option that has plenty of features that make it worth your time. While it lacks some of the writing functionality of the true tablets on this list, and isn’t as durable and has a slightly lower resolution when compared to the Paperwhite, the Kindle is a great investment for readers who want the paper-like feel of an e-ink device, without spending a lot.

Positive Amazon review:“The e-ink technology is much easier for my eyes than reading on my tablet, which was causing me too much eye-strain. You can set the fonts, font size, theme, layout, line spacing, etc. to get the perfect reading experience for your eyesight. This also has a light so you can read it in the dark if you want to. It has a very sensitive touch screen.”

Most devices that use an electronic paper screen are built for specific tasks like reading, note-taking, or even just displaying price tags on grocery store shelves. The Bigme InkNote Color has greater aspirations, and with two cameras, microphones, and a multi-function stylus, it’s the best and most versatile e-note device we’ve ever tested. After going hands-on with a pre-production unit from this promising Kickstarter, we have high hopes, but it’s a shame that it’s most notable feature is also its biggest letdown.

E Ink devices have been available to consumers for almost 20 years, starting with the Sony Librie back in 2004. For the longest time, devices with E Ink displays were

The InkNote Color (top) is more or less the same size as the reMarkable 2 (bottom), but slightly thicker and heavier.Photo: Andrew Liszewski | Gizmodo

The InkNote Color is a little shorter and wider than the reMarkable 2, but also thicker and heavier as it includes extra screen layers for color reproduction as well as screen illumination. So unlike on the reMarkable 2, you can actually use the InkNote Color in a dark room without the need for a lamp or a flashlight close at hand.

The InkNote Color is powered by an A53 2.3 GHZ octa-core processor with 6GB of RAM. It’s also got 128GB of storage (expandable through a microSD card) and runs on Android 11, boasting specs more on par with a full tablet device. This lets it include features we haven’t seen before on e-notes. The power button on top features a built-in fingerprint reader, making it easy to lock and unlock the device to secure your documents on it. Why haven’t e-notes gotten this feature before?

The InkNote Color’s 8MP rear camera is really only useful for snapping pics of documents you want to scan for editable text.Photo: Andrew Liszewski | Gizmodo

The same goes for the InkNote color’s rear camera. It’s useable, but the images it takes are disappointing by today’s mobile device standards. Even photos snapped on a bright but overcast day come out grainy and with disappointing color saturation. Despite what this sample photo seems to indicate, the grass in my backyard isn’t completely dead. The rear camera is more useful as a productivity tool than for creativity, as the InkNote color includes OCR capabilities for extracting editable text from scanned documents.

Based on Wacom’s stylus technology, the InkNote Color’s bundled stylus, the A5, doesn’t realistically need charging, and is completely interchangeable with other devices and stylii boasting Wacom compatibility. (Such as the reMarkable’s stylus.) That’s one of the most important features you should look for in an e-note device, as your comfort with a stylus plays a big part in how much you’ll use it and how comfortable you’ll be transitioning away from pen and paper. If the stylus included with a device doesn’t work for you, can always swap it out.

The A5 stylus’ shortcut buttons rely on a Bluetooth connection, requiring the stylus to be charged by magnetically docking it to the edge of the InkNote Color.Photo: Andrew Liszewski | Gizmodo

The most important feature in an e-note is how well it reproduces the pen on paper experience. If you’re trying to quickly scribble down notes and your e-note is four or five strokes behind the tip of your stylus and struggling to keep up, it just makes the experience too frustrating to stick with. Our high bar for e-note performance is the

Its note-taking performance is just fantastic, and at no point does it ever feel like the tablet is struggling to keep up with a flurry of strokes, even when challenged with my choppy, chicken-scratch printing that’s sure to make my grade school penmanship teachers hang their heads in shame.

It’s as good as you can get when it comes to a simulated pen-on-paper experience, right down to the screen texture. One of the biggest complaints Apple Pencil users have is that writing or drawing on the tablet’s smooth glass display just doesn’t have an authentic pen-on-paper feel. Many E Ink devices, like the InkNote Color, avoid this by using a top layer with a textured matte finish that not only helps dissipate glare, but also has just enough resistance as you scribble across it to make it feel like actual paper. The only downside? That pen-on-paper feel tends to wear stylus tips down faster.

Unlike the reMarkable 2, you can even write in your choice of 11 different colors, in addition to black, white, and several shades of gray. As the name implies, the InkNote Color is another e-note device that has taken advantage of E Ink’s color e-paper technology, but might it actually be better off without it?

As innovative as E Ink’s push into color electronic paper has been, the technology still has lots of room for improvement, and it’s part of what holds the Bigme InkNote Color back from being perfect.

When displaying simple text, the InkNote Color’s screen (right) appears darker and muddier than the reMarkable 2"s screen (left.)Photo: Andrew Liszewski | Gizmodo

The most obvious drawback is that the extra layers the InkNote Color’s Kaleido Plus screen use to display color result in a display that looks darker and muddier than strictly black-and-white E Ink screens. The difference is especially obvious when comparing the InkNote Color to the reMarkable 2. There’s less contrast with Bigme’s e-note, and even when using the device somewhere with ample ambient lighting, you’re going to find yourself leaving the adjustable screen lighting on most of the time. That’s certainly not a deal breaker, but the biggest appeal of E Ink has always been how easy on the eyes it is when relying on reflected light, which feels negated when you need a glowing screen to see it.

Running Android 11 instead of a proprietary Linux-based OS (like many other e-readers use) means the InkNote Color also has access to apps like Netflix and YouTube, but you’ll have a far more enjoyable experience Lightyear trailer on an E Ink device is negated by limited colors, extreme ghosting, and choppy frame rates.

If a color E Ink screen is important to you, this looks like it’s going to be the e-note device to get. But if you’d rather wait for color E Ink to mature a little more,

EeWrite is looking to be the first company to release a dual screen tablet with a color LCD screen on one side and a monochrome E Ink screen on the other side.

There have been a few E Ink phones that have an E Ink screen on the back, like the Hisense A6, but there haven’t been any tablets with E Ink screens yet.

A few devices have tried combining LCD and E Ink in flip form, like the Lenovo Yoga Book C930, for a 2-in-1 approach, but the E-Pad X would do away with the hinge and combine them into a single unit.

The EeWrite E-Pad X is expected to have a 9.7-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 2048 x 1536. Unfortunately it sounds like they are going to go the cheap route on the E Ink screen. Apparently they’re going to use a low resolution 9.7-inch screen with 150 ppi instead of the 10.3-inch display with 227 ppi that’s on the E-Pad.

The E Ink side has a Wacom touchscreen for notes and drawings. The tablet has a microSD card slot and USB-C port. It has a 6-core processor with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage space. It has a 5,000 mAh battery.

At this point it looks like they basically glued an ereader to the back of a tablet, but it’s not a final product yet and they are expected to try and make it thinner and lighter.

Some people use camomile tea, others use breathing exercises, but, for me, the most reliable tactic for getting to sleep quickly is to avoid screens before bed. Yet, actually doing so requires some creativity if I want to keep up with news online. My current system involves saving articles to the read-later app Instapaper, which sends a daily digest to my Kindle each evening. But it’s a hacky approach where articles often aren’t formatted properly and sometimes don’t appear at all.

I could switch to a Kobo, which offers native integration with rival read-later app Pocket, but the Onyx Boox Nova Air C offers a much more tantalizing alternative. Unlike either a Kindle or Kobo, its E Ink display is capable of showing colors, and it’s running a modified version of Android that allows you to download and run a variety of apps that go far beyond reading ebooks. It opens the door to numerous read-later apps as well as full-on word processors and third-party note-taking software. It even includes a stylus for handwritten notes.

At $420, it’s pricey compared to Amazon’s Kindles, which often cost well under the $200 mark. But that price gets you something closer to a full-on Android tablet than an e-reader. It’s just a shame that the total package doesn’t fully deliver on the promise.

The Onyx Boox Nova Air C is an unassuming device, with big bezels around its 7.8-inch screen and a generally plastic-feeling construction. Its power button is on the top left, while a USB-C port is on the bottom alongside a pair of downward-firing speakers. They’re roughly as bad as I expected them to be, but it’s better 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 main attraction here is the color E Ink display. The Nova Air C is equipped with E Ink’s Kaleido Plus screen, which uses a color filter layer on top of a more typical E Ink panel to offer 4,096 colors. The approach comes with some obvious drawbacks. For starters, the screen can’t display color content with the same resolution as black and white, so while the display reaches 1404 x 1872 in black and white (300ppi), it’s limited to a paltry 468 x 624 (100ppi) when showing color. And even then, the colors are far more muted than what you’d get from even a cheap LCD panel, whose range of colors can be counted in the millions — not the thousands. My former colleague Sam Byford described the colors on the similar Kaleido-equipped PocketBook Color as like “a newspaper that’s faded over a few days,” which felt like a very apt description of the Nova Air C.

And yet, even basic color is better than no color at all. The Nova Air C’s colors might look washed out and low resolution, but the essence of the image remains — unlike on a Kindle, where color imagery just looks broken. I’d almost liken using the Kaleido screen to watching a foreign movie with subtitles; you miss out on a lot of the subtlety, but you can still fundamentally understand what you’re looking at.

I briefly tried watching video on the Nova Air C’s screen via YouTube, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Content looks incredibly juddery thanks to the screen’s low refresh rate, colors look washed out, and there’s a huge amount of ghosting. You can see what’s going on in a pinch, but I’d rather watch video on literally any other screen.

Despite the color, the tablet retains the benefits of an E Ink display. I had no issue reading the Nova Air C in bright sunlight, and, with a small boost to its screen illumination feature, I was also able to read it in low light before bed with no eye strain. Battery life is also as impressive as any other e-reader. I’ve been using the tablet on and off for the better part of two months, and its battery level is still sitting at 55 percent.

That said, part of the reason for this impressive life is likely to be the Nova Air C’s aggressive power management settings, which, by default, see the tablet fully shut down if you don’t use it for just 15 minutes. This can mean waiting around 27 seconds for the tablet to boot up every time you want to use it. I’d suggest adjusting the “Power-off timeout” in settings to one or even two days, which will allow the laptop to wake in a couple of seconds when you want to use it. But be prepared to sacrifice a little battery life for this increase in responsiveness.

The highlight of the Onyx Boox Nova Air C is its built-in note-taking app. Handwriting notes feels great with the included stylus, with pen strokes appearing on the screen near-instantaneously and 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity that offer a lot of versatility. There are a variety of different brush styles and colors, and the software can attempt to transcribe your handwriting into typed text and even emoji.

This character recognition worked okay in limited cases but struggled with lengthy passages. Once written, it’s easy to export notes to a PDF or PNG file by simply scanning a QR code with your smartphone or sharing them to another app on the tablet. It all makes the Nova Air C a great device for taking notes by hand.

But trying to use the tablet like a traditional e-reader is more complicated, and you’ll have to jump through more hoops than on competing devices like the Kindle. Although the Nova Air C technically comes with a built-in “Store,” in practice it seemed to be filled mainly with public domain works, and I couldn’t find any of the modern books I was hoping to read.

That leaves you with a couple of other options. You can download ebooks from elsewhere on the internet and then transfer them to the tablet, and it supports a good range of filetypes, including PDF, ePub, TXT, RTF, and MOBI. But, when I actually purchased an ePUB from eBooks.com and tried to load it onto the Nova Air C, I discovered that it doesn’t support the Adobe DRM the store uses. (The only DRM the e-reader supports is the Chinese-focused JD DRM.)

Thankfully, Onyx is using a heavily modified version of Android 11 as software on the Nova Air C, which means you’re not limited to using its built-in software. You can download and install most apps from the Play Store as though you were using any other Android tablet, including, crucially, Amazon’s Kindle app. Getting Google Play Services set up on the device is a bit of a weird process that requires you to hop through a couple of strange hoops. But, once I was set up, it was relatively easy to benefit from my preexisting Kindle library. While I was there, I downloaded a couple of other Android apps: Instapaper for reading all the web articles I bookmark for reading later throughout the course of my day; Obsidian for note-taking; and Comixology for reading comics.

Take note-taking. The Nova Air 2 comes with a decent note-taking app that works very well with the stylus. But it works less well for typed notes, which you might want to do if you have a Bluetooth keyboard to pair with the tablet.

So, instead, I downloaded the note-taking app Obsidian. It worked well, allowing me to type up notes far faster than I could ever handwrite them. And, unlike when using a laptop or my phone, I could happily do so late at night without having to look at a bright screen. You could use whatever word processing or note-taking software takes your fancy — so long as it has an Android app. It’s also possible to download alternative stylus-compatible apps, but my experience was a bit hit and miss. OneNote worked well, but INKredible felt laggy with Onyx’s stylus.

I was also able to get Instapaper up and running with minimal hassle. I had full access to all my saved articles ready for me to read without having to go through the clunky sync process that Instapaper’s Kindle integration requires. Comixology worked okay for reading comics, but the screen was just slightly too low in resolution and small for it to feel like I was getting the most of the experience.

But, very quickly, I started encountering issues with these apps that had obviously never been designed with E Ink screens in mind. You control apps on the Nova Air C with a combination of taps and swipes, same as you would on any other Android tablet. But its E Ink screen is so much less responsive than the 60Hz LCD or OLED panels found in most other Android devices that it’s hard to “feel” your way around each app. You can’t half-swipe to check what a full swipe might do; you have to fully commit and hope you got it right.

Things feel a lot better when you start using physical buttons to control the tablet, which is made possible via Onyx’s magnetic Nova Air case. This not only adds a protective cover to the tablet but also includes a pair of physical volume buttons, which many reading-focused Android apps will let you remap into page-turning controls. If you’re going to pick up a Nova Air C, I’d strongly recommend getting this case for it. It’s sold separately from the tablet for $59.99, which feels expensive given how necessary it is.

I had very high hopes for the Onyx Boox Nova Air C. I wanted it to be able to do it all: read books; read online articles; and act as a repository for all my notes — all in a form factor that I could happily use late at night without eye strain.

And, yes, it can absolutely do all of these things. But the more I asked of the tablet, the more I could feel its E Ink screen creaking under the pressure. E Ink panels are more than responsive enough for reading books using software designed specifically with them in mind. But throw in an app designed for a 60Hz touchscreen, and it can be a struggle to use. And packing in this much functionality means that the Nova Air C struggles to match a simple Kindle when it comes to simply being able to flip it open and immediately start reading. You have to choose the app, and possibly even the book, first.

I wanted a lot from the Nova Air C, and at $450, I think it’s reasonable to expect it. Amazon’s Kindles cost roughly half of what Onyx is asking, and you can even get an alternative e-reader with a color screen from PocketBook for $234. Or, if your priorities are less about having an E Ink screen and more about having the functionality of a tablet, you could get an iPad Mini with an 8.3-inch screen for $499 or a base level iPad with a 10.2-inch screen for $329. None of these devices will tick all the boxes. But, then again, neither does the Nova Air C.

Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. It’s impossible for us to read and analyze every single one of these agreements. But we started counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate.

Oh boy, where to start? This is a loaded conversation full of many different angles, so let me start from the beginning. As an avid stationary nerd, die-hard Chromebook fan, and self-proclaimed mindfulness expert, I can confidently tell you that there’s a massive gap in the technology landscape for a Google-branded e-Ink paper tablet. Let me explain.

If you’re not familiar with e-Ink, it’s a technology that has been popularized by Amazon Kindle devices. You know, the non-LCD screen display that reduces eye strain, has weeks-long battery life, and gives you the sense that you’re actually looking at a piece of paper? The tech itself uses what’s called electronic ink – hence the name – and operates based on tiny capsules under the display that electronically flip one way or another to produce a black or a white spot.

To answer these questions we should start at the very core of e ink technology: small capsules filled with a clear fluid containing teeny-tiny particles, each about as wide as a human hair.

Each electronic paper display is made up of millions of such capsules in a thin film, with the particles inside the capsules of different colors and different electric charges. Electrodes are placed above and below the capsule film. When a positive or negative electric field is applied to an individual electrode, the color particles with the corresponding charge will move either to the top or bottom of a capsule, making the surface of the e-paper display appear a certain color.

Most recently, Amazon came out with a device called the Kindle Scribe, which allows for more than just reading ebooks – it also lets you take notes with a stylus! What’s significant about this is that, unlike an LCD tablet or Chromebook, it has perfect palm rejection (something traditional tablets still struggle with to this day) and even feels resistant enough to give a sense that you’re writing on paper.

There are obviously others that have preceded the Scribe, like this new Boox Note Air 2 Plus that I recently ordered, for example. An Android-powered E Ink paper tablet was a better bet for me for a few reasons. First, I was sick of trying to make my Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3 and other Chromebooks in tablet mode work for notetaking. The Duet came the closest for its size, but the much larger and hotter running Samsung Galaxy Chromebook worked perfectly for this use case. The issue was, again, the heat it generated, the hard, metal body, the heft, the tiny stick stylus, and well, I could go on and on.

If I’m taking handwritten notes, something I much prefer to typing as I feel much more connected and free-flowing with my thoughts, these problems are deal breakers. I wanted something under two pounds, ultra-portable, and paper-like that reduced eye strain and didn’t have my running for a charger every few hours. If I’m completely honest, technology has made me more capable yet less connected with my internal thoughts, reflective personality, and attempts at self-actualization. Moving back to paper would afford me the opposite problem which I began with when I started using Chromebooks, so I needed something new.

Having fought with Chromebooks and attempted to wrangle them for handwriting has been a struggle for years, and I nearly came out the victor if it weren’t for the terrible pen and display of the new Duet 3. I lost hope in ChromeOS tablets, and while it’s my experience and not an objective fact that they’re bad, I’ve abandoned ship until further notice. I still use a Chromebook to be productive, but in the planning stages, ideation processes, and alignment times in the morning, I’m now happily using my Boox Note Air 2 Plus.

Despite this, even the Boox is not a perfect device. It’s owned by a Chinese company where questions of privacy and security have risen thanks to the government there. While I know that’s ironic when you consider Google’s track record, I still trust Google over potential national security threats and international spying initiatives.

For this reason, I’ve not enabled synching on my Boox device, and my notes are simply on the device – a dangerous state of existence that I’m not comfortable with as a millennial who’s spent his whole life cloud-synching things as a backup solution.

With all of the rambling out of the way, I’ve been getting at the fact that an E Ink paper tablet that runs either ChromeOS or Android, created by Google, that natively integrates Keep, Play Books, Google Cursive, and more would solve all of my problems.

You see, for all of its faults, Cursive – Google’s handwritten notetaking app – is primed for such a thing. It’s more visually appealing, has better organization and tools, and so on than many of its competitors. Even still, it’s simple enough to be the home screen of such a device centered on writing.

Of course, Boox tablets already have Android, but Cursive isn’t available except in read-only mode thanks to its Chromebook-exclusive approach and Keep and other notetaking apps have considerable input lag. We need a device that natively operates on Cursive with Google Play Books on another tab for reading and listening to audiobooks.

While it may sound niche, and well, maybe it truly is, that didn’t stop Amazon from making a paper tablet. I’m actually surprised that Google has yet to jump at this opportunity. E Ink is becoming more affordable (slowly), more widely available, and more mainstream. Not everyone is bought in due to its slow refresh rate, ghosting, and limited use cases, but the desire to use paper to plan and execute on bigger ideas will never go away. Now that I’m in my thirties and over-saturated with keyboards, LCD screens, and apps, I finally get that. You’ll truly only get where I’m coming from when you finally use an E Ink device for yourself!

Do keep in mind as well that Google has been doing a ton of work on its Prosidy model for audiobooks so that they have a much more natural speech pattern, they continue to invest in Play Books and its audience, and the company even archives millions of old newspapers from decades ago. All I’m saying is that Google has a lot of reasons to make such a tablet.

So then why hasn’t it come about? It’s true that Google is focusing heavily on ChromeOS (again, a ChromeOS base for the E Ink device would rock) so its sights aren’t really set on niche markets, nor can it afford to do so. Add to that the fact that globally, the Google Play Books market share is less than 5% and dropping each year, and the user base for E Ink is still extremely low and imbalanced compared to traditional computers, and it’s clear why there’s no mention of this type of thing coming to market.

As previously mentioned, the refresh rate on paper tablets is also not great, and Google’s apps are made for scrolling. There’s clearly a lot to figure out, but just as with Chromebooks, Google took a chance, stuck it out (for once), and struck gold.

Lastly, the new Pixel Tablet that’s said to double as your next Nest Hub is rumored to be receiving a stylus for handwritten input around the house. If true, I very much doubt that it will fare better than the Lenovo Chromebook Duet for palm rejection, battery life, and eye strain. It is still an LCD display after all, and it’s being created with the mindset that you will never be far from its charging base. It most certainly isn’t a device you’ll be traveling with, but future iterations could succeed where Chromebooks have failed.

With Google adding improved neural input developer flags to ChromeOS over the past few years to help reject your Chromebook’s shelf from activating when your hand touches it, I do believe it’s working hard on these problems. Even still, I hope that one day, we have better solutions that actually work, are reliable, and perhaps even save my poor, aging eyes.

Hell, if we could get a proper handwriting experience on a lightweight Chromebook that simply doesn’t disappoint – something that I’m losing hope with – the battery life on ChromeOS were doubled (yes, I know, that’s an insane request) and a greyscale mode was added to the display, then maybe I would finally find that unicorn device.

Perhaps natively integrating Android’s Digital Wellbeing into ChromeOS would solve this problem and E Ink would no longer be necessary (though I am enjoying it), screen refresh rates would not need to be sacrificed, and the beautiful color that comes with a standard tablet would remain. My hope is that against all odds, Google rushes to fill this gap for those of us who want to be freed from our keyboard-shaped prisons without losing the improvements that the digital age has brought to paper – the original technology for thinkers.