ZDNET Key Points
- The Onyx Boox Note Air 3 C is a $500 color electronic ink tablet for note-taking.
- This tablet is packed with productivity features and templates, while also delivering an impressive pen writing experience.
- The machine is a bit lacking in video viewing or web browsing, and the e-book library isn’t very extensive either.
As a writer, you always worry about falling into a productivity or creative slump. I recently found myself in this situation, and in a desperate attempt to get my life in order and get my creative spark back, I bought two paperback notebooks. I carried them around with me for a while, opened them a few times, but ultimately, they did little to spark my inner inspiration. Then I tried Onyx Boox Note Air 3 C.
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This color E Ink tablet finally revived my productivity with a variety of note-taking templates. I found my creativity returning when using the stylus, with virtually no lag and a smooth feel like your favorite ballpoint pen on smooth paper. The display has a color resolution of 1240 x 930 (150 PPI) and a black-and-white resolution of 2480 x 1860 (300 PPI—same as the Kindle Scribe).
Although it doesn’t have a sharp color display like traditional tablet like a IPAD tabletThis tablet is for taking notes, and it does a great job. Forget fancy note-taking apps; the Onyx Boox Note Air 3 C has all the best features of the best apps, like templates, voice recording, color coding, inserting links and attachments into notes, and more. Plus, it integrates artificial intelligence enables text recognition, shape completion, and a strikethrough feature that makes erasing much easier.
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From organizing my to-do list to drafting my daily plan to simply serving as a space to jot down my thoughts, this tablet has replaced all my bulky notebooks with a slim design (it weighs less than a pound). I still get the satisfaction of writing things down on paper. I even downloaded a coloring app from the Google Play store (you can download just about any app you want) to replace my daily scrolling routine for a much more mindful experience.
The tablet has a number of features that make it a productivity machine. For example, there’s a split-screen feature that lets you switch between two different apps. This was especially helpful when I was planning out the layout of my garden beds: on one screen, I could plot out which herbs I would plant where, while on the other screen, I could search the web for which herbs grow best together and which herbs should not be planted close together.
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Also, if you need to use this tablet for work or schoolYou can easily send files to your tablet from your computer or smartphone using BOOXdrop. It only takes a few seconds and you can annotate PDFs and other Word documents with ease. I find it extremely useful for story editing and content planning in my daily work.
While you can use the Note Air 3 C as an e-reader, Boox’s built-in book library is lacking. Fortunately, you can download the Kindle app, which gives you access to more titles and more vibrant colors in your books. Since it’s a color E Ink display, I found it great for reading magazines. Just keep in mind that you won’t be able to use features like handwritten notes or page layout adjustments in the Kindle app (and most third-party apps).
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Like all E Ink displays, you’ll occasionally experience ghosting due to the refresh lag. I only noticed this in certain apps, especially third-party ones. Browsing the web works pretty well, but then again, this is an E Ink tablet. There’s a built-in speaker, which is useful for watching YouTube videos about growing rosemary, although the sound is a bit tinny and lacks bass.
ZDNET Buying Advice
If you’re looking for a note taking tablet to get your groove on, I can’t recommend it enough. Onyx Boox Note Air 3 C more. Its color E Ink display puts it ahead Kindle Note Taker and ReMarkable Tabletand writing experience with built-in templates make it easy to organize your thoughts.
