BOOX Note Air 3C Review: does anyone really need a color e-ink tablet?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 6 лип 2024
- I impulse-bought this e-ink tablet in October. How do I feel about it now, months later? I reveal all in this astonishing tech review.
🦑 Where am I?
website: www.savallion.com
sticker shop: savallionart.etsy.com
watch on Twitch: / savallion
peep my insta: / thesavallion
Read me on Medium: / lysscreative
☕ ko-fi.com/savallion
If you liked this, you can support me by watching more of my videos, hanging out with me on Twitch, or buying me a kofi coffee at the link above - Наука та технологія
The color screen was why I finally bought a Note Air 3C. I have tons of color PDFs. Battery life never been an issue for me. But I see that point. The colors are not vibrant, but good enough for me.
Thank you so much for your review! Great review, btw!
Thank you for sharing your views about this tablet after using it on a long period of time. It helped me making my mind about it.
This is honestly one of the best videos I've watched on this device, and I've watched a lot of them! Very well done and thought out. Great points on the device as a whole and different use cases. I currently have a Supernote A5x, and I really do enjoy it, but I've been wanting to get a color device mainly for reading more (comics, graphic novels) and some light sketching with color. I've actually got my SN posted for sale in a few places lol
Few years ago I bought graphics tablet without screen for ~60$, bcs ones with screen were much more expensive.
Now it is my favourite essential tool for drawing ideas: no flashing from hand, reliability without fear of damage, pleasant fantomy feeling of painting without see to hand and so on.
So, better to be with tablet rather than without, imho : )
For me, a graphics/drawing tablet has a different use case than the e-ink tablet. I've used graphics tablets as well (I have a review for a HUION tablet with a screen and prior to that I used screenless tablets like the Wacom Bamboo Fun). The e-ink tablet cannot do all the same things, and it CAN do some things that graphics tablets cannot do. The biggest difference being that it is 100% portable, and does not need to be a attached to a computer.
I think a closer comparison would be comparing the e-ink tablet to an iPad or Galaxy Tablet, where they have the same capabilities.
Thank you! I've been looking at a lot of reviews, and I feel yours was most helpful in seeing the device in a way I wanted to inspect it. It would have been nice to hear about it's utility for drawing but still by far the best review. I feel like reviewers like Kit Masters are trying to sell me the product, where as you have a very pleasant and open approach. 👍🏾
Thank you!
As for your drawing question:
I have used it to sketch out some basic diagrams and it's been perfectly fine for that. However, for fully-featured drawing I'm not sure how well-suited it would be. The built-in notes app, at least, has a pretty limited set of "brushes" available, and then of course the colors are all very muted on the tablet & extremely bright once you export. Even if you grabbed a digital painting app from Google Play, you'd be really limited with color usage because of how it displays on screen, so it would really only be good for black and white drawings, linework, or perhaps a daily sketch practice. That said, the pen is very snappy and pressure sensitivity should have the precision you'd need to do some drawing.
If you want to do digital art regularly or create finished pieces, something like an iPad/Procreate or a graphics tablet that connects to a PC would be better for that use case IMO (and at a similar price for the same amount of screen space).
Yes, just in December the Note Air 3 came out. It has a normal black and white screen and is 100 bucks cheaper. Currently have the NA3C as well and will return it. Color EInk displays have too many downsides for my taste.
Did exactly the same - bought the NA3C and returned it in a week. I don't think E Ink is ready for colour, and this device overpromises and underdelivers. Especially for the cost. I got the black-and-white version and it's way better (for my workflow) for what I need. And the battery life is way better.
Nice to see another left-handed and the app allows to move the toolbox to the right :)
A very helpful and accessible review, nicely delivered, that helped me finalise my purchase decision since the 'pro e-reviewers' had not ! Thank you I am now Subscribed S
Thanks for keeping it real with your review! Just hit subscribe - you really should have more subs, you've earned it!
Thank you! I really appreciate that.
And last point, I think the Kindle Scribe would have been enough for your use case. For simple notes that mostly stay on the device it's great, the screen is fantastic and during prime day or Christmas it was way cheaper than any other EInk tablet.
Great review! I was so close to getting this version but ended up going with the standard Air 3. I do like the idea of color especially since I plan on using the tablet to be the host of my textbook PDFs but we shall see if it hinders me in that aspect or not. The main selling point for me was the much longer battery life compared to the 3C. I have heard the 3C is a more seamless writing experience so if I notice an annoying latency I will most likely return it and get this one lol. I believe Amazon gives me 30 days to return it
What did you do in the end friend? whats the comparison like?
Thanks for the review. Vector PDF should zoom/scale better, that's the main difference.
That makes perfect sense, now that you mention it!
Do you use OneNote at all? I would love to hear someone like you discuss how that works for you. Most of the videos I am finding about it are from people who don't use it and so the reviews are a bit lackluster. I am wanting to read on Kindle using split screen and then taking notes in One Note to save for future reference.
I'm afraid I don't use OneNote! I tried it years ago and really did not like it. I hope you can find what you're looking for!
These kind of screens work great in daylight too, so If you want to work outside for a while where a normal laptop screen wouldn't work these e-ink screens are a good option. I got mine a few weeks ago and wanted a colour screen to be able to differentiate colours in diagrams and such, when reading papers. It's also nice when reading comics. Someone also said the latency is lower on the colour device (I don't understand why, maybe it will change in the future, but for this model it was supposedly so) and that it might be advantageous if you move the pen a lot, like when doing maths. So those were some of my thoughts when choosing the colour screen. But it's noticeably darker than the grey scale screens so that's a disadvantage. I agree that if those things weren't important to me I would be better of with a grey scale screen. But I only have one device so I can't compare and say if I would manage just as well on a colourless device. I'm glad to hear you haven't changed your mind, I intend to use mine for a lot of note taking as well.
That's a good point about daylight! I think most e-ink works well in daylight (at least, better than a traditional tablet screen). I also can't really compare it to other devices - I am not a tech review channel, I just review tech as I get it for my own use and hope that it's useful to people :)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Thank you, you have a great voice! Do you feel refreshing for the eyes compared to a tablet?
Thanks!
If you're asking whether I notice any more/less eye strain looking at the e-ink compared to an LED screen, it's hard to say. The e-ink screen is still slightly shiny and has a little bit of glare in certain lights. If I had to guess, I would say it is probably better than looking at a computer screen, but not as good as looking at a book in a well-lit room.
Would you suggest going for the color version or black and white one? Will be used primarily for taking notes in uni so baterry is definitely a priority. Amazing job on the videos lovin them
I talked about this in the video 😉 the TL;DR is that for me, I think the color was a bit extraneous. It seemed cool, but after using it for months I don't really make use of color in my note-taking. If I were making the same choice again today, I would probably opt for the black and white version to save a little money. If there are specific apps you'd like to use or if you plan on reading/annotating things on it that have a lot of imagery (maybe a textbook?) it might be worth it to get the color version. Only you can know what your needs are!
Oh I also tried to use the NA3C as an external monitor for coding (with a usb c capture dongle) and it was horrible, very high latency, the colors are so dull that syntax highlighting is basically nonexistent and the ghosting made it really hard to read anything - do not recommend 😅
This sounds like an atrocious experience 😂 thanks for taking one for the sake of science.
Did you try with 100% front light?
To answer the video title: No, but if I need a new one anyway, I might as well have color.
Also, its the culmination of a childhood dream of mine from when I got my very first Kindle, with the keyboard.
This was exactly the goal :) Color is nice to have for some things, and what might be unnecessary to some people is worth it for other people.
Hi can yu tell me if onyx boox note air 3 c is certificated by Google Play Protect?
I'm not sure - is Google Play Protect a separate thing from Google Play? The Boox Note Air 3C does use Google Play as an app store, so the apps you can get from there will only be apps that are allowed on Google Play. If there's an additional app/component to Protect that you're asking about, I'm afraid you'll need to do more research as I don't know.
The screen seems too dark/grey, don't you think so ?
The screen is a bit grey, but it doesn't bother me, personally. The tablet *does* have a backlight that I have set very low. It's possible that turning up the backlight would help in your case, but I think it's a matter of preference!
@@Savallion Thanks for the answer. I'm tempted to buy it. I don't need the color but unfortunately the BW version has not the BSR technology and the screen is not 300 ppi.
I've been pretty satisfied with mine, but there's no harm in checking out reviews of other B&W tablets to see if you can get the resolution you want at a lower price :)
1) The screen is grayer/darker than a standard b/w e-ink screen due to the color e-ink layer, which is common.
2) Onyx had to go with a Kaleido color e-ink screen as it is currently the only way to get 300 ppi b/w resolution on a screen of this size outside of a Kindle Scribe. That was actually a selling point for me.
FYI.... You could write on normal paper all your life and your ecological footprint woult be several times less than using this device. For the research, developement, production, shipping, charging and disposal will always use more resources than a few million pages of normal paper
What if I both use an e-ink tablet and also write on normal paper? Because I do, every day. I also work & play on computers, slurping up delicious electricity 24-7. My home is heated and air-conditioned year-round and I eat beef several times a week. If we want to compare the ecological footprint of my various life decisions, there are better places to start than with how I take notes.
You'll notice that I didn't mention the ecological footprint in my video, because that's not why I got it :)
@@Savallion You may want to re-watch 18:00 - 20:00 you mention using resources, wasting paper etc in several sentences. What you exactly meant can be argued, but what is usually meant by such statements is what I was debating.
@@eriklans8139 I see the source of misunderstanding - when I spoke of "wasting paper" I did not mean that I was concerned about ecological waste. I meant a combination of creating clutter in my home & also wasting money **purchasing** those notebooks that I'm filling up. I value a nice writing experience, quality paper to be used with my fountain pens. Doing morning pages specifically (a practice that creates "useless" notes at a rapid pace) in a digital format gives me the best of both worlds, as I mentioned.
I also just don't care to cater to sensationalism around sustainability. It's pointless to debate a low-power e-ink tablet vs. paper when they are both insignificant in the larger conversation about environmental impact.
@@Savallion I'm considering this device for the same purpose, but I have my doubts that it will help me de-clutter. How has your experience been so far?
I can't really say much more about my experience than I already have 😂 Only you can determine if your goals will be supported by an e-ink tablet. For example: do you currently use a lot of sheets of paper / sticky notes / notebooks that you could consolidate into one place with the tablet? If so, it will probably help -- but only if you also change your behavior to actually USE the tablet. Another example: if you read a lot of physical copies of books and would prefer to read digitally, it may also help you declutter physical books, though I would argue if you ONLY want to use it as an e-reader there are definitely cheaper options for that.
To figure out if this (or any other device) will help you declutter, take a look at what clutter you are currently bothered by and then ask, honestly, "will I actually use this new device to replace those other things?" You may also consider the effort it would take to migrate existing notes, if that's important to you. There are some similar tablets that have a camera to "scan" in documents. For me, the tablet helps in some areas (doing brainstorms, doing calculations by hand, or taking quick, scrap notes) but not in others (I prefer to do daily planning on paper), and that's OK.