A More Powerful Kindle With A Keyboard

Shenzhen tech brand Boox has been making e-ink readers for several years, but its latest offering, the Boox Tab Ultra, is the most ambitious yet for the company and the e-ink reader industry as a whole. Product.

A quick refresher for those unfamiliar with e-ink readers. e-ink is a display technology that is manufactured to look and feel like paper. The screen material has a matte texture with more friction than regular glass. The display produces high-contrast black and white visuals. This type of display is easier on the eyes, especially when used in very dark environments. The most popular electronic ink reader is the Amazon Kindle. Electronic ink readers are generally low power devices because they don’t require a lot of processing power to display static text.

The Boox Tab Ultra turns the script upside down with a Qualcomm octa-core processor and 4GB of RAM (a lot for an e-reader). Boox did this because they wanted their tablet to be more than just an e-reader. We want the Tab Ultra to be a productive machine.

To that end, Boox licensed Android to run on tablets and designed a stylus and detachable keyboard case (similar to what we’ve seen on iPad and Xiaomi tablets). The keyboard case connects to the tablet via pogo pins, and once connected, the 10.3-inch display becomes an Android tablet (albeit a black and white screen).

In general, the refresh rate (how often the screen refreshes per second) on e-ink screens is so slow that even basic scrolling can look laggy and jarring. But Boox has developed a software system that intelligently increases the refresh rate depending on the app. Text can be read statically like an e-book, and the refresh rate is kept low to save battery. Jump to Twitter and scroll to increase the refresh rate. The tablet runs Android, so you can take advantage of the apps available in the Google Play Store, from Instagram to Google Maps to graphics-intensive games. The latter can technically be done, but the refresh rate is still so slow that it’s borderline unplayable. Finally, e-ink screens have their limitations. But most other apps like AirBnb, Facebook, Google Maps, etc. work fine here. I actually wrote most of this article on my tablet.

The tablet itself is thin at 6.3 mm and the battery isn’t that big, but the e-ink screen doesn’t draw as much power as a normal display, so battery life is pretty good. In my use, which consists of typing a lot of words and scrolling the web, the Tab Ultra gives him 14 hours of use on a single charge.

The tablet also has a 16MP camera, but it’s not for photos, it’s for scanning documents. Once the camera captures an image, Boox’s built-in OCR (Optical Character Recognition) algorithm scans it to create an editable document. This software “flattens” the paper you are capturing to create a scanned document that looks more professional than a regular photo of your document.

Let’s go back to accessories. The aforementioned stylus came with the tablet and I really enjoyed sketching and taking notes without any lag. However, styluses can’t detect pressure well, so professional artists can’t alternate between fine and deep lines with just the force of their wrists. The stylus also magnetically snaps to the side of the tablet.

The $108 keyboard case is well made. The keys have close to 1mm of travel and the entire keyboard is large enough to touch type without any adjustment period. The case wraps around the front and back of the tablet and has a faux leather finish, giving the package a very premium and professional feel.

Overall, I really like the Boox Tab Ultra, but it’s a little pricey. The tablet and stylus are $599, and adding a keyboard increases the price to about $700. That’s a high asking price for a tablet that crosses its niche. The reality is that a “regular” Android tablet (or iPad) can do everything this tablet can, but the two advantages of an e-ink display are Except for It has a texture close to that of paper. In return, a “regular” tablet offers a better screen for watching videos or playing games, and a $400+ Android or iPad offers more processing power.

In other words, you really need to want an e-ink display.Perhaps you already have poor eyesight and want to reduce that burden as much as possible.Buy the Boox Tab Ultra. I love using this as a sub-tablet. But I’m a spoiled lucky reviewer. If you can only afford to spend money on one tablet, nothing beats the iPad, unless it’s a fraction of the price of an iPad. And this is not.