BOOXTablet Note Max 13.3 No Frontlight B/W ePaper Notebook Carta 1300 300 PPI 6G 128G

I use it to read documents and contracts. Look and feel like real paper printouts. Being able to download all Microsoft productivity products using Android os is amazing. A truly productive tool.

Surprised it's only at 3.5 stars right now. It's everything it claims to be.I'm using it as a replacement for my PC, and it's great. I have to sacrifice some speed and function, but it's easily worth the health benefits compared to LCD.

Extraordinario dispositivo. Casi un PC de tinta. Si bien la pantalla es más gris que la del Boox Go 10.3, no afecta en nada la nitidez de los textos e imágenes. Óptimo dispositivo para quienes desean enfocarse en su productividad.

The media could not be loaded. This is my fourth Boox device, and when it comes to value - it is the worst one.To start with the "good" - the writing feel of the Max is amazing! It's the best you will get from any Boox product. The screen looks great, impressive contrast, and to my eyes its as bright as the Go 10.3.And that's about all the "good" I can say. Now, let's talk about why you should not buy the Note Max:• Ghosting - some ghosting is to be expected with any e-ink device, but the ghosting on the Max is just plain ridiculous. The Max simply refuses to do a full refresh under any circumstances and settings. No matter what you do – you will have visible ghosting, sometimes quite so. The only way to get rid of it is to do a manual full refresh, that’s it.I’ve watched a lot of video reviews of the Max before buying, and while reviewers will talk about the ghosting, it just didn’t appear to be such an issue on camera. But now that I have it in real life – it’s worse than you can imagine, because you’ve probably never seen this level of ghosting before.• Still some Bugs – after all this time Boox has been working on their software, you’ll still find annoying bugs. For example, I write with the toolbar collapsed (and all gestures and hand touch turned off). Yet every now and then the toolbar will just randomly expand itself for no reason. Another issue I have is that the Max is unable to detect the network all my other Boox devices are on. Attempting to add a network manually does absolutely nothing, either.• Battery Life – the battery life of the Max is abysmal. Compared to the Go 10.3, the Max uses up the battery significantly faster, and that’s with wifi and BT off, just simply writing. Yes, writing will drain the battery, but again, it will do so much faster on the Max than on the Go 10.3, very noticeably so.• Kinda Slow – for being one of their latest devices, the Max feels much slower than the older Go 10.3, despite having better processor and more ram. Just simple tasks like opening settings or turning on a feature from the Command Center feel lethargically slow. Too often it tricks me into thinking that maybe I failed to properly press a selection, when in reality I did do it right and the Max was just "thinking".• It’s Big – the A4 size of the screen is not abnormal, but when you add the bezels, the Max becomes a rather large device. Combine this with the thinness, and I’d be scared to take it outside the house. It would be very uncomfortable to use it to take notes in college or during a business meeting – it just takes A LOT of room. Another issue related to the size is that if you have another, smaller Boox device, there will be a size discrepancy between the notes. For example, if you start a note on the Go 10.3 and then open it on the Max, the size of your handwriting will appear comically larger; and vice versa, if you start a note on the Max and then want to continue on the Go – your handwriting will appear lilliputian.• The Price – with all these issues, the asking price is down right astronomical.Overall, the Go 10.3 would be a much better option for the vast majority of people. The ridiculous ghosting and the slow performance will be a deal breaker for most – it’s just hard to read documents with all the ghosting, it’s slow (and just plain too big) for note taking or apps, and it’s too expensive to have so many issues that directly affect the use of the device.That said, I am keeping my Max, but only because my use case is long-form handwriting. I don’t read on it, I don’t take notes, and it never leaves my desk. Having to do a manual refresh when I add a new page is just a minor inconvenience. And the wiring feel is truly excellent. But unless you are a very niche case like me – you will regret buying the Note Max.

When old school meets the future magic happens. Voya posted a 5 hour in-depth review on YouTube. I initially purchased the Remarkable Paper Pro, which was very nice, but was too bare boned for my needs. I liked the color screen and backlight, but now I have full access to the google play store, kindle books, OneNote, Bluetooth, split screen, TV streaming, and the list goes on. People are complaining about ghosting, but I don't find it troublesome. New updates seem to be minimizing the issue. If you can't live without a backlight, just get a sleek inexpensive portable light. The writing feel is very good. Almost as good as the RMPP. There is a learning curve there, but I find it intriguing and rewarding. Oh, and the hardware is dead s3xy! P.S. The keyboard folio is nice, but bulky/hefty and non backlit. My favorite EMR pen to use with this is the Kindle Scribe Premium pen with modified ceramic nib :)

INTROSo, I feel like I should preface this with an acknowledgement and/or rebuttal of some of the most common tropes about Onyx's Boox line of devices because for some reason "e-ink disinformation" is a thing now on the internet (not that I guess that should really surprise anyone since disinformation in general seems to be heavily in vogue). Two salient points:First, regarding their supposed fragility: look. I have 6 of these freaking things. After I finish my review series I am going to start selling them off. Three of them -- the Note Max, the Tab Ultra C Pro and the Tab Mini C -- live in my backpack as part of my everyday carry, not because I need all of them at the same time but because I'm still learning interesting things about when devices of different sizes and/or capabilities are useful for different reasons at different times and taking down notes on those experiences. All of them are more or less permanently ensconced in their folio cases such that while they're in my bag they never take a hit to their screens. Nevertheless, I am clumsy as hell thanks to ADHD ensuring I never really have much of a solid idea of where any part of my body is in relation to its surroundings, and have knocked my Note Max to the floor of my living room at least three times. It has never been worse for any of this wear.Second, regarding their supposedly terrible customer service: some of you may know that the Note Max's keyboard case has a factory defect affecting all of them to one degree or another, such that keys near the center of the keyboard may quickly repeat themselves when pressed; the space bar was a typical example of this. Back when I discovered it in January I contacted Onyx about the problem via their Feedback tool, explaining the issue and asking for assistance. They requested a video of the problem because they could not duplicate it themselves at the time. I obliged, noting that some of the testing issue could very well have been because they were more inclined to be careful while typing and probably just didn't hit the keys as hard as your average overly-caffeinated Westerner (not, surely, that we know any of those). They thanked me for the help and noted that their engineers were examining the problem. Three weeks later came a mea culpa from their customer service rep, with words to the effect of "hey, our engineers have determined that We Done Goofed with this product, we're going to send you replacements which we believe have the defect corrected; can you please send us the busted ones you have now?" That's right -- plural, because I originally ordered two cases because I'd originally thought "oh this keystroke problem must just be a 'me' thing." They expressed no reservations about replacing both. I am now typing this review using the second keyboard, validating that it too has the defect corrected -- I have not had a single repeated keystroke the entire time. Throughout this process, the Onyx CS reps were courteous, professional, and interested in engaging with me on a technical level about the problem I was encountering. This is more than I can say for interactions with plenty of Western brands. In conclusion, relax about the customer service. It's fine.WHO IS THIS THING FOR?And now, to Get On With It. I think I want to structure this thing by talking about who this is for and why, and who it isn't for and why, because a lot of people probably read things like this to figure out whether or not a given product fits their use cases.For:* Professionals who want to work with data in a number of different apps (Outlook x the Boox Notes app x OpenTasks x PowerPoint, for example). Having a really usable split-screen mode is killer for this, as is the Note Max's class-leading Snapdragon 855 system-on-chip and 6GB RAM which lets it multitask like a "real tablet" as opposed to the performance compromises one often finds themselves needing to make on other e-ink devices due to OEMs skimping on SoCs because of the high cost of e-ink screens. There's none of that worry about tradeoffs here. The SD855 isn't a "speed demon" in any modern sense but it is decidedly capable of handling anything you throw at it. Here I feel compelled to note one of my classic use cases: turning notes into actionable work. It’s a pretty simple workflow: take notes in a meeting, when I’m finished, hit AI > Recognize, get the text, highlight things that I called out as to-dos, pick “share” and then send that text to Microsoft To-Do or another app that can do something useful with the text. This has been a game-changer for me at work. There are other e-ink platforms with similar functionality, but without exception they all restrict the recognized text to their own to-do app or are simply less functional and are missing a step. The Note Max (and other Boox devices, to be fair) gives me a huge amount of flexibility to turn my notes into data.* Scientists, engineers and students who need to read and annotate large PDFs with a lot of textual detail -- the huge screen is great for things that scale down poorly. It also has one of the best writing experiences in the combination of Boox's Notes app and the excellent pen-and-paper-like screen protector that ships preapplied to the screen that you can get from an e-ink device -- I think only Supernote and their FeelWrite 2 surface is superior (at least to me), and even then, not by much. When writing notes in meetings or annotating large documents I like the combination of the Note Max's screen surface and a Staedtler Noris Jumbo pen with a titanium tip.* Sketch artists who want a huge canvas, great screen/pen feel and responsive e-ink.* Anyone who wants a portable (yes, I said it -- it's big, it's just not heavy at all especially for its size) productivity machine -- especially to be used with the keyboard case -- with a sharp, gorgeous B&W e-ink display to help them keep focused on what they need to do.Not For:* Someone looking for a bedtime reader. This sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people seem confused about the "this is super large and does not have a frontlight" thing. On that note -- no, the screen is not "dark." Its white level is maybe slightly less bright than the Boox Go 10.3's, and its black levels are probably the best you can get from electrophoretic display technology. So you can't use it as a bedtime reader because you would probably need a frontlight for that kind of work, but reading in somewhat low light? You're fine, just stay near a lamp.* Artistic creatives who need color -- again, this sounds obvious, but a lot of people seem to go into the search process "hoping" devices can do things it's sort of clear that they can't.* Someone who wants a "no distractions" note-taker. Look, this is a full-blown Android 13 Play Store-enabled tablet with everything that goes along with that. While the black and white e-ink screen does avoid your brain going dopamine-hunting quite so easily (there's science on this!), you can still waste time on Discord on it like you could on anything else running Android. As for unintended distractions, while there's been a lot of ink (ha) spilled about the Note Max's supposedly horrendous screen ghosting/e-ink afterimage problem, I, personally, barely notice it. Whenever it gets to be a little too obtrusive I just hit refresh and that's the end of it. My understanding is that it can and will be reduced further in future updates.OVERALLThe Note Max is easily one of the best technology purchases I've made in the last few years. It's designed for focus and productivity and it excels with anything you can think of you might want to do with this kind of device. With the addition of the keyboard case it is a great word processing tool and even a remarkably good coding terminal. To me, it's better than anything -- yes, I realize this is a strong statement -- Onyx has produced to date. It is also an excellent value. Until Tariff Time came for us in the U.S. recently, it was $650 direct from Onyx for a package that included their standard cover, the tablet itself and a pen. Personally, I think the pen is just okay (again I refer you to the stellar Staedtler option above), but the regular cover/case is quite nice and does a good job of protecting the device if you don't go for the keyboard case. But, more significantly, every other 13.3" device is at least $100 more expensive and significantly slower. Between value, performance and breadth of use cases, I can unreservedly recommend the Note Max to anyone.

This is the E-ink device I have been waiting for. The screen resolution is crisp, the tablet is wonderfully light, and the Android experience is quite usable.