BOOX Note Air 4C The BOOX Note Air 4C is a powerful and flexible E-Ink tablet that blends the open ecosystem of Android 13 with a vibrant color display and useful stylus support. It’s ideal for avid readers, digital note-takers, and anyone who wants more than a basic e-reader, without diving into the distractions of a full-blown tablet.
As a bibliophile with limited storage space in my home, I’ve relied on a Kindle to house my personal library for more than a decade. After all, you can’t habitually fall asleep with a stack of hardcovers (not that I haven’t tried). When the Kindle Scribe landed on my desk, I fell in love with the idea of an e-reader with even more functionality, throwing my notebook obsession into the same Mary Poppins bag of tricks as my e-books.
However, the BOOX Note Air 4C completely overhauled my interpretation of what an E-Ink tablet can offer. Sleek and powerfully built, it runs Android 13 for app access, delivers a surprisingly good writing experience, and features a vibrant color display that handles all kinds of content. It’s not cheap, and it won’t replace your multimedia tablet, but for anyone wanting their Kindle to do a lot more than just downsize their bookshelf, I think the Note Air 4C offers plenty. Let me explain how.
A more flexible experience
Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
At its core, the Note Air 4C is a solid reader. The 10.3-inch Kaleido 3 E-Ink display won’t rival the brightness or vibrancy of an OLED screen, but it adds more than enough color (more than 4,000) to make highlights, charts, and comics pop in a way a traditional black-and-white e-reader can’t. PDFs also feel right at home on this larger canvas, and textbooks are much easier to navigate and more enjoyable, as much as one can enjoy a textbook. I was most excited to check out a few graphic novels that take full advantage of the color display, and the experience didn’t disappoint.
The BOOX Note Air 4C is a solid, colorful e-reader that lets users tap into an open ecosystem.
With Android 13 under the hood, the Note Air 4C taps into an open ecosystem. That means, unlike traditional e-readers stuck with proprietary software or limited app stores, this device opens the door to a vast world of Android apps. Given that I’ve already sunk tons of cash into Amazon’s walled garden, I downloaded the Kindle app right off the bat and jumped effortlessly between the Kindle store, Libby, and Instapaper. The convenience of having all my content accessible without constantly switching devices is exactly what sets the Note Air apart.
Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority
I also downloaded a range of apps for going beyond reading, including Evernote, OneNote, and Google Keep. I even installed creative tools like Concepts, though I ultimately preferred the tablet’s native offerings for sketching (more on that below). I also downloaded the YouTube app for the sake of curiosity. Videos ran, audio played, and content was consumed, but it’s very clearly not the type of usage this device is meant for.
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