GoKawiilBoox just announced a refresh of its popular Note Air E Ink tablet. The Boox Note Air 6C features plenty of upgrades, many of them related to speed. This is a very good thing as E Ink devices excel at a lot, but being fast is not typically one of them.
The company says the Note Air 6C includes an upgraded processor that can reach speeds up to 2.9GHz. This is a 45 percent increase when compared to the Note Air 5C. Boox says this translates into a 40 percent improvement in PDF page-turning speed.
It has also updated the refresh mode, which the company says is faster than ever before and "designed to make scrolling, web browsing and apps with dynamic content feel significantly more fluid on an E Ink display." As for apps, the Note Air 6C runs Android 16 — the 5C is stuck on Android 15 — and has full access to the Google Play Store.
The 10.3-inch display delivers black-and-white content at 300PPI and color content at 150PPI. There's a four-microphone array for voice recordings and the power button has a fingerprint sensor for secure logins.
It comes with 6GB of RAM, which is the same as the previous generation (and the one before that). More RAM is always nice, but I'm just happy they didn't lower it to 4GB to accommodate the ongoing RAMpocalypse.
It ships with the Pen3 stylus, which doesn't require charging or pairing. As with the Air 5C, there's an adjustable front light, dual speakers and 64GB of built-in storage. That doesn't sound like a lot, but books and documents take up very little space. Also, there's a microSD slot for more storage.
The Boox Note Air 6C looks to be a robust, if iterative, upgrade. It's available today for $580 in a bundle that includes a folio case and some spare tips for the stylus. That's a $50 price hike from the Air 5C, which currently retails at $530. A separate bundle for the new tablet adds a keyboard cover and is priced at $690, discounted to $657 for the launch period. The Air4 C made our list of the best E Ink tablets, and several staffers use the Air5C, so we're excited to put this one through its paces.