It has a stylus to take notes with I suspect I’ll lose that presently, as I do with most phone/tablet styli. It will play music and podcasts just fine (I downloaded Spotify on it), although you’ll need USB-C headphones for that. If you’re trying to watch video, well, I don’t know what to tell you other than I admire your ambition.

By which I mean to say, yes, in fact, you can use it for anything that has static text and pictures and it will do just fine, as long as you can deal with the fact that e-ink refresh rates are laggy as hell and that as a result scrolling is a thing you do mostly by feel (it has various settings to try to minimize lag while scrolling, but, yeah. Strictly as an ebook reader, which is what I wanted, I’m satisfied and happy with the purchase.Īs a tablet, it’s a very fine ebook reader. It’s only monochrome, but I knew that going in, so I’m not exactly disappointed. There is backlighting, so one can read it in less-than-perfect lighting, and the thing has 300 dots per inch resolution, which for e-ink really is more than sufficient. I have my Kindle and Nook and Google Books apps up and running on it, and they’re presenting text in the way e-ink readers present text, without eyestrain, which I appreciate. I got it and spend most of the afternoon fiddling with it and it’s… doing what I wanted it to, perfectly well indeed. It’s not just an ebook reader, and it’s not tied into a single bookseller ecosystem.

And as a bonus, as an actual Android tablet, you can use it for other things as well. Then over the weekend I read this review of the Onyx Boox Nova 2, which is not only an ebook reader, but is an actual bonafide tablet running Android software - older Android software, to be sure, but new enough that every ebook app from every retailer works on it perfectly well. I had a Nook reader for a while and it was good, but there were some things I had on Kindle I couldn’t get on it, and so on. I’ve been wanting to get a new e-ink book reader lately, but the problem with doing that is, since most e-ink readers are tied into one book-selling ecosystem or another, you pretty much have to choose which retailer you read in e-ink from, whilst everyone else you have ebooks with, you read on a regular glowy screen.

Today’s Tech Acquisition: Onyx Boox Nova 2

Calibre onyx boox