I know you. Yes, you. You were looking at the $630 Kindle Scribe Colorsoft or reMarkable Paper Pro with hungry eyes, but the price of both tablets was upsetting your stomach. So you’ve started looking elsewhere for a color e-reader/e-notetaker. In your blind search, you’ve come upon the Boox Note Air 5C, and you’re still left grimacing at the $530 asking price. What I can tell you is there’s a good reason you want a device like this. It just won’t be the everything tablet you were hoping it would be.

I came to the Boox Note Air 5C after finding myself entranced with the $400 Boox Palma 2 Pro. That e-reader is a smaller, phone-sized device compared to the standard 10.3-inch tablet dimensions of the Note Air 5C. Both devices are using the same screen technology, the same octa-core CPU, Android 15 as their operating system, and both use a stylus. And somehow, despite the fact that the Note 5C has a larger screen and similar limitations, I would far prefer to use the smaller device over the larger one, and not just because it’s more portable.

The Note Air 5C doesn’t sport as strong a battery life as other similar devices. That’s a big flaw considering the longevity we expect from other e-notetakers. The 6.13-inch Boox Palma 2 Pro also comes with a special programmable button that should be standard on all e-readers in general. Having to use a touchscreen with a slower refresh speed to change E Ink settings or refresh the page is far more annoying than bringing it up with a single button press.

If all I needed was an electronic note-taking device that wouldn’t hurt my eyes long term, then the Note Air 5C would be sublime. The pen feels great, and the default notes app feels responsive. The added color makes highlighting PDFs, ebooks, or your own notes more expressive. I used it to record my notes before an anticipated tabletop RGB campaign slated for next year. For actually reading my favorite RPG books from this year, it’s a mixed bag. And that means the Note Air 5C may become a $530 one-trick pony for some users.

So why not just get an iPad?

There’s an indefinable beauty to E Ink screens. The screen technology isn’t anything like your typical LCD touch panel. Instead, it uses an electrical field to move incredibly small microcapsules around to create an image. The Boox Note Air 5C uses Kaleido 3 E Ink, which overlays a color filter on top of the image to generate the look of colored paper. Devices like the reMarkable Paper Pro Move use the slower, more vibrant E Ink Gallery 3. Kaleido 3 can replicate 4,096 colors. Sure, that seems like a lot on paper. In reality, the image won’t look anything like real colored paper. That’s important to remember if you plan to use color e-paper as your replacement for your comic collection.

What’s more, Kaleido 3 is notoriously dim. The only functional way to use the Note Air 5C is by boosting the brightness up to 100%. You also have the option to change the color warmth if you tend to read or jot down thoughts late at night. For many readers, sticking with a black and white e-reader, such as Boox’s own Go 6, will offer a cheaper and cleaner experience. There, you can rely on a faster refresh speed to avoid any signs of ghosting, where the E Ink capsules don’t quite move in time and create a subtle bleed into following pages.

The screen on the Note Air 5C has a subtle matte texture that offers gentle feedback when you swipe with a finger or drag the included Boox Pen 3 Stylus across it. That pen is one of the biggest highlights of the e-reader. It includes tilt sensitivity and pressure detection. Using it on the default notes app is smooth and comfortable. The back of the pen comes off to reveal two extra replacement nubs as well. It easily beats the stylus included with the Boox Palma 2 Pro, and you don’t need to spend anything extra to get it.

As for other amenities, there’s not much else. There’s a single USB-C slot for power and a microSD card slot to augment the Note Air 5C’s 64GB of storage. I already mentioned how much I would appreciate some additional physical controls. What I would also want is a better pen attachment point. The device simply doesn’t want to hold onto the stylus—aka the entire reason you buy this device over any regular e-reader or an 11-inch iPad Air with the Apple Pencil Pro.

Everything you lose in convenience is for the sake of the screen. I am much more enthused by color E Ink than the black and white variety. Even a small spot of color makes a huge difference in getting me to sit down and read. Colors make it far easier to highlight PDFs or take notes. It’s a shame such technology demands such high premiums, especially when you’re limited to such a select few tones.

A real figure-it-out-yourself device

There are two versions of the Boox Note Air 5C. One, the $530 standard bundle, comes with the tablet, extra stylus tips, and a magnetic case. The keyboard cover bundle costs $640 (it’s currently going for less on Boox’s own site) and includes a similarly textured case with a keyboard stuffed inside. So, had I discovered my next distraction-free device for typing the next great American novel? Sure, if you have such small hands that typing on a constrained keyboard is preferable to wider devices like a Freewrite keyboard.

Both the folio and keyboard cover bear a pleasant burnt umber color and a soft book cover-like texture. However, I didn’t see much of the appeal of the keyboard cover. It folds up so you can only use the Note Air 5C in landscape mode. The keys are constrained by the 10.3-inch size of the tablet, which makes for a cramped typing experience. There’s no trackpad either, so even if the device supports Android 15, it won’t support any of the recently added touchpad features. The lack of a function row means you still need to touch the Note Air 5C’s screen to change brightness or volume settings.

Actually putting text onto the screen will not be as instantaneous as you’re used to with any other laptop or tablet with a keyboard. The Note Air 5C supports three refresh modes: Regal, Speed, and “Smooth.” The latter is the most recent mode and is supposed to make the browsing and typing experience near instantaneous. It’s slightly faster than the Speed refresh mode, but also results in much more ghosting, which will then require you to refresh your page.

The magnetic case is an odd duckling. It adheres to the Note Air 5C with a simple magnetic attachment point and includes foldable wings that will let you stand it up vertically or horizontally. It also includes a soft, magnetic clamp that folds around the book to keep everything in place. At first, I thought this was exactly the kind of thing I would immediately lose (in the process of writing that sentence, I looked around and realized I left it in the other room). Then I realized what I could actually use it for: making sure I don’t lose the pen as well.

The stylus does a very poor job adhering to the e-reader, whether due to the added pocket clip or poor magnets. Wrapping the fold around both the pen and cover did the trick, and it didn’t even fall off when I shoved the whole apparatus into my backpack. I still fear that, one day, the pen will come loose.

What’s it like taking notes with 4,096 colors?

Over the past few months (mostly thanks to the Boox Palma 2 Pro), I’ve become addicted to the volleyball manga Haikyu!!. The comic pages that roll through on the Note Air 5C include small shades of color that likely are due to the scanning technology on apps like Crunchyroll Manga. These small imperfections surprisingly add to the faux-paper effect you get on E Ink.

Seeing the splash of color when you open up the book cover can be a calming experience—far less old-timey than on a black and white e-reader. How accurate those colors are will depend on each work’s palette. For instance, the cover art to a title like Paru Itagaki’s Beastars on the Kindle app bears a close semblance to the real-life manga. The watercolor-like inks are already in line with Kaleido 3’s washed-out colors, so that makes sense. When I load my PDF of the indie TTRPG Mythic Bastionlands, those dark tones also look very close to what you get in the physical book.

Strangely, in some titles, I found that the “Vivid” refresh settings made ebooks lose much more of the darker contrast than on the “Fast” setting. However, there was no hope for representing every work that tickles my fancy. The comic series The Power Fantasy by Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard was a sad facsimile of what it should look like. It lacked the caustic tones of the artwork hanging up in my apartment. The TTRPG Slugblaster by Mikey Hamm, a work so full of deep cosmic purples, appeared far too pale, like a shade of mauve. This made white text too difficult to distinguish compared to how it is on the real-life page.

You’ll need to switch to Regal refresh mode to get the most definition of white text on a black background. Because of the color options, highlighting text is considerably better than anything you could use on an e-reader with a black and white screen. Boox’s software includes a FreeMark tool that will let you mark up the pages in some apps. It works on Kindle, but it won’t in other apps, including, strangely, Boox’s own NeoReader PDF viewer. You can mark up text, but it lacks tools to change pen or marker type.

An e-notetaker with poor battery life? Yes really…

This e-notetaker weighs in at only 440g, or less than a pound. It’s thin at 5.8mm thick. Yup, that’s what we expect from today’s Kindle-likes. And with this form factor, I’m not forced to consider battery life too much. But with the Note Air 5C, I have to keep a close eye on my battery gauge. Even when jotting ideas down or flipping pages in a book, the device’s battery depletes precipitously. I can use the Note Air 5C intermittently for an entire day and still have enough left over to get it to a charger. However, I’m used to devices like Boox’s own Palma 2 Pro that will last for multiple days with regular use.

If you planned on using this e-notetaker as an artist, I suggest you stick with a clearer OLED tablet. The stylus is accurate enough for penmanship, but E Ink is too unreliable. Colors aren’t what you think they are. Trying to fill in spaces is too inconsistent. I tried the popular Android drawing app Krita on the Note Air 5C, and it was too laggy to even consider.

So you’re left with a few choices. The Android-based Boox devices have all the benefits of being on such an open platform compared to devices like the Kindle Colorsoft Scribe and the similarly expensive reMarkable Paper Pro. For that, you’ll need to deal with occasional jank. The Note Air 5C never failed to boot, but navigating menus can be slow and occasionally laggy. I desperately want just one more physical control on this device to make refreshing the screen and accessing settings seamless.

Boox still promotes the $500 Note Air 4C on its website. They’re the same tablet, though the older version is using Android 13 and includes a less-capable folio and pen (plus no keyboard). So if you were looking for the cheapest color e-notetaker, this device is in the running, though there are other options. There’s another iteration of the Note Air 5C that’s much, much better. Perhaps that will come soon, or else we may finally get a version of color E Ink that truly ticks all the boxes.