Boox Note Air 2 Review: Flawed

I’ve been on a bit of an odyssey over the last month. I’ve been trying to read more and simplify my work life by drastically reducing my reliance on paper notebooks. After some searching online, I discovered that a world of YouTubers and bloggers who extol the virtues of e-ink: how it’s good on your eyes, has weeks of battery life and can offer good reading and writing experiences. I was intrigued and purchased an Onyx Boox Note Air 2 to replace a Kindle and to allow me to take notes (instead of an iPad or paper notebook).

Onyx is a Chinese company that has been selling e-readers internationally for some time. Nevertheless, their official website is odd: I was a bit weirded out by the humorously vague quotation that was attributed to a mysterious ‘IT Expert’. The European-focused website is a little better, despite the occasional translation error and the absence of information about the products themselves. The voices of the YouTube evangelists still rung in my ears and I took the plunge.

Once it arrived, I was surprised. The hardware is really rather pleasing. The device is thin and nicely weighted in the hand. Due to the absence of any physical protrusions from the back, the device sits flat when used as a notepad. The cover glass sits flush atop the device so there is no annoying ridge on which one can catch their hand. And the blue colour looks good in all…