Onyx Boox Tab Ultra brings iPad features to E Ink

We’ve been fans of Boox ereader and tablet devices from Onyx for a while now, especially the Boox Nova Air C, one of our picks for best ereader. The Air C has a color LCD layer on top of the black and white E Ink, but now, the company is pushing its E Ink even closer to full-featured tablet territory by adding features we normally expect on a tablet such as the iPad 10.9. 

The Onyx Boox Tab Ultra is a 10.3-inch E Ink tablet with a 16MP camera on the back, a feature we would never expect paired with an E Ink display. E Ink is very slow to refresh, but Onyx has done tremendous work making the Boox Tab Ultra move as fast as possible. The tablet features a Qualcomm 8-core processor and a GPU that Onyx says was custom-made for faster refresh rates on its screen. 

The camera won’t be used for normal photography, we suspect. Instead, Onyx touts the sensor’s ability to photograph and scan documents, which is more in keeping with the technology. We’re curious how well the E Ink handles the viewfinder tasks with the camera.

Onyx says the Boox Tab Ultra builds off of the Note Air 2 Plus spec, and we found the Note Air 2 to be an excellent digital note-taking device. The Boox Tab Ultra gets a stylus, and Onyx wisely sticks with Wacom-style EMR technology, a much better choice than going with proprietary tech, like Apple and Microsoft prefer. Samsung uses this technology in its S Pen stylus.

The tablet strangely runs Android 11, putting it two generations behind the latest Android 13 release. It seems doubtful to expect such a unique offering will get regular updates, but hopefully Onyx manages to keep the Tab Ultra secure.

The Boox Tab Ultra gets 4GB of RAM, which should be plenty to drive apps on the monochrome display, and 128GB of storage. Don’t worry about the lack of space, because Onyx happily provides a microSD card slot.

The Boox Tab Ultra will launch on the Boox online store on October 27. The tablet will cost $599.99 in the U.S.. Pricing in our other favorite markets is not yet available.

In addition to the Tab Ultra, Onyx is also updating some of its other popular E Ink tablets. The Nova Air 2 updates the Boox Nova Air that we called “cute-looking, super-slim and incredibly flexible 7.8-inch device for digital note-takers on the go.”

The new device has a 7.8-inch E Ink display, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage space, plus it supports the Onyx Pen Plus stylus. The Nova Air 2 will cost $399.99 in the US, though we’re still awaiting pricing in other markets.

The Onyx Boox Leaf 2 updates the company’s simpler line of ereading devices. Rather than a stylus, this device is for reading and gets updates with page turning buttons. It has a 7-inch display, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, and a microSD card slot. The Leaf 2 sells for $199.99 in the US – again, pricing in other markets isn’t available just yet.

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