The New Love Of My (Reading) Life
A (Long) Chat About The BOOX Note Air2 Plus
I'm a reader. I own over 1,000 physical books. I have a Kindle Voyage. I have a Nook (ugh, what a terrible decision). I have an Audible account and a Libro.fm account. I have a library card and the Libby app. I use the Matter app and the Readwise app, and I'm testing out the Heyday app.
That's a long way to say, if it's a way to consume the written word, I'm all in.
But recently, I realized that I was struggling with my reading routine. After some introspection, I came to a few realizations.
I need to be able to annotate easily.
That immediately ruled out my Nook, and mostly ruled out my Kindle. While you can technically annotate on it, it's a pain. Physical books are great to annotate on (yes, I write in all my books, I'm a heathen), but there's a limit to how many books you can carry at a time.
Too much backlight gives me a migraine.
I'm one of those lucky people who get migraines at least once a month. And I've noticed that they tend to happen when I've spent too much time in front of bright screens. That rules out reading on an iPad, leaving me with either my kindle—which, remember, sucks to annotate on—or physical books.
I have both fibromyalgia and ADHD.
My fibromyalgia (which may be early onset arthritis, no one is sure) tends to flare up in my joints, including my fingers and elbows. Why does this matter? Because holding a 400-page doorstopper can quickly become excessively painful when every knuckle, wrist, and elbow bone feels like it could shatter at any moment. Then there's the ADHD which means I'm always reading multiple books at a time, because who knows what my brain is going to want to focus on today. I certainly don't. It could be the new Brené Brown with my morning coffee, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy while I scarf down lunch, and something literary like Sea Of Tranquility before bed. You'd think the answer would be something simple like leaving a copy of Atlas of the Heart by my coffee maker, THGOTG on the dining room table, and Sea of Tranquility on my nightstand. But of course my brain isn't willing to be that easy. As soon as I do that, it wants to switch up the order and I have to go find the book it wants to read right then—and that's never where it should be because who knows where I actually put it down when a sentence reminded me that I needed to paint my nails right that second.
So, in summary, I needed something that wouldn't trigger a migraine, that I could easily take notes on—preferably with a pen of some sort—that I can hold or prop up when my hands are having a bad day, and that could contain multiple books at the same time.
What originally sounded like an impossible feat turned into childlike delight when I stumbled upon the Onyx Boox Note Air 2 Plus.
THE BORING BIT
Let's start with the boring list of specs, shall we?
10.3" e-ink screen
229.4x195.4x5.8 mm
1404x1872 resolution (227 dpi)
5.8mm thick
445g (0.98 lb)
Android 11
4,096 levels pressure sensitivity
Upgraded Octa-Core CPU
3700mAh Battery
4GB RAM + 64GB Storage
Adjustable dual-tone front lights
Auto rotation
Aluminum body
Wi-Fi (2.4GHz + 5GHz) + BT 5.0
USB Type-C (support OTG) for power that can also support a USB-C headphone
THAT'S GREAT, BUT WHAT EXACTLY IS IT?
The BOOX Note Air2 Plus (henceforth to be known as the NA2P because I'm too lazy to type that out every time) is an e-ink tablet. Basically it's what you'd get if a kindle and an iPad had a baby.
The NA2P uses electronic paper technology (E Ink Carta, to be specific) so it feels like you're looking at paper while you use the tablet, just like on a kindle. However, like an iPad, you can also use other apps, though in this case it uses Android 11 so you're limited to apps available in the Google Play Store. Still, you can use Google Drive, DropBox, Google Docs, Microsoft Office, OneNote, Evernote, Obsidian, Kindle, Nook, Overdrive, Libby, etc. You can even browse the web with the built-in web browser.
It comes with a built-in speaker so you can listen to any type of audio: music, books, podcasts, voice memos, etc., which is surprisingly rare in most e-ink tablets. If you don't want everyone to hear what you're listening to, however, you can always either use bluetooth headphones or plug in USB-C headphones instead.
Unlike some kindles, the NA2P isn't waterproof, so be careful using it in the tub or at the beach. But unlike an iPad, it comes with a protective screen protection already applied so you don't have to worry about scratches or glare.
If you do get a touch of glare, say from bright overhead lights, you can turn the backlight on. Not only does it let you choose how bright you want the backlight, but you get to choose how warm or cool you want the light. So if you're reading before bed, you can choose a low warm light that won't interfere with your circadian rhythm.
I'll admit it's not as light as a kindle or even the smaller iPads, but it's not unbearably heavy by any means. I've walked around the house reading on it several times and even with a case on it, I didn't have any issues.
The primary uses are writing, drawing, and reading, but in this article, we'll focus just on the reading use case.
LET'S READ ALL THE THINGS
The biggest reason I bought the NA2P was for my reading, as discussed at the beginning of this article. And so far, it's been a dream.
It comes with its own e-reading app built-in, so if you have DRM free e-books, you can load them onto the tablet and read them without having to download a single extra app. However, more thank likely, you have e-books from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Kobo. Don't worry, you're still in luck.
Just download the appropriate app from Google Play, sign into your account, and bam—start reading. The best part is that annotating in something like the Kindle app is SO MUCH BETTER on this than on a traditional kindle.
Kind of like on an iPad, it has a scribble mode so you can write your annotation with a stylus and it'll convert it to typed text for you. Or, you can download the Gboard keyboard app if you want a traditional on-screen typing experience because it is loads a little bit faster (and has the swipe feature) than the built-in keyboard.
But generally, the apps work just like they do on any other tablet/computer/phone, just on a bigger surface area with faster, easier to use annotating.
THE NEOREADER
If you have DRM free e-books to read, the built-in reading app, called NeoReader, is fantastic. The best part about it is that you can write annotations anywhere on the page, just like a real book. You don't have to highlight a section and then click a note button and then write your note. The downside is that it doesn't automatically send your annotations to a program like Readwise, so you'll have to add your own annotation directly to Readwise or your note-taking app of choice manually (if that's something you're into).
You can also customize how you see the book, including font size (and even font if you want to override the book's font), space between words, space between lines, space between paragraphs, size of the margins (top and bottom as well as sides), and more. You can also customize your writing tool, if you are handwriting notes: brush pen, ballpoint pen, pencil, highlighter, size of point, etc. There's even four different types of erasers to pick from! Not to mention a (customizable, shocking!) toolbar that you can easily bring up and hide with multiple saved pen/highlighter options.
In the section that you can view the table of contents, you can see any pages that you've bookmarked (easily done by clicking the small bookmark icon in the top right corner of ever page), any annotations you've made (i.e. typed notes), and any scribbles you've made (i.e. written anywhere on the page annotations).
If you want to take notes on whatever you're reading in a separate notebook or app, you can do that too (this goes for any app you have downloaded). Have your e-book (or app) open, click on split view, and choose from:
Current doc and another doc
Doc and notepad
Doc and translate
You can also choose if you want the split to be horizontal or vertical. If you choose Doc and notepad, it'll create a new note with the name of whatever you're reading plus Notes.
PDFs, TXTs, AND DOCs—OH MY!
You aren't limited to e-books, however. There's a laundry list of file formats that you can read: PDF(reflowable), PPT, EPUB, TXT, DJVU, HTML, RTF, FB2, DOC, MOBI, CHM, PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, WAV, MP3, and more. I believe there's over 20 file types supported right now.
Once imported, you can easily change the layout of the file, just like e-books, in order to make them easier to read. The NA2P also had a really cool feature under navigation setting, specifically for PDFs. You can choose from either Comic Mode and Article Mode, where you can break your PDF page into four smaller sections in order to see them better.
Comic mode goes from upper right > upper left > bottom right > bottom left, like reading mangas, while Article Mode goes Upper left > bottom left > upper right > bottom right, because it assumes there are two text columns per page. You can manually set the where the areas are, how many areas you want (2–9), and which order you want to see them when you turn the "page" (i.e. move to the next section).
SOME FUN EXTRAS
The NeoReader has some extra ... extras that I haven't seen on other e-readers. One that is great if you want to read while your hands are occupied is an auto-page turner. You can set it up to turn the page at different intervals, depending on how fast you read.
You can also have a (admittedly robotic) voice read to you, which is great if you don't want to buy an audiobook along with the e-book you already purchased (though you should because narrators are extremely talented and deserve to be paid and a robotic voice will never compare).
TO SUM IT UP
There is so much to the NA2P that I didn't cover like organizing your library, the navigation ball, OCR, vocabulary builder, multiple dictionary support, handwriting recognition, the progress bar, pushing files to NA2P, the built-in bookstore (it's not great), battery life (it's fantastic), and more. But since we're at ~2,000 words already, I think it's time to wrap this article up and cover the rest of this in other articles. (If there's something you want to hear more about, leave a comment or send me an email and I'll bump it up the writing list!)
No matter if you are reading on an existing app, like Kindle, Kobo, or Scribd, or reading using the built-in app, reading is a pleasure—indoors, outdoors, daytime, nighttime, by a window, or under a glare-inducing lamp. It doesn't matter where or when you read, you'll still have an excellent experience, which has had me not only reading a lot more often but capturing my thoughts as I read too.
If you enjoyed this article and want to hear more about reading and writing tech, please subscribe!