The Boox Note Max Is a Beast of a Digital Notebook

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Chances are good that if you've ever owned an e-reader, it was one of the many varieties of the Amazon Kindle. But though the Kindle is the most ubiquitous e-reader, that doesn't mean it's the best—nor does it mean that other companies haven't bettered Amazon at the game it more or less invented.

One of the most interesting competitors in the space is Onyx International, a Chinese company that has been producing innovative e-readers for more than a decade under the brand name Boox, often including new features (like color e-ink displays) years before Amazon brought them to the Kindle.

Though Boox makes my own favorite e-book device (that would be the phone-shaped Boox Palma, which I'll recommend every time I get the chance), they've expanded well beyond the e-reader market, launching multiple lines of e-ink notebooks. You can think of these devices as a cross between a Kindle and an iPad—they've typically got those familiar greyscale screens, but can run apps and work with a stylus, like a full-fledged tablet.

I recently reviewed the Boox Note Air 4C, the latest model of the company's color e-ink digital notebook, and came away very impressed: While the price might be a deterrent for some, it's a fabulous option for anyone looking for a device with a writeable, paper-like screen and enough features and processing power to serve as as a truly versatile productivity tool.

For the past two weeks, I've been testing out Boox's newest release in the space, and I think I like it even better than the Note Air 4C, for one simple reason: As the name implies, the Boox Note Max is freaking huge, in a good way.

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A truly massive device

I know they make big iPads, but the biggest tablet I'd used prior to the Note Max had a 10-inch screen. This 13.3-inch device feels much larger. It's like that math equation that proves you should always order the bigger pizza, because it turns out there is quite a big difference between a 16-inch pizza and an 18-inch pizza. The Note Max is roughly the size of my laptop screen, but holding it, it feels a lot bigger—but it's also super thin, which makes it feel truly high-end (as befitting the eye-watering $650 price tag, I suppose). The included stylus, with a 4096-level pressure sensitivity, is also on par with the Apple Pencil in terms of the writing experience and the solidness of the build.

Credit: Joel Cunningham

For most of the stuff you'll want to do with this device, you'll truly appreciate the extra real estate. Whether you're marking up a PDF, paging through a recipe book, reading manga, or using split screen to read a book and take notes at the same time, it's wonderful for everything to be so big (and I say that as someone who typically prefers an e-reader the size of an iPhone).

The 13.3" Note Max (left) is significantly larger than the 10.3" Note Air 4C, not to mention the iPhone-sized Boox Palma.
Credit: Joel Cunningham

The HD E Ink Carta 1300 screen has a resolution of 3,200 x 2,400 pixels (300ppi) and delivers impressive clarity—text looks especially sharp even blown up, and images are crisp enough that you'll have no problem reading the tiny dialogue bubbles in your comics. The Carta 1300 is supposed to look brighter and whiter than older e-ink displays, but to be honest, if you asked me what color the screen is, I'd still say gray.

And that brings me to the one big love-it-or-hate-it caveat with this device.

There's no front light, for a reason

Since at least the release of the first Nook Glowlight, a front lit e-ink screen has been a standard feature for most every e-reader—certainly any pricier model. And one thing a temperature adjustable front light is good for is making a grey e-ink screen look brighter and whiter. So why, then, does the Boox Note Max lack a front light?

It has to do with Boox's intended use case for this device. This is a digital notebook aimed at a user with specific and relatively sophisticated needs: reading and editing documents, organizing their calendar, and, most importantly, taking written notes.

It turns out that putting a front light on an e-ink tablet involves putting an additional layer between the display and the outer glass. That also means that when you use the stylus, the tip of your pen is that much farther from the surface you actually appear to be writing on. It doesn't affect performance that much, but the effect is certainly a little less smooth—or so I've ascertained from comparing the Note Max to the Note Air 4C I recently reviewed. Taking notes or doodling on the latter delivers a good approximation of putting pen to paper, but the Note Max really perfects it. Eliminating that little bit of extra distance adds that much more verisimilitude to the experience, which in turn makes the device very satisfying to write on—kind of fun, even, though I assume the novelty will wear off.

Apparently the lack of a front light also improves overall clarity, which is a good thing, because you'll need it if you are trying to use the Note Max in anything but direct light. I'm old enough to already need to crank the brightness on my laptop just to read it comfortably, and I had a little trouble with smaller print on the note max unless I was sitting in a fairly bright room.

Is the tradeoff worth it? I think if you plan to take a lot of handwritten notes on it, yes—the improved writing experience and larger screen will serve you well. But if you really want that front light, the significantly smaller but still very capable Note Air 4C is probably a better choice.

A dream digital note-taking device

If a device has been optimized to best serve as a digital notebook, then it had better perform well enough at those tasks—note-taking, marking up PDFs, linking files, working on- and offline—to justify the loss of a useful feature like a front light. And it's here that the Note Max truly excels.

It has basically the same functionality as the Note Air 4C, but with a larger screen. Using the Notes app is effortless, and there are a lot of options to customize, from the type of virtual writing instrument you're using to the thickness of the lines. You can zoom into a PDF and move it around with little lag time.

The split screen mode allows you to run any two apps side-by-side, so you can, for example, read an online article while taking notes on it at the same time.

Credit: Joel Cunningham

Though I haven't used the the Kindle Scribe, Amazon's flagship e-notebook, I have read many user reviews filled with complaints about the difficultly in getting files on and off the device. The Note Max solves for that by integrating with most of the major cloud services, like Google Drive and Dropbox. Importing and exporting PDFs, notes, and anything else you are working on is a matter of a few taps (and, OK, mastering the not always intuitive file structure).

Credit: Joel Cunningham

In short, if you are looking for a digital notebook that can handle any planning, research, and organizational tasks you can throw at it, this one is it.

Be prepared for a learning curve

Considering the native Boox apps were likely developed in Chinese and localized for the English-language version, I'm all the more impressed at how straightforward they are to use (this definitely hasn't been the case with every app-in-translation I've used). That isn't to say it's simple, however.

The fact is that the Note Max can do so much, that figuring out how to make it work best for you is going to take a lot of poking around, experimentation, and trial and error. Multiple times throughout my testing, I'd have to google how to accomplish a particular task, from opening a PDF in splitscreen mode to linking a website directly from a particular word in my notes or a PDF.

On the plus side, I never encountered a need the Note Max wasn't capable of handling—the native notes apps are truly feature-packed, and built with power users in mind—but it took some work to figure them all out. If you're used to Apple hand-holding you through using one of its apps, you might get frustrated, but I think the robust tool set and customization options are worth the tradeoff.

A lot more than just a digital notebook

While the digital notebook capabilities are definitely the reason to pick up the Note Max, that's not to suggest it doesn't excel as an e-reader, for many of the same reasons I praised both the Palma and the Note Air 4C. Like those devices, the Note Max runs on a fairly basic version of Android 13 that allows you to access the Google Play Store out of the box. This means you can install basically any apps you want, and the format agnosticism is great if you've amassed a collection of e-books from different sources over the years—Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and more.

A great device for reading books, manga, and black and white comics

The massive screen is nice to read on if you're sitting comfortably, though I do think the device is heavy enough to make it impractical for reading in bed or while commuting. Still, the size is particularly nice if you want to read anything with a lot of graphical elements, like comics or manga.