The Boox Tab X C brings color to big-screen e-ink tablets. It’s one of the best examples of the e-ink tablet maker at its strongest pulling together the strengths of its prior tablets – great screens, versatile Android software – to deliver an experience that elevates the color e-reader to a place where it could become a laptop replacement (if you bring your own keyboard) that gives the iPad a run for its money. It is simply one of the best color e-readers for ebooks, comics, and browsing the web, and its large, A4 paper-sized screen, also makes it an equally good fit for the classroom and office as a feature-rich digital notebook. It occasionally stumbles with a handwriting experience that doesn’t quite match its Wacom predecessors, but the experience is overall one of the best e-ink has to offer today.

Boox Tab X C – Design and Features

The Boox Tab X C makes a compelling case for paper-sized digital notebooks. I was a daily user of the same-sized Boox Note Max, the Tab X C’s note-centric monochrome counterpart, and used to its A4 paper-like size but even still, the Tab X C makes an impression. At 13.3 inches, it’s large for any tablet – even the largest iPad Pro is still 13 inches – and for one with an e-ink display, which is usually associated with handheld e-readers, it seems especially big. But for large PDFs and handwriting space that’s a good match for an actual sheet of paper, it’s great.

At the same time, Boox has done a good job of making it easy to hold and use, whether you’re writing with its stylus on a desk or holding it in your hand to read a book. Three sides have a slim bezel of about a quarter of an inch, but the left is much wider and acts as a natural hand-hold. It’s thin, measuring only 5.3mm and weighs 625g, or just a couple of ounces more than the aforementioned iPad Pro.

The frame is made of aluminum and the screen is glass instead of the softer plastic found on some other digital notebooks. The back has a matte texture with a glossy stripe down the side and some script branding in the corner. It’s simple but refined. If you use it without a case, it can be a little slippery. (I wish more brands would opt for a grippier finish like the recent ReMarkable Paper Pro Move.) With a glass screen, the Tab X C is naturally more fragile and susceptible to pressure, so picking up a case is definitely advisable.

The display on the Tab X C uses a color e-ink Kaleido 3 panel, which is currently the most recent and highest-performance from the E Ink Corporation. It has a resolution of 3,200 x 2,400 in black and white and 1,600 x 1,200 for color, giving it pixel densities of 300 PPI and 150 PPI, respectively. I’ll go into more detail shortly, but the display also has fewer layers separating the actual panel and the front glass and both color and clarity look better than I’ve seen on any other Kaleido 3 panel so far.

Unlike traditional LCD tablets, e-ink renders black and white and color content differently. Below the screen are masses of black and white particles that rise to the surface when charged with electricity. There are no colored particles to directly render the hues that appear on screen. Instead, a color filter is used to split red, green, and blue hues from the white particles only. Since only the white particles, or half of the total “pixels,” are able to be split, the resolution for color content is also half of the total display.

In practice, what matters most is the 300 PPI, as blacks cover most text and outlines of illustrations. Colors more frequently “fill in” so the lower resolution isn’t as noticeable as the crisp, paper-like text and line work. Even in color graphic novels and apps, the screen looks very sharp for e-ink and is definitely at the top of its class.

Part of its impressive performance is also due to how well it handles ghosting, or afterimages of what last appeared on the screen. The Tab X C comes with Boox Super Refresh (BSR) technology, powered by its Snapdragon 855 octa-core CPU. Without any user intervention, the tablet automatically works to remove any visual remnants for a clean reading experience.

That processor is hardly new, first released in 2018, but still works very well for anything you would typically do on an e-ink tablet. It’s responsive to the touch, reacts to the pen immediately and reliably, and runs most apps without hardware-related slowdowns. Handwriting latency can be an issue, but typically only if you’re using apps that weren’t designed with e-ink devices in mind.

One of the most controversial aspects of the Tab X C is that it uses an active stylus with haptic feedback instead of the Wacom EMR stylus found on previous models. Wacom styluses work with a special under-screen layer that detects handwriting input with high accuracy and without the need to keep the stylus charged. It’s a community favorite and approaches a standard-level of adoption among e-ink tablets. Because of this, there are also tons of aftermarket pens right on Amazon, as well as low-cost replacement tips to keep your writing experience sharp.

The Tab X C’s new stylus, the Inkspire, uses the USI 2.0 protocol. It’s capacitive, not magnetic, and many people were worried that it wouldn’t be as accurate as Wacom. It attaches magnetically to the side of the tablet and recharges wirelessly while there, so you won’t have to be concerned about that, at least.

It’s not as accurate as Wacom. That’s an objective fact. But, as far as capacitive styluses go, this is one of the better ones. In fact, unless you’re making slow straight lines, the accuracy feels pretty spot on. While I can’t say for sure, I’d wager that Boox went out of its way to make sure that the capacitive layer built into the screen is higher-resolution than standard.

The bigger issue is that the screen is perfectly smooth and doesn’t have the microtexturing to make handwriting feel like paper on its own. The haptics help and can even be convincing at times, but it’s not the same. As of this writing, there also aren’t any replacement tips available for purchase in the United States (though I would expect them to appear in the future). There are several included in the box, though, and without texturing on the screen to wear them out prematurely, they should last virtually forever.

If you add your own paper-like screen protector, though, you’ll quickly burn through these — mine didn’t last a week before needing to be replaced. Until replacement tips are available, you’ll be stuck buying a whole new Inkspire stylus which currently retails for $99. You could also pick up a different stylus that does have replacement tips available (any USI 2.0 stylus should do), which will run you anywhere from $30 to $70.

With all of that in mind, while Wacom purists won’t be content with the Inkspire, I didn’t mind it. If you can get past the smooth screen, I found it to be accurate, responsive, and perfectly fine to write on.

Like many of Boox's other tablets, the Tab X C runs a full version of the Android operating system, but one that has been customized to work best with its e-ink display. It comes with the Google Play Store pre-installed so you can load your own applications in addition to those provided by Boox. This gives you a wealth of choices and an open door to integrate the tablet into your existing mobile workflow. This does diminish its distraction-free design a touch, as it's possible for applications to inundate you with notifications and for you to install social media. Getting sidetracked is less likely due to the slower refresh rate of its e-ink screen.

Because Boox has been refining its implementation of Android across multiple products, its capabilities, features, and level of polish generally exceed the competition in this space, though that gap is closing quickly. A good example of this is within the Microsoft OneNote app. While handwriting in the app were initially too laggy to use on other tablets, updates and an innovative solution to this problem have rendered that a thing of the past. Now, the application easily functions across platforms, with all changes synced automatically to the cloud.

Boox Tab X C – Performance

More than many other e-ink tablets, the Boox Tab X C is able to fill multiple roles depending on how you would like to use it. It's a fantastic e‑reader, excellent for typing and getting work done, and also acts as a digital notebook and sketchpad. The Android integration adds a welcome amount of versatility. So even if the built-in applications don't meet your needs, it's very likely that another application will and is readily available on the Google Play Store.

Let's get the elephant in the room out of the way first: the writing experience. Much has been made about its active stylus and lack of tactile feedback from screen texturing. The criticisms aren't wrong, but they are overblown. Though the writing experience is absolutely better with some kind of screen texturing (I tested this myself with a paper-like screen protector), the included stylus feels high-resolution enough that my writing always felt accurate and immediate.

The classic test of writing slow, straight lines does reveal a small amount of jitter that's not present with Wacom. However, for e-ink tablets, this is a stress test and not something you will encounter often in normal use unless you’re an artist. For handwriting and a more typical movement speed, I didn’t notice it much at all.

The stylus’s haptic feedback is hit or miss depending on your tastes. It can be set across six preset points from Low to High and Off, but anything below halfway was difficult to feel. Setting it to its maximum highlighted the haptic motor instead of feeling like writing on a textured surface. Your mileage will vary but this essentially left me with one choice. I enjoyed it and found it to be better than simply writing on a completely smooth screen. Over time, it does become less convincing, however.

I want to give Boox kudos for its implementation, though, because different tools provide different types of haptic feedback. Writing with the pencil tool feels rougher than the pen tool, for example. I like that quite a bit; it’s a neat touch.

The screen quality is excellent. Text is clear and legible, and colors have a bit more vibrancy than on the Note Air 4C I reviewed previously. Since there’s no Wacom layer, there’s also less space between the screen’s surface and its e-ink layer, reducing a bit of the dimness inherent to Kaleido 3 displays and making writing feel slightly more natural. The lack of screen texturing also makes this one of the crispest Kaleidos available.

Its responsiveness is very good. I was a bit concerned about this because the Boox Note Max had significant ghosting issues when it launched and made me question whether Boox Super Refresh was working correctly. That was addressed with firmware updates and is much less of an issue today, but the Tab X C launched in a great state and has only gotten better with time.

This, combined with its support for apps like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and Obsidian, make it a great tablet for typing. E-ink is known for its latency while typing, and while the Tab X C isn’t quite to the level of an actual laptop, it can easily be used for essays and other typed note-taking when set to its highest refresh mode. So, if you like the benefits of e-ink’s reduced eye strain and distraction-light design but don’t want to write by hand, this might just be the perfect option for you.

The biggest issue with the screen is that it pretty much requires using the frontlight. Kaleido screens are noticeably darker due to the color filter layer, so white looks very grey and colors are duller without it. The frontlight is very well done, evenly illuminating the screen without shining any light directly into your eyes, but impacts overall battery life.

The Tab X C comes with a 5,500mAH battery. With regular use of a couple hours each day and the frontlight on 80% brightness, it typically lasted me three to four days before needing a recharge. This will vary depending on what you’re doing, but just know that it won’t last weeks at a time like a Kindle.

Of course, it has all of Boox’s staples, including dedicated apps for note-taking, managing your calendar, reading, and browsing the web. In these applications, you can really see the years of polish shine through. Boox’s Neoreader app allows you to highlight, annotate, screenshot and markup, and manipulate books and PDFs in a wide array of ways. The Notes app has an assortment of writing tools and a keyword linking system similar to Supernote, handwriting-to-text conversion, a full art suite including Photoshop-like layering and drawing tools, and more.

If you instead opt for a third-party app, like Amazon Kindle, you can raise an “E-Ink Center” menu to adjust key settings to ensure it works well. You can customize how colors appear, contrast, refresh behavior, animation filtering, and more to make sure it works well. I would love to see Boox implement “best settings” for popular apps out of the box, but the tools are there.

Taken as a whole, the Boox Tab X C is one of the most fully featured, best implemented e-ink tablets available. It’s only a couple of steps shy of being the ideal e-ink tablet for users that prefer larger screens, with only its handwriting experience holding it back. If Boox can continue to improve its onboarding and user-friendliness for future releases, it could dominate the market and propel e-ink Android tablets into the mainstream.