Posts

Showing posts with the label dan.gardiner@futurenet.com (Dan Gardiner)

Onyx Boox Note Air 3 review: upgraded E Ink notetaker trades slickness for versatility

Image
Onyx Boox Note Air 3: Two-minute review Onyx’s Boox Note Air 3 may not be the Chinese company’s thinnest e-paper tablet (having been usurped by the recently announced Boox Go 10.3), but this slim and comfortable Android device still has plenty of appeal for anyone after a flexible way to create digital handwritten notes.  With a sleek and relatively thin chassis, plus a slightly asymmetrical design, the Note Air 3 is great to hold and, despite its large size, can be comfortably supported with just one hand for both reading or writing. The monochrome E Ink Carta 1200 display is the same one used broadly across many other 10-inch epaper devices, and performs well when it comes to handwriting with the included stylus or text-based productivity and entertainment tasks. Being black and white, it’s not as geared towards highly visual tasks – images can sometimes be hard to make out – and if you’re after a device where you can highlight and mark up text with bright hues, then you’ll li...

Kobo Sage

Image
Two-minute review The Kobo Sage is ostensibly a more refined version of the now three-year-old Forma, one-upping Amazon’s Kindle Oasis by offering an 8-inch display that also boasts stylus support. It’s the first ‘mainstream’ Kobo ereader to come with the latter but, unlike the Elipsa (a bigger and more niche device), you’ll need to buy the Kobo Stylus separately.   To further justify its premium price, the Sage has a noticeably improved chassis. Although it’s still plastic (unlike the metal body of the Kindle Oasis), it’s a step up from the slightly janky design of the Forma. The body has a cleaner and more elegant look with less distinct sections; it’s effectively just one front piece and one back piece that are cleanly sandwiched together. Fitting into the sleeker chassis is the latest in E Ink displays. The 8-inch screen is now a Carta 1200 panel that enables faster page turns (Kobo claims it’s 20% more responsive than the previous-gen E Ink display) and has a higher cont...