Last night Onyx announced the upcoming release of the Note Air3 with a regular black and white screen to go along with the Note Air3 C with a color E Ink screen that was released a couple of months ago.
A lot of people have been waiting for the black and white edition ever since the color model came out, and most people assumed Onyx would upgrade the screen to 300 ppi like the color version, but unfortunately that isn’t the case.
In fact, the Note Air3 is pretty much a re-release of the Note Air2 Plus with a few minor upgrades. They added a microSD card slot, which is nice, and it has a slightly faster CPU, but otherwise all the specs appear to be exactly the same as the Note Air2 Plus.
Onyx also updated the underlying Android version to Android 12 from 11, but that’s not really going to change much anything with Onyx’s heavily customized OS.
One interesting thing about the Note Air3, it doesn’t have BSR (Boox Super Refresh) technology like the Note Air3 C so things like scrolling and web browsing aren’t going to be as fast and smooth. On the plus side, battery life is going to be better without BSR.
All things considered, it’s hard not to be disappointed with the Note Air3, especially considering the screen hasn’t been upgraded, but that becomes a little easier to accept when you find out that Onyx has lowered the price of the Note Air3 to $399. That’s $100 less than the color version and $50 less than the Note Air2 Plus.
The Note Air3 is expected to start shipping by the end of the month. It can be ordered from Onyx’s website if you don’t mind dealing with their sketchy return policy, or you can wait for it to turn up on Onyx’s Amazon store.
Boox Note Air3 Specs
- 10.3-inch E Ink Carta 1200 screen.
- Resolution: 1404 x 1872 (227 ppi).
- Boox stylus included, supports 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity.
- Capacitive touchscreen.
- Frontlight with warm and cool temperature control.
- OS: Android 12 with Google Play.
- CPU: Qualcomm 2.4GHz octa-core.
- 4GB RAM.
- 64GB storage space.
- MicroSD card slot.
- WiFi (2.4GHz + 5GHz).
- Bluetooth 5.0.
- USB-C port with OTG support.
- Battery: 3,700mAh Li-ion Polymer.
- Rotation sensor.
- Fingerprint reader.
- Dual speakers and mic.
- Supported document formats: PDF, DJVU, CBR, CBZ, EPUB, AZW3, MOBI, TXT, DOC, DOCX, FB2, CHM, RTF, HTML, ZIP, PRC, PPT, PPTX.
- Dimensions: 226 x 193 x 5.8 mm.
- Weight: 450 grams.
- Price: $399 USD.
Crazy that this doesn’t have a 300 ppi screen. I recently pulled the trigger on the 3c, which is really outstanding except for the darkness of the color screen and the high rate of battery drain. I use the light except in very bright environments. The 3c is incredibly responsive when taking notes. The latency is barely noticeable.
Yeah, it’s pretty crazy indeed. It’s like they’d rather just sell color models now. I was waiting to buy the Note Air3 but it’s almost exactly the same as the first gen Note Air that I reviewed in 2020. They just keep releasing the same thing over and over again with minor changes and calling it “new”. The lower price is a pretty big deal, though. The first gen Note Air sold for $479 so it’s good to see the price keeps getting more reasonable with each new release.
I think people are missing the point- this is not some dumb, random decision on Boox’ part- Amazon still has an exclusive on A5 monochrome Carta 1300 displays, thus the lower dpi. Still, we’ve gotten a worthy upgrade to the Note Air2 Plus, but with Android 12, expandable storage, etc., plus a lower price.
Amazon doesn’t use Carta 1300 displays so how can they have an exclusive deal on them? Last I heard only one model in China uses the new 10″ Carta 1300 display, so Amazon clearly doesn’t have any exclusive rights to it since they aren’t even using it themselves.
What’s the capacity of the micro sd card slot?
Their website says 2T, which I’m assuming means 2TB.