A couple weeks ago a new ereader turned up on the FCC website called the Boox Go 6, and now Onyx has officially released it.
The Boox Go 6 is basically a newer version of the Poke5 from 2023 with a few upgrades and a new lower price. Onyx is selling it for $149.99 from their website. It’s now shipping from their Hong Kong warehouse; their US warehouse is expected to start shipping them around September 13th. It’s also available to pre-order from B&H.
It remains to be seen if they’re going to sell it from their Amazon store too. Onyx has never sold their smaller Poke models on Amazon, but they are selling the Boox Go Color 7 on Amazon now so maybe the Go 6 will turn up in mid-September.
As the name suggests, the Boox Go 6 has a 6-inch 300ppi E Ink display, and it’s using E Ink’s latest Carta 1300 screen. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, considering the Carta 1300 screen on the Kobo Clara BW has worse contrast than the Carta 1200 screen on the older Kobo Clara 2E, but in theory it’s supposed to be an upgrade. It also has a flush front cover-lens, and a frontlight with adjustable color temperature.
The Boox Go 6 runs Android 12 Android 11 and has Google Play onboard to install apps like the Go 7 Color and the Boox Go 10.3, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end (Onyx’s three new Go Series models have surprisingly little in common).
Specs-wise, the Go 6 has a 2.0Ghz octa-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, and there’s a microSD card slot for expansion. It supports dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0. It has a USB-C port (with support for OTG), a built-in microphone and a 1,500 mAh battery. The device measures 148 x 108 x 6.8mm, and it weighs approximately 146 grams, so it’s very light and portable.
Aside from the newer version of Android, there doesn’t appear to be much of a difference between the new Go 6 and the Poke5 from last year. It has a different CPU, with 8-cores instead of 4, but that doesn’t always translate to faster performance. The Carta 1300 screen is supposed to be faster (and it is on the Kobo Clara BW), but the 2GB of RAM is kind of disappointing for an Android ereader in 2024 (the Go Color 7 has 4GB). But at least Onyx managed to lower the price from $169 to $149, and between the Android OS and the memory card slot it offers features that most other 6″ ereaders lack.
Great review! They just changed the description down to Android 11 on their website.
Apparently it’s still Android 11 – there’s a post on r/Onyx_Boox from person who received it.
Product box mentions Android 12, BUT on actual device Android version is 11.
Boox ever made correction on their website and now it reads OS: Android 11
No newer OS advantage, apparently.
Haven’t seen this kind of thing from Boox before. Somewhere somebody got REALLY sloppy.
Thanks for letting me know about it running Android 11 instead. I updated the article. So it’s basically a Poke5 with a new name…