Summer is here and life is back outside.
Anyone who sits in the blazing sun with their small electronic devices will immediately see that the usual displays are not designed for such use.
They automatically adjust their brightness to the environment, the maximum value is usually called up immediately and you still don't see much.
In addition, this setting drains the battery quickly.
Therefore, displays with a matte e-ink display are recommended for use in bright sunlight.
This "electronic paper" has been around since the 1970s and has the advantage of high contrasts because the image is not generated by backlighting but by tiny electrically charged particles on the one hand and an LED in the frame on the other.
The display itself only requires power when the content changes.
Michael Spehr
Editor in the "Technology and Engine" department.
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However, the technology also has disadvantages that stand in the way of its spread in the smartphone and tablet world.
Display is sluggish because the particles have to rearrange for each image change, and a color e-ink display is the exception so far.
We have tested such an exception for some time.
The Chinese manufacturer Onyx International, which has been offering e-ink devices under the Boox brand name in various sizes and designs since 2006, sent us its Nova Air C. Interestingly, it is not an e-book reader, but an Android tablet .
It costs 450 euros with pen and protective cover.
The display has a diagonal of 7.8 inches and has a resolution of 624 × 468 pixels.
A maximum of 4096 colors are reproduced.
Even these technical data give an indication that a typical tablet display is not to be expected here.
A similarly compact iPad Mini has a resolution of 2266 × 1488 pixels and reproduces millions of colors.
The Nova Air C also has a very wide mourning border around the display.
The tablet looks well made, at the bottom there is a USB-C port for charging the battery and a row of holes for the speakers.
Three pogo pins on the left serve to activate two buttons located on a bar inside the protective case.
The included pen docks magnetically on the right side of the case and requires no power supply.
The tablet takes a few seconds to boot up, and then an on-screen menu appears that is only slightly reminiscent of Android tablets.
On the left is a menu bar for quick access to applications and settings, in the middle there is content, such as the in-house bookshop or apps.
Although an Internet browser is already installed and the connection to the WLAN is unproblematic, the Google Play Store is missing.
A number of steps are required to activate it, and the whole thing is not self-explanatory.
Once you have cleared this hurdle, you can log in with your Google account as usual and load the desired apps.
Since the tablet also supports Bluetooth, an external keyboard can be connected without any problems.
We tried different apps.
Starting the browser for the first time and entering an address with the virtual on-screen keyboard shows that the enjoyment is limited.
Images can be roughly recognized with 4096 colors, but the writing remains fiddly, is difficult to read even when enlarged, and the slow image build-up greatly reduces the surfing pleasure.
Even video playback is only a makeshift.
On the second try, we launched Amazon's Kindle e-book reading app.
Since the book pages are displayed in a reduced form and the font can be enlarged sufficiently, the impression was positive.
However, the display is significantly worse than on Amazon's monochrome e-ink devices, such as the Paperwhite or Oasis.
However, in this scenario, the Nova Air C is definitely recommended.
Reading e-mails, for example in Google's Gmail app, is not a problem. Writing with an external Bluetooth keyboard is again a pain because of the sluggish display update.
Handwritten notes can be taken in conjunction with the pen, and there is nothing to complain about here: the tablet responds precisely.
The edge of the hand resting on the display is not a problem.
In comparison to the rival Remarkable 2, handwriting recognition, i.e. the conversion of what is written into text, is missing.
However, the Remarkable 2 does not support Android.
Everything else works with the Nova Air C like with any other Android tablet.
There are push notifications and a top menu bar for making settings such as WLAN, brightness or volume, and you can use the usual Android gestures to display all open windows at a glance, for example.
The tablet runs on an older Android 11, and don't expect security updates.
After all, you can protect access to the device with a code.
The main memory is three gigabytes in size, the device memory has a capacity of 32 gigabytes.
After installing half a dozen apps, we still had 18 gigabytes free.
The manufacturer specifies the battery life as “up to four weeks” in stand-by mode.
This is not a meaningful statement.
If you have activated WLAN and Bluetooth and are actively using the tablet, you can expect around eight hours.
In this regard, too, an Amazon reader is a better choice.
Overall, the Nova Air C remains an exciting product, but one that plays in a very narrow niche and isn't a device for everyone.