Onyx Boox Nova Pro: a 7.8-inch Carta e-reader

The
Onyx Boox Nova Pro is shaking up the market. This e-reader is
equipped with an e-ink carta 7.8 screen and it is possible to write
with a stylus. Does it defeat the Inkpad 3, especially for big
readers of PDF documents?

Hardware: a good CPU!

The
e-reader is equipped with a very
good 7.8″ E-Ink Mobius Carta
screen
covered with a kind of glass (for the stylus) that looks good. Its
resolution is 1872×1404 pixels (300 dpi), like the different
e-readers using this screen (Inkpad 3, etc.).

On
the processor side, however, the device is equipped with a more
powerful CPU than the competitors, as it has a 1.6GHz quad-core.
2 GB of RAM and 32 gigs of internal memory complete the picture. In
addition, this e-reader also has an adaptive lighting (to change the
color tones to yellow in the evening, to limit the blue light) of
good quality, and of course a varied connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
& BT 4.1. The battery is 2,800 mAh, which allows a good autonomy;
after all depends on the use, if in standby the e-reader can last 4
weeks between two recharges, for those who use it to consult their
favorite forums, it will not last more than a few days…

Software:
Android-based, multipurpose and stable

The
e-reader is delivered with Android
6 and, it is possible to install the PlayStore!
So, all the Android applications are accessible.

Android
on an e-reader? It may seem strange at first, but in use it’s not so
shocking. First of all, the navigation in the menus is fluid. The
pre-installed applications adapted for the e-reader work well and are
reactive. Also, the reactivity is there when changing pages on a PDF
document, which is pleasant.

However,
the French translation leaves something to be desired: it is more
pleasant to use the e-reader in English if you can afford it. If this
is a problem for you, it may be a good idea to switch to another
model, or to be prepared to deal with a language that is somewhat
mistreated in your e-reader’s menus…

The little “extra”: stylus and note-taking…

Compared
to the leading e-readers of the industry leaders, which users have
been facing in recent years (Amazon Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook), the
Boox Nova Pro (like the manufacturer’s other e-readers) has a stylus
and the ability to take notes! This is also the case with the
e-readers from the Chinese manufacturer Boyue: small actors are
pushed to innovate in order to get the best out of the game. Is this
a gadget or an important feature? It all depends on the type of user.

This
e-reader is not necessarily for everyone: for those who want to read
ePub novels before going to sleep, any 7.8-inch e-reader will do just
as well, even if it is better (cheaper and more ergonomic). But for
those who are looking for a work tool for books or articles in PDF
format, for example, the stylus allows you to annotate the document
as if it were a sheet of paper!

In
use, the precision to underline a passage or take a note is
impressive. It is then possible to export the annotated document to
the Cloud or to your computer. It is also possible to take notes, and
the e-reader has a software adapted for this purpose that allows it
to try to recognize what has been written in order to pass it on in
text format. If this function works well enough, it seems to me that
it is easier and quicker for those who want to take notes with an
electronic device to use a laptop and a keyboard…

A
perfect e-reader for PDF reading?

This e-reader is really good for PDFs reading, and it seems possible to consider it better than the PocketBook Inkpad 3 which we have so far considered to offer the best quality/price relation on the market.

However, you have to take into account that the Boox Note Pro costs more than 100 euros more than an Inkpad 3: if you can find the latter for around 200 euros on Amazon, the Boox Note Pro costs more than 300 euros there. In the US though, as the Inkpad 3 is harder to get, the Boox Note Pro is quite interesting.

In my opinion, this is a price difference that can be justified, as the PDFs reading is fluid and the default software is powerful: even if it is possible to easily install Koreader on the e-reader, it is not necessary, even for those who would like to reflow, to adapt an A4 text to the e-reader screen, for example. The ability to mark certain passages with the stylus can be interesting for some users, such as the ability to use it for tasks other than reading, thanks to the PlayStore and a powerful processor that allows you to consult an online journal or a forum easily.

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