Wednesday May 21, 2025; 11:52 AM EDT
- I bought the Boox Go 7 e-Ink tablet, which is the second Boox tablet that I have purchased. The Boox Note Air 3C has become my primary "large screen" table that I use as an organizer and paper notepad and it is great for writing but can be too large for reading. #
- My interest in the Go 7 was piqued when I learned it has a seven inch screen, supports stylus input for handwriting, and cost $249. The downside is that the stylus is not included and that it doesn't use the Wacom EMR input as used on the Note Air 3C, which means the stylus has to be charged and the writing feel is going to be "plastic on glass" such as exists with the iPad. #
- The reasons to buy the Boox Go 7 are the resolution of the screen, how fast the screen refreshes, it's ability to run any Android app, it's size, and it's price. The Go 7 display is based on e-Ink, which is intended to look like paper and does not have back lighting. Text and pictures are drawn by applying an electrical charge to move micro capsules up or down and electricity is not needed to keep showing what is on the display, which means e-Ink displays use much less power than the LCD and OLED displays used by all other devices.#
- When e-Ink was first introduced in the mid-90s the speed at which display changes was noticeably slow. The slow refresh was tolerable for reading a book but if you flipped through the pages of the book quickly what you would see is a blur of changes as it started to draw text and then be disrupted by the page turn and the need to draw different text. #
- Even with slow refresh rates, the low power consumption of e-Ink coupled by the fact the displays are much easier on eyes because one is not starting at a panel light, made e-Ink desirable despite it's limitations and that lead to the success of Amazon's Kindle and competing products from Kobo and Barnes and Noble that are designed for reading books. People who bought these devices did so for the sole purpose of reading and had no expectation for playing games or watching video.#
- The display of the Go 7 is much more advanced than the the one in my Amazon Kindle Paperwhite or Barnes and Noble Nook. I can quickly flip through books or load web pages and scroll them up or done and see legible text. Text display is crisp and clear with the 300 DPI resolution and you can see higher resolution pictures and even video although the refresh rate, refresh rate, and lack of back light does not make for a good experience for watching video. #
- Unlike the Kindle, which exists for only to read e-books sold by Amazon, the Go 7 has the Google Play store and therefore one can install and run any Android app. Boox has their own UI for their tablets so one familiar with Android may not recognize the Go 7 and running Android, and in fact while Google is about to release version 16 the Go 7 runs version 13 of Android. If you have Kindle books all you have to do is install the Amazon Kindle app on the Go 7 to read them, but you can also install the Kobo, Nook, or even Bookshop.org app so you are not locked in to a specific e-book ecosystem. #
- I plan to use my Boox Go 7 primarily for reading but I have installed and handful of necessary (to me) Android apps: 1Password, Google Calendar, Google Tasks, Syncthing, and Readwise Reader. Reader is my web read-it-later tool that is integrated with my prime information repository Obsidian and it works very well on the Go 7.#
- Google expects Calendar and Tasks to run on a device that has a color display, so some of the color to grayscale translation results in hard to read text. Had I bought the color version of the Go 7 this would not be an issue, but I think the black and white version is good for my needs and I have plenty of other devices with very good color displays. The color use in Tasks is not an issue and it works very well on the Go 7.#