Onyx Boox Note Air2 Plus

Falls short of perfection, but this versatile e-reader and tablet could fit seamlessly into your workflow

-  TIM DANTON

PRICE £392 (£470 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk

Not quite a tablet, not quite an e-reader. The Onyx Boox Note Air2 Plus is the first time I’ve tested a member of this new breed of devices, which all promise a world of incredible battery life, paper-like note taking and seamless integration with cloud services.

At the heart of everything is an E Ink Carta screen. This stretches 10.3in across the diagonal with a density of 227 pixels per inch, which falls behind the 300ppi of the Kindle Oasis and recent Paperwhites. I noticed a slight fuzziness to the edges of characters in ebooks, but this wasn’t an issue once I focused on what I was reading.

It’s the same screen as found in the Onyx Book Note Air2 (see issue 331, p63), with the Note Air2 Plus offering two key advantages over its sibling: support for a magnetic case and the inclusion of a larger battery. Rather than four weeks of life in standby mode, the Plus promises up to five weeks. A figure that I rapidly came to believe, as this device holds its charge perfectly overnight.

How much life the Air2 Plus actually gives you will depend on how bright you push up the backlight and how often you use it. To hit weeks rather than days, Onyx’s default power management puts the tablet to sleep after five minute of inactivity and switches it off entirely after 15 minutes. As it needs to perform a 20-second resume process from cold, I suggest you adjust those settings if you know you’ll be picking up the Air2 Plus frequently during the day.