Why The Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C Might Make You Give Up Your iPad For Reading
Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C is in a tough spot. It's an extraordinary device, but because its intended audience is so tiny, it struggles in the ever-moving tech news shuffle. Apple's iPad sells well because each device is so versatile — and the brand name is synonymous with the hardware. Amazon's tablets sell well because their value as a simple media consumption device outweighs their price. Google and Samsung have brand-name recognition on their side, too.
The Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C has an absurdly long and complicated name that cannot compete with the simple brand power of devices like the iPad. The Onyx Book Tab Ultra C is a device made by a company you might not have heard of before today. But we've seen what they can do — devices like the Onyx Boox Note Air 2 Plus have shown us the brand is more than capable of creating high-quality ebook readers that are well worth their asking price.
The most important point of differentiation between this device and most other e-readers is the inclusion of the latest color ePaper technology from the company E Ink. The display on this e-reader makes it an ideal alternative to the iPad for a very specific sort of consumer. The image you see at the head of this article shows the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C in direct sunlight, where the device's display technology shows its true colors.
If you've been looking for a color E Ink tablet with a big display, long battery life, and visibility in effectively any environment, the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C is the new high watermark. Onyx provided SlashGear with an Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C for the purpose of this article.
No more battling the sun with brightness
We're at a point at which most high-end tablets have bright enough displays that they can be used outdoors on a sunny day. The Google Pixel Tablet is an excellent example of a tablet that has a display that's capable of getting bright enough to be usable outdoors — so long as you're in the shade. The biggest and best Amazon Fire tablets aren't quite as capable in the outdoors (regardless of shade), but most any iPad released in the past few years shouldn't have an issue with display visibility.
LCDs and OLED screens use brightness to combat an otherwise difficult-to-view display, courtesy of the sun and light-reflective glass. If you've got a bright enough display, reflections from the sun shouldn't be an issue. With ePaper from the brand E Ink, the visibility of a device's display is more akin to a printed piece of paper than it is an OLED or LCD.
With ePaper you're being shown particles of ink that've been physically moved and arranged — sort of like an Etch A Sketch. Once these ink particles are told where to go, they stay in place until told otherwise.
Because the ink particles reflect light rather than transmit light, they don't compete with the sun — they benefit from it. And because the ink particles stay in place unless told otherwise, an ePaper display uses very little power. Your average ePaper tablet uses power so conservatively that battery life is measured in days rather than hours. The Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C barely needs to be charged more than once a month, even with daily usage.
E Ink Kaleido 3 ePaper
The Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C has a 10.3-inch Kaleido 3 display panel. That's a color display panel made with the latest in ePaper tech from the original E Ink brand. This isn't the first time color ePaper has been available in a consumer device, but it's the first time it has been implemented on a device that's advanced beyond your average "early adopter" piece of hardware.
Chris Burns/SlashGear
We've been waiting for years for this tech to mature to the point where it'd be viable for a consumer-level device. Because this tech delivers all the benefits of black ePaper (monochrome) and adds some decent-looking color, the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C is easily the best color-friendly e-book tablet on the market today.
So long as what you're planning on reading doesn't have any moving images in it, you'll be solid. Where earlier iterations of ePaper were ideal for novels, E Ink's Kaleido 3 tech is fully prepared to be the best solution for bingeing digital books in full color.
Onyx quality hardware, lacking for software
This e-reader device is just as high-end as the Onyx Boox Tab X (shown above) and as large as the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra (monochrome). This device runs Android 11, which means it can run most of the apps you've probably already got running on your standard Android tablet. It's not the newest version of Android — that's Android 13 when this article is set to publish — and we're not expecting it to keep up with software updates from Google for more than a year or two — but we'll see.
When it comes to operating system updates, Apple's iPad still dominates. Apple's app ecosystem is powerful and robust, and the company makes a point to update their devices for several years after they're first made available. If Google proves itself to be as reliable in updating its Pixel Tablet as it has been with its Pixel smartphones, Apple might have a real competitor on its hands (for software updates specifically — not so much on the app library front).
With Onyx Boox Tab X, it would be smart to expect that the software experience will stay largely the same through the future. The apps that run on the device right out of the box should continue to work for as long as you own the device, but one shouldn't put too much faith in any apps beyond that.
Price and Verdict
The most high-end Android tablet on the market is the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 — soon to be the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9, a device that'll cost you approximately $800 at minimum. On the other end of the spectrum, Amazon Fire tablets have the lowest-priced tablets that remain worth their price — but only recently. Before 2023, Amazon Fire tablets have largely been categorized as "you get what you pay for" devices — in a bad way. Starting in 2023, Amazon Fire tablets started coming with software and hardware that delivered a value higher than their cost.
The Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C was launched with a price tag of approximately $600. Apple sells their 9th generation iPad (released in 2022) for $329, and their newest-generation iPad for $449. Prices for every other iPad model go upward from there. So while the Onyx Boox Ultra C may have battery life and the benefits of ePaper in its corner, iPad beats the device on price.
So now we're at a point at which color ePaper is ready for consumer devices, but we're not quite at the point where the price of said devices is ready to compete with the top dogs. It's exciting to consider that E Ink continues to develop ePaper tech and that we might very well see an — affordable — consumer-ready, usable, full-function tablet at some point in the future — we're almost there!