Boox Go Color 7 E-Reader: Unboxing & First Impressions

The Boox Go Color 7 is a 7″ colour e-reader (no writing capabilities).

It arrived on my doorstep yesterday and I’m looking forward to testing it out over the next week or so, and then writing out my full review.

In the meantime, this is my unboxing experience and first impressions.

Transparency Notice: Boox sent me this review unit of the Go Color 7 free-of-charge, however, they understand that this will not influence my views and opinions of the e-reader.

In addition, affiliate links on this website mean that I may get a small commission if you buy a device after clicking on them. This does not cost you
anything but greatly helps to support my work.

Again, the presence of affiliate links does not affect my editorial control – I say what I think and try to objectively cover both positive and negative aspects of the devices I review.

If I were driven by profits, I (like many other “influencers“) would be promoting the reMarkable 2 to high heaven because their affiliate program has the best rewards and is the easiest to make money from!

Unboxing

This is what was in the package; a box for the e-reader and a box for the magnetic cover.

The outer packaging of the e-reader is a cardboard sleeve, and the main box slides out of it.

Upon removing the lid, the e-reader itself (wrapped in a protective sleeve) is at the top.

And below the e-reader is a smaller box.

Inside the smaller box is some paperwork, the MicroSd Card Tray Opener Tool and a USB-C cable for charging, data transfer and OTG connection.

Overall the packaging is well designed. The cardboard is robust enough for transit whilst still remaining simple and effective, with little material wastage. The contents are presented nicely, and easy to access. And the elegant black box with shiny lettering is aesthetically pleasing.

The E-Reader

The Boox Go Color 7 has a 7″ colour e-ink screen (Kaleido 3) with a glass lens over the top. It has thin bezels on the top, bottom and left sides and a wider bezel on the right, which houses the physical page turn buttons.

On the right edge is the speaker, USB-C socket, MicroSD card slot and an opening for the microphone (pictured above).

And on the bottom edge (toward the right-hand side) is the power button. The top and left edges are smooth and featureless and the corners are rounded.

The rear panel is a rough textured polymer, which provides a comfortable grip – for those familiar with the Boox Palma, it uses the same sort of material.

It’s not the lightest e-reader I’ve used, but feels a lot lighter than I expected considering the glass over the screen and Boox’s comprehensive hardware. I feel that I could use for long periods without it becoming uncomfortable.

I did notice that my greasy fingerprints seemed to show up on the screen quite easily – I’ll be monitoring this over the next week or so.

Magnetic Cover

Boox’s official cover for the Go Color 7 looks very stylish and minimalist.

The exterior is plastic with ‘Boox‘ embossed in the bottom right corner. The interior has a softer feel and has a couple of indentations for the page turn buttons when the cover is closed.

Unlike other brand’s covers that use a plastic bucket to hold the e-reader in place, Boox has opted to use magnets instead. By simply placing the e-reader onto the cover, it snaps into place. Magnets are also used to hold the front of the cover in place – it won’t inadvertently open very easily.

Although the connection feels fairly secure, it’s not as solid as the bucket approach (although it does make it much easier to remove/replace the e-reader from/to the cover when required). I think there may be a possibility of it falling out if it gets a hard enough jolt – something I’ll be checking out in my full review.

Initial set-up

Upon first boot of the Boox Go Color 7, I went through the initial setup.

First I selected my language, and then I was asked to agree to Boox’s User Agreement and Privacy Policy.

I often get emails from people that have visited my website concerned about Boox not having a Privacy Policy for their devices – so I’ve posted images of the full privacy policy below. This perspective is often based on this poorly-researched article by somebody that appears to have never even touched a Boox device.

I’m not saying that based on the existence of Boox’s Privacy Policy, you shouldn’t have any privacy concerns about Boox devices – just don’t base your opinions on the above article, which was written in 2021 and could not confirm much at all because the author obviously did not have a Boox device.

The next steps were to set the date and time, set the power off and sleep timeouts, disable the navigation bar, and set up gestures. I wish Boox would also have an option for disabling the navball during setup (or even have it disabled by default) – that thing just gets in my way and I usually disable it the first chance I get!)

Initial configuration

After doing this, the main home screen was displayed:

It appears that the user interface has changed a little from previous versions with icons looking smoother and more consistent across the board – I’ll have to explore this more check the differences on an older Boox e-reader.

I then set it up on my wi-fi network and checked to see if it needed a firmware update (it didn’t).

I then downloaded a book (Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest‘) from the Boox Store (which has a library of expired-copyright ebooks, from Project Gutenberg).

First impressions

Having flicked through a few pages of ‘The Tempest‘ and had a quick wander around the User Interface, I am initially very impressed by how great black text looks on the screen – and colour is also rendered really well (within the limitations of Kaleido 3).

Switching between apps and e-books is very quick and snappy and there’s something different about the user interface that just feels a little more polished (but I haven’t quite put my finger on exactly what that is yet).

I did notice that the lower page-turn button (next page) does not work/click properly when pressed at the lower edge – something I’ll be looking at more closely in my full review.

But I’m very much looking forward to using Boox Go Color 7 for my e-book reading over the next couple of weeks 🙂