What is the difference between the Boox Note Air2 Plus and Note Air3 C?

With the recent launch of the Note Air3 C, you may be wondering how it is different from its predecessor; the Note Air2 Plus.

In this post, I will try to cover everything that is different (and the same).

First, the similarities…

Both the Note Air2 Plus and Note Air3 C have a 10.3″ screen with a thin film across the surface to provide a grainy writing feel, akin to (but not the same as) pen on paper.

They both have a frontlight (with warmlight), speakers, microphone, g-sensor, bluetooth and wifi. They have the same 4Gb of memory and 64Gb of storage space. They also both use a 3700mAh battery.

And the native apps on both tablets, including the reading app (NeoReader) and note-taking app, have the same features.

So, what are the differences?

The most notable difference is that the Note Air3 C has a colour Kaleido 3 screen, compared to the Monochrome Carta screen of the Note Air2 Plus.

Not only does the Kaleido 3 screen show colours but it also improves the quality of black-and-white text and images, offering monochrome screen resolutions of 1860×2480 at 300PPI (compared to 1404×1872 at 227PPI on the Note Air2 Plus).

However, colour resolutions do drop to 930×1240 at 150PPI, which makes them quite subdued and not as vibrant as you would find on an LCD/OLED screen, for example. I go into a bit more detail about the different screen types in my e-ink tablet beginner’s guide, however, other slight disadvantages of Kaleido 3 are that the screen is a little darker and at the right angle you can make out a honeycomb pattern across the screen. This can be a bit too much for some people, however, most are happy to live with these concessions for the sake of having colour.

Another improvement of the Note Air3 C is that it has a faster CPU; 2.4GHz compared to the Note Air2 Plus’s 1.8GHz.

It also uses Boox Super Refresh technology, along with an integrated graphics processor that improves on some of the historical disadvantages of an e-ink screen (slow refresh rates and ghosting). This means that tasks that involve a lot of on-screen movement, such as scrolling down a website, are now a lot more comfortable.

Both the Note Air2 Plus and Note Air3 C run the Android operating system, however, the NA3C has Android 12 installed, whilst the NA2+ uses Android 11.

The NA3C also has a fingerprint scanner (located on the power button) and a MicroSD card slot, which are not present on the NA2+.

And, the NA3C has a robust aluminium body and thinner screen bezels, which makes the footprint (both width and height) slightly smaller than the NA2+. It is also around 15g lighter, however they both have the same 5.8mm thickness.

Finally, the NA3C is about $50 more expensive than the NA2+ (priced around $500 and $450 respectively).

Boox Note Air3 C vs Boox Note Air2+

The specs of both the NA3C and NA2+ are provided below for easy comparison. You can also search and compare other e-ink tablets using my comparison matrix.