onyx undoubtedly releases more e-ink tablets than any other company look how many they have in their
lineup not only that they have all these russian variations and other variations for specific
marketplaces and they provide the units for various other white labelers around the world
so it's not so surprising that onyx is releasing these little tiny incremental upgrades to be
completely honest there isn't a whole lot that sets this apart from the nova 3. a lot of the
people have been griping about that and you are accurate spec for spec they are the same but what
are the differences we're going to go over to the chalkboard to give you a little bit of an idea of
how it is different than the previous generation and then we'll move into the review itself so if
you compare the specs alone they are identical it's basically like the oasis 2 upgrading into
the oasis 3. it's a marginal upgrade but you would be surprised that there's actually a few things
that lurk just beneath the surface first off it is white and it's using an all new shell it's a more
squared off shell kind of kicking back to the poke 2 kind of thing rather than it being contoured
you also get the air pen not only that it's a brand new air pen and it's in white the air
pen comes with the conical nibs that give you a little bit better accuracy in fact if you were
to buy the air pen separately it is 49.99 usd so it is a great deal that you get it with the device
itself the back is also very nicely textured and upgraded to be a lot more rigid it's also 30 grams
lighter and it's smaller shorter and thinner in every dimension than the previous generation
this one also comes with three copper contact pins on the left side of the unit that actually allow
you to put a magnetic case that will show you in a bit that has physical page turn buttons on it
so despite people thinking it is not worth the upgrade there are several reasons to make the
plunge the nova air an incredibly well-built and high-quality compact e-ink tablet bundled
with an all-new premium stylus with some of the highest accuracy in the business stereo speakers
google play wacom note-taking and an all-new screen layer give you an amazing writing feel
an accessory port to accommodate peripherals like the all-new magnetic case with page turn buttons
and a paint spattered backing giving you high grip
the nova air screams quality everything from the construction to the usability
makes this potential to be the one true all-in-one e-paper tablet so let's dive a little bit deeper
we will be doing an individual video on this case but needless to say it is very nice all you do is
slide it in like that you can close it it offers you to have a sleep capabilities and you snap the
pen on the side and this is just about as good as a e-reader slash e-note is gonna be from a quality
perspective once you slap that open you can go into a book like so and start using the physical
page turn buttons another good thing about this is it requires no calibration you can literally just
snap it on and it works instantly you don't have to set anything up the home screen on the onyx is
relatively unchanged over the last generation you have your things on the side library store notes
storage apps and settings if you swipe the top down that's where you're getting all your quick
access to your display control your glow light which we'll show you later and your volume control
you also have some things like bluetooth split screen finger touch etc you can edit these as well
and choose what you do and do not want to show at the top you can drag the tiles over to the top if
you want to add the navigation ball etc because it has no physical buttons on the unit swiping
up from the bottom is your back so if you're into something like settings you can swipe up from the
bottom and it will go back your navigation ball is here by default and it is very nice it will
actually conform itself to whatever side you're on so if you're on the bottom it's going to give
you a little rainbow like that so it's never cut off you can toggle this on and off in the settings
menu because this is running android 10 with google play it's pretty much limitless what you
see here gallery calculator calendar email this is just the stuff that is pre-loaded on here in fact
you can actually remove these and uninstall them or move them into other groups respectively if you
long press so much like an android tablet which this is except it's running an e-ink screen you
can download a lot of apps on here and use them to your heart's content onyx does have a bookstore it
is pretty much just a lot of royalty free content be a lot of classic stuff no copyright issue
content and there will be a lot of chinese content as well on this unit because they are primarily a
chinese company but they have an international presence additionally they do have an app store
now unfortunately onyx is an amazing brand but their app store is not good they only have 48
apps on their app store but to their credit they do have google play enabled on this device as well
because of its stereo speakers you have the ability to use this as a music player as well
loading content into the device into the root will automatically organize everything so if you
put things into the root it'll put everything into image documents download etc please stay tuned to
our youtube channel for a full writing experience on this but they do have five different pens pen
paintbrush mechanical pencil highlighter a ton of different lines when it comes to graphing
and drafting you can choose different lines for different situations with different breaks as well
you can even do squiggles and arrows in any thickness you want six geometric shapes right
out of the gates come bundled on this unit so you can make perfect shapes every single time
text conversion is very easy all you do is write on the screen and when you click the a i button
or the a cursor you can do two things you can do original recognition which it will just basically
do it right where it is on the screen from there you can bold italicize underline or even share it
or you can go back and you can do reflow recognition in which case it's going to
justify everything to the top left corner so you can continue on using the keyboard down
below it is a conventional qwerty keyboard with a little bit of stacking where the q and the a
is usually q and the a are staggered but in this case it is stacked on top of each other
from here you can continue your dictation or you can use voice recognition as well
i am taking notes on this device with my voice
furthermore you can take notes with your handwriting as well so if i write a p
on the screen a p is going to show up right there a lowercase e
etc etc so this is very nice too if you want to get a little bit more of a personalized
feel to it layers is very useful as well you have multiple layers with a template layer as well so
if you select a layer like this and you go to the eraser and maybe you want to choose stroke eraser
and you erase everything you're actually only erasing the layer you're working on and everything
else remains completely safe so this is very nice if you've just drawn something and you don't want
to wreck everything beneath it you can insert images as well which is very handy so you can
go down here select something throw it onto there and you can go ahead and change it move it around
click out of it and then you can start altering it right on the page so this is very nice if you
want to just throw something on there and you don't want to draw it from the ground
up or maybe someone has saved an image and sent something to you you can continue it from there
now the screen is glass but what they do is they bake on a screen protector
that is non-removable i mean if you pry it it will remove but you do not take it off
because it has a certain level of grit on there now it is still rather slippery it's
not as sticky as say a fujitsu or a super note so you do get a little bit of slipperiness to it so
it's not the greatest feeling in the world but it is definitely top three as you write with the air
pen you do feel a little bit of vibration through the pen so the harder you push the more evident
that grit is gonna be it does feel nice and this pen really does do it justice this pen was
originally only available on the note air but now it is on the smaller form factor and it is a very
good addition to be completely honest pdfs never look good on a 7.8 it's just too small if you just
compare it against two of my hands here it's it's just too small of an experience for a full eight
and a half by eleven piece of paper or magazine it can do it it is nice all the functionality
is still there you can take notes right away but it is very small if you wanted something that is
catered more towards using pdfs every day i would definitely consider getting the 10.3 or above
incidentally manga looks amazing on 7.8 because manga is specifically 7.8 inches at least in japan
so as you turn pages it is going to come down to how well the file is formatted from the get-go but
it is quite nice it's very clear and because the screen has a screen protector over it you
actually get not only good writing feel but a reduction in glare there are no complaints when
it comes to the reading experience there's absolutely nothing wrong with it whatsoever
and this is the neo reader which comes bundled with the unit if you don't want to use it you can
simply go to google play and download anything you want split screen mode is a nice addition to have
but it's honestly not that useful on such a small screen you really don't get the screen real estate
you get on a 10.3 does work well enough you can take notes you can go over to your book you can
read your book while you take notes that's all great but the icons end up being really really
small and condensed albeit you can do it it's just not big enough of a screen to make it viable
so in the end is the onyx books nova air worth it it it really comes down to what you want if
you want color look completely away because this doesn't have color but if you want a very refined
looking device and something built really well this is one of the best
built devices we've seen in a long time everything from its tactile feel on the
back to the design elements to the open or the white color but it's silver gray
i think they're calling it and this all new pen everything about this feels so
premium from head to toe and they have a premium magnet case a lot of it is incremental upgrades
that they just kept the same internals but what they did on the outside is a really big thing
and it is a lot different than the previous gen and the body is as well if you want to grab this
it is available on our store goodyreader.com blog shop and for another review this is peter