BOOX Note Max 13.3 No Frontlight B/W ePaper Notebook 300 PPI 6G 128G Review

The BOOX Note Max 13.3 has a best-in-class 13.3" E Ink screen for reading and writing, but it's a one-trick pony. Our scoring puts it in the bottom third of tablets for overall productivity. Only buy this if you live in PDFs and need an Android-powered digital legal pad. For anything else, get a regular tablet.

The BOOX Note Max 13.3 is a specialist's tool, not a general-purpose tablet. Its headline feature is a massive 13.3-inch E Ink screen with a sharp 300 PPI resolution, making it one of the largest and clearest digital notepads you can buy. It runs a full version of Android 13, which means you can install apps like Kindle or Google Drive directly, a flexibility most e-readers don't offer.

But you're trading a lot for that screen. Our scoring puts it in the bottom half of tablets overall, with a total score of 35.3 out of 100. Its weakest area is productivity at 23.2, which tells you this isn't built for multitasking or office work. It's a device with a very specific job: reading, annotating, and writing on a big, paper-like display.

Performance is a mixed bag, heavily dependent on what you're doing. For its core task of rendering text and handling pen input, the octa-core CPU and 6GB of RAM are solid, landing in the 77th percentile for processing power. That means it's well above average for an e-ink device, and the BOOX Super Refresh tech does help minimize the laggy feeling that plagues cheaper e-paper screens. You can even watch a video in 'Ultrafast Mode' if you're determined, though it'll look like a ghostly flipbook.

Where it falls short is in everything else. The 6GB of RAM is mediocre (35th percentile), which limits how many apps you can keep open. The Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity is about average (59th percentile), and the 3,700mAh battery is right in the middle of the pack (49th percentile) for a tablet this size. This thing is fast for an e-reader, but slow for a tablet.

The price is all over the map, ranging from $820 to a steep $1,422 depending on the vendor. That's a $602 spread, so shopping around is crucial. At the lower end, you're paying a premium for that unique big e-ink screen and Android flexibility. At the high end, you're entering iPad Pro territory for a device that can't do half of what an iPad can. The value proposition only makes sense if your workflow is 90% reading and annotating PDFs or taking handwritten notes.

Stacked against the competition, the BOOX Note Max is in a weird niche. An Apple iPad Pro with an M-series chip will run circles around it in every performance metric, has a gorgeous color screen, and costs about the same at the high end. But you can't read on it for hours without eye strain, and the writing feel isn't the same. Compared to a dedicated e-reader like a Kindle Scribe, the BOOX wins on screen size, Android apps, and file format support, but loses on simplicity, battery life, and often, price. The Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus offers a better media and general-use experience for less money. This BOOX only wins if you specifically need a giant Android e-ink canvas.

Skip this if you need a do-it-all tablet. The data is clear: its productivity score of 23.2 is a major weak spot. If you plan to edit documents, video call, stream movies, or juggle more than a couple of apps, you'll be frustrated by the slow E Ink screen and limited 6GB of RAM. This device lags behind most modern tablets for general use.

We can only recommend the BOOX Note Max 13.3 if you're a researcher, student, or professional who spends entire days reading and marking up large-format PDFs, technical papers, or manuscripts. Its big, clear screen and Android app support are legitimately excellent for that one job. For anyone else—someone who wants to watch videos, browse the web comfortably, or use more than one or two apps at a time—this is a hard pass. The data shows it's a specialist tool that underperforms as a general tablet.