BOOX BOOX 10.3" Note Air5 C Tablet Review

The BOOX Note Air5 C is a tablet that knows exactly what it is. With a 10.3" color E-Ink screen and a 74th percentile ranking for display quality, it's built for one thing: reading. Its overall score of 37.4/100 tells you it's not trying to be an all-rounder. It's a specialist, and it's comfortable with that. You get 6GB of RAM, 64GB of storage (expandable, thankfully), and Android 15 on a Qualcomm chip. At 439g, it's light enough to hold for hours. But those core specs land in the 34th to 52nd percentiles, which means you're buying the screen, not raw power.

Performance is a mixed bag, and that's by design. The octa-core CPU and 6GB of RAM land in the 34th and 52nd percentiles respectively. That's fine for flipping pages in an e-book app or browsing simple websites, but it's not built for heavy lifting. The GPU sits even lower at the 36th percentile, so don't expect to game on this. The real star is the screen. That 10.3" Kaleido 3 color E-Ink display hits 2480x1860 resolution in black and white mode and sits in the 74th percentile. For reading, it's excellent. For anything else, it's a compromise. The battery life is perfectly average at the 50th percentile, which should get you through a day of reading.

At around $530, the value proposition is very clear. You're paying for that high-quality E-Ink screen in a lightweight body. Compared to a basic Kindle Scribe or a Kobo Elipsa, you're getting color and full Android. But you're not getting the performance of a similarly priced iPad or Android tablet. It's a premium tool for a specific job. If that job is reading and note-taking, the price makes sense. If you want to do anything else, your money goes further elsewhere.

Let's compare it to some obvious alternatives. The base iPad is cheaper and blows it away in CPU (likely 90th+ percentile) and entertainment, but the LCD screen is harder on the eyes for long reads. The reMarkable 2 offers a better writing feel but no color and a more locked-down OS. The BOOX sits in the middle: more open than a reMarkable, easier on the eyes than an iPad, but less powerful than both for general use. Against the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra, there's no contest on performance—the Samsung wins—but for dedicated reading, the BOOX's E-Ink screen is the clear winner for comfort.

Here's the deal: the BOOX Note Air5 C is a fantastic e-reader that can do some light Android tablet things. If your primary use is reading books, PDFs, or articles, and you want color for comics or magazines, it's a great choice. The screen is top-tier. But if you score below 30/100 for productivity, you can't expect it to handle real work. Don't buy this as your only tablet. Buy it as a superior, dedicated reading device to complement your real computer or powerful tablet. For that specific user, it's a solid yes.