Onyx Boox Tab Ultra brings iPad features to E Ink

We’ve been fans of Boox ereader and tablet devices from Onyx for a while now, especially the Boox Nova Air C, one of our picks for best ereader. The Air C has a color LCD layer on top of the black and white E Ink, but now, the company is pushing its E Ink even closer to full-featured tablet territory by adding features we normally expect on a tablet such as the iPad 10.9. 

The Onyx Boox Tab Ultra is a 10.3-inch E Ink tablet with a 16MP camera on the back, a feature we would never expect paired with an E Ink display. E Ink is very slow to refresh, but Onyx has done tremendous work making the Boox Tab Ultra move as fast as possible. The tablet features a Qualcomm 8-core processor and a GPU that Onyx says was custom-made for faster refresh rates on its screen. 

The camera won’t be used for normal photography, we suspect. Instead, Onyx touts the sensor’s ability to photograph and scan documents, which is more in keeping with the technology. We’re curious how well the E Ink handles the viewfinder tasks with the camera.