Digital note taking devices or e-notes are some of the best products for productivity. These are E INK based tablets that come with a stylus and allow users to freehand draw, take notes or make annointatins in documents. One of the big advantages of e-notes over another tablet such as the iPad or Samsung Galaxy is the battery life. Most true tablets give you around 2 days of battery life if you use them for drawing or apps, whereas e-notes will last a couple of weeks. They are also easier on the eyes, because there is no backlight shining into your eyes. If you are looking for a new e-note that has come out in 2022, here is our top picks for the summer.
Hanvon N10
Hanvon has done something utterly unthinkable, they have released a new e-note in 2022, with English! This is something they really haven’t done before. They tend to focus exclusively on the Chinese market, but with this model, it is now ideal for anyone who wants a great digital note taking device with some great hardware specs and has OCR functionality. You can buy this from the Good e-Reader Store for $429.99 for the 32GB version and 499.99 for the 64GB model.
Dasung A4
Dasung is dipping their toes into the dedicated digital note taking sector with the advent of the A4. This is basically a rebranded Sony Digital Paper DPT-RP1, except it has Android and comes in a myriad of different colors. The Sony could only read PDF files, but the new Dasung software can read various ebook formats, such as EPUB and MOBI. You can sideload in your own apps, which is quite useful or alternative app stores. Basically, this is a DPT-RP1 that is four years ago, but comes in different colors and has different software. It is an interesting concept and idea to do something like this, however, Android 5.1 might be the deal breaker. It retails for $799 from the Good e-Reader Store.
HyRead Gaze Note Plus
Hyread has been making e-readers and digital note taking devices for a couple of years and their primary market is Taiwan and China. They have a bookstore that is pre-loaded on the e-note, but all of the content is in Chinese. Does this mean this is another product that is only relevant if you speak Chinese? Not necessary, it has a fully functional English mode, so you can sideload in all of your favorite books, apps and take advantage of the note taking features. The Gaze Note Plus is running Google Android 11. Although it doesn’t really have an app store, it is possible to sideload in your favorite content such as Kindle, Kobo, Libby, Moon+ Reader or basically anything you want. If you already have an extensive book collection you can also sideload in EPUB, PDF, MOBI, DOC, TXT, FB2, RTF, HTML/HTM, DJVU/DJV. It retails for $399 from the Good e-Reader Store.
Onyx Boox Note Air 2 Plus
The Onyx Boox Note Air 2 Plus is the latest generation e-reader and e-note. This device is aimed towards creative professionals, students and businesses. The major selling points is the Google Android 11 operating system and this it the first Onyx product to have Google Play preinstalled, so gone are the days of enabling it manually. It also has the best note taking app in the business with tons of functionality, which gives Remarkable a run for their money. The hardware is quite excellent and it has support for magnetic accessories, the company is also using the Pen-2-Plus stylus, which magnetically attaches to the side of the display.
Should you buy this e-note? The large 10.3-inch screen is quite excellent for reading A5 documents and can easily handle your entire digital collection, such as books, comics, magazines, manga or newspapers. You will likely never have to pinch and zoom because the images or text is too hard to read. It makes a great tablet for consuming digital content. There is also OCR for handwriting support and it also does a good job for audiobooks, music or podcasts, since it has a speaker and support for higher version of Bluetooth for wireless headphones. It is worth every penny and costs $499 and is available from the Good e-Reader Store.
Good e-Reader and Bigme InkNote Color
Good e-Reader and Bigme have developed a new color ebook reader and digital note taking device. This is the first E INK product that has two cameras that are able to take pictures of textbooks, documents and a myriad of other formats, it will then use OCR to convert them to text, so they can be saved or edited with the accompanied stylus. The E INK Kaleido Plus screen will ensure that all of your digital content will be displayed in the very best color e-paper that is currently available. Your magazines, manga or webtoons will like rich and vibrant. The Android 11 OS will ensure you have the latest security updates and the InkNote Color has Google Play preinstalled, so millions of free and paid apps are at your fingertips. It is currently available for crowdfunding, and will be available on the Good e-Reader Store for $699 on August 25th and will ship in the middle of October.
Good e-Reader has lots of input on the design of the writing tablet, since we have reviewed every single one that has hit the market over the course of the past 7 years and have been covering the e-reader sector since 2008, so we know a thing or two on what makes a good product. On a pure hardware level, it was important for this to standout in a crowd and not look like everything else, with a piano black front and back. Adding in two cameras was something on day one, we thought that would be an excellent feature. Obviously, you can video chat with your friends, take selfies or use the rear facing camera to take photos. There is a quad microphone array that helps eliminate background noise when you are talking on Zoom or taking audio notes. On a screen level, we wanted to do color, since there are so many black and white models on the market. We wanted to appeal to lots of different types of users. People who wanted to draw using 28+ colors or take notes, students who want to make highlights and annointatins in the class, readers who want to consume all sorts of digital media.
The InkNote Color is running Google Android 11 and ships with Google Play preinstalled. This will give users the ability to download and purchase millions of apps. This means you won’t have to worry about all of the complications of sideloading in apps. There are four different speed modes which give you increased performance to take advantage steaming audio, video, coding, looking at high quality pictures or just wanting to scroll very fast while browsing the web.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.