The Onyx Boox Leaf 2 is the first e-reader in the world to go beyond color schemes for their latest generation products. They come in black and white. The black version has a flush screen and bezel design, with the e-paper screen being protected by a layer of glass. The white model has a sunken screen and bezel design, with exposed e-paper and no glass. This is beneficial in a number of ways, exposed e-paper will not have any glare on the screen when reading outdoors, or with bright overhead lighting. Glass based displays, which are more prevalent in the e-reader world do have glare from the sun or overhead lighting, you can normally bypass this by purchasing a matte screen protector. Other than one being sunken and the other flush, this is the main differences between the two. Best of all, the prices are exactly the same, they retail for $199 from the Good e-Reader Store.
The Onyx Boox Leaf 2 features a 7-inch E INK Carta 1200 display with a resolution of 1680×1264 with 300 PPI. This new version of Carta drastically increases the overall performance of the reader by 35%. When you are clicking on the user interface or launching apps, they will be way quicker than the first-generation Leaf. Page turn speed has also been increased by 25%. There aren’t that many Carta 1200 products on the market, the only ones users can easily buy is the new Kindle Paperwhite 11th Generation, Kobo Sage and Pocketbook Era. You can read at night with the front-lit display and color temperature system. The cool and warm lighting can be blended together to give you an ideal illumination.
Underneath the hood is a Qualcomm 2.0G Quad-core (4 x Arm Cortex-A53) processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage and it also has a SD card slot capable of an additional 512GB of storage. This is a dedicated e-Reader with no note taking functionality. This sets it apart from many of the other products in the Onyx portfolio. I can can recommend this model to people who want manual page turn buttons and not be locked into a specific ecosystem like Amazon, Kobo or B&N. The Leaf 2 has Bluetooth 5.0, two speakers, 2 microphones, G-Sensor for automatic rotation, and USB-C. The USB port is designed for plugging it into your computer to transfer books, apps or to charge it.
I would recommend the Leaf 2 white version for the vast majority of users. You will get a better reading experience, since there is nothing between your eyes and the text on the screen. The less layers, such as glass and a screen protector, ensure that the text will really pop.
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.