BOOX Note Max

BOOX Note Max

The A4 monochrome workspace you’ve been looking for

For years, if you wanted a 13-inch e-paper tablet, you had to compromise. Older 13.3-inch E Ink displays topped out at 207 PPI noticeably softer than the 300 PPI you’d get from a 10-inch device. Text on smaller tablets looked sharp; text on the bigger ones looked slightly fuzzy. That was the trade-off you accepted for the larger canvas.

The BOOX Note Max fixes that. It’s the first 13.3-inch E Ink tablet at true 300 PPI resolution (3,200 × 2,400 pixels on a Carta 1300 panel), giving you A4-sized paper dimensions with text sharpness that finally matches the smaller 10-inch class. If your work involves reading full-size PDFs without zooming, viewing engineering CAD drawings, working through sheet music, or annotating dense academic papers this is the tablet that removes the compromise.

Two other things separate it from cheaper BOOX tablets: the Wacom EMR Pen Plus ships in the box (no battery, Wacom-class accuracy), and it runs Android 13 with full Google Play Store so Kindle, OneNote, Notion, Google Drive, Adobe Acrobat, and any other Android app work natively alongside BOOX’s own reader and note app.

The A4 dimensions matter more than they sound

BOOX designed the Note Max to physically mirror an A4 sheet of paper (roughly 210 × 297 mm). At 287.5 × 243 mm outer dimensions with a 13.3-inch screen, you get essentially a full A4 workspace on the display.

That specific size choice changes what the tablet is good for:

• Engineering, architectural, and CAD drawings — most are drafted for A4 or larger; at last a screen fits them without zoom
• Academic papers, journal articles, and dense PDFs — read a full page at natural size, exactly as it was designed to be read
• Sheet music — musicians reading standard-sized scores get the whole page at once, with room for handwritten notation
• Business documents — reports, spreadsheets, presentations render at readable sizes without endless pinch-to-zoom
• Longform writing — Word documents and Google Docs open in “1:1 size” mode where a page really is a page

For anyone who’s tried to work on 8- or 10-inch tablets and constantly zoomed in and out of documents, the difference is immediate.

The Carta 1300 display 300 PPI at 13.3″

The 13.3-inch E Ink Carta 1300 panel runs at 3,200 × 2,400 resolution 300 PPI, indistinguishable from paper at normal reading distance. Text stays legible even in fine-print PDFs; hand-drawn diagrams show crisp strokes without pixelation; sheet music renders every note clearly.

The flat cover-lens glass front provides a smooth writing surface and reduces glare compared to older textured E Ink panels.

BSR (BOOX Super Refresh) technology provides multiple refresh modes text mode for reading (slowest refresh, cleanest text), balanced for general use, faster modes for occasional video. Standard trade-off: cleaner text needs slower refresh, faster scrolling shows ghosting. Practical answer: most users pick a mode and stay there.

Honest note about the missing front light

The Note Max has no front light. This is a deliberate design choice the flat glass surface reflects ambient light like real paper  but it’s also the tablet’s most-flagged limitation in reviews.

Where this works well:

• Daytime reading — direct sunlight, sunny outdoors, window-lit rooms
• Office lighting — typical fluorescent or LED office lighting
• Well-lit indoor spaces — reading lamps, ceiling lights, task lighting

Where this doesn’t work:

• Dark rooms without a lamp — you cannot read in bed at night with the lights off
• Dim environments — cafes with mood lighting, evening living rooms without task lighting
• Nighttime commuting — the tablet doesn’t produce its own light

If your work happens in daytime or well-lit spaces, this is a non-issue. If you’re a bedtime reader hoping to use the Note Max as a big Kindle replacement, it’s a real limitation worth knowing about before you spend $700+.

BOOX makes other 13.3″ tablets with front lights (like the Tab X C, which adds Kaleido 3 colour) if front light matters to you.

Writing with the Pen Plus (EMR, included)

The BOOX Pen Plus ships in the box. It’s an EMR (electromagnetic resonance) stylus with 4,096 pressure levels — no battery to charge, no risk of it going flat, Wacom-class writing accuracy.

Writing feels close to pencil on paper — a small amount of friction from the glass surface, minimal latency (~21 ms), and no diagonal wobble on strokes. For anyone doing serious note-taking or sketching, EMR technology is genuinely better than the capacitive active pens BOOX ships with newer smaller tablets (InkSense on the Go Color 7 Gen II, InkSpire on the Tab X C).

Software includes:

• Smart Scribe — AI-assisted note editing, shape recognition, handwriting cleanup
• Lasso tool — select and manipulate handwritten content, move blocks of writing around
• Shape tool — draw a rough circle, get a clean one; useful for diagrams and flowcharts
• Outline feature — organise notes with hyperlinked table-of-contents structures
• 45+ built-in templates plus PNG template import
• PDF, EPUB, DOC annotation

Android 13 with full Google Play Store

The Note Max runs Android 13 with unrestricted Google Play Store access. This is the biggest structural difference vs closed-ecosystem tablets like the reMarkable Paper Pro or Kindle Scribe.

• Reading: Kindle, Kobo, Libby, Google Play Books, ComiXology, academic reader apps
• Note-taking: OneNote, Notion, Obsidian, Nebo, Squid, Google Keep
• Productivity: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs, PDF Expert, Adobe Acrobat, Outlook
• Cloud sync: Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud web
• Communication: Slack, Teams, email clients

No BOOX-only ecosystem. Your existing Amazon library, your Kobo purchases, your work Office 365 account, your Google Drive — everything works.

Performance and battery

Hardware — 2.8 GHz octa-core CPU, 6 GB RAM, 128 GB internal storage (double the Note Air 4 C’s 64 GB). Fast enough for smooth multitasking across reading app, PDF annotation, and note-taking. Not iPad-fast, but responsive by e-ink standards.

Battery — 3,700 mAh gives typical daily use (2–4 hours reading/writing) of 5–8 days between charges. Longer with lighter use. No front light means less battery drain than tablets with backlights, which offsets the BSR feature’s higher refresh power draw. Fast USB-C charging brings the device to full in about 2 hours.

Full technical specifications