When I bought my iPad Pro 12.9 (2021) three years ago (a lovely pre-owned model which I've written about before), I knew its main function would be as a portable creative tool. I've used it to edit videos, write scripts, brainstorm ideas, and write pitches and treatments; sometimes on trains and sometimes on planes, and other times at my beloved local coffee shop (which I won't name because it's a bit too popular as it is).
That's three years of a loyal, faithful commitment... until recently, as I've been having some fun on the side, which is getting more and more serious. I'm in danger of becoming a two-tabber!
Two years ago, for TechRadar's sister site TopTenReviews, I tested the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C (and gave it a similar rating to TechRadar's own reviewer). There's a good chance you haven't heard of this device because Onyx makes ereaders but isn't Amazon, and therefore, the brand sits in relative obscurity. Indeed, after my review period finished with the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C, I stopped using it. For a year and a half, it very literally sat gathering dust.
But then, for reasons I'll get to, I started looking for a bit of fun on the side of my iPad Pro, and quickly found that the Boox Tab ticked all my boxes. In fact, it's proven so useful that I use it for certain creative tasks more than my iPad Pro now.
Meet the Boox
First, a brief introduction to the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C (boy, what a mouthful!). It's an ereader akin to the Kindle Scribe, but with all of Amazon's slate's features turned up to 11 (if that reference hasn't recently been made gauche...).
It's a really expensive device, costing $600 / £600 / AU$980, and that's without the keyboard folio, which I've been using too. Banish the thought of this being a standard Kindle-esque cheapie.
In part, that high price comes from the sheer size of this thing; it boasts a 10.3-inch display, which, unlike some ereaders, supports color. But the Onyx also offers the Google Play Store, making it a tablet at the same time.
I'm going to level with you: I used to cover ereaders (amongst other things at TechRadar), and have used them loads, but at heart I'm an aficionado for real books and real pen-and-paper writing. I'd rather look at a page than a screen, and my collection of books takes pride of place in my flat (well, as proud as a collection can be that's crammed into the corner of rental digs). I realize that an ereader is a gadget designed for someone like me, and it's definitely better than a tablet, but I still generally stick to the page if I can.
Lots of my reasons for picking this device aren't specific to the Tab Ultra C. It happened to be in the right place at the right time, and another stylus-toting ereader might work just as well for the tasks I describe. In fact, it's scarily expensive for what it is. But it's the Onyx that was at hand and the Onyx which won me over.
The problem with iPad
My iPad is a jack of all trades. It's powerful for video editing, though not as powerful as my edit rig. Its keyboard is useful for word processing, but not as natural to use as my laptop or PC. It's portable, though not as portable as my phone. But it can tick all of those boxes at the same time, which makes it really handy.
Before the Boox came into my life, its stylus was also my only way of writing by hand, which is useful for two purposes. Firstly, I much prefer to handwrite notes than to type them, and secondly, it's great for marking up scripts and documents; both of these would be feasible with just a pen and paper if they weren't bad for the environment and, just as importantly, easy to lose.
The problem with using the iPad for handwriting is that, whether you're using an Apple Pencil or, in my case, a knock-off Apple Pencil, it just doesn't replicate the feeling of a pen on paper. Ignore what Apple fans say, it's just not the same.
It's hard to quantify the components of the process of handwriting until you've considered it, but when you think about it, it's all about pressure; the squeeze of your fingertips on the pen, the firm lunge of the pen onto the paper, the iron barrier of your arm holding you at the perfect position.
There's none of that on an iPad. You touch the stylus on the screen and move it about, and a line appears. I know subsequent generations of iPad press releases have boasted about touch sensitivity and palm recognition, but at the end of the day, it's a country mile from the experience of using a pen on a piece of paper.
Going out of stylus
Disenchanted by the iPad Pro's handwriting shortcomings, I began using a pen and paper for all my note-taking, leaving sheafs of papers strewn across my bedroom like I was the subject of a 'tortured artist' movie whose set design department had been given too high a budget. Most of these papers I lost, or were drenched in coffee, rendering them illegible, and the ones that did survive gathered dust on my desk, as I didn't really have anywhere to file or store them.
Then I moved house, which brought with it a big tech cull and the repeated question: "Am I going to use you?". For loads of past review units I had hanging around, the quick answer was "no", but when I asked the Onyx, I hesitated. Maybe this device could fix my writing problem.
When I'd moved into my new place, I charged up the Onyx, opened up a blank page, and started to scrawl out a few things. Nothing ground-breaking, just a doodle and a sentence to see what the handwriting was like. Quickly, I found that it offered that natural-feeling handwriting experience that the iPad didn't.
A few neat touches make the Boox's stylus feel much more like a pen. These range from the haptic – like the slight friction from the tip on the screen when you drag it along the display and the 'give' when you push down with the stylus – to the stylistic; the stick has a pen nib you can put on when you're not using it. I felt permitted to use the stylus like a pen and the device like a page, which was much more comfortable for handwriting.
The screen doesn't feel as big and cold as an iPad's. This may seem irrelevant, but it meant that when leaning my hand to write, which happens approximately 100% of the time I'm scribbling, I'm not constantly reminded that this is a smart device.
And then there's the simple fact that E-Ink looks a lot more like paper than a tablet screen does, telling my brain once again that "No, this isn't a tablet", and also letting me take notes at night without stopping me from sleeping.
The Ultra ereader
I was won over by the handwriting experience of the Onyx Boox but what kept me using it, and stopped me returning to the iPad, was its useful features.
As on Kindles, you can import documents onto the device, and it's an easy process. You can see in the image above that I imported scripts that I could annotate, and shot lists that I could fill in, and I did both on film shoots. While an iPad would run out of power if it were left on all day (or would keep turning off), the Boox was a reliable driver, with ereaders generally lasting dramatically longer than tablets.
You can also make notes documents, which aren't massive clean pages to write on, but are instead documents that you can add pages and various style designs to. These were handy, as I could create a page for ideas on one project, and then add separate sub-pages for different facets or angles, and it was easy to scribble notes in each page and navigate between the two.
One lovely feature is Smart Selection, which lets you draw a lasso around some notes for the Onyx to auto-select, allowing you to move them about. This quickly became a vital part of my workflow, as I could move notes and ideas around between sections without having to scribble a comment out and re-add it.
I'll admit that I never used the device's Play Store access, and didn't read books with it due to my aforementioned predilection towards paper ones. But as I recall from my review testing time, you can actually mark up e-books, too, if you want to take some notes as you read.
You might find it bizarre that I'm commending an ereader's features versus an iPad, when the latter has much more potential. That's true, but if I'm working on a project, I don't want to be distracted, and my own worst enemy is myself. I know my iPad Pro has social media, it has games, and it has downloaded TV shows. There's too much temptation, and that just isn't present on the Onyx.
Keeping the iPad around?
Since discovering how nice (for lack of a better word) it felt to use the Tab Ultra C for hand-writing, its features have made it a stalwart part of my creative life. If I'm in the genesis stage of a new project, it's always on hand, so I can scribble out ideas or structure plans and lists.
It hasn't knocked anything out of my process; when an idea has reached maturity, I'm still going to use my iPad to formulate it and my PC to create it, and there are still loads of other gadgets that get in the way.
But the Onyx can be my faff-free interface with the digital realm, letting me ignore the annoyances of artifice that the iPad brings and spew my thoughts and ideas straight onto the (digital) page.
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