Boox E-Readers Receive Awaited V4.0 Update With A LONG List Of Features
Summary
- Boox has been testing Firmware v4.0 for many of its devices for the past few months.
- The big update is now rolling out to all eligible users with features like a new theming engine, OCR functionality in the background, and clickable links in PDFs.
- Notetaking features have been improved, too, with a few new shapes, note imports from PNGs and PDFs, and structured outlines for lengthy notes.
Onyx Boox brings some much-needed freshness to the black-and-white world of e-readers. Their devices run on a custom OS based on Android, letting you download virtually any app — including rival e-book apps — without locking you into the ecosystem (looking at you, Amazon). The company makes a range of excellent e-readers that either resemble a regular Kindle, feature a color e-ink display, or come with a stylus for notetaking. And now, many of Boox’s recent devices are getting their long-awaited firmware v4.0 update packed with so many features, you’ll probably lose count, too.
Related
Boox has been testing its massive v4.0 update in beta for a good few months, and it’s now finally rolling out to everyone (via Good e-Reader). The feature list is long — a mix of small and significant improvements that all come together to seriously upgrade the overall experience.
The most notable of the bunch is the new theming engine, which lets you tweak background colors, font, spacing, margins, and more. You can even save your preferences and apply them across files. Boox has also enabled OCR functionality in the background. So now, you can click through your PDFs without waiting for the device to finish scanning them — it’s already done and ready to go. Speaking of PDFs, links in your documents are now finally clickable (as they should’ve been from the start), and highlighted text now has better contrast, making it easier to read.
Boox devices that support notetaking are getting some extra love, too. You can now insert a bunch of new shapes into your notes and create handwritten notes by importing PNGs or PDFs, while the system can now automatically create a structured outline for longer notes, making navigation super simple.
There are plenty of other upgrades as well, like a customizable top function bar in the Library, plus a new button that lets you switch between Library view modes instantly. You can check out the full changelog here.
What Boox devices are getting the firmware v4.0 update?
The latest Boox v4.0 update is already live and rolling out to a ton of recent devices. Here’s the complete list:
Go series: Go 10.3, Go Color 7, Go 6
Note series: Note Max, Note Air4 C, Note Air3, Note Air3 C, Note Air2 Plus, Note Air2, Note 5
Tab series: Tab X, Tab Ultra C Pro, Tab Ultra C, Tab Ultra, Tab Mini C
Other models: Page, Poke4 Lite, Poke5, Poke5 Lite, Palma 2, Palma, Nova Air2, Nova Air C, Max Lumi 2, Leaf2
If you’ve got one of these, the update should be reaching you pretty soon — if it hasn’t already. A Boox Go 6 user even reported smoother performance after installing it, which is a promising start. You can check your Boox’s system settings to see if the update has arrived.
