When you picture a tablet, you probably think of an iPad or maybe a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and you almost definitely picture something with a glossy LCD or LED screen that operates like a larger, more powerful version of your smartphone. But there is another category of these devices built not for browsing social apps or consuming media, but for productivity: digital notebooks.
These devices are the halfway point between a pen and paper notebook and a laptop, with glare-resistant screens and smart pens you can use to take notes, sketch, and mark up documents. While some of them are purpose-built for writing, others are closer to full-fledged tablets that can run work, productivity, and even entertainment apps. If you're looking for a device that will help you organize your life while eliminating some of the factors that can make you devices distracting and addictive, a digital notebook may be the solution.
The downside is that these devices are aimed at a niche (if expanding) market and can be more expensive than a traditional tablet—so choosing the one that will meet your needs is key. I've spent the last year reviewing the latest offerings from the biggest players in the market, and these are my picks for the best digital notebooks for every type of user.
Of all the digital notebooks I've tested, the Boox Note Air 4C strikes me as the best bet for most people. The 10.3-inch screen is large enough to serve as a usable workspace, but not so large that you have to worry about portability. The writing experience is typical of e-paper devices with EMR (electromagnetic resonance) styluses, which is to say pretty good (I'd liken it the feel of using a felt-tipped marker pen on paper), and the native Notes app offers a ton of options for creating and organizing your writing and documents. The front-lit color e-ink screen makes it a good pick if you want a device that can double as a capable e-reader for both books and comics, and the open Android operating system runs the Google Play store out of the box, so you can download all of your favorite productivity apps.
If you're the kind of person who is constantly saying "let me throw that into ChatGPT," the AiPaper—the first device from ViWoods, a relatively new player in the market—is a strong bet. It's pleasant to write on, it offers some of the best organizational and productivity tools of any device on the market and, after messing with the settings, it can be configured to access the Google Play store to run your favorite reading and work apps. But what truly sets it apart is the smart way it integrates ChatGPT-4o into all of its native apps, so you can ask the chatbot to draft emails, summarize a document, and more at a tap.
If you want the biggest writeable screen you can get, they don't come any bigger than the 13.3-inch Boox Note Max. It offers a premium build, the same great writing experience and features as my top choice, the Note Air 4C, but minus the front light and color display. These sound like downsides, but removing that extra tech only serves to make the Note Max's screen crisper and your connection to what you're writing or drawing more immediate. (If color and lighting are really important to you, consider the newer Boox Tab X C, which has both—but a different stylus that might not be for everyone.)
Though I think the Note Air 4C is the best digital notebook for most people, the Supernote Manta is the one I'd choose for myself. In contrast to competing devices from Boox and Viwoods, the Manta doesn't run apps out of the box—by design, this thing is built to be a replacement for your pen and paper notebook. As such, it's all about the writing experience, and writing with the Supernote's ceramic-tipped stylus is a joy. While the functionality is a bit basic for a modern tablet—the focus is on writing, drawing, and organizing your files—it's kind of nice to use a device that flawlessly executes on its intended goals: removing distractions and leaving you alone with a pen, a surface to write on, and your thoughts.
A close competitor to the Supernote Manta, the reMarkable Paper Pro (a larger, updated version of the excellent reMarkable 2) likewise foregrounds writing and productivity, but with a few interesting twists. For one thing, it has a front-lit color display that uses E Ink's Gallery 3 screen tech, which can display 20,000 colors to the Boox Note Air 4C's 4,060. For note-taking and drawing, it offers a unique "infinite canvas" that allows you to create endlessly scrolling documents that you can organize via tagging. And I'm particularly impressed with its cloud integrations, which allow you to edit files on both the Paper Pro and your laptop—though doing so does require a subscription.
If the Boox Note Air 4C is too pricey for you, you might also consider it's younger, smaller brother, the Boox Go Color 7. In many ways, it mirrors the capabilities and features of that more expensive device, but shrinks things down considerably with a portable, comfortable 7-inch screen that also makes it a great color e-reader. For an extra $50, you can get the supported InkSense USI 2.0 stylus so it can also serve as a pocket notebook of sorts. The pen is different and the writing experience can't compare to what you get with the Note Air 4C, but it's also the best option at this size and price point. (Also available in a black-and-white only version, the Boox Go 7.)
While it can't compete with the other devices on this list in terms of versatility, if you're just looking for a straightforward digital notebook—that is, a place to take notes or keep a journal—it does the job really well. The writing experience is smooth and satisfying, the stylus is one of the best I've tried (the rubbery eraser is a notable plus), and you can also use it to mark up your e-books and PDFs. Because oh right: This is also a Kindle, which means it's a great e-reader—provided you're OK with being locked to the Amazon ecosystem—with a large screen and the best lighting system on the market.
If you can't bring yourself to give up the versatility of a traditional backlit tablet screen, the XP-Pen Magic Note Pad is a nice stop-gap: It's like a Kindle and an iPad had a baby. Its TLC NXTPAPER display has an etched surface to reduce glare as well as three different color modes, controlled at the operating system level, that ostensibly take it from full color LED tablet to something that more closely resembles a black and white e-reader. It comes with an outstanding stylus that's more than four times as sensitive as an Apple Pencil (or any of the others I've written about here, for that matter), making it a particularly good choice for artists; though I find the slippery feel less than ideal for note-taking, it will get the job done.
I hope the above recommendations are helpful to you, but before you consider buying any of them, a word of caution: Though digital notebooks can be a fantastic productivity tool, they aren't for everyone. Most modern tech is designed to meet your needs as seamlessly as possibly, keeping you plugged in and engaged. An e-ink notebook is more about being useful—even if that means their slower screens are clunkier to use and uglier to look at.
If you're going to drop hundreds of dollars on a device, it should be able to do what you want (and need) it to do, so be sure to keep your expectations in check and consider the notable advantages—and especially the disadvantages—of e-ink screens before investing.
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