I traveled the world with the Boox Go 10.3 Gen II, and I found a great Kindle Scribe alternative (provided you don’t do too much note-taking)

“It’s been a while since I properly sat down and read a book.” A sentence I said, and probably many of you have uttered in the age of short-form content. With the $419 Boox Go 10.3 Gen II and 25,000 miles worth of flights in two weeks, I’ve got the chance to lose myself in many good reads.

Did this e-reader hold up to the Kindle Scribe? Kind of — it depends on what your priorities are. If it’s a high-quality reading experience, Boox is the way to go.

The screen has fantastic sharpness and contrast that makes the text pop off the screen; the soft, evenly spread backlighting makes it easier on the eyes for late-night reading.

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But more than that, this tablet runs Android 15, which, beyond the Play Store’s selection of reading apps, makes it far more open to different eBook file formats. Way more open than you’d find on any Kindle! Throw in stellar battery life, and you’re onto a winner.

However, if you really want to take advantage of all that note-taking capability, that’s where the Kindle wins out. Not to say the Boox doesn’t allow you to doodle — there’s a stylus and a touchscreen, after all. But the supplied pen tip feels a little awkward to drag across the screen, and the slight latency, paired with ghosting when taking notes, can create a disconnect between your hand and the paper that your brain takes a beat to process.

So it very much depends on what your goals are with an e-reader like this. For me, someone who leans more toward reading with a casual side order of jotting things down, the Boox is more than enough and a global daily driver I was happy to have in my daily carry.

Boox Go 10.3 Gen II: Cheat sheet

• What is it? This is an e-reader/notetaking tablet hybrid.
• Who is it for? This one's for the bookworms and daily jotters/doodlers.
• What does it cost? The standard model without a backlight costs $419, and you'll pay an extra $30 for the Lumi model with illuminated screen.
• What do we like? This is a featherweight, premium-feeling ereader in the hand with a great battery life, super sharp display with even backlighting, and Android 15 gives you a far more open experience than you'd find on a Kindle.
• What don't we like? The writing experience isn't quite as good as you'd find on the Scribe, and that internal power can be a little slow to open apps and books.

Boox Go 10.3 Gen II: Specs

Boox Go 10.3 Gen II: The ups

The first leg was a big one — Heathrow to Taipei. Keeping yourself entertained with a short attention span is tricky, but popping open a good book on the Boox seemed to be the key to watching the hours fly by.

A good-looking read

Let’s start with the hardware, which feels great in the hand thanks to its metallic construction and that nicely textured fabric case. At around 360g and 4.6mm thin, it’s a featherweight with evenly distributed weight across its body. And yet, it still feels durable enough to be stashed in an airplane seatback pocket or chucked into your backpack.

Throw in the longevity of that 3,700 mAh cell giving me a full week of use easily, and it’s a worry-free device from most angles.

Display looks like a page of a book

Now for the display. That 10.3-inch monochrome panel sports 300 pixels-per-inch, which really brings out the crispness of text in whatever you’re reading. Throw in a decently deep contrast ratio, too, and that brings real definition to each character on that page or image in a web article.

And when the refresh rate needs to be upped for things like web browsing or drawing, it does so at a respectable rate. It may not be LCD or OLED levels of fluid, but it's fluid enough for the essentials.

Quality-wise, this is up there with what the Kindle Scribe can provide — especially when you loop in that nice even Lumi backlighting. It sucks that you’ve got to pay an additional $50 for this feature, but for those bookworm night owls or those on long-haul flights, that glow is just right.

Android 15 opens the door

Let’s be real — books aren’t the only thing you want to read on an e-reader. There are also textbooks, short stories, PDFs, web articles, and more. On top of that, all of these different types of reading can come in all sorts of file formats.

On a Kindle, you can absolutely find backdoors to force files onto it, but in general, you’re locked down to Kindle books for reading and a few very specific avenues. However, the Boox is running Android 15 in all its glory.

That means the Play Store for different reading/content consumption apps. But most importantly, that means compatibility with pretty much every file format for text and image. The Boox software is a cinch to use, so you can easily upload a file to your reader via a desktop browser.

It was a dream scenario to upload all of my press releases ahead of Computex 2026 and circle the key points with my pencil — all on the same device I could tuck into Lord of the Rings or read the latest longform reporting or biographies too.

Boox Go 10.3 Gen II: The downs

Juicing it back up to full, it was time for my next two big flights — one over the Pacific to LAX, and a final hop back to London. Reflecting on my time doodling notes, reading away and browsing Android on this slate, I did remind myself of a couple of key frustrations.

A bit sluggish

Inside, you’ve got an octa-core CPU running at 2.4GHz with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, which is just enough to avoid too many problems.

However, it can be slow on startup, and if you try to stretch it to app downloads (thanks to Android 15), you may run into some issues and slowdowns. Especially on startup, rendering the book or opening anything takes a short while, and it seems to chug into gear.

Once it's all warmed up, responsiveness does come back, but in the clutch moments where you’re trying to get something up fast, it can get frustrating.

Penmanship is lacking

Then let’s turn our attention to the note-taking experience, which I’d consider just about fine for my uses. If you’re just a casual jotter, what I’m about to talk about won’t be a massive issue. But if you want to use this more than casually, you’ll feel the pain points here.

The surface of the screen causes friction with this wider pen tip that, at best, can feel like you’re dragging the pen more than writing with it, and at worst, the sound is mildly like nails on a chalkboard.

And there’s a small bit of latency. Not game-breaking in and of itself, but paired with some ghosting of the lines you lay down, it can create a disconnect between your brain and the page, making writing things down a start-and-stop experience.

Boox Go 10.3 Gen II: Bottom line

And as I finally touched down at London Heathrow, I felt more enlightened after my time with the Boox Go 10.3 Gen II. I could’ve gone down a content wormhole that would’ve strained my attention span, or I could’ve read a book. Ultimately, I made a good decision for my mind with a damn good device.

Obviously, there are considerations based on how you will use this. If you want a better balance between a reader and a note-taking workhorse, the Kindle Scribe is definitely better on the notation side, with more responsive performance.

However, if you only need to jot things down casually and want a better, more open reading experience for uploading all your content, this is a well-built, long-lasting way to go.