Boox Tab Ultra C Pro Review

Regular readers will find that my review of the Boox Tab Ultra C Pro is shorter and less detailed than my other reviews.

This is because I bought my Tab Ultra C Pro when I first started taking this website (eWritable) seriously, and sadly had to sell it a few months later to cover the costs of buying another tablet (for those interested, it was the Note Air3)

As well as a lack of depth in this article, due to my lack of experience there are also fewer photos and no battery tests.

Design & Build

The Boox Tab Ultra C Pro has a metal chassis, which means that it feels strong and robust, but is quite weighty at 450g. With the folio added on, it is a rather heavy beast.

The metal is quite cold to the touch, and the edges and corners have not been rounded, so it can feel quite uncomfortable to hold. This tablet was evidently designed to be used within a folio on your desk or lap.

Another reason for the necessity of folio (whether the plain magnetic folio, or the keyboard folio) is that the rear-facing camera is not flush with the casing. It juts out a few millimetres from the rear panel, which means that the tablet will not lie flat without a folio to stabilize it. In addition, the corners of the camera glass are quite sharp and scratched my desk. For such an expensive tablet, this is really quite a big oversight from Boox.

Also on the rear panel are a set of five POGO pins that are used to provide a data connection between the keyboard folio to the tablet. This is an improvement from its predecessors (the Tab Ultra and Tab Ultra C) which had the POGO pins on the edge and would sometimes disconnect when typing.

The power button (with integrated fingerprint scanner) is located on the top-left edge and the USB port is on the bottom-left edge. Next to the USB port is the MicroSD card slot. The dual speakers are also located on the top and bottom edges next to the power button and MicroSD slot, respectively. And at the top of the right edge are two physical buttons, which can be customized depending on your preferences (e.g. volume up/down, page turns etc.)

If I’m honest, I didn’t really not like the design of the Tab Ultra C Pro, just as I didn’t like the Tab Ultra and Tab Ultra C before it. It feels like Boox has taken great care with some aspects (such as the quality of the aluminum casing and packing in lots of hardware features) but then completely overlooked others (such as the hard edges and protruding camera). It’s not the worst design I’ve seen and it does have some nice touches but for something that is supposed to be a premium tablet (with a price tag to match), I did expect better.

Hardware Specs

Under the bonnet is an absolute powerhouse!

The Tab Ultra C Pro has a 2.8GHz octa-core CPU with 6Gb of memory and a whopping 128GB of storage space (which can be extended to an additional 2Tb with a MicroSD card). This is plenty of space, even for people with vast ebook libraries.

The Tab Ultra C Pro also has an integrated graphics processor and Boox Super Refresh (BSR). Essentially, this provides better refresh rates and means that some third-party apps will perform better than they would on other Boox tablets that do not have a GPU and BSR. However, this feature does drain the battery faster (which is why you only get a day or two out of it before it needs a recharge).

Overall, in the realm of e-ink tablets, the Tab Ultra C Pro has exceedingly powerful internals (CPU, GPU, RAM, Storage), as shown on my e-ink tablet CPU benchmarks table.

Screen

The screen is colour (Kaleido 3) and has a screen resolution of 1860 x 2480 and a pixel density of 300PPI for black-and-white, and 930 x 1240 (150PPI) for colour.

SIDENOTE: Whilst colour e-ink can be very useful for some tasks (e.g. reading colour books or adding a splash of colour to your notes) the current technology (Kaleido 3) does have some drawbacks. Firstly, there are a limited number of colours (far less than a regular tablet screen). Colours are also displayed at a lower resolution and screen density. This means that colours on an e-ink screen look quite pale and washed-out. In addition, colour screens are several shades darker than monochrome equivalents, which means they can look quite dim and have lower contrast in dimmer environments (however, this can be mitigated by adjusting the intensity of the frontlight).

The screen is 10.3″ (measured along the diagonal), which is an industry-standard and roughly equates to a sheet of A5 paper.

Around the screen are three thin bezels, with a thicker bezel on the left that is a bit like a ‘spine’ and gives a place to rest your thumb without obscuring the screen. Incidentally, the Tab Ultra C Pro has a G-Sensor, which rotates the screen based on its orientation, so you can switch the ‘spine’ to the right-hand side if you prefer. The screen is flush with the bezels.

The Tab Ultra C Pro has a frontlight with temperature adjustment (to give it a reddish hue which can be more comfortable for night-time reading).

I will cover the tactile writing feel below, but I should mention here that there is no textured film on the screen, as there are with some other Boox tablets, so it feels quite smooth and glassy when the stylus glides over it.

There’s a Wacom EMR layer (the industry standard for digital writing), which means you can use any Wacom-compatible stylus. And it is also capacitive (touchscreen), so you can navigate around the system without the stylus.

Writing Experience

The Tab Ultra C Pro does not have the paper-like screen protector that is fitted to some of Boox’s other products, which means that the writing feel is very smooth (and a little slippery). For me, this results in a less-satisfying writing experience because there is less friction and I don’t get the scratchy, raspy audible feedback that I really enjoy. I also found that (on occasion) the stylus would slide across the screen a little too easily, resulting in mistakes.

I had no issues with lag latency, but there is a tiny gap between where you write on the screen and where the strokes appear, almost as if you are writing a millimetre under the screen rather than on the surface. This will not be an issue for everybody, but it did lessen the pleasure of writing for me because I felt that my writing was not as precise as I wanted it to be.

Overall, I would describe the writing experience as ‘okay’ – there are plenty of tablets that are better in this regard (Supernote, reMarkable, Kindle, and even other Boox’s), but there are also plenty that are worse (Kobo, Meebook etc.).

Hardware features

The Tab Ultra C Pro has several additional hardware features.

It has dual speakers (they’re not amazing quality but are good enough) and a microphone (for recording voice notes).

In addition, you can connect your own Bluetooth speakers (similarly, you can connect to other Bluetooth devices, such as headphones, keyboard and mouse). There’s also Wi-fi support (2.4GHz + 5GHz). And, as previously mentioned, there’s a G-Sensor (for auto-orientation), a fingerprint scanner (for added security), and two customizable physical buttons.

There is also a 16MP rear-facing camera with integrated flash. Although you can take photographs with it, it is primarily designed as a document scanner (i.e. you take a picture of a document and use Boox’s proprietary OCR software to turn it into a digital document). I’ve only tried to do this a few times but I found it awkward to line up the photo and after running it through the OCR software, it hadn’t recognised all the characters and the formatting was very wrong. Personally, I feel it is much quicker and easier to scan documents with your phone and send them to the tablet.

Overall, the Tab Ultra C Pro has a set of very useful hardware features (frontlight, speakers, microphone, MicroSD slot, etc.) However, I feel the camera has very limited use. Because it is not something I could see myself using, and is actually detrimental to the design of the tablet, I would prefer if it were not there at all!

Battery

The 4600mAh battery provides enough power for around a day of average use before requiring a recharge.

Accessories

Keyboard folio

There are two official cases/covers available for the Tab Ultra C Pro – the magnetic (book-like) cover, and the keyboard folio (with integrated keyboard and touchpad). I’ve not used the magnetic cover, so I will only be covering the keyboard folio here.

The first thing I noticed about the keyboard case was that it is rather heavy and makes the whole tablet/folio combo very heavy indeed – it certainly made a noticeably big difference to the weight of my rucksack when I was lugging it around.

It has a faux leather feel, and the rear panel (which houses the keyboard and touchpad) is solid, whilst the front panel has a fold down the middle so that it can be configured as a stand to keep the screen upright. This groove means that the tablet does not lie flat on a desk when the front cover is folded back to the rear. It’s almost flat (certainly not as wobbly with no cover, due to the camera) but there is some movement when tapping the screen in certain areas. There is also some wobbling when the folio is configured as a stand, particularly when you tap on the top edge of the screen. However, the keyboard does not lose connection, as it was prone to do with previous incarnations of the Tab Ultra.

The tablet is secured to the folio with magnets, which keep it in place for the most part, but it will fall out with a vigorous shake if the folio is open. When the folio is closed, there is a magnetic flap on the right edge, which holds the tablet (and stylus) with a bit more security.

The keyboard itself is small (as would be expected for a device of this form factor) so may take a bit of getting used to for those that are used to keyboards with wider key spacing. But it does work really well. I experienced very little lag, although faster typists may notice more. For some third-party apps, you may need to play around with the refresh settings to get an acceptable typing experience but Boox do provide the ability to type notes in their native note-taking app.

By default, the software displays the on-screen keyboard when the cursor is in a typing area, which becomes tiresome when you have to keep closing it. Similarly, there was a pop-up predictive text box whenever I was typing. I found them to be very frustrating until I worked out how to disable them (which wasn’t very intuitive).

The trackpad is very useful, not only as a mouse pointer, but also for quick navigation using gestures. For example, a three-fingered swipe up takes you to the launcher/homescreen and a three-fingered swipe down is the equivalent of tapping the back button. Similarly, sliding two fingers over the trackpad allows you to scroll up and down, which was very useful for reading through webpages.

Overall, the keyboard folio does feel robust and durable and the keyboard and trackpad work pretty well, and opens up new possibilities for the tasks that can be carried out on an e-ink tablet. However, there are a lot of irritations that make it seem more like a late prototype product than a polished product – examples of this include the slight wobbliness of the tablet (both when laid flat and in the stand), the annoying pop-ups when initially using the keyboard, and the sheer weight of the tablet+folio.

Stylus/Pen

The Wacom-compatible stylus that ships with the Tab Ultra C Pro is the Boox Pen2 Pro. This is Boox’s premium Pen, which only ships with their premium products.

It is made of plastic and is almost cylindrical, apart from a single flat edge where it magnetically snaps to the tablet. The magnetic connection holds the stylus fairly well but it will fall off with a shake – the magnetic flap on the cover is designed to keep it in place more securely when transporting.

It is quite smooth, but the plastic material that has been used does provide a pretty decent grip. There are no customizable buttons on the shaft.

The nibs wear down over time but can be replaced by simply pulling them out and inserting a new one – a box of five replacement tips and a removal tool are provided with the tablet. How often you will need to replace the nibs depends on usage, but typically you will get several months of writing before swapping them out. Frayed nibs can also be sandpapered down to get a little more life out of them.

Overall, it functions really well as a stylus. It is lightweight and is comfortable to hold and write with for long periods.

Software

My review of this tablet should be read in conjunction with my review of the current firmware (see table below), which includes aspects such as the Operating System, User Interface, and Native Apps.

The hardware and software reviews have been separated because the firmware used at the time that this review was written may not be the same firmware being used currently. This could result in the review quickly becoming outdated. Also, as several tablets may use the same firmware, this would mean going back and updating every single tablet review from a particular manufacturer to account for the new firmware. By splitting them up, if there is a firmware update, I am able to make the updates on a single page.

Current versions of this brand’s firmware are shown in the table below, along with the tablets running them.

My rating	Firmware version	Tablets using this firmware
	4.1 (current version) Aug 2025	Boox Go 10.3 Boox Note Air5 C Boox Palma 2 Pro Boox Note Air3 Boox Note Air4 C Boox Note Air3 C Boox Go 7 Boox Go Color 7
	4.0 (current version) Oct 2024	Boox Note Max Boox Tab Ultra C Pro Boox Tab X Boox Tab X C Boox Tab Mini C Boox Tab Ultra Boox Max Lumi 2 Boox Tab Ultra C Boox Note Air2 Plus Boox Note 5
Older Boox firmware versions may be found here

Brand

For some people, it is also worth considering the brand as whole, including aspects like customer service, ecosystem, values, and criticisms.

My full overview of the Boox brand can be found here, but I have provided a summary below.

Final Verdict

The Boox Tab Ultra C Pro gives us a glimpse of what may be possible in the future with e-ink screens (and that e-ink tablets could be an alternative for conventional tablets with LCD screens).

Unfortunately, there is still quite a way to go before this is realised.

There’s no denying that the Tab Ultra C Pro is an absolute powerhouse in terms of its hardware specs, and with the addition of BSR, many more third-party apps can be used with an e-ink screen. The keyboard folio opens up many opportunities to carry out typing tasks (emails, word processing etc.) using an e-ink screen. In addition, the native reading and note-taking apps are fantastic (however, they do take a bit of learning and can sometimes be unintuitive).

On paper, the Tab Ultra C Pro looks like the best e-ink tablet on the market, but in reality, I think that (like the Tab Ultra) it tries to do too much, which leads to the detriment of other aspects of the e-ink experience.

Whilst the GPU/BSR improves the performance of some third-party apps, it does this at a cost of drinking up the battery juice faster. The colour screen is nice but does make the overall screen darker. The integrated camera means that the tablet has additional functionality but it really screws up the design. Similarly, whilst the keyboard folio allows you to carry out typing tasks, it does make the unit a whole lot heavier.

The Boox Tab Ultra C Pro is trying to be a viable alternative to a laptop for a lot of activities, but (in my mind, anyway), it doesn’t do them as well as my laptop. Of course I would love to ditch the LCD screen on my laptop for an e-ink alternative but the technology is not quite there, so I would rather have one device for computing tasks and another (that is easier on my eyes) for reading and note-taking.

Which brings me to another point – if the main reason you are considering the Tab Ultra C Pro is because of the keyboard, remember that you can hook a cheap Bluetooth keyboard up to the Boox Note Air 3C and get virtually the same functionality. Granted, the keyboard is not integrated into the folio but there are several advantages to this method – it is much lighter, the tactile writing experience is better, the official folio can stand the tablet up in portrait, and it is much more affordable. Other than the camera and the physical buttons, the Note Air3 C has almost the same hardware and software as the Tab Ultra C Pro – the CPU is slightly slower and there is a little less RAM and storage space but I feel that the average user is unlikely to notice the difference.

Overall, the Tab Ultra C Pro is a high-performance e-ink tablet that is designed to be used for productivity tasks in addition to regular reading and note-taking but it feels a little rough and unpolished. Many of the features also have drawbacks that have to result in a compromise. For some people, the sheer power of the Tab Ultra C (or the camera) will be enough to overlook everything else, but for many, the Boox Note Air3 C will provide the same benefits for a fraction of the cost.

Tablet Overview