Nova Air with 3.2 - OneNote = Horrible experience - This can't be so
Recently purchased a Nova Air. I saw youtube reviews of people taking notes on BOOX devices, so I thought BOOX devices would be good as both eReader and note taking device.
Sadly the only note taking app that works at all is the built-in Note app. I am finding that any other note or sketching app from the Google Play store, especially Microsoft OneNote is completely unusable. I cannot believe how much of a horrible experience using OneNote is on this BOOX device. There is less pen lag yes, but overall it's just horrible.
I updated to v3.2 and did the app settings found in the boox blog: https://shop.boox.com/blogs/news/optimize-onenote-evernote-wps
Even after the v3.2 update, OneNote is still horrible.
I notice that Nova Air has Android 10 and some other BOOX devices have Android 11 and they actually advertise being compatible with OneNote/WPS/Evernote.
I don't know what to think now ... I feel cheated thinking the Nova Air was more capable than it is. Live and learn I guess.
Is Android 11 the trick to getting OneNote to work on the Nova Air? Will Android 11 ever come to the Nova Air?
What am I missing? Is there a way to get other pen enabled apps to work?
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Hi! try installing the app with the default settings, I have it that way on my nova air and the experience is quite similar to the native app. I installed it in the play store app instead of the native app store
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I tried it again. I uninstalled OneNote and re-installed it from the google play store. I didn't customize any settings. At first it was ok. I could write decent but it quickly went horrible.
The four menu tabs, HOME, INSERT, DRAW, VIEW are difficult to see. Hard to know which tab you are on. The icons under the menu bar is even more difficult to see. The two drop downs in HOME are just faint outlines with nothing visible inside them. Click the down arrow to pull down the drop down does absolutely nothing.
The top right corner where your user account and the three dot ellipse menu, where settings is found, is completely not visible at all. I just have to know that it's there.
Then comes writing with the pen. There's no lag while writing, which is good. However, after I stop writing, it dances around and goes faint. My palm seems to be moving the entire screen around, so I turn off touch in the control panel, but then I can't interact in any way with the application.
I'm completely dumb founded how bad of a user experience this really is. I had bought this Nova Air for my wife and I was thinking of buying a bigger one for myself to replace my paper notepad, but after seeing how this actually works in real life, there's no way.
I guess I'm stuck with just using the default Note app, which ain't all that bad and use it as an eReader.
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I have the exact same feelings your do. I have been using Onenote since day one. I bought a Boox Note Air 2 running Android 11 specifically for using Onenote based on marketing and videos. Onenote is unusable on this device. You should be able to get the menus working okay by tweaking the settings but using the application for serious work is not possible. All of the reasons you mention but just the UI and functionality is horrible.
I am seriously considering returning my note air 2 because of this. The notes application while much better for taking notes does not do simple things like ocr recognition on circled text. That is Boox's fault. While I was surprised to see synchronization with onenote and notes it is not a good implementation. Pages get merged into one page and other issues.
Come on Boox and Microsoft. It is 2022. You can do better.
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I have experienced many of the same issues on my Note Air 2. I do think most of the issues revolve around the color scheme within the app, which don't translate very well to a greyscale screen. You just can't see many of the functional parts of the app. It would be great if there was some way to apply a filter to the app, or maybe an Accessibility option. Don't know if it would help, but it would be worth a try. Send your comments to MSFT also! EInk is becoming more viable, and they should adapt the App to work better with it.
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Haven't had my Note Air 2 long, and avoided OneNote due to poor performance on other platforms. I just installed it to check on the Air 2 and I'm surprised to say I find it great so far (haven't been using it long). Pen input is super speedy and the problem with the hand dragging the screen around seems easily managed. The large OneNote interface took a bit of getting used to, but once you navigate to your page, it dissappears. Lets see how it goes!!
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