So it’s that time of the year again, apparently.

Onyx has recently released Nova Air C, the successor to their Nova 3 colour. I’ve been using it for about a month now, and I absolutely LOVE it.

Last year when Onyx released the Nova 3 Colour, I was positively ecstatic. As may have been obvious by the review I wrote of it. When I heard about the plans to release the Nova Air C, I was actually wondering how different the new model could possibly be, given the giant leaps that Nova 3 Colour had already taken, less than a year before. But then I heard about a single new feature and it was important enough for me to decide to upgrade. Then it turned out to be totally worth it.

While Nova 3 Colour and Nova Air C share most features, there are a few key differences. The first thing that got my attention even before turning on the device, was the quality of the screen. The AG glass flat cover-lens gives somehow gives the screen a much more sturdy as well as clear look. The general look of the device is just neater somehow, with the sharper edges and the thinner body.

I also find the redesign of the cover to be a much bigger deal than it may seem to be upon the first glance. The cover is now simply attached to the side of the device via [pretty strong] magnets. This means that one can easily attach / detach the cover at any moment. The cover also has a couple of buttons with customizable functions, that can come pretty handy. The cover is also far sturdier than the previous design. The thin plastic on the back of my Nova 3 Color recently cracked, which wasn’t at all a surprise. The new cover design manages to both protect the device and avoid it heating up. In Switzerland unfortunately the orange kitty design cover is not yet available, but I was able to order it from Canada. It’s really very cute.

The new pen is also sturdier, and it attaches to the side of the device via another magnet. This also proves to be priceless in practice.

Once I turned the device on, I had another pleasant surprise waiting for me. As a result of a much better colour contrast and saturation, the colours seem much more natural and vivid. With the Nova 3 Color, I could arrive to fairly good colour vividness after changing the contrast and saturation settings for the particular context. With Nova Air C, so far I have very rarely [perhaps twice in a month of heavy use] had reason to tweak colour settings.

And then there’s of course the feature that swayed me to upgrade in the first place. The Nova Air C has both warm and cold front lights. This is a very big deal, if you do as much with the tablet as I do, including reading ’till very late at night and with tired eyes.

With the arrival of Nova 3 Colour I pretty much shifted to doing just about anything I previously did on a normal tablet, to the E-Ink tablet. In the past month with the Nova Air C I’ve done even more of that. From reading books and comics to taking notes, browsing the web, using maps, listening to music and using work related apps, I’ve done just about everything imaginable on this tablet and it hasn’t let me down yet. I’d say the upgrade was totally worth it.