With the BOOX Go 6 Gen II, BOOX is giving its pocketable 6″ E Ink reader the one feature that might make it feel less like a single-purpose gadget and more like something worth carrying every day: stylus support. The $199.99 second-generation model keeps the travel-friendly size, adds compatibility with the optional InkSense Plus stylus, and includes a native notes app for jotting thoughts, marking passages, and keeping quick lists. It’s still an e-reader first, but now it can double as the tiny notebook you meant to pack and, predictably, forgot on the way out.
A Small Reader with a More Useful Trick
Small e-readers have always made sense for travel. They’re lighter than a paperback, they don’t glare at you in direct sunlight, and they let you bring a vacation’s worth of books without pretending your carry-on has unlimited emotional or physical capacity. The new BOOX Go 6 Gen II keeps that basic promise, but the addition of handwriting support gives it a more flexible role.
The Go 6 line previously lived mostly in the “read anywhere” category. With this version, BOOX is nudging it into “read and do something with what you just read” territory. Paired with the InkSense Plus stylus, which is sold separately, the Go 6 Gen II can be used to underline passages, mark up books, capture handwritten notes, and make quick to-do lists in the native notes app.
That doesn’t turn a 6″ device into a full-size digital notebook, and no one should buy it expecting the screen real estate of a larger BOOX tablet. But for the kind of note-taking that happens in real life, the small size may be the point. You could use it to mark a favorite passage on a plane, jot down a packing reminder before leaving a hotel, sketch out a quick errand list in the car before heading into a store, or capture a thought during a commute without getting pulled into the notification swamp on your phone.
The Design Leans Into Travel
BOOX has refreshed the design with a suitcase-inspired back shell that includes tactile grooves and subtle curves. That kind of design language can sound a little much on paper, but here it at least matches the device’s purpose. A reader meant to go everywhere should be easy to grip, easy to toss into a bag, and not so precious that you’re afraid to use it outside the house.
The Go 6 Gen II measures about 5.9″ by 4.3″ by 0.27″, and it weighs approximately 5.6 ounces. That’s firmly in “bring it just in case” territory, which is where a travel e-reader should be. It’s small enough for a purse, jacket pocket, backpack, or the overstuffed personal item that airlines like to pretend they aren’t judging.
It’ll be available in four colors: Plum, Stone, Shell, and Custard. The names are a little like a boutique hotel paint swatch, but the idea is welcome. E-readers have spent far too long looking like they were designed by committee in a room where joy was considered a compliance risk.
The Display Is Still the Reason This Category Works
The BOOX Go 6 Gen II uses a 6″ HD monochrome ePaper glass screen with a flat anti-glare cover lens, a 1448 by 1072 resolution, and 300 dpi. In plain English, that means text should look sharp and print-like, rather than pixelated or fuzzy. The 300 dpi number matters because it’s the sweet spot many people associate with crisp ebook text, especially if you read for long stretches.
Because this is an E Ink-style display rather than a phone or tablet screen, it should also be easier to read outdoors and gentler on the eyes during long reading sessions. There’s an adjustable front light with warm and cool tones, so you can make the screen feel brighter and cleaner during the day or warmer at night. That’s useful if you read in bed and don’t want your e-reader giving off the same energy as a gas station canopy at midnight.
The touchscreen is capacitive, meaning it responds to your fingers like a phone screen, and it also supports BOOX’s InkSense Plus stylus for handwriting. The physical key is limited to power, so most interaction will happen through the screen.
Android Gives It More Breathing Room
One of BOOX’s biggest differentiators has always been its use of Android, and the Go 6 Gen II continues that approach with Android 11 and Google Play built in. That matters because it gives you more freedom than you’d get from an e-reader locked to one bookstore or service. You can download reading apps, cloud storage apps, and other tools, assuming they play nicely with an E Ink screen.
There are some realistic limits. E Ink is designed for reading comfort and battery life, not for buttery scrolling or rapid-fire animations. So while the Go 6 (Gen II) has a Qualcomm 2.0GHz octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage, you still shouldn’t expect it to behave like an iPad mini. The upgraded RAM should help with smoother reading, note-taking, and app switching, but this is still a calm little reader, not a tiny entertainment tablet trying to run your digital life from a hotel nightstand.
Storage can be expanded with a microSD card, which is helpful if your digital library includes a messy mix of ebooks, PDFs, comics, and files you’ve been meaning to organize since 2018. Connectivity includes dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz), Bluetooth 5.0, and USB-C. There’s no speaker, but there is a microphone, and the device supports text-to-speech, dictionary tools, a calendar, and other built-in features.
File Support Is Broad, Because Real Libraries Are Messy
The BOOX Go 6 Gen II supports a long list of formats, including FBZ, HTML, MOBI, ODT, PRC, RTF, SXW, TRC, TXT, CHM, PPT, JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, CBR, CBZ, WAV, and MP3. That list won’t matter to everyone, but it’s a practical advantage if your reading life isn’t neatly contained in one app.
Maybe you have ebooks from different stores, old work documents, web articles, PDFs, image files, comics, and a few random documents whose origin story has been lost to time. The broader the file support, the less likely you are to spend your evening converting formats when all you wanted to do was read a book.
Language support follows Android 11, and the device can be updated locally, with optional over-the-air updates available. It also uses BOOX’s Open SDK (software development kit), primarily for developers and tinkerers seeking a more flexible E Ink platform.
Pricing and Availability
The BOOX Go 6 Gen II is available for preorder now for $199.99 through the official BOOX Shop and Amazon, with shipping beginning soon. The package includes the Go 6 Gen II, a USB-C cable, a card tray eject tool, a Quick Start Guide, a warranty card, and a gift box. The InkSense Plus stylus is sold separately, so anyone buying this specifically for handwritten notes should factor that into the real cost.
For readers who want a small E Ink device that’s light enough to carry every day and now useful enough to handle quick handwritten notes, this second-generation model makes a stronger case for itself than the original. Just don’t mistake it for a full-size writing tablet. Its charm is that it isn’t trying to be one.
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