[duckface]

When the note was announced a number of posts lamented the lack of an SD card, but there were replies that the builtin 32GB should be more than for anyone. That is a correct response if you are using it to read novels -- 32GB would be more than enough to last a lifetime.

The need for more than 32GB comes from researchers, graduate students, and professors. A single research academic paper of only 10 pages often requires several megabytes, and even up to 10meg or more in the case where there are figures and photographs. When combined that with some scanned books (could be 50-100 meg each), it means that 32GB is only enough to hold a couple years worth of papers.

Of course you can delete them when done, but that works for a novel better than research papers. Whereas a novel is mostly self contained, and when you're done you might never read it again, research papers are not self contained. They include ideas from other papers that they cite, and those papers in turn cite other papers. So the first time studying a paper might require reading 5 or 20 other papers. And unless your brain is a mega encyclopedia, you end up referring to many papers repeatedly. So an ideal device for these professions would allow having your entire catalog of annotated pdfs available wherever you work.

The story gets worse still for the case of a group of researchers or students in a lab. A common strategy is to maintain a shared and sync'd library of .pdfs across every student or project in the lab, using system such as Zotero or Mendeley. One of my colleagues said her Zotero library grew to 14GB in just over a year. At this rate the these devices (Note, Max) would not even last for 2 years.

Sadly the Note does not support OTG either.

Although both devices look amazing, I am waiting for the Boyue Likebook Note. The SDcard is more valuable than speed, since managing and juggling files is itself quite a slowdown. If there were a "note pro" with 128 or 64g I think it would sell well.