Edit: Curse you autocorrect!
The Mobileread discussion linked from there is >60 pages of discussion including staff from the company, and there's discussion of a Boox Max 2 coming out later this year that will have the higher-resolution screen, touch instead of pen, an updated (but still slow) processor, possibly a bump in Android version (still ancient, jumping from 4.0.4 to 4.4 perhaps?). Doing a little digging, the processor change may not be a processing power increase but a power consumption decrease (i.MX6 to i.MX7). Note that all of this is unofficial and that it doesn't seem like the details have been finalized.
I'll also note that (without reading the whole 60+ pages) I saw at least one person who'd also installed apps from the Google Play store and found that troublesome, particularly when updating the firmware in the device.
Edit: after a bit more reading on Mobileread there might also be a 10.3" version of the Boox ("Boox Note") towards the end of the year; they're taking prototypes to the Hong Kong fair to gauge interest but would likely not do mass production until October (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=285006)
When I read this post about the Sony tablet, I'm thinking the product space is getting interesting--FINALLY!!
But I'm honestly kind of amazed that something like this isn't already widely available at a reasonable price... I don't feel like my needs are that atypical and it's just the dream product to me.