TCL has unveiled the Note A1 NXTPAPER, a productivity-focused note-taking tablet that aims to combine the feel of writing on paper with AI-powered features. The $549 device is aimed at professionals, students, and anyone who wants a focused writing experience without the distraction of phones or tablets or the limitations of traditional e-ink displays.
Rival note-taking tablets with color displays such as the Amazon Kindle Scribe Colorsoft (starting at $629 for an 11-inch screen) or reMarkable Paper Pro ($499 for 7.3 inches and $679 for 11.8 inches) have sluggish e-ink screens. The Note A1, instead, uses TCL's NXTPAPER Pure display, which is a color LCD screen designed to emulate the feel of paper. It has a 120Hz refresh rate, which will feel far smoother than e-ink when you're writing or simply using the tablet, and also provides flicker-free visuals. You will also see a lot of detail on this 11.5-inch screen, with a 2,200 x 1,440 resolution that's comparable to its Kindle and reMarkable rivals. The Note A1 also comes in a sturdy aluminum body.
A display that feels like paper
TCL says the NXTPAPER Pure display offers a paper-like writing experience while keeping all the benefits of LCD technology. That means support for 16.7 million colors, as you would get on an LCD iPad, Android tablet, or even an entry-level LCD TV. It also has adaptive brightness to help it work well in different lighting conditions. The company claims the display reduces eye strain compared to traditional tablet screens, which could be helpful if you're taking notes for hours at a time. E-ink screens also offer this, but they can feel slow and look jittery during usage, which TCL aims to avoid.
The Note A1 also comes with TCL's T-Pen Pro stylus, which has 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity – twice that of the Apple Pencil for iPad. But the bigger number may not matter so much, as the Apple Pencil is already praised by its users. One end of the stylus works as a pen, while the other acts as an eraser. TCL claims the stylus has less than 5 milliseconds of latency, or delay. If TCL's software can keep up, the response could be virtually instantaneous.TCL is also promising "pencil-like writing," meaning it's designed to replicate the feel of writing on real paper. We’ve tried the technology with the TCL NXTPAPER 11 Plus, which we awarded a Techlicious CES 2025 Top Pick award, and can confirm it works exactly as promised.
AI-powered productivity features
I’m not a fan of AI being the selling point of every new piece of hardware, but the features here sound promising. The tablet includes the company's Inspiration AI, which offers handwriting-to-text conversion, real-time transcription, and real-time translation. It can also generate automated meeting summaries, provide writing assistance, and recognize handwritten mathematical or scientific formulas (such as in chemistry).
The device has an eight-microphone array with intelligent noise reduction, which means cleaner audio, and could help with speech recognition. There's also a 13-megapixel camera at the back for scanning documents, which adds to its productivity appeal.
Read more: This New $199 Tablet Feels Like Reading on Paper
Hardware and availability
The Note A1 gets an 8,000mAh battery, which, with an LCD screen would likely be comparable to the all-day life of a tablet vs. the days to weeks of an e-ink device. It's housed in a 5.5mm (0.22 inch) thick aluminum body that weighs 500 grams (1.1lbs). The device has 256GB of storage, significantly more than its competitors, which could likely hold over 50,000 regular e-books.
Optional accessories include a flip case and a keyboard case that can turn the tablet into a portable laptop-like work machine.
The TCL Note A1 NXTPAPER will retail for $549 and will be available at the end of February in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. TCL says that early adopters can get discounts through the company's Kickstarter campaign, which is set to go live soon – at which point the discount pricing may become clear.
[Image credit: TCL]
