TCL Note A1 NXTPAPER is a writing slate with an 11.5 inch screen, stylus support and 8 microphones

TCL is bringing its NXTPAPER display technology to a new 11.5 inch tablet made for writing as well as reading. The upcoming TCL Note A1 is clearly taking aim at products like the reMarkable Paper Pro, Amazon Kindle Scribe, and Onyx BOOX Note Air5C.

But while those devices all have color E Ink displays, the Note A1 uses TCL’s NXTPAPER display technology, which means it has a full-color LCD display with support for high screen refresh rates. The TCL Note A1 isn’t available for purchase yet, but TCL plans to launch a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for the tablet soon, with reward levels expected to start at around $419.

NXTPAPER is TCL’s brand for a line of “paper-like” LCD displays that use a combination of features like a matte, anti-glare finish, “zero flickering technology” and blue light reduction to come a little closer to the look and feel of paper than other LCD and OLED displays.

E Ink screens still have some advantages: they consume less power, display static images indefinitely, and don’t require a backlight if you’re using them outdoors or in brightly lit environments.

But E Ink displays have much lower screen refresh rates (you can push them to go fast enough for video playback and other high-motion graphics, but image quality worsens significantly if you do that), and while E Ink has added support for color to its screens in recent years, the color palette for E Ink Kaleido 3 screens tops out at 4096 colors, while E Ink Spectra 6 displays only support around 60,000 colors. TCL’s NXTPAPER displays support 16.7 million colors.

While TCL has used NXTPAPER displays on a handful of Android smartphones and tablets in recent years, the Note A1 is the first that seems like it’s designed specifically as a digital notepad or writing slate.

TCL hasn’t provided full specifications for the Note A1 yet, but a preview page shows a tablet with a thicker bezel along one side, making it easy to hold in one hand while you hold a digital pen in the other.

That pen supports dual tips and has an integrated eraser, and TCL says it an be used for writing or drawing on the screen. Handwritten notes can be converted to text. And the tablet also appears to support a keyboard cover, although it’s no clear if that will be included in the base price.

The tablet has an aluminum body that measures 260.1 x 196.6 x 5.5mm (10.2″ x 7.7″ x 0.2) and the TCL Note A1 weighs 500 grams (1.1) pounds.

The tablet’s other features include a fingerprint sensor for biometric security, support for wireless screen casting, and the ability to use WiFi to sync your notes with cloud services including Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive.

While there’s no word on the processor, memory, storage, or other specs, the tablet appears to run Android, and supports features including the ability to run multiple apps in split screen mode.

Unsurprisingly, TCL is also playing up its AI capabilities, suggesting that it’ll be able to transcribe, translate, and summarize notes. There are also 8 built-in microphones for recording meeting notes, among other things.

It also looks like the tablet may ship with the Microsoft Edge web browser pre-installed, because I found a bunch of images that were not visible on the TCL Note A1 web page, but which were reference in the HTML code for the page that show Edge with support for features including Quick Links, private browsing, and Copilot and Chat GPT.

Of course, the fact that these pictures aren’t visible on the website could be an indication that TCL isn’t ready to announce or confirm that the tablet actually ships with Edge, Copilot, or ChatGPT support.

More details should be announced closer to to launch.

via NotebookCheck