Review: TCL Note A1 Nxtpaper

Tablets are secondary devices for most of us, but there's one place where they outshine laptops: digital note-taking. Attempting to bridge the gap between analog and digital, digital notebooks offer a paper-like writing experience with all the pros of digital notes.

ReMarkable devices are probably the best known in this space, and they top our digital notebook guide, but I've always wanted something a little more versatile—what if I want to stream a baseball game on the same device I take notes on? E Ink, the technology employed by digital notebooks and e-readers, isn't the best choice in that case.

TCL's Note A1 Nxtpaper tablet uses a more traditional, though still matte, tablet screen to get as close to the E Ink writing experience as possible, while still being able to display video when you want to expand beyond just taking notes. It mostly works, but it can't completely mimic the feel of writing on paper, and there are a few quirks with the user interface.

Hybrid Screen

The heart of any digital notebook is the screen—how well does it mimic paper? With E Ink, the answer is pretty darn well, but this is not actually E Ink. TCL's Note A1 Nxtpaper is built around a custom 1440 x 2200-pixel matte LCD panel with a 120-Hz refresh rate. At first glance, it looks like E Ink, and indeed it reduces glare and is easier on the eye than a typical tablet. At the same time, it's still an LCD panel capable of the color rendering and responsiveness of a traditional Android tablet. (The Nxtpaper matte LCD technology is proprietary to TCL.)

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

It's not E Ink, but I find the Note A1 screen to be quite nice and a perfectly acceptable alternative given how much more versatile it is than an E Ink screen. However, if what you love about E Ink note-taking devices is the paperlike experience, this is not the device for you (I'll explain more in the next section). It's certainly much nicer to look at and to write on than a typical glossy Android tablet.

While it is not perfect, the Note A1's screen feels very close to the hybrid note-taking/true tablet device that I've been searching for—one part real screen, one part writing pad.

The rest of the tablet is about what you'd expect in a midrange to high-end Android tablet. There's a MediaTek G100 processor, with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. That's enough power to run all the apps I tested and power some of the AI-driven features TCL is pushing with this device, including automated meeting summaries, audio-to-text transcription, and, of course, handwriting-to-text conversion.

All this is wrapped in a solid aluminum body that's almost exactly the same size and weight as the 11-inch Kindle Scribe. The Note A1 is 5 millimeters thick and weighs 500 grams.

I have two gripes with the Note A1 hardware. The first is the keyboard case, which is unnecessarily heavy and complicated. TCL apparently hired an origami expert to design the keyboard case, which has three panels where two usually does the job. The result is a keyboard case that adds an annoying level of weight, thickness, and complexity where none of that is required. For all that though, the keyboard itself is quite nice to type on. The other problem is the lack of hardware volume buttons. Volume buttons are good, mmmkay?

Writing, Drawing, Reading

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

Besides the screen, the bundled T-Pen Pro is the highlight of this tablet. The fact that it's bundled is somewhat unusual these days, as many manufacturers have followed Apple's lead and made their writing devices a separate purchase.

This isn't some throwaway pen either; it's very good, with excellent pressure sensitivity and extremely low latency, which makes writing with it feel a lot more natural than some tablets I've tested.

But the overall writing experience doesn't feel like paper. Devices like the ReMarkable have spent a lot of effort getting the texture and feel of paper into the screen-writing experience. The A1 Note can't compete on this front because it still feels like writing on a glass tablet. This didn't bother me as I've never really wanted to replicate the exact feel of paper notebooks on digital (if I want to write on paper, I, well, write on paper), but if you're coming from a device like the ReMarkable, know that the writing experience here is more like a traditional tablet screen.

Despite this, the pen is really nice for taking notes, annotating documents, and even sketching. There are several tips available, and you can customize the pen quite a bit, including setting up custom shortcuts. There's also good handwriting and shape recognition tools in the A1 Note's note-taking software.

The Note A1 supports a broad range of document formats, from PDF docs to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, EPUB, MOBI, AZW3 (Kindle), and more. That means you aren't locked into any specific reader or app on the device.

Similarly for syncing, you can use whatever you like. TCL ships with Google's Play Store installed, but I had no trouble downloading and installing F-Droid, then installing Syncthing and some open-source apps that I use. That said, at times, I felt like I was fighting against the UI that TCL developed for the Note A1.

The device, despite running Android, has a UI designed for note-taking. There's a sidebar that gives you access to any apps you install (more on that below). At the top of the screen is a short to-do list and the Inspiration Space, which is like a free-form clipboard area where you can store things you want to highlight (pretty much anything, which is very useful). Below that, you have your list of notes.

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

Click on a note with the pen, and it will open in edit mode with a configuration toolbar shown across the top. Here you can set up pen type, color, line thickness, and all the other tools you'd want to use to write or draw. I found the editing interface just about perfect in the sense that it balances keeping it simple but still giving you access to the controls you actually need.

The other element I enjoyed in the Note A1 UI is the Inspiration Space. I can easily clip a bit of text from any document (including web pages), save it, and then automatically convert it to text for use in something else or apply any of the other onboard AI-powered tools. It's one of the best clip-and-save tools I've used since I gave up on Evernote.

What I was less thrilled with is the file management system. It works, but there are confusing shortcomings. For example, I couldn't find a way to open a note in reading mode and then switch to editing from within the note. This seems like a very common use case. But no, you have to exit the note, go back to the main notes menu, and then reopen it in editing mode.

The interface is not very intuitive. I had to consult the manual to figure out how to get two documents open side-by-side, something that works by drag and drop in every other Android device I've tested (even those with highly customized UIs).

A Note on Earlier Versions

Curiously for a large publicly traded company, TCL launched the Note A1 via Kickstarter (but clearly already had plenty of the tablet available, which the company fed to YouTube influencers). If you hunt down early reviews of these Kickstarter devices, you'll notice people complaining about limited app availability, no Google Play Store, and having to sideload apps via F-Droid, the Aurora Store, and other shenanigans.

The Note A1 I tested, and the device that is for sale these days at all major retailers, comes with the Google Play Store preinstalled, making it easy to download any app you need. Accessing installed apps can be a little awkward; they pile up in the sidebar menu, but if you make good use of the ability to customize the launcher, it's not too difficult to have everything you need close at hand. And for completeness sake, I did install F-Droid and the Aurora Store, and both also work (although if Google carries through with its current development plans for Android, apps installed with F-Droid will stop working on all Android devices next year).

Competition

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

There are two competitors here. The first is an E Ink tablet. If you want the most paperlike possible experience, then the E Ink wins. But you won't be watching videos or perusing social media. If you want 80 percent of the E Ink experience, but also the ability to use your device as a normal Android tablet, then the Note A1 is the clear winner.

The other major competitor here is TCL itself, namely the Nxtpaper 11 Plus, which offers much of the same experience, albeit with a less powerful chip, costs half the price, and doesn't have the same custom UI. Most compellingly, the Nxtpaper 11 Plus is regularly on sale for less than half the price of the Note A1 Nxtpaper. While you do get a nicer, more powerful piece of hardware in the Note A1, I'm not sure it's twice as nice.

While the Note A1 is not perfect, for the right person it's pretty close. The screen is excellent and paperlike enough for most people, and writing and drawing are great. The keyboard, though deeply flawed, works fine, while the software is 90 percent of the way there; encouragingly, TCL seems to be updating it based on feedback. As with all TCL devices, the support period is on the short side, but given the level of Android customization here, I don't think that's unreasonable. If you've been looking for an E Ink–like device that's more versatile, this is the best hybrid tablet I've tested.