Viwoods AI Paper Tablet Review

The Viwoods AI Paper isn’t your average tablet. Instead of a bright AMOLED or LCD screen, it comes with an eye-friendly e-ink touch display and stylus, turning it into an Android-powered digital notebook. It’s compatible with the Google Play Store, so you can access your favorite apps (like Kindle) and use it for much more, however, and comes with its own built-in AI assistant. It won’t be for everyone, and that’s by design, but if you’re looking for a reading tablet alternative to the Remarkable or Kindle Scribe, it’s a great option.

Viwoods AI Paper – Design and Features

Viwoods is a new company, completing its first Kickstarter only late last year. Despite being fresh to the world of consumer electronics, it has debuted with a very strong first product. The Viwoods AI Paper is intuitive, innovative, and surprisingly versatile for an e-ink tablet, and, even while the company is regularly updating it to incorporate new features, it’s already competing with the most popular competitors that have, in some cases, a multi-year head start.

The AI Paper comes in two forms, the full-size 10.65-inch version I was sent for testing and the more compact AI Paper Mini, which has an 8.2-inch screen and comes with a backlight the larger version lacks. For this review, I’ll be focusing on the larger version, but if you’re looking for something smaller, those are the most important differences to be aware of.

The AI Paper falls into a tablet category that’s better categorized as a Digital Notebook. You’re probably familiar with the Remarkable, which really pushed this category into the mainstream. Digital Notebook tablets don’t claim to be do-everything devices. Instead, they emphasize note-taking, writing, reading, and organization. They’re less prone to cause distraction and, when used properly, can become a pivotal organization and thought-management tool.

Like its key competitors in this space, the AI Paper uses a paper-like e-ink display. In this case, the company has implemented the Carta 1300, which offers improved contrast compared to older e-ink screens and, theoretically, should be one of the best out there. Viwoods has done an excellent job of making the “paper” of the screen look bright, but the same can’t be said for most of the alternatives out there, like the Boox Max, which is noticeably darker grey. The screen has a resolution of 2,560 x 1,920, giving it 300 pixels per inch (PPI) of clarity. It’s a high resolution for an e-ink device and allows text and images to appear crisp and readable.

Unlike OLED or LCD displays, e-ink works on an entirely different principle. It’s best thought of a bit like an Etch-a-Sketch, where the Etch-a-Sketch has a layer of magnetic filings beneath the screen that are then pulled upwards to create its lines. E-ink displays have a layer of black ink beneath the display that is then pulled into place with the application of electricity. Once the image has been formed, it doesn’t need to reset, which means that, in theory, if you are reading a book, each page can be presented as a static image, dramatically increasing battery life and reducing eye strain. This quality, in combination with the matte texture used for the screen, works to make the display look much more like a sheet of paper. Amazon popularized this tech with the original Kindle and it has been a hit for e-readers ever since.

This is true of all e-ink tablets, but the AI Paper takes its capabilities further with Google Play Store access. It doesn’t come with installed by default but allows you to add it as an app, giving you access to a whole ecosystem of apps, including Google Drive, Microsoft 365, Obsidian, and more. This functionality inherently takes away from its distraction-free nature, but the slow refresh rate of its e-ink screen means that it’s unappealing to use the device for things like YouTube or social media, so it evens out.

AI comes into play prominently, but can also be completely ignored if you choose to. There are three touch buttons on the bottom, similar to a normal Android device, but the right right button is dedicated to summoning your AI agent. When held, you can speak a prompt which is then sent to ChatGPT. This functionality is also built into its different reading and writing applications with quick commands to analyze what’s on the page, generate a new article based on it, convert handwriting to text, or just to summon an AI assistant. It also allows you to come up with your own custom commands so you don’t need to retype a prompt every time.

Other tablets also feature AI assistance, such as those from Boox, which are also based on Android and have access to the Google Play Store. After all, if you can download any Android app, that also means you can download any Android-compatible LLM. What makes this different, however, is that Viwoods has given it the ability to see and interpret anything on your screen versus just answering text prompts.

This is especially useful functionality for students. For example, if your professor has assigned you an article to read, you can generate summaries and study aids quickly and easily simply by creating a prompt for it. You can also take handwritten notes in class and then have the AI transcribe these into written text that can then be accessed on a computer. The transcription process isn’t perfect, especially if you have messier handwriting, but it’s seen improvements since the tablet launched and is usually close enough that I can understand what I was attempting to write anyway.

Its traditional notebook and organizational features are exceptional. The homepage is broken into different sections for writing, organization, drawing, and apps. For writing, there are 31 different templates you can choose from, including everything from normal lined paper to graphic organizers to music notation and even body diagrams for clothing design. Templates are essentially backgrounds that you can write on and take the place of having a paper version of the sheet or organizer.

When you’re ready to write, you can choose from seven different implements, including a calligraphy pen, pencil, highlight, and a “thinker” which looks like a dry erase marker. The stylus uses the Wacom standard EMR (electro-magnetic resonance) stylus, which is battery-free, has 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity, and is able to detect when the stylus is tilted. This is incredibly useful when drawing as it allows you to shade with the pencil tool.

The tablet has a bundle of neat features that go along with this. Each “note” can be tagged for easy organization and searching them up later. Notepads allow you to create layers, similar to a photo editor, so you can add to drawings and note pages without marring anything you’ve written underneath. If you’re drawing a shape, simply holding the stylus in place at the end of your stroke transforms it into a perfect version of that shape with straight lines and curves for circles.

And, of course, it can be used as a reader. It natively supports PDFs and EPUB ebooks, but downloading the Kindle app from the Play Store gives you full access to your Kindle Library as well. Reading on e-ink is as close as you can get to paper without it actually being paper, and thanks to its 300 PPI screen, letters are just as crisp as a Kindle Paperwhite.

Getting documents onto and off of the device can be done in several different ways. You can upload your documents to the AI Paper management site and they’ll automatically sync to the device the next time it’s online or you can connect it to your PC with a USB Type-C cable and move files on or off like any other mass storage device. You can also email documents or sync them to the cloud.

Finally, the AI Paper comes with a 4,100mAh battery that can last around a week when writing two hours a day. This necessitates turning the WiFi off, however, and actually left me a bit disappointed. One of the downsides of running Android and having these additional functions is that they drain the battery significantly faster. A week isn’t bad, but if you’re taking it to several classes a day and then using it for assignments, it won’t even last that long. Viwoods rates it for a month in standby, which does hold true, so if you’re off on vacation or seasonal break, it should still have juice left when you return.

Viwoods AI Paper – Performance

I’ve tested the AI Paper alongside three other leading e-ink tablets (part of an upcoming feature), and all of these devices are after similar things: a paper-like writing experience, fewer distractions, supporting your education and work life, and improving your organization. That side-by-side comparison has highlighted just how much the Viwoods AI Paper has been able to stand out despite the company being so new.

For starters, this is the best implementation of the Carta 1300 display yet. One of the most disappointing qualities of it, as implemented in other tablets like the Boox Max, is that the screen is unusually dark. Whites tend to look dark gray, which can impact readability. The Al Paper is the whitest implementation I’ve seen so far, offering very good contrast and clarity.

The writing experience is also great. I wouldn’t say it’s like paper exactly, but the screen has a minute texture that creates a bit of scratchiness when writing. It feels good if you’ve never written on an e-ink tablet before; it takes a little getting used to, but I found it much easier than learning to write with a stylus on my Android tablet and its smooth, glassy surface (I eventually gave up on that). The display also uses a soft surface instead of hard glass, which helps it to feel a bit more natural too.

The AI Paper was my first e-ink tablet, so I had to go through that learning curve transitioning from paper and typing exclusively. I found it fairly easy to adapt to. It does take a minute to learn its different tools, but it’s very smartly designed with intuitive features like lassoing to erase large bits of text or drawing.

Sketching on the tablet was also surprisingly good. In fact, it’s one of the best. This is largely because of its variety of writing implements. I especially liked the pencil. It just felt so natural to use, much more so than I would have expected any digital writing instrument to feel. You can naturally tilt and angle it for shading with full pressure sensitivity to dial in gradients. This honestly makes a huge difference and works very well with the pressure settings hidden in the tablet’s menu system. Between the two, you can really dial in the feeling to make advanced sketches truly possible on this tablet.

I like the stylus, though I do think it could feel a bit more premium. It’s simple, slim, and plastic. At the same time, it feels like a normal pencil and has a flat section to rest your thumb and keep it oriented correctly. There’s a button on this section that can be used for erasing, or you can flip it over and use the backside as an eraser. It’s no Lamy, but it feels good to use. It also made me wish other brands started making spring-loaded nibs. If you push hard enough, the nib provides some resistance that almost feels like you’re digging into the page.

The AI Paper is at its best when you actively make it a daily companion. I’m finding that to be true of all of these tablets, and perhaps it goes without saying. Even so, I’ve made a point to carry it in situations when I wouldn’t normally carry a notebook. Doing so, and using the keyword system, I’ve found that I’m more organized and less forgetful. I work across multiple organizations, and simply using the AI Paper so regularly has inspired me to keep a daily organizer and to-do list. As an adult with ADHD, I’ve come up with a lot of systems to manage, but never stepped into a daily planner with such regularity.

Running on Android also has benefits if you prefer to work in apps that don’t come preloaded or to use peripherals like a Bluetooth keyboard. This was also something I was highly interested in, as I have been a fan of the Astrohaus Freewrite for quite some time, a device that uses an e-ink screen as part of its attempt to be a modern typewriter. Since I do most of my writing in Google Docs, I downloaded the app, connected a wireless mechanical keyboard, and was off to the races. It worked exceptionally well.

Despite feeling quite fully featured, the Viwoods Al Paper is still a work in progress. The company has been releasing updates regularly, adding features like the aforementioned tap-and-hold auto-shapes. It also still needs some features to give it parity with competitors like the Supernote, such as the ability to add multiple keywords to a document for more advanced sorting and connecting ideas.

The biggest issue I personally encountered, however, was ghosting. Because of the way the display technology works, all e-ink displays have some form of image retention when changing screens. It’s not permanent like it is with OLED gaming monitors, but it can be distracting. While it’s not terrible, it is definitely noticeable. More noticeable than I expected. Thankfully, you can easily refresh the screen by dragging down from the top left corner, which wipes these away.

You can also set the screen to different refresh speeds which reduces this. That comes with a trade-off, however. You can choose from Best Display, Fast Mode, and Ultra Fast Mode. Each of the two steps up softens the image. So while it’s possible to make the ghosts less visible, it’s also not something I usually wanted to do when a simple swipe would eliminate them entirely.