Not too long ago, we mentioned how there was a sudden boom within the tablet market in the past few years, brought about by more capable midrange devices from different manufacturers. While most people might see the word “tablet” and immediately think of Android and Apple devices, it should be noted that there’s more to this market segment as seen with the likes of Amazon’s recent Kindle Scribe models.
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That being said though, today it’s TCL who’s under the spotlight—the company recently announced its new Note A1 NXTPAPER tablet, a new device designed more for productivity than entertainment or gaming. The tablet builds on TCL’s NXTPAPER technology introduced in 2021, which the company refers to as NXTPAPER “Pure.” The tablet’s display comes with support for 120Hz refresh rates, 16.7-million-colour range and adaptive brightness, as well as TÜV-certified eye comfort which TCL says should reduce eye strain.
In terms of design, the Note A1 comes with a massive 11.5-inch screen surrounded by an aluminium chassis, which TCL says is only 5.5mm thick and weighs at around 500 grams. It does pack some rather wide bezels however, which we reckon have been designed with handling in mind. Interestingly enough, the front of the tablet comes with what seems to be a dedicated home button, which greatly resembles the home buttons found on Apple’s older iPad models. Inside, you’re getting 256GB of built-in storage, as well as support for LAN and Bluetooth connectivity.
Of course, the main selling point of the TCL Note A1 is its writing capabilities, which come baked in with a ton of assistive AI writing tools for note-taking, support for real-time transcription and translation, and even handwriting-to-text conversion.
Another key feature of the device is its 8,000mAh battery, which is considerably large and should be able to last most folks a day or more of general usage; it also charges at 33W, which unfortunately isn’t particularly fast. The tablet is of course not made for gaming, as you’re getting a modest MediaTek Helio G100 chip inside, alongside 8GB of RAM. TCL is also offering several accessories which include a flip case and dedicated keyboard case.
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The Note A1 also comes with a stylus, and TCL says that it’s capable of 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity, and also comes with dual-tip functionality with ultra-low 5ms latency. Finally, there’s a single rear camera on the device which comes in at 13 megapixels. The TCL note A1 starts at $419.
