I did not order my AiPaper through Amazon, for full disclosure, but had a preview device sent to me by the manufacturer, and I have been using it for about two months now. I have previously used a Kindle Scribe, a Boox Tab Ultra C and a Supernote Nomad, but the AiPaper is now the one I use every day. Why? Well, the screen quality is the best of all of the above. It is not a color screen, but I found the color on the Boox to be underwhelming anyway. The build quality is impressive — it’s light, easy to hold, and the folio case they sent it with is really nice. I especially like how it attaches to this case, almost as is they can’t be taken apart — although of course, they can. The stylus is very natural to use and feels solid. I am still on the first nib after two months of use, but will probably need to replace it within a month or two. The OS does everything I want to do on a daily basis, and it was very easy to add my own custom-created notebooks. There is a built-in app store, with just under 20 apps that have been tested to work well. Although Google Play Store is not integrated, I installed a third party app store and have added apps beyond those in the device’s app store. A few haven’t worked, but most have.
The AI features are one of the selling points here, and they don’t disappoint. All of the functions that are built into the OS (notebook, schedule, file reader, etc) have an AI tool built in that has AI prompts specific to that function, and you can add up to 5 custom prompts for each function as well. I even experimented with one in the notebook that turns this device into a handwriting analysis (graphology) machine! You have to keep reminding yourself that the AI tools are available until it becomes a habit, but once it does, I think it would be very difficult to go back to an eInk device that doesn’t have AI integrated.
The screen does not have a front light, as many eInk devices do, but the trade-off for not having this is the amazingly realistic paper look of the tablet, which would be lost by adding a front light. I have a little rechargeable book light that fits between the back of the tablet and the folio case, and doesn’t get in the way, and that’s enough for use even in an otherwise completely dark room.
In the headline, I called this tablet game-changing, and I believe that. We are in the midst of an AI revolution that’s pretty hard to miss, and this, in my opinion, is the first device that successfully integrates AI in a way that makes it truly useful. The tablet’s OS gets fairly frequent updates, which gives me confidence its abilities will continue to grow and be refined, and the manufactured recently announced a plan to create a developer community, which makes me think that AiPaper users will be empowered to contribute to the functionality of AiPaper as well!
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