If anyone is interested. Previous tablet was greyscale.
Reflective Android colour tablet (no backlight) TCL Nxtpaper S8
a year later
AFAIK no, but looking at the specs, I see there are two, an LTE version with a full resolution IPS LCD display and a 5G version with a shittier half resolution display (!?). Both are mediatek chipsets/mali gpu but different model #s for both. I'm confused why the 5G version has a worse screen.
If it was comfortable and you need one, maybe you should get it. Do you know which one you were looking at?
- Edited
I've shared my experience of the 40 nxtpaper 4g last month, in the smartphone thread.
I had the phone for a day before returning it for a refund.
Both the 4G and 5G nxtpaper models use pwm, previously confirmed by TCL's customer service team. Nevertheless, I still took a risk to try it.
The phone was usable on higher brightness settings, but when reducing the brightness to around 50% or under, i did not find it comfortable, and felt strain symptoms.
The backlight also felt quite harsh, which seems to be an issue with a lot of recent LCD based smartphones.
The same nxtpaper like effect can be achieved by using a standard LCD phone, and applying a high quality anti glare matte screen protector. I've done this in the past on some realme/honor/oppo/xiaomi/poco/nokia devices. This has worked flawlessly for me, and has actually felt more comfortable than the nxtpaper.
Xiaomi already offer a feature called reading mode 3.0, in some of their phones. This feature includes a paper mode. The nxtpaper felt very similar to this feature. After using both, Xiaomi's iteration feels more comfortable overall. I used it often in the past, on the poco m3 pro 5g, with a matte anti glare protector applied, and it worked great in terms of eye comfort.
With that being said, it's still worth a try, and depending on your level of pwm sensitivity, the nxtpaper may work for you. But keep in mind that both nxtpaper models use pulse width modulation to control brightness. So they're not flicker free.
- Edited
TCL have used very clever marketing for their nxtpaper product line, however, all they have essentially done is embed a proprietary matte anti glare protector under the touchscreen, as opposed to over it.
The rest of the nxtpaper "features" are software based, that have already been implemented by many other manufacturers in the past.
On that note, none of these eye care modes and eye care features can replicate the comfortability offered by genuine eink technology, which doesn't use LCD/backlighting.