E Ink is probably best known for making the displays that power Amazon’s Kindle eReaders and similar devices, as well as screens for digital signage and price tags. But now the company has announced what appears to be a white label Android tablet designed for use in classroom or professional use.
The new Digital Paper Tablet Solution comes in a choice of 10.3 inch or 13.3 inch sizes, runs Android 9 software, and supports capacitive touch input as well as pressure-sensitive input from a Wacom EMR pen. But you probably won’t find this tablet in online stores anytime soon.
That’s because E Ink is partnering with Avalue Technology to offer the Digital Paper tablet as a customizable tool for use in education, training, healthcare, science, legal, or other industries. Avalue provides tech support and logistics, while the tablet’s hardware was developed by Linify, a partnership between E Ink and Sony (one of the first companies to produce Digital Paper tablets).
Specs for the tablet include:
| Digital Paper Tablet Solution specs | |
| Display | 13.3 inches / 1650 x 2200 pixels / 207 dpi or 10.3 inches / 1404 x 1872 pixels / 226 dpi |
| Display features | E Ink Carta 1250 16-shades of gray Capacitive Touch Panel EMR sensor (4096 levels pressure sensitivity with Wacom pen) |
| Processor | NXP i.MX 8M mini 4 x ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores @ 1.8 GHz |
| Storage | 32GB eMMC |
| Ports | USB 2.0 Type-C |
| Wireless | WiFi 5 Bluetooth 5.0 NFC |
| Battery | 2,000 mAh |
| Dimensions | 301.1 x 222.8 x 5.7mm (13.3 inch display) 244.2 x 175.5 x 5.85mm (10.3 inch display) |
| Weight | 368 grams (13.3 inch display) 261 grams (10.3 inch display) |
E Ink says you can expect up to 3 weeks of battery life from light usage or up to 5 days under heavy use thanks to its low-power display technology.
Other advantages to E Ink include screens that are easy to view indoors or outdoors using ambient lighting and which offer paper-like contrast and reduced eye strain. Of course the down side is that color content won’t display at all, and videos or animations that require a high screen refresh rate may not be displayed properly.
Since the Digital Paper Tablet runs Google Android (albeit an aging version of the operating system), it should also be relatively easy for corporate users to develop custom applications that meet their specific needs. E Ink and Avalue say they’ll also provide “Digital Paper Control Server Software (DCSS) which includes APIs for securely transferring documents to and from the tablets.
E waste, just buy a good working tablet with better screen why, pay less and use less. Get realme pad or something like that.
I have a remarkable 2 which is a similar device for reading technical papers. Electronic ink screens are way better than regular tablets when you’re reading text for hours at a time. That’s all they’re really good for though, they’re not multifunction devices like a regular tablet. In fact, one of the things I like about the remarkable is it’s not a tablet and there’s nothing to distract you like notifications when you’re reading. I don’t think I would like it as much if it had a full android is on it.
No microSD card expansion, no thanks.
Wow! Those are light. They should be comfortable to use.