I have been a user of the original Remarkable Tablet (RM1) for more than 8 years now. I use it nearly daily, to take notes during my day job as well as for private projects. So when Viwoods asked if I'd be interested in testing their approach on a E-Ink note taking device, I was very interested.

I got the device for free and can keep it after the review. The device I got, is an RMA'd (possibly refurbished) unit. I'm not paid and all opinions below are my own.

I only own the RM1, so that's what I will compare the Viwoods AI Paper to. The more modern RM2 is probably much closer to the hardware of the AI Paper.

I have a lot to say about this device, so buckle up – this will be long.

The AI Paper weighs 536 grams (including the cover) which is noticeably more than the RM1 (but less when my custom Remarkable Cover is added). Even with the cover it's just 8mm thin and feels very premium. Even the packaging is really nice.

Inside is a MediaTek MT8183 CPU with four Cortex A53 and four A73 cores. It has 4GB of RAM and 128GB storage.

It has three permanent visible capacitive touch buttons under the display, a power button with built-in fingerprint reader and an USB-C charging port with a charge LED (red while charging, green when fully charged). No camera, GPS, vibration feedback or other sensors you might expect from “normal” Android tablets.

It does have WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. It also has a built-in microphone for voice memos, but since there are no speakers you can only play them back via Bluetooth or a USB-C connected headset.

Personally I would have preferred physical buttons for forward/backward page navigation like on the RM1.

I can't say much about the battery life yet. But I assume it's about on par with the Remarkable – a couple of weeks. It's rated at 4100 mAh.

The AI Paper is a bit smaller than A4 (roughly 18x25cm), about the same as the reMarkable. They also sell a “Mini,” which I assume to be smaller, but I couldn't find any official sizes on their store page.

The display is crisp, I would say better than the RM1. In the official Apps, ghosting is basically non-existent in the default “Fast Mode” with “Auto Ghosting Removal” enabled. In 3rd-party apps, ghosting is more pronounced but not terrible. Refreshes can be triggered manually if needed, and there are two additional display modes: “Boost Display” and “Ultra-fast-Mode.” There is absolutely no lag when writing or drawing.

The tablet comes with a simple book-like cover that attaches magnetically. It can be folded behind the device. It also uses magnets to automatically turn on the display when opened.

The cover is very thin and will only protect from scratches, not from accidental drops. The pen can be attached via a little loop. You can also use the tablet without the cover - then pen can be attached magnetically. I really like the cover and how thin it is. If you want it more luxurious, you can buy a genuine leather one as an accessory.

On my first steps with the tablet, I had quite the trouble with getting the pen to work reliably. It would stop being recognized mid-stroke.

Luckily the device comes with a few replacement tips. I switched to a different one and that immediately fixed the problem. This might have been an effect of this not being a brand new unit.

Interestingly, changing the tip also drastically changed how writing felt. The tips also look different, so I guess they can accommodate different preferences.

The feel of the surface is different from the reMarkable. It's much slicker, less papery. I would say the reMarkable feels better, but the experience of the AI Paper is not bad at all. I also assume that tips will wear down slower on with the reduced friction.

Like with the Remarkable, the pen is an EMR pen that does not need a battery. It has a button to switch to eraser mode, but can also be turned around to use the end as a larger eraser. Both features are missing from my RM1 pen but I believe are available with the RM2.

Fun fact: the reMarkable pen works on the AI Paper. The AI Paper pen only works on the reMarkable when holding the erase button.

The display is also a capacitive touch display, so buttons can also be used with your fingers. Palm-detection works reliably – I had no issues with accidentally pushing buttons while writing.

The pen is very slippery, and the flat edge makes it just slightly too thin to hold comfortably in my hands. I feel my hand cramps a little after a while of writing. This might be unique to my hands or how I hold a pen. I am wondering if I could 3D print a TPU sleeve or something. The reMarkable pen is slightly thicker and grippier and thus more comfortable to me.

However since there are 3rd-party pens that work with the reMarkable, I assume they would work with this tablet too. So maybe I'll give the Noris Digital Jumbo a go some time.

The AI Paper runs a customized version of Android 13, with the latest security patch from December 5th 2022 (at the time of writing, nearly 3 years ago). The latter part is not great. How much this is a real issue for you depends on how you use the device.

The device has a fingerprint reader built into the power button. I love the idea, but in practice, it's rather hard to use. The position interferes with the cover, and it's too slim to effectively scan the finger in my experience. Each unlock took several attempts for me.

The alternative is a 4- or 6-digit passcode. Individual notes can be locked with their own passcodes, which can be up to 12 digits. The fingerprint can also be used as an alternative unlock for those.

Personally, I just go without a lock. As with the outdated security patch level, it's up to your own risk assessment on how much security you need. My alternative would be a paper notebook which would not feature any lock either.

The launcher shows a tiled overview of the latest content of the different built-in apps and a small area of favorite 3rd-party Apps. The left side shows launch icons for the built-in apps.

Generally, I like this approach. I wish it was more customizable. It would be nice if I could disable some of the tiles I don't use and thus have more space for the remaining tiles. There is also no support for standard Android widgets.

The launcher also supports a dropdown quick tile settings menu similar to standard Android. However this one is not customizable either. The available tiles are fixed.

You can of course install 3rd-party launchers. However, since the default launcher does not expose the standard Android Settings app, it's not easy to set a different launcher as default.

One way to do that is to use the DevCheck App, then go to the “Apps” tab, select the 3rd-party Launcher, and click “Manage.” That opens the standard Android App manager where you can select it as the default launcher. Maybe Burrow UI could become a feasible alternative launcher in the future.

The note-taking app is the most important to me; it's what I use 95% of the time on my reMarkable.

Getting used to the one on the AI Paper was very easy for me, as it is very much a rip-off inspired by the reMarkable App. Even the icons are the same. They decided to copy what works, which isn't a bad idea.

There are a few things I miss from the ReMarkable app that are currently not available on the AI Paper one.

You cannot export pages as SVG. This is the format I use when I want to export hand-drawn sketches. I really hope this feature will be added in a future update – it's essential to me.

Also missing, but less crucial: line drawing mode. On the reMarkable, long-pressing with the stylus will enter a mode to draw a straight line from the point you started the long press.

Inserting new pages is another of those small quality of life things missing. You can only add new pages at the end, then move the new page to where you want it one page at a time. Not great for long documents.

There seem to have been somewhat regular updates in the past months, so I am somewhat hopeful these minor issues will be fixed.

Files created by the Paper app and the other built-ins use a .note extension. The files are simply zip files containing a bunch of .json and PNG files.

• *_HeaderInfo.json contains metadata on the app that created the file.
• *_NoteFileInfo.json has more metadata on the file, most importantly the last_modified time.
• *_PagelistFileInfo.json lists the pages and their metadata.
• *_PageResource.json seems to be a manifest file for the archive.
• path_*.json contains path coordinates in triplets.

I'm pretty sure the data in the latter could be decoded to SVG, but I haven't looked into it, yet. I suspect the first two coordinates to be simply X,Y positions with the third being a tool code. IIRC reMarkable's initial .lines format wasn't much different.

Meetings is basically the same as the Paper app. The toolbar is moved to the top, and there is some meta info like place and attendees. And Meetings are always tied to a date. That's it.

I don't think this adds much and its functionality could have easily be merged into the Paper app.

Pickings is the weirdest part of the software suite. It took me a while to figure out how they work.

When you enable “Picking” in the launcher's dropdown settings, a floating button appears on the right-hand side of the tablet. It's available in every app. Tapping it gives you three options:

1. The first one has not done anything for me. Not sure what it is about.
2. The second one gives you an overlay on top of the current screen. You can draw on that screen and save it as “Picking.” Only your drawings are saved, not the visible screen.
3. The third option does exactly that; it saves a screenshot with your annotations.

I think the idea is quite clever. The picking mechanism allows you to annotate anything, regardless of the used app.

The Learning App is Viwoods' implementation of an e-book reader and PDF annotator.

It's fine for reading the manual, but didn't really work with my epubs. To be honest, for reading e-books, I would recommend a 3rd-party app. I tried FBReader and MoonReader, and both worked fine.

More important to me is the PDF annotation part. While the PDF viewing and annotation works fine, I found the app seriously lacking when it comes to getting my annotations out again.

The app saves the annotations as “Reading Notes” separately from the original PDF. When exported via cloud sync (see below) the resulting PDF contains only the pages you actually annotated.

So if you're reviewing a 50 page PDF and only have annotations on every second page, the resulting reading notes PDF will only have 25 pages. Not great when you want to share your annotated version with another colleague who will then miss half of the paper.

This app really needs a way to re-export the full document including the annotations!

The calendar can be synced with Google and Outlook 365. It seems the implementation does not go through Android's built-in calendar and account provider mechanisms.

Instead, you authorize the Calendar app via OAuth and the app, not the Android calendar, does the synchronization. The result is that the calendar will show all your events from all calendars you have in your Google Calendar – usually not what you want.

I immediately disabled the sync again. What's interesting is that you can tie notes from the Paper, Meeting and Pickings apps to a day. This effectively turns the calendar app into a diary. I like that aspect and it works fine without any synchronization.

The calendar app also provides a simple way to create todo items for a day, but since unchecked items do not carry over to the next day, that seems not very useful to me.

Since the tablet runs Android, you can basically install whatever you want on the device.

However, the AI Paper is not a Google Authorized Device and by default, does not come with the Google Play Services enabled.

I believe, not only is Google Authorization expensive for the vendor, it also requires the installation of certain apps by default. For example the YouTube app - this makes no sense for an E-Ink device, so I am not sure if Viwoods even could get Google's official blessing.

Instead, the AI Paper comes with a few preinstalled book-related applications like Kindle, Kobo, and so on. It also has its own little App Store, which seems to simply install a few curated APKs. How up-to-date those are, I don't know. How legal this distribution is, I don't know.

The preinstalled Chrome Browser and the Play Store will not work without the Play Services. However, activating them is relatively simple.

The Settings app has a mechanism for that. It generates a device ID and copies it to the clipboard, then you click continue. Google Chrome will open; select “continue without signing in”. In the input field, insert the generated ID, confirm the CAPTCHA, and you're done. After a restart, the Play Services will work fine and you can install apps via the Play Store as usual and log into Chrome.

I also installed F-Droid and E-Ink Bro, a browser optimized for E-Ink Devices, which has a somewhat better experience than a full blown Chrome. But really, the promise of “install any Android app” is true.

The most important question for an electronic note taking device is: how to get notes on and off the device?

Viwoods went out of their way to provide multiple mechanisms here.

According to a Viwoods blog post, it should be possible to connect the tablet via USB-C to your computer and have it show up as a mass storage device just like in the good old days of Android. This did not work for me. However, there are other options.

You can enable the “WLAN transfer” option in the dropdown settings and the tablet opens a simple web server that allows you to transfer files using any web browser on the same network.

I believe there is also a bluetooth option but I haven't tried that.

With a mail account configured in the built-in mail app, you can also send files by mail and of course the Android share mechanism is also supported.

Then there is the Files app. It's a very basic file manager application, but it allows you to add different Cloud Storage providers:

• Google Drive
• Dropbox
• Microsoft OneDrive
• Baidu Cloud

At first I got an error after adding my Google Drive account via oAuth, but after removing and re-adding the Drive connection it worked.

Once set up, you can configure a sync interval to have the tablet synchronize data with your cloud storage automatically. The launcher also shows a little cloud icon that triggers a sync when clicked.

The sync will synchronize the built-in apps' data in PDF-Format and the internal .note format using two different folders called Viwoods-PDF and Viwoods-Note, both containing subfolders per device. So I don't think it's possible to sync the same files to multiple Viwoods devices (not that I need that).

I wish the cloud sync would also support some self-hosted option. Maybe via SMB or WebDAV.

Finally there is Viwoods' own mechanism called ViTransfer. Just like the cloud connection, this one is completely optional. The tablet works fine without any account.

TBH. I found the ViTransfer mechanism rather clunky. Unlike Remarkable's subscription service, this is not a complete sync of your data into a cloud run by Viwoods. It works more like a kind of in/outbox to transfer files. This means Viwoods doesn't need to provide large amounts of storage, but it also makes the whole thing less interesting to me. The other ways of transferring files are more useful to me. I unlinked the Viwoods account from my tablet again.

Let's talk about the elephant in the Room: AI. Why is it called AI Paper? My guess? Some investor wanted AI to be added to the pitch deck.

What Viwoods did was to shove an AI button into each of their applications and make one of the navigation buttons an AI button as well.

All of them basically do the same: open a chat interface where you can chat with Chat GPT, Gemini, or DeepSeek. Only a small list of models are available, with GPT-4o being the default. In the case of the in-app buttons, there are often preconfigured prompts, and your current notes are sent along as an image.

The only time any of this is useful, is when converting handwritten notes to text. This is a perfectly valid use case for modern multi-modal LLMs – it works surprisingly well, even with my seriously shitty handwriting.

However, a chat interface is the worst interface you could come up with for the use case of handwriting to text conversion. Especially since the Paper app only allows to convert single pages, not whole documents.

When sharing a document, there is an option to export it as .txt. You would think that would convert all your handwritten notes at once – it does not. It will only export texts you added via the text tool.

I really think the OCR support is the weakest spot in the Paper application. This is a shame because the use of AI absolutely makes sense here, it's just not very well implemented.

Otherwise the AI functionality is pretty pointless. In the most recent update, chat answers can be saved to a “knowledge base” which seems to be used for simple RAG in the chat. Interesting, but not particularly useful.

Interestingly enough, Viwoods seems to pay out-of-pocket for the model usage. There is no subscription and I cannot use my own API key. This is of course not sustainable and makes me wonder how the feature will fare in the future.

What I would like to see:

• Allow me to configure my own API key and OpenAI compatible end-point so I can be sure this feature will be available to me in the future, even if I have to provide my own model endpoint
• Add a feature that auto-converts all my notes to text, accessible as an additional view in the Paper app.
• Use that text to allow full-text search in the Paper app.
• Let me use the AI button as a “next page” button.

I have to be honest. I had never heard of this company and expected some cheap, barely working product. But I was pleasantly surprised.

I wrote most of this review on the AI Paper tablet itself!

The AI Paper is premium hardware. The software has its quirks but generally works. Especially the note-taking app (which is most important to me) works great. Being able to install any Android App I want is a huge advantage over the reMarkable¹⁾.

This is not a cheap device. It's only marginally cheaper than a Remarkable 2. However the RM2 requires a subscription service if you want to use their synchronization service²⁾ – no subscription needed for the AI Paper.

If you're interested in buying the AI Paper, check the Global Store and the EU Store. There's also an official blog with additional product details.

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