The E Ink paper tablet market is growing. Initially, it was a space where unheard-of and smaller brands likeReMarkableand Onyx launched niche products to appeal to a specific set of customers. Now, the big names have seen the appeal and interest with Lenovo being one of the more recent manufacturers to try its hand at this new product category.
With its Smart Paper device, it’s launching something loosely similar tothe Amazon Kindle Scribe, but exactly how does it compare, and will it be a better notepad replacement than the giant e-book reader? Let’s compare them.
Looking at size and thickness, there’s really not much to separate the Kindle Scribe and the Lenovo Smart Paper, there’s a millimetre of difference in width, and only 3mm difference in height, with the Kindle Scribe being both taller and wider than the Lenovo model. It’s also a fraction thicker and heavier, so Lenovo clearly went in with the aim of making a slightly more nimble device. And that’s not the only practical element it offers.
Both devices feature a thicker bezel down one side of the front surface, however, the Lenovo has made more use of that space by designing a shallow groove for resting your pen/stylus when not in use. That should make the magnetic attachment a little more secure than it is on the Kindle Scribe, which uses magnets at the very edge of the device to grip onto the included pen. Both do include a pen as standard when you buy the tablet. You don’t have to purchase it separately. Only the Lenovo tablet ships with a folio case, however. If you want one for your Kindle, you’ll need to buy one.
On the back, the two devices feature slightly different designs. Lenovo’s device has a two-tone grey finish, whereas Amazon’s has a single-coloured plain aluminium finish. Where the Kindle Scribe has a slight advantage is in grip, since it features four small rubber feet (one in each corner). That means when you rest it against a surface - like your desk or a table - it’s not likely to slip around. Another small difference is the shaping of the edges, which appear more rounded on the Kindle Scribe, so it should be a little more comfortable to hold.
Neither device is equipped with lots of buttons and ports; you get one button and one port on both. That’s the power button andthe USB-C port.
There are similarities and important differences when looking at the two devices' displays. Starting with the similarities: they’re both a similar size at 10.3-inches and 10.2-inches on the Smart Paper and Kindle Scribe respectively. They’re bothE Inktoo, which means a relatively low refresh rate monochrome display that’s incredibly battery efficient. It also means they reflect the light from their surroundings back at you, so actually become clearer in brighter conditions.
Amazon and Lenovo wanted the experience of writing or sketching on them to feel as much like a real pen on paper as possible, so the screens are designed to be anti-glare and feature a subtle texture. They’re not shiny and glossy like a regular tablet or smartphone display. Both even feature LED front lighting systems, so that you can use them when it’s dark. You don’t have to rely on ambient light to use the device, unlike the ReMarkable 2.
Where Amazon has a clear advantage is in sharpness. It was clearly a key addition for the Kindle Scribe and had to match the 300-pixel-per-inch displays of its popular portable e-readers. That makes text and detail look clear and sharp. Lenovo’s Smart Paper has a considerably lower pixel density of 227 pixels-per-inch.
Note-taking and e-book reading
It’s in the software and user interface we suspect these two devices will offer very different experiences. Amazon’s device is effectively a bigKindlewith added note-taking abilities, where the Lenovo tablet is a little more like a very stripped-down Android tablet with a richer feature set.
Lenovo’s offers a much wider selection of notebook template styles: 74 in total. It also offers nine pen styles, for drawing, shading and writing. To support those additional pen styles, the stylus/pen itself has tilt and pressure sensitivity, enabling you to draw and write with different thicknesses and angles automatically. Its smart features also allow you to convert handwritten notes to text and will even let you record speech and use a built-in transcription service to turn that into text as well. The Lenovo Smart Paper tablet also has built-in email and calculator apps as standard too, expanding its usefulness further. There’s a Lenovo Smart Paper app for mobile and desktop that will allow you to access your cloud-synced notebooks, but that feature requires a subscription.
Amazon’s features a user interface that’s very similar to its other Kindles, in that it offers you your library of Kindle books, access to the store for purchasing/accessing e-books or audiobooks, and your collection of notebooks. you’re able to write handwritten notes in the books, markup documents or create handwritten notebooks of 18 different styles. There’s no handwriting recognition software, or ability to record voice notes or listen to music. You can listen to audiobooks over Bluetooth with a pair of headphones or a Bluetooth speaker.
Amazon offers two different pens: one basic, one ‘premium’. The latter offers an eraser on one end, so you can easily rub out any part of your text or drawing, just like you would with a real pencil on real paper.
Both devices support a number of different document formats, so you shouldn’t find that either limits you here. You’ll be able to open nearly all the most popular formats, including epub books, PDFs and Microsoft Word docx files.
Connectivity, storage and battery life
When it comes to the amount of space you get to store all your documents, each tablet offers plenty. Lenovo’s ships with 64GB as standard, whereas the Kindle Scribe is available with 16GB, 32GB or 64GB, depending on how much you want to spend.
The difficulty with comparing battery life at this stage is that Lenovo has stated its own battery in terms of the number of pages you can turn on a full battery. Its spec listing states you get around 8500 pages from a full cell, which translates to about twenty-one 400-page books. This is an approximate figure, however, and doesn’t really account for levels of brightness, or how much writing and note-taking you do.
Amazon lists its own device with approximate timeframes and suggests you can get about 12 weeks of reading time if you read for thirty minutes a day with the brightness set to about halfway. If you use it for thirty minutes of writing and note-taking, that reduces down to about 3 weeks. If - like most average buyers - you do a mixture of the two, you can expect the battery life to be somewhere between those two given figures.
Regardless of which you go for, the fact that they both use a very low-power display technology means you don’t really have to worry about battery life at all. We suspect you’ll get roughly a month from each, if not more, with moderate reading and writing usage.
Both devices will allow you to connect to Wi-Fi networks for downloading documents, books and syncing. Likewise, they both feature Bluetooth connectivity for pairing with speakers and headphones.
When it’s available to buy, the Lenovo Smart Paper will set you back about $399 in the US but - as mentioned - that includes the stylus, a folio case and 64GB storage. All things considered, that’s a very good price. Buying the same level of storage with the Kindle Scribe and getting a case as well would cost about $499.
However, you can spend considerably less on the Kindle Scribe, as long as you’re happy with less storage and no case. The full retail price is just $339 for the 16GB model, and - at the time of writing - there was a discount that took it below $300, and we suspect we’ll see similar discounts at various points over 2023 and beyond.
Conclusion
Lenovo’s device seems quite different, even though it uses similar display technology. It’s got smart features like voice transcription and translation for recordings, plus the ability to turn handwritten notes into text. With email and music support, it feels like it does that bit more. It isn’t cheap, but it does come bundled with a case and pen as standard.
