Gift idea | E-ink screen notebooks: the best of both worlds

Electronic notepads are great for reading documents and books. Normal: they take over the e-ink screen of e-readers, but bigger.

The accompanying stylus allows you to doodle, draw and of course write. Or even annotate ebooks and PDFs. As a bonus, the autonomy easily exceeds 8 days of use. We managed to pack in the 21^e box of this Advent calendar three models intended for the general public and available in France. And as with all our selections, this one is necessarily subjective!

Amazon Kindle Scribe

Available for a few weeks, Amazon’s Kindle Scribe is the brand’s first electronic notebook. Both slim and elegant, the device is made of metal with an impeccable finish. Its 10.2-inch screen displays 300 DPI in 16 levels of gray.

Amazon had the good idea to equip it with a backlight with variable lighting temperature. Depending on the time of day, it will be more or less amber, so as to reduce visual fatigue. Of course, this function can be adjusted manually, or even deactivated. If you have already used a Kindle e-reader, you will not be disoriented by the Kindle Scribe interface, of which it takes up the essentials. The only noticeable difference is the addition of writing tools that support the stylus.

Depending on the version of the device (16, 32 or 64 GB of internal storage), it will be basic (16 GB model at 369 euros) or premium (32 and 64 GB models sold respectively at 419 and 449 euros), this the latter benefiting from a function key and an electronic eraser. The stylus attaches to the tablet using a magnetic mechanism. In addition to writing on the notepad, you can annotate Kindle ebooks (to be purchased from the integrated online store), but not manga or comics.

PDF reading and annotation are also possible, as well as Word files. It is possible to send documents or images to the notepad from a computer using a web interface or an application to install.

Pleasant to use, responsive and with an impeccable display, the Kindle Scribe is a successful product, but it lacks some essential functions (handwriting recognition, convincing drawing tools, synchronization with online storage such as Google Drive, etc.). ). Amazon is aware of this and claims to offer ” very quickly » updates to bring new features.

Huawei MatePad Paper

Announced in the first quarter of 2022 and available since this summer, the MatePad Paper is a remarkable product on many points. Unlike the majority of e-ink notebooks currently available, it does not come with software specifically designed for it. Instead, Huawei has chosen to install a light version of HarmonyOS, the home mobile OS derived from Android that the Chinese manufacturer is no longer allowed to use.

On the hardware side, everything is for the best. The MatePad Paper has a neat finish. Its 10.3-inch screen has a resolution of 227 dots per inch and produces a perfectly readable image.

Pleasant detail, the power key also acts as a fingerprint reader to secure the content. The HarmonyOS interface has been completely redesigned to adapt to the specificities of the MatePad Paper. The home page is thus simplified and is based on a system of tabs.

AppGallery, Huawei’s online store, offers only a very small set of applications (about twenty at the time of this writing), but it should be enriched little by little. In the meantime, it remains very simple to install an Android app by downloading an APK file or installing an alternative store. This is what we did without encountering any major problems, as long as the application did not use Google Services. For example, we were able to operate the Kobo e-reader without any problem, because the one supplied with HarmonyOS offered an almost non-existent choice of books in French.

In addition to a web browser, the MatePad Paper includes an email client as well as an address book and a calendar. Both synchronize with Huawei Cloud, and you can find your contacts and appointments saved on another Huawei device on the device. The notepad application turns out to be very pleasant to use, and all the necessary functions are included in it. We particularly appreciate the efficiency of handwritten text recognition, the tools offered as well as the precision and very low latency of the stylus provided.

This is fixed to the tablet by a magnetic system. It should be noted that Huawei has the excellent idea of ​​providing a well thought-out protective case with its MatePad Paper.

With more possibilities than its competitors and an excellent writing module, the MatePad Paper is a really interesting product. It is offered in France at a price of 499 euros in a 64 GB configuration, for the moment only on the Huawei site.

Kobo Elipsa

According to Kobo, Elipsa is an electronic reader before being an e-ink notebook. Why not. This does not prevent him from providing a very appreciable service in this area. The device is thicker than its competitors (7.6 mm against 5.8 for the Kindle Scribe and 6.65 mm for the MatePad Paper). It is equipped with an intuitive interface that can be controlled with a finger or a stylus.

It has two function keys and requires an AAAA battery (miniaturized version of the classic AAA) to operate. Too bad Kobo did not opt ​​for a passive stylus or a rechargeable battery, which are much more practical.

The 10.3-inch screen has a definition of 227 dots per inch and a homogeneous backlight. The internal, non-expandable storage is 32 GB. Elipsa provides two types of notebooks. The first is completely classic: you can write, doodle and draw without constraints. The second offers much more advanced possibilities: formatting of mathematical equations (with calculation by character recognition), design of diagrams (an approximate square is transformed into a “real” square, for example), insertion of drawings and recognition of ‘writing.

This last aspect turns out to be quite impressive, since he succeeded in understanding our writing without failing, despite being worthy of that of a doctor. Everything works perfectly, even if we sometimes notice a very slight latency of the stylus when using the advanced notebook. Good point also for the export functions of notebooks as well as access to Dropbox.

Elipsa is, in our opinion, the most complete e-ink notebook of the moment. We especially appreciated its advanced functions which facilitate the creation of diagrams as well as the quality of the handwriting recognition. The device is sold in a pack with the stylus and a SleepCover case at a price of 399.99 euros.