Review: Viwoods AiPaper Mini 8.2-inch e-ink tablet

Review unit provided by Viwoods

Viwoods AiPaper Mini is a 8.2-inch BW e-ink tablet with pen support released in August 2024. This is a device designed for reading and writing.

This tablet was released together with the bigger 10.65-inch Viwoods AiPaper (full review) at the same time.

The price of the big and small tablets are USD 549 and USD 429 respectively, before any promotion or discount. The pen and case are included, and the company provides a 100-day return policy and 14-months warranty.

Specifications

Things included

• Tablet
• Case
• Pen
• 5 replacement pen tips
• SIM ejector
• User guide
• USB-C to USB-C charging cable

No charger is included but you can use any phone charger.

The exterior of the included case has canvas-like texture, and the interior is velvet.

This flip case uses magnets to hold the tablet down.

There are 2 replacement pen tips inside the plastic bar in the case that holds to the side of the tablet. The cover that holds the pen tips can only be opened by the SIM ejector so if you happen to need a spare pen tip, you will also need a SIM ejector.

Design

The tablet design looks clean and simple. The home screen has sections shortcuts by the left with six big sections in the main area for notes, calendar, meeting notes, e-books, pickings (screenshot and annotation) and apps. There's no option to choose an app-focused home screen you see on Android tablets.

The bottom bezel is much larger because of the three capacitive buttons: Back, Home, AI. The AI button is definitely not as useful compared to an app-switcher button. And there two little holes for the microphones.

The tablet has 4GB RAM and 128GB storage with no microSD card slot. Overall performance is smooth.

The tablet weighs 230g which is considered lightweight. Even with the case on, this tablet can be held in hand comfortable for long periods of time. Note the side bezels are quite thin and it can be easy to accidentally touch the screen on the sides to flip pages.

The back is matte textured and feels great.

The tablet is just 4.5mm thin. The power button located at the top unfortunately does not have a fingerprint scanner. And this tablet has no cameras so it does not support face unlock too. Having to enter the pin to unlock is quite inconvenient.

Display

The display has resolution of 1440 x 1920 (292 PPI). The e-ink technology is CARTA 1000. Text looks really sharp and the blacks have great contrast against the canvas which is a light gray.

Text quality looks good. There's no grain, and no pixelation.

The e-ink display has three refresh modes:

• Best: Best visual quality with one page refresh/flash
• Fast: Added grain and more ghosting with no page refresh/flash
• Ultra-fast: More grain, more ghosting with no page refresh/flash

This is the Best mode with the best visual quality, contrast, and has minimal to no ghosting or image retention. The downside is the page will refresh with a noticeable flicker (to clear image retention), so the responsiveness is affected.

Fast mode has noticeably more grain and ghosting, but page flips are much faster.

Ultra-fast mode also has more grain and ghosting, and contrast is affected more, but page flips are much faster.

Which refresh mode to choose depends on what you're reading.

Other than the three preset refresh modes, there are no finer adjustments for the e-ink quality.

The tablet has front light with 20 levels of adjustment, and this will improve contrast when reading in a room with low light.

The display surface is matte textured and the anti-glare can be quite glaring if there's strong light source reflected off it. But at long as there are no direct light source on the display, the visual quality will look amazing.

Colour conversion from BW looks alright to me on the Carta 1000 display. The colour conversion to BW looks fantastic on Carta 1300 display.

8.2-inch is not the ideal size for reading comics or PDFs where the text size will look small on small tablets. Comics that are designed for small pages will still look good enough, e.g. Japanese manga.

The tablet can be used for web browsing and you'll usually get the mini-tablet web page layout.

Pen and writing performance

The included pen is well made and comes with a side button eraser and eraser at the back. Build quality of the pen is feels solid with a nice weight to it. The matte textured surface provides a good grip.

The pen uses Wacom EMR technology so other Wacom EMR pens can also be used on this tablet. The pen supports pressure sensitivity and palm rejection. The pen is not powered by battery so no charging is required.

Pen tip does not move when in writing.

Writing feels smooth but there's still some tactile feedback. Writing experience is fantastic due to minimal latency. The default note taking app was able to capture my handwriting style very accurately. Writing performance would be a 5 out of 5 stars for me.

The default note taking app is quite basic but has enough tools for writing. There are numerous templates to choose from. You can also lock specific notes.

You can write on PDFs and export them with annotations.

There are also some AI features:

• Analyze content: This will analyse what's written and provide context.
• Generate article: This will use the keywords provided to generate an article.
• AI text conversion: This will convert handwritten notes into editable text that you have to paste somewhere else. It does not seem possible to have converted text appear in the same page, and continue to write.
• AI assistant: This is an interactive tool for generating ideas.

The AI features require internet to work and I'm not sure how secure the data is when sent to Viwoods server, or how they use the data.

One nice feature I like is you can write the name of the page and that will be automatically converted into the filename.

Text search is only for filenames, text and editable text, not handwritten notes.

There are a few ways to share notes:

• QR code: Scan the QR code on the tablet with your other device that has a camera
• Email: Self explanatory
• ViTransfer: Upload the notes to Viwoods cloud, and notes can be access from web browser from your other devices. It's free. There's no storage limit listed but files stored in the cloud are deleted 12 hours later.
• Bluetooth: Receiving devices has to be detectable

Exported notes can also be saved directly to Google Drive.

I've tried exporting in PNG and PDF and there does not seem to be any anti-aliasing, which means the text and lines will have jagged edges, not smooth vector lines.

Installing Google Play Store

On the settings page, there's a section called Play Store, and there are instructions on how you can install Google Play Store.

Once Google Play Store is installed, you can sign in with your Google account and install whatever apps you want.

For this review, the only extra apps I installed are Kindle, Libby, Google Drive, Microsoft Edge and they all worked fine.

Software features

On the left side bar, you can see different sections for

• Papers: You can create notes here.
• Calendar: You can sync to Outlook or Google Calendar
• Meetings: You can take meeting notes, with voice recordings
• Library: Downloaded files (PDF, EPUB, MOBI, AZW) will appear here
• Pickings: Screenshots with notes are stored here

There's actually a bookmark on the home screen that links directly to Viwoods community page where you can ask questions or request for features.

You can use POP3 or IMAP for your personal email accounts, e.g. yourname@yourwebsite.com.

Battery life

Battery capacity is 2450 mAh and battery life is days if you're just reading and writing.

Conclusion

The Viwoods AiPaper Mini is noticeably more portable compared to the larger Viwoods AiPaper. For note taking, a 8.2-inch display is sufficiently big, so the main reason to go with the larger tablet is if you read comics or PDFs often.

This tablet works great as an e-ink e-reader. The BW text quality from the Carta 1000 display looks good, but the Carta 1300 display with the larger tablet looks even better.

The pen works well for writing.

Downsides. There's no Google Play Store but that can be installed with the steps mentioned further below. There's no face or fingerprint unlock. Overall responsiveness is alright, not as fast as non e-ink tablets and that's to be expected.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Lightweight
+ 5 replacement pen tips are included
+ 8.2-inch is good for reading text
+ High resolution with good text quality
+ Comes with case and pen
+ Responsive pen and note taking performance
+ Long battery life
+ Direct link to community page to provide feedback
+ There's front light
- 8.2-inch size not as good for reading comics or PDFs
- Google Play Store is not pre-installed, but can be installed
- Third party note taking apps will not have responsive latency
- Default note taking app is quite basic
- No speakers, no cameras
- No MicroSD card slot
- No face or fingerprint unlock
- No backup option
- No notification pane (to see downloads, alerts, etc)
- No split-screen mode
- No landscape orientation
- Exported notes in PNG and PDF do not have anti-aliasing

Availability

The Viwoods AiPaper Mini is available from Viwoods online store.