Review: Penstar eNote Pro 10.3-inch colour e-ink tablet

The Penstar eNote Pro is a 10.3-inch Kaleido 3 colour e-ink tablet released in late 2025. Price at the time of review is USD 499.

This is a tablet designed for reading ebooks and note taking. The large size makes it suitable for reading comics and PDFs.

Specifications

• Display: 10.3″ E Ink Kaleido 3 color ePaper
• Resolution: 2480 × 1860 pixels (300 PPI mono, ~150 PPI in color)
• Touch input: Finger touch + stylus input
• Stylus: Penstar B6 metal stylus, paper‑feel writing surface
• Front light: Adjustable front light, low‑glare, eye‑friendly
• Processor: Octa‑core 2.2 GHz
• RAM: 4 GB
• Storage: 128 GB internal
• Operating system: Android 14
• Buttons: 5 fully customizable physical shortcut buttons
• 10 softkeys: Stylus‑exclusive side menu to avoid accidental finger taps
• Audio & mics: 4 microphones for voice recording
• AI voice-to-text: Real‑time transcription with support for 50+ languages
• Handwriting recognition: MyScript-powered handwriting‑to‑text conversion
• Camera: 8 MP rear camera for document scanning
• Cloud sync: Integration with Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox; sharing via email/PDF

Things included

• Tablet
• Cover
• User manual
• Pen
• 10 replacement pen tips, and tip remover
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable
• Thank you card

The included cover attaches magnetically to the side of the tablet, and only protects the front of the tablet. The cover does not make the tablet much thicker or heavier. The cover can be removed easily to use the tablet alone.

The cover has a leather-like texture that looks and feels great. The cover supports auto wake and sleep.

Design

Design of the tablet looks good to me.

One key differentiating factor this tablet has is there are 5 customisable physical buttons, and 10 softkeys (3 customisable). Having button shortcuts is useful.

One downside here is the graphics for the 10 softkeys can barely be seen so it is not instantly obvious where to press, and what you're pressing when you're new to the tablet.

Another downside is the softkeys can only be activated by the pen and not finger. Company says it's to prevent accidental touches but there's already enough bezels to hold the tablet so accidental touches is not really an issue. Not being able to use the softkeys with your finger is inconvenient.

These are the 10 shortcuts for the softkeys:

• Home
• Notes
• Books
• Library
• Recorder
• Apps
• Shortcut 1
• Shortcut 2
• Shortcut 3
• Settings

The 5 physical buttons can be customised, and the shortcuts can change according to the app used.

Back of the tablet also has the same leather-like texture as the cover. The 8MP camera on the back is flushed to the back so I expect scratches in the future. Tablet feels well made and over build quality is solid.

The tablet does not have a fingerprint scanner, no front camera and no microSD card slot.

The tablet only has 128GB of storage and there's no user expandable storage which means you'll have to rely on cloud storage. This tablet can sync with Google Drive, Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive. The limited storage is not an issue for me since I get all my books from Amazon Kindle and Libby.

The included pen can be attached to the tablet by sliding into its holder at the top right. This is not magnetic attachment so it's less likely to knock the pen off accidentally, but I'm afraid of the pen clip breaking off with an accidental hit.

Display

The display uses Kaleido 3 technology. Resolution is 2480 x 1860. Pixel density for BW is 300PPI and for colour is 150PPI. The display quality here is the same as other e-ink tablets that use Kaleido 3 technology.

The display is almost laminated, so the e-ink looks likes it's on the surface of the display and it looks great. I say the display is almost laminated because when writing, there is actually a tiny gap between the line and pen tip.

There are 30 levels of cool light and the lighting looks quite even to me.

There's also warm light. There are four lighting presets available including one that's user customisable.

The gray of the Kaleido 3 display is noticeably darker than BW-only displays, even in a bright environment.

Having some lighting will improve contrast and visual quality noticeably.

Colour quality is good, or as good as colour e-ink can be nowadays. Colours look paper-like enough. Now colours won't be as vibrant as LCD or OLED displays but you know that already.

Main advantage of e-ink over LCD and OLED is the reading experience is better, easier on your eyes.

Penstar has went for an e-ink setting that can produce as many colours as possible. There are no other e-ink settings that can be adjusted which I think is fine since the default look is good.

There is some ghosting or image retention which is not unexpected. You can customise one button for page refresh. I personally find pressing the page refresh button for each new page to be tedious so I just accept the ghosting which actually isn't too bad.

There's no option to set the page to refresh with each page. This is not an issue for me, because it's not a setting I use with other e-ink tablets too because each page flip will show noticeable page flicker.

Page flip animation looks fast enough to me, quite typical of e-ink tablets.

The large display is great for reading comics and PDFs as text should be big enough for comfortable reading.

Performance

Overall performance is seems smooth enough for an e-ink tablet. I don't have any negative things to report.

RAM is just 4GB but sufficient for an e-reader.

OS and software

The OS is quite basic compared to other e-ink tablets I've tested, and that's alright. My main uses for an e-ink tablet is mostly for reading, other features are nice bonuses to have, such as note taking.

There is no Google Play Store so if you need certain apps, you'll have to install the APK versions. I've installed Microsoft Edge and Libby and both worked fine.

Email accounts can be added using IMAP.

There's Calendar and syncing is either with Penstar's cloud or Microsoft Outlook.

There's voice to text transcription service but it's not free. At the time of review, the company has provided 30 hours of free transcription valid for three months.

And below are the prices for transcription after the trial expires:

• 3 hours - USD 3.99
• 10 hours - USD 9.99
• 30 hours - USD 28.99

Transcription is usually not a free service so I'm not surprised here. If you need transcription services, I recommend the iFlyTek AINOTE 2 instead which provides free transcription services.

Note that transcription requires internet.

Writing experience

This pen is called the B6. I'm not sure what technology the pen is using but there's no need for pairing with the tablet, and the pen does not use battery. The pen has pressure sensitivity and works well.

The pen does not use Wacom EMR tech. Do not lose the pen because it's needed to press the softkeys.

There are three customisable side buttons and shortcuts default to eraser, highlighter and touch (no idea what this is), and there's another eraser at the back of the pen.

The writing experience surprised me as I did not expect the pen to be that smooth on the matte display. There's minimal tactile experience when writing. One upside of smooth writing is you can write fast.

The note taking features are basic but do the job well. The pen and tablet are able to capture my handwriting style. There is slight latency when writing but not really an issue. There's handwriting-to-text conversion and it works well.

Battery life

Battery capacity is 6500 mAh which is almost two times larger than what you can get with other e-readers. Battery life can last several days even with front light enabled.

Penstar has done a great job fitting a large battery inside the tablet when man other companies choose to include much smaller batteries for who-knows-what reasons.

Conclusion

The Penstar eNote Pro works great as an e-reader and for taking notes. The extra long battery life is also huge selling point.

There are some downsides but they don't really affect the functionality of reading and writing.

Penstar can certainly improve this tablet further in the future with firmware updates and better software features.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Nice cover
+ Good build quality
+ 10.3-inch is good for reading comics and PDFs
+ Pen is included
+ Good handwriting experience
+ Good reading experience
+ 6500 mAh battery capacity is large
+ Smooth overall performance
- Kaleido 3 display is darker than BW-only display
- Not many OS and software features
- Transcription is not free
- Softkeys can only be used with the pen
- No fingerprint scanner
- No microSD card slot
- Audio sounds hollow
- Rear camera may develop scratches

Availability

The Penstar eNote Pro is available from Penstar online store