A Tablet with a Unique Display and All-Day Battery Life

It’s tough to stand out in the tablet market when you’re not a marketing giant like Apple or Samsung. But TCL is making a real effort to distinguish itself from the competition with the TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G. It promises to preserve original colors on a glare-free and eye-friendly blue light-reduction technology paper-like display. Overall, TCL delivers on this promise, as well as offers enough other compelling technology at a great price point to actually stand out, although being tied to Verizon will be a deal-breaker for some.

TCL Tab 10 NXTPAPER 5G

The TCL TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G is an Android tablet with a paper-like, glare-free 10-inch display, dynamic audio, and all-day battery life.

Pros

• Unique matte display looks great even outdoors
• An eye-friendly alternative to a limited eReader
• Latest version of Android

Cons

• Poor viewing angles
• Only available from Verizon
• Requires a Verizon 5G data line if purchased online

Price and Availability

The TCL TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G is available from Verizon for $240, either online or in-store. The dark blue-backed tablet comes with a USB-C cable, 5V2A charger, SIM card tool, and paperwork.

If purchasing online, you’ll need to have some type of data plan for the first month and then you are free to cancel. The cheapest plan for new customers is $40 per month for 5GB and goes all the way up to $100 per month for 150GB. You can save $30 per month on any plan if you add a new line to an existing Verizon account. If purchasing in-store, you only need to pay for the tablet and can just rely on Wi-Fi.

The Matte Display Is The Hook

While the TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G has a lot of the standard features most users would both want and expect in an Android-based tablet, the real star is its 2K display with a resolution of 2,000 x 1,000. Using what TCL calls NXTPAPER 3.0 technology, the 10-inch display features a glare-free, matte screen with a paper-like feel. Simply put, it takes some of the best features of standard tablet displays and combines them with some of the best features of E Ink eReader displays.

An eReader like the Kindle Scribe looks great in almost all lighting conditions, including direct sunlight. Unfortunately, the limitations of monochrome E Ink relative to displaying shades of grey mean that certain visuals can look muddy. Monochrome E Ink devices are best suited to text, and uniquely optimized for outdoor usage. Of course, some E Ink tablets have color, making them more useful for other types of content like comics, but that type of display technology has limitations of its own, including a limited palette, poor color saturation, and low relative brightness compared to traditional LCD technology.

What’s interesting about the TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G’s display in comparison to E Ink devices is that it’s usable in nearly all of the same lighting conditions. Sure, you may have to slightly adjust your viewing angle or where you stand, but it’s nothing like a traditional glossy LCD. Unless you’re outdoors most of the time when you’re using an eReader, the TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G makes a viable alternative. In fact, outside of auto and manually adjustable brightness, TCL makes three display modes available: Regular, Ink paper, and Color paper.

Regular is exactly as it sounds, making the display act like your typical smartphone or tablet with the full range of colors you’d expect. Ink paper acts like the aforementioned Kindle Scribe’s display, with a monochrome E-Ink simulation. Similarly, Color paper simulates a color E Ink display, much like the one found on a Kobo Clara Colour.

Both the Ink and Color paper modes are approximations, of course, since the TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G doesn’t use E Ink technology, but the effect is similar. For instance, in Color paper mode, color has a lighter, more pastel look. Frankly, neither mode is a match for the eye-friendly look of a true E Ink device, but it’s as close as I’ve yet seen for a traditional LCD thanks to the matte finish. This feature alone makes this tablet more likely to be the one device I bring with me if I want to read on the go but want the option to do more things than even Android-powered E-Ink tablets that struggle with anything requiring motion.

A high-end Android-based tablet like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+ has a wonderfully bright and color-rich display that looks fantastic indoors. Taking it outdoors, however, or even indoors directly under harsh lighting, shows a ton of glare, creating a mirror-like effect. At 100%, the perceived brightness on the TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G is nowhere near what it is on the TFT LCD on the Samsung, but I never found it lacking in isolation.

Of course, the TAB NXTPAPER 5G’s display is not exactly perfect. Besides its lack of peak brightness, the viewing angles are weak. There’s a relatively small range of angles where you see the screen as intended. Outside that range, the screen appears darkened and reflects light more like a regular LCD. On the plus side, when you are viewing the screen from a good angle, the fact that the display appears flush with the front of the device creates a nice, seamless effect.

Even with the flush display, I found the touchscreen responsiveness to be excellent, as well as the effectiveness of the haptic vibrations confirming my taps and swipes. It’s a well-tuned tablet in regards to feel.

Although not part of this review, TCL promises that their active T-Pen Stylus works with the TAB NXTPAPER 5G. Given the slight grit to the finish of the tablet screen, I suspect it would feel a lot like writing on the Kindle Scribe.

Design and Features: All the Essentials

While the TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G is hardly a thin and light device at 0.31 inches thick and 16.92 ounces, it nevertheless is well-balanced and feels solid in hand. The 10.4-inch display fits well within the roughly 11.1-inch diagonal dimensions of the tablet body.

The included SIM ejector tool lets you remove the NANO SIM card and microSD tray. microSD cards up to 1TB are supported to augment the 128GB of included storage, which has about 100GB available to use.

Both the rear and front cameras are 8MP, which provides images up to a resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 pixels. Only the rear camera has a flash, with the front camera briefly turning the screen white to simulate a flash. For picture taking or selfies, the tablet’s cameras are no substitute for what you’d find on a good smartphone, but I was pleased with the overall color and sharpness of what each camera captured.

In terms of video capture, both cameras support up to 1080p at 30FPS. Again, I found the quality from both cameras to be just fine, although the tablet did have trouble with how quickly it was able to adjust to different lighting conditions when in motion.

I found that the built-in microphone captured audio that sounds a bit flat, but, more importantly, it’s clear. You’ll definitely want another solution for content creation, but for regular video chats, the built-in microphone works just fine.

The built-in speakers can handle 100% volume without distortion and get pretty loud for a portable device. The default sound profile is a bit flat and lacks any bass, but it’s still a viable option for music or video entertainment when a good Bluetooth headset or speaker isn’t available.

Software and Performance: Android 14 Paired with Solid Hardware

Fortunately, TCL includes the most recent version of Android, 14, which was released at the end of October 2023. Besides having the latest features, Android 14 also helps to optimize battery life. This translates to up to 20 hours of mixed usage from the 6,000mAh battery. From 0%, it takes just over 3 hours to get the battery to full.

Thanks to a MediaTek 24E Octa core 2*A76 2.2GHz processor and 6GB of RAM, whether playing videos or games, I rarely had a performance issue, even when multitasking. It was only when playing the most demanding games, like “Ark: Survival Evolved,” that I noticed some sluggishness and frame rate issues. This is not the best choice for dedicated Android power gamers, but for everyone else, it should be up to most tasks.

Although I only had three to four bars of Verizon 5G coverage in my area, mobile network speeds were decent. I averaged a 45ms ping, 250Mbps download, and a sluggish 0.6Mbps upload.

Performance over my TP-Link BE33000 home Wi-Fi network was slightly better. My Xfinity Internet connection generally maxes out at around 1.3Gbps download and no more than the 20 to 25Mbps range for upload speeds. While my TP-Link hardware supports up to Wi-Fi 7, the TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G connected via Wi-Fi 5, giving me an average ping of 26ms, 240Mbps download, and 20Mbps upload. It’s definitely middling performance in comparison to other devices on my same network, including the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+.

Should You Buy the TCL TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G?

There’s no such thing as a perfect device, but the TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G does a great job of bridging the gap between a good Android tablet and a good eReader. While you might miss a glossy screen when watching videos, or any other color-saturated content, for those who like to use a tablet outdoors or in other overly bright environments, the matte display is a revelation.

The fact that it’s only available from Verizon is a bit of a downer, but considering its relatively robust specifications and low price, The TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G should be a serious consideration for anyone who not only likes to read on a tablet but wants a solid Android tablet experience in general.

TCL Tab 10 NXTPAPER 5G

The TCL TAB 10 NXTPAPER 5G is an Android tablet with a paper-like, glare-free 10-inch display, dynamic audio, and all-day battery life.