Lenovo made a Kindle Scribe

Lenovo has introduced an e-ink pill referred to as the Smart Paper, which seems to be geared toward Amazon’s writing-focused Kindle Scribe. The Smart Paper incorporates a 10.3-inch show, a pen that doesn’t have to be charged, and the flexibility to detect if you’re tilting the stylus, in addition to 4,096 ranges of strain.

The display Lenovo’s utilizing, whereas not as pixel-dense because the Kindle’s, ought to be high-res sufficient for each studying and writing at 1872 x 1404. It additionally options entrance lighting with adjustable shade. Another neat trick is that the Smart Paper can file audio whilst you’re jotting with a pen, and also you’ll have the flexibility to listen to precisely what was being mentioned as you wrote a selected be aware — a useful characteristic when you’re holding monitor of conferences or courses.

One of the Scribe’s largest annoyances is syncing, in accordance with my colleague Alex Cranz’s overview. Its notebooks do sync through the cloud, however marks you make on PDFs or books don’t. It does appear to be the Smart Paper may clear up this concern; Jeff Witt, a spokesperson for the corporate, instructed The Verge in an e-mail that customers will be capable to import epub and PDF formatted content material. Additionally, he says that the Smart Paper app for Windows, Android, and iOS gadgets will be capable to sync books, notes, and paperwork.

The firm’s spec sheet says the Smart Paper is working the open-source model of Android 11, so it could be doable to sideload apps onto it — although whether or not or not it’ll be simple to do is an open query.

At $399.99, the Smart Paper is costlier than the most affordable Scribe you may get, which begins at $340 and features a “basic” pen and 16GB of storage. However, Lenovo’s model comes with a case and has 50GB of storage. The Kindle, in the meantime, has a $390 32GB model and a $419 64GB model.

The Smart Paper isn’t the one e-ink product Lenovo is saying at CES — the corporate can also be exhibiting off a brand new technology of the ThinkBook Plus, persevering with the sequence of laptops with common and paper-like shows. With the earlier iterations, the e-ink panel lived on the again of the lid, which meant you had to make use of it with the pc closed. Now, with the ThinkBook Plus Twist, the show is on a hinge, which helps you to flip the e-ink display round and use it with the keyboard.

Both screens on the Twist are an improve from 2021’s ThinkBook Plus Gen 2 — the “main” 13.3-inch display appears to be getting a slight decision bump to “2.8K” (a time period Lenovo has used before to indicate a 2880 x 1800 display) and can now characteristic a 60Hz OLED panel, in comparison with the earlier model’s IPS LCD show. The 12-inch e-ink show, in the meantime, has been upgraded to assist shade and in addition consists of entrance lighting. While e-ink screens that may present extra than simply black and white could be hit and miss, the inclusion actually is sensible on a laptop computer that allows you to use one as your major show. Washed-out colours are nonetheless far more helpful than no colours in any respect — and if you wish to go from typing up a doc to watching a video, that OLED panel is only a flip away,

The ThinkBook Plus Twist additionally has some upgraded internals as nicely — you may get it with thirteenth Gen processors as a substitute of eleventh Gen ones, the webcam is now full HD as a substitute of 720p, and it helps Wi-Fi 6E. It does, nevertheless, begin at $100 greater than the earlier model did; the bottom configuration will price $1,649 when the laptop computer turns into out there in June.