XP Pen Magic Note Pad – Tablet with matte screen and quirky choices

XP Pen is a brand we are not familiar with before, and their promise to combine three product categories, the tablet with the reading and writing tablet, is grand.

It should turn out to be a bit grandiose, because basically it is primarily a tablet with a matte screen. So you don’t get an e-paper screen that does without backlighting and that works perfectly in direct sunlight like a reading tablet does. However, there is a button where you can choose to have duller colors on the screen more like an e-book reader, or the entire panel in black and white.

This feels very familiar from TCL’s NXTPaper series of mobiles and tablets. When I search for the relationship between the XP Pen and TCL, I can’t find anything about the XP Pen being a brand under TCL, but it does appear that the XP Pen does indeed use TCL’s NXTPaper technology for matte screens and reading modes.

That’s good, I really like TCL’s matte screens, which reduce reflections in the screen a lot, well much more than the anti-reflective treatments that Samsung and Apple have on their more expensive tablets. It also makes the screen easier to use in sunlight even though it is an LCD screen with not too high brightness.

Expensive but with accessories

The XP Pen Magic Note Pad has a price tag of around SEK 4,500. Looking at the specifications, it’s basically a budget tablet, it’s at its most juicy, but on the other hand, it includes a protective cover and a stylus, accessories that you normally have to pay extra for.

The design is unusual and mimics reading tablets more than tablets. There is no ambition for the screen to cover the entire surface of the plate, but instead has a wide surface for grip and with space for a pen on one side. It’s actually a really handy format for a tablet.

It is also unusual that the camera on the back is completely missing. Selfie camera is in the screen, for video calls, but if, for example, you need to scan QR codes, the flat is fine.

The XP Pen Magic Note Pad’s biggest limitation is performance. The Mediatek Helio G99 chipset is a several-year-old budget chipset that is definitely in the slowest range for a modern tablet. But the user interface is not very demanding, and as long as I stick to less demanding apps like video players and browsers, I don’t mind the performance too much. However, when I try to play games, I get clear delays when the tablet needs to think.

I’m less bothered than I expect by the slow performance when using the pen. When I write or draw on the screen, I don’t get a lightning fast response, but the lag is so small that I can write on the screen without lag.

Good pen

The pen is ambitious for a tablet in this price range. It is charged wirelessly from the tablet, and has various functions that can be controlled, among other things, with a button and by holding the pen close to the screen without pressing it.

The claim to be able to function as a writing pad comes, of course, from the pen in combination with the matte screen, which should provide a bit more natural writing resistance compared to a glossy screen. The emphasis has to be on a bit here, because the experience still doesn’t come close to paper. Norwegian ReMarkable makes writing pads with a really rough surface that actually feels like paper, which shows that it works, but we’re not there with the XP Pen Magic Note Pad.

Perhaps the claim of 3 in 1 fulfills another function. Google makes demands on manufacturers of tablets and mobile phones that they must have a fresh version of Android in order to be sold. Tablets manufactured at the beginning of the year are still allowed to have Android 15, but those that go on sale now must have Android 16. The XP Pen Magic Note Pad, on the other hand, has Android 14, perhaps because they claim that it is not a tablet.

Given that the tablet is already several generations behind in Android versions, you probably shouldn’t count on any future system updates for the tablet.

The XP Pen Magic Note Pad is an odd tablet, with a bit too high a price tag if you just want a simple tablet, but if the pen and design appeal and you don’t plan on performance-demanding tasks, it’s definitely worth a look.

Questions and answers

Where to buy XP Pen Magic Note Pad? It can be ordered from XP Pen’s European webshop https://www.storeexppen.eu.

Can the lid work as a stand? It is stiff and without creases. You can helpfully prop up the plate by folding back the lid, but it’s not really built for that.

How is the speaker sound? Quite okay when watching movies, although most things are missing in the lowest registers.

An alternative

If it is the matte screen you want, TCL has several models of tablets in different sizes with a more conventional design. See for example the TCL NXTpaper 11 Plus, which is cheaper than the XP Pen Magic Note Pad.