TCL Tab 10 NXTPAPER 5G at Verizon – Right Display, Wrong Tablet
TCL may appear to be a consumer devices company, but at its heart – and its CapEx budget – it is a vertically integrated display manufacturing conglomerate. TCL first introduced NXTPAPER in China in 2021 as an attempt at delivering a display technology that significantly reduced both blue light and eyestrain. It achieves this by taking a traditional LCD panel with LED backlighting and adding nearly a dozen different diffusion layers on top. I have tested each generation of NXTPAPER – by my count we’re now up to the fourth, though one was just a prototype. The initial versions dramatically reduced glare, but that came at the cost of so much sharpness, color saturation, and brightness that it was hard to recommend. With each iteration TCL has improved the color, clarity, and especially the brightness. The TCL Tab 10 NXTPAPER is now good enough to comfortably read text in most lighting conditions and you can watch video without feeling like you’re missing half the color palette – unless you want to (more on this later).
NXTPAPER is still obviously inferior to OLED for watching movies with wide color gamut, extreme contrast, and HDR, but that’s not the point. It also doesn’t have any of the benefits of e-ink displays: battery life is roughly the same as other LCDs (possibly a bit worse in brighter environments, as you’ll want to crank the backlight up to overcome the diffusion). Unlike e-ink, NXTPAPER washes out completely in direct sunlight. In indirect sunlight, however, it is actually quite nice once you turn the brightness up to maximum, as there is no glare or reflections to look through. It can be as simple as finding the right angle, but a bit of shade overhead is still going to be necessary.
The NXTPAPER display has three modes: regular (full color), “color paper” (desaturated color), and “ink Paper” (grayscale). On the Tab 10 NXTPAPER you have to change modes in software, though TCL seems to have recognized that this is less than ideal – you will want to switch among the modes often – and the latest TCL 50 NXTPAPER smartphones have a physical toggle button.
Even in regular mode, the physical aspects of the NXTPAPER layers reduces eyestrain as your brain doesn’t have to correct for as many reflections. It also protects against blue light, even if the science isn’t fully settled on how harmful blue light actually is. In practice, I quite like the option of reading graphic novels in desaturated mode, or reading text in grayscale, e-book reader style. I have showed the Tab 10 NXTPAPER to a friend with a visual disability that makes it hard for his eyes to focus, and after just a minute using it he begged me to let him borrow the review unit when I’m done with it.
Where TCL Thinks NXTPAPER Fits
TCL is putting the fourth generation NXTPAPER display in some of its smartphones, tablets, and Windows convertibles. By necessity, those phones are relatively low end; faced with heavy competition, TCL got out of the premium and even mid-tier market years ago. That doesn’t have to be the case with its tablets, but the TCL TAB10 NXTPAPER 5G is a Verizon exclusive, and connected tablets are a unique device category. Carriers have historically used tablets given away free with paid service as a way to goose postpaid subscriber numbers whenever Wall Street rewards that particular metric, or ARPA (average revenue per account) when that’s what investors are looking for. That means carriers need 4G or 5G devices with large screens at the absolute lowest possible cost so that the service revenue for the tablet connectivity covers the device cost over the two-year period. Most consumers don’t actually need cellular connectivity on a cheap tablet, so carriers can’t count on recurring service revenue past the incentive period -- nearly everyone cancels their tablet data plan once the device itself is paid off.
Carrier Exclusivity Mandates Tradeoffs
To make a cellular-connected tablet that can be subsidized for less than the cost of two years of tablet add-on data, manufacturers are forced to cut corners on display specs, materials, build quality, and silicon. On the TAB10 NXTPAPER 5G, the 1200 x 2000 NXTPAPER display is the primary differentiator, so no corners could be cut there. TCL could not choose the absolute cheapest processor, since it needed to have 5G to fit in Verizon’s lineup. To hit the price point that Verizon demanded, the tablet uses a MediaTek Dimensity 6100+, which integrates sub-6 5G but skimps on processing power, and is paired with just 6GB of relatively slow RAM. The resulting Geekbench 6 scores are fine for basic use but come up short for mobile gaming: CPU single-core score of 737, CPU multi-core 1947, and a truly dismal GPU-CL of 1274. Apps open quickly, but gaming performance isn’t the best and eyestrain-free gaming or late-night gaming without blue light could be a killer use case. For that, TCL needs to move up MediaTek’s line and pick something with an 8 or a 9 in front of it. I just spent a few months testing Vivo’s X100 Pro, a smartphone powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 9300, and its multi-core CPU comes in 3x faster, while the GPU is 6x faster.
Internal storage on the TAB10 NXTPAPER 5G is just 128 GB, but there is a microSD card slot so you can load it up with content.
The tablet supports sub-6 5G in addition to 4G and Wi-Fi 5. In my basement office I could just see Verizon’s 4G LTE network, and a Speedtest resulted in 92.6 Mbps down, 0.73 Mbps up. However, just outside my house the Verizon signal is considerably stronger, and Verizon’s 5G C-Band network resulted in 332 Mbps down, 70.2 Mbps up. That still lags Samsung Galaxy smartphones but is more than good enough for watching YouTube at 1080p, synchronizing your Photos library, or downloading app updates. The 6000 mAh battery provides reasonable usage time provided you aren’t on cellular a lot and you don’t forget that NXTPAPER is not e-ink; it uses power like the LCD that it is.
Pricing
Verizon sells the TAB10 NXTPAPER 5G for $240… only the carrier won’t sell it without a data plan, even for prepaid. That makes this a very expensive proposition. The way Verizon presents the tablet pricing is as an add-on for existing Unlimited subscribers, who can add a tablet line for $20/month plus $6.66 per month for the tablet over 36 months for a total of $959.76 over three years ($720 + $239.76). You can get up to $180 off over three years if you have another tablet to trade in. This might almost make sense if you truly need wireless data on an inexpensive tablet (for example, for kids in blended family moving locations frequently), but this is a hard case to make, and it’s seemingly the least expensive option.
If you are a Verizon Fios subscriber but don’t have a wireless plan, Verizon Lest you think that Verizon might want to sell its Fios subscribers
You can also buy the tablet with a postpaid plan on its own, however you’ll have to pay in full for the data: $240 plus tax up front for the tablet, plus a $35 activation fee and then $80 - $110 per month for data every month. However, there is no contract for the service, so presumably you could cancel wireless service after a month and only be out $355 plus taxes ($240 + tax + $35 + $80 + taxes) and then use it with Wi-Fi. There is a cheaper way: buy it from Verizon Prepaid for $240 plus tax along with a month of prepaid data. The Prepaid offer removes the activation fee, and the least expensive no-contract wireless service plan is $40/month. If you cancel the plan after the first month, you’re only out $280 plus taxes.
None of these options make sense for most consumers. If Verizon offered the tablet for just a bit more than the cost of the service, say, $20 per month over two years ($240 + $10/month) it would be justifiable for people who want a tablet and travel frequently or don’t have reliable broadband where they live.
Conclusion
After four generations, TCL’s NXTPAPER display is now good enough for broad use, but this tablet is hard to recommend. Verizon gives it a channel (and subsidies!), but carrier pricing and cellular requirements handicap what it could be. TCL should be making a premium NXTPAPER tablet for the open market at a price point $200 higher, with a thinner metal case, a MediaTek 9000 series chipset, Wi-Fi 7, more RAM, more storage, the physical display mode toggle switch TCL is putting on its NXTPAPER phones, and remappable shoulder buttons for e-book page turns and gaming.
Another option would be to keep the price the same, add a colorful indestructible case, put a parental management interface on top that exposes Google’s existing parental controls that people don’t know about, get a license from Disney to put princesses or superheroes on it, ditch the cellular, and sell it to parents for their kids. Verizon should sell that one through its channels, too – especially to its broadband households.
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