Recently, Huawei, which frequently promotes the progress of the industry, has entered the ink screen market and launched Huawei's first Hongmeng ink level board MatePadPaper, which is backed by huawei ecology.
From the perspective of publicity, this product is to solve most of the pain points of the existing ink level board - in addition to the functions equipped with conventional large-screen ink screens (support handwriting, split-screen notes, voice-to-text, real-time translation), Huawei also combines the advantages of traditional tablets and paper-like screens, and the built-in HarmonyOS 2 brings Huawei's cross-end collaboration with mobile phones and PCs, distributed file management, and many other innovative experiences.
Maybe the idea is beautiful, but the actual experience is another matter. So can Huawei MatePad Paper inject a breath of fresh blood into the "lifeless" ink level board market? With many questions, I began a journey of experience.
How is the design and is it easy to hold?
The fundamental reason why many people buy e-book readers is that they want to get rid of the shackles of heavy paper books and materials, and they don't want to carry several pounds of "wood" every time they go out. Indeed, most of the paper books are very "pressed", especially long serial novels are even more headaches, and the number of units of an IP even has to be measured according to the "box", and moving is also a very laborious thing.
For comparison, the author has a novella (332 pages) of "Walden" weighs 431g, and the wrist will be a little sore after holding it for a long time, compared to the ink screen reader, which is much lighter and thinner, and the capacity is massive.
For example, the Huawei MatePad Paper, which has a screen size of 10.3 inches (86.3% of the screen ratio is full screen), is just equal to about 16 open books, and its 64G (another 128G version is optional) body capacity can even cram hundreds of thousands of e-books (100,000 words, 200kb size) into this "small body board" that weighs only about 360g.
The design is also commendable. The surface of huawei MatePad Paper body is made of plain leather material, which has the cover texture of hardcover books, which feels good. And there are three colors of brocade white (lambskin pattern), clear blue (lambskin pattern), and ink black (micro lychee pattern) to choose from, which can meet more personalized needs.
In order to facilitate the user's one-handed holding, huawei MatePad Paper retains a "book spine" design on one side of the fuselage, so that there is more border area on the left side of the front, so that when holding it with one hand, the thumb will not accidentally touch the content on the screen.
Because of the shape of its flat plate, plus the weight of 360g, the one-handed grip is obviously stronger than the physical book, but the hand will be sore after holding it for a long time.
Then the official smart leather case does not actually have a bracket function, only we usually find a notebook bracket to put it on the desktop. At this time, the advantages of the 10.3-inch large screen are also highlighted, even if the naked eye is about 30cm away from the screen, the book content is still clearly visible.
It is worth mentioning that Huawei MatePad Paper is also a tablet that pays attention to privacy and security, and it can be seen that its power button integrates fingerprint recognition function - boot and enter notes can be encrypted with fingerprints, thus replacing cumbersome conventional passwords, which is too friendly for me, who has forgotten passwords.
The power button integrates fingerprint recognition
Is the ink screen really more "eye-protecting"?
Everyone says that "ink screen eye protection" is a false proposition. But in fact, after everyone stares at the computer and tablet for a long time, they will feel that the dazzling light on the screen is easy to make people's eyes dry, and even unconsciously shed tears. So began to waver, in the end whether to replace the electronic screen equipment at hand with ink screen equipment?
The ink screen is really more "eye protection".
After reviewing the relevant information, the author found that in addition to the viewing distance and the length of the eye, there are two main factors in the ordinary electronic screen that will seriously harm our vision health -
1. Harmful blue light
2. Harmful strobe
Electronic screens are all to emit light, and some poor screens do not filter out high-energy short-wave BLUE HEV rays (harmful blue light) between 380-460 nm. Harmful blue light irradiation intensity, long irradiation time, will lead to retinal pigment epithelial cell decay, resulting in a variety of serious ophthalmic diseases.
Some electronic screens also have the problem of low-brightness PWM dimming strobe, which is more likely to lead to problems such as eye fatigue, blurred vision and headaches.
Unlike traditional electronic screens, ink screens are made up of millions of microcapsules containing electrophoresis—each capsule containing many negatively charged white particles and positively charged black particles suspended in a transparent liquid. When the power is turned on, the corresponding white or black particles in the area will be placed on the top, and the black or white content will be displayed on the screen.
Image source Eink official website
In fact, this is a bit like the black and white drawing board we played with when we were children, relying on ambient light to "light up" and have a sense of ink particles, so the actual look and feel is very close to the texture of paper and ink.
In addition, the ink screen will not strobe, will not directly radiate "harmful blue light", and the ambient light will generally not be too strong, so the ink screen will not make the pupils zoom frequently, and reading books for a long time will not be as tired as looking at the electronic screen, and it will naturally be more "eye protection".
For whether the display effect of the ink display can be close to the performance of the paper, the industry also has a certification with data test endorsement - Rheinland paper display certification. Huawei's MatePad Paper passed all the test requirements of the standard in the top ten professional tests. It is not an exaggeration to say that Huawei's MatePad Paper is a "physical book" equipped with the Harmony OS intelligent system.
In fact, although the reflectivity of huawei MatePad Paper screen is slightly weaker than that of physical books, it is softer in natural light during the day and does not require additional fill light.
Then at night, the picture that relies on the backlight is also very clear, the backlight is uniform, and the font boundary is not blurred.
Coupled with the picture quality effect of the nearly 256-level grayscale image achieved by Huawei's picture enhancement algorithm, it is natural to read comics and pictures.
Eye protection small TIPS: Reading books at night also needs to pay attention to the surrounding environment to open a bright enough light source!
So in general, compared with ordinary electronic screens, the ink screen does effectively avoid the two major factors that endanger vision, "blue light" and "strobe", and is more "eye protection", but it does not mean that after everyone uses the ink screen, reading books really does not hurt the eyes - after all, even if it is a physical book, we also need to close our eyes from time to time, control the time of using the eyes, otherwise it is easy to cause eye fatigue and myopia.
Support the second generation M-Pencil stylus, how about the note/writing experience?
Many people say that the ink level board without a pen is only suitable for reading novels, comics and other leisure books, but not for books and research works, because there is no way to take notes and make annotations. Even with a pen, I'm worried that the writing experience on the ink screen will be delayed.
In fact, Huawei MatePad Paper is a large-screen "electronic notebook", which can be used with the second-generation M-Pencil stylus (which can be used with the same pen as other HarmonyOS 2 and above tablets to write and draw), and can write, draw, and record essays.
The second generation of M-Pencil stylus supports magnetic storage and charging
The built-in "Notes" app provides a variety of different writing templates, including white paper, horizontal lines, meeting minutes, to-dos, SWOT models, etc., which can be selected according to the needs of the use. You can also insert pictures and audio recordings into your notes, which is not possible with paper notes.
In addition, I found that I can also open a book or document at will, and then swipe the upper right corner of the screen to call out the split-screen note menu, and then you can read the book on the left side of the screen, record the reading notes synchronously on the right, and of course, you can also make full-screen annotations.
Split-screen handwriting
About the writing experience:
Huawei's MatePad Paper matte screen and proper damping, combined with the 4096-level pressure of the second-generation M-Pencil stylus, the paper writing experience is well restored.
When I actually experienced the "notes" that came with the original machine, I found that I could indeed write with different strengths with the second-generation M-Pencil, and I could accurately draw lines of different thicknesses.
In terms of delay, the official said that the delay is about 26ms, and in terms of actual experience, the somatosensory is almost no delay, and each stroke is very followed, which is no problem to draw a sketch.
What is the system application experience and is the content rich?
In terms of book content, Huawei MatePad Paper has 1.65 million+ reading resources from partners and 130,000+ reading content from cooperative publishers, and with the support of the HarmonyOS ecosystem, the compatibility is excellent, and third-party book platforms such as Kindle, WeChat Reading, and JD Reading can be installed, and even video software such as Bilibili can be downloaded to watch videos and download games to play.
But I really don't recommend that you use it to watch videos to play games, games and videos are not its strengths, because affected by the physical characteristics of the ink screen, the actual screen refresh rate per second is not very high, the screen caton phenomenon is more serious.
Its strengths are still in office and reading.
Huawei MatePad Paper will be high-frequency applications in the form of Hongmeng card one-stop collection in the "homepage", boot is the default entry, you can see the calendar, notes, mail inbox, WPS, continue reading, read later and other card page. Each card is a visual representation of the corresponding content, such as today's schedule in the calendar, recent notes in the notes, etc., just a tap to reach the core application.
In addition to being on WeChat, sending and receiving emails, and setting up schedules, you can also download apps like mind maps and WPS as a true "productivity tool."
When reading a book encounters a foreign document that cannot be understood, it can also be translated in real time.
Split-screen real-time translation
So when I want to close my eyes and recuperate after reading books for a long time, I will occasionally "lazy" to "listen to books". Huawei's MatePad Paper uses two large amplitude speakers, and the support for voice reading function is also very good.
So when I open a book, I can restore the storyline by listening to the book, reading aloud and other intelligent life audio experiences, using AI voices and the voices of tens of millions of voice actors.
Hongmeng full-scene interaction, how about multi-device experience?
Because systems, operations, and data are not interoperable, the application experience between multiple devices often gives people a strong sense of separation. Based on the Hongmeng operating system, Huawei has broken this barrier through the concept of "smart office".
Here are three common scenarios I also experienced:
1. Interconnection with mobile phones - Books, articles and information on mobile phones can be transferred to Huawei MatePad Paper with one click to continue reading.
The actual test only needs two devices to start at the same time and belong to the same Wi-Fi network, you can pull down the "Control Center" page of the mobile phone to find the Huawei MatePad Paper Hyperterminal, and then just tap the icon to transfer the web page on the mobile browser to huawei MatePad Paper. This process takes about 5 seconds to wait, which saves a lot of time compared to re-finding the content on the phone on the ink screen tablet.
However, the actual test like other APP pages can not be transferred to the tablet, such as "reading" the app in the book can not be transferred, WPS, OFFICE and other software in the document can not be transferred, follow-up official firmware upgrade may be improved.
2. Interconnection with the PC - Sitting in a workstation office, you often feel that the number of windows that a screen can accommodate is limited, which limits work efficiency.
Because Huawei's MatePad Paper supports multi-screen collaboration, it can be directly transformed into an exclusive expansion screen for PCs. For example, when I am writing text, I can put a large amount of text document content on the Huawei MatePad Paper to read, and there is no need to turn my head to look at the ink screen, which will be more friendly to the eyes and neck.
3. Transfer data - Huawei MatePad Paper can also appear as a drive letter for some PC equipped with HarmonyOS 2, so it can drag e-books and office documents in the PC directly into the ink level board, and also support the notes and screenshots in the Huawei MatePad Paper directly into the PC.
In general, Huawei MatePad Paper, which has the concept of "smart office", solves the problem of device islands, and is no longer separated in data transmission and use experience, but there are still some details such as mobile phones more APP compatible circulation functions that need to be optimized, I believe this is not a problem for Huawei, looking forward to follow-up upgrades!
summary
Huawei seems to have entered a niche field, but in fact, it has developed more potential users - ink screens bring a paper-like reading and writing experience, gentle and not harmful, but also more ritualistic. With harmonyOS' all-scenario interconnection capability, Huawei MatePad Paper has also become a member of the smart office family, which can seamlessly interconnect data with mobile phones and PCs, as well as application experiences. At present, although there are still deficiencies in the experience of details, I believe that with Huawei's strong combination of soft and hard capabilities, it can be optimized and improved in a short period of time. As for whether Huawei can bring the ink screen to a larger market? The future can be expected.