Penstar eNote Pro 10.3″ Color E Ink Paper Tablet Bundle, Touchscreen Digital Notebook, 4GB 128GB ePaper Writing Tablet with B6 Stylus Pen, AI Powered Voice-to-Text

Great color e-ink tablet! Highly recommended!
I was surprised when the eNote Pro was announced because it has a Kaleido 3 color screen, touch support, and frontlight. This marks a departure from Penstar’s other devices with black and white screens with pen only input and no front lighting. When I noticed it retains the physical buttons while also offering new pen-only shortcuts on the sidebar, I decided to give it a shot. TLDR; I’m extremely satisfied with my decision.The Penstar eNote Pro comes in high quality packaging offering a satisfying unboxing experience. Included in the box are:TabletStylusFolio CaseCharging cableSpare nibsDocumentationThe eNote Pro brings some fairly strong specs to the table, featureing a 10.3” Kaleido color screen with a resolution of 2480 x 1860 that features 300 ppi for B&W content and 150 ppi for color. Under the hood, there’s a 2.2 GHz Rockchip RK3576 octa-core processor, 4 GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage, running Penstar OS 2.0, based on Android 14. Powering the device is a 6500 mAh battery rated for two weeks of use. It also has a camera for scanning documents, a 4-mic array for recording audio, and stereo speakers.The eNote Pro looks and feels high end, with an aluminum alloy build that is comfortable to hold and use while never feeling flimsy. The front has a premium metallic finish with the larger left bezel featuring a brushed grille housing five physical buttons. The top and bottom bezels appear to have grilles for accommodating stereo speakers and the multi-mic array. The back of the tablet has a leatherette texture that matches the folio cover, adding a quality feel and bit of gripiness. A camera on the top left corner of the back is for scanning documents as well as taking photos and video.The edges of the eNote Pro are comparatively minimalist with the top edge of the eNote Pro houseing the USB-C port, a LED charging indicator, and the power button. The left edge has two indentations for snapping the cover onto the device. The bottom edge has a three-hole grille. The left side houses one a useful feature. The eNote takes a simpler and better route to stowing the stylus, with the pen clip slotting into the side of the tablet, making a secure physical connection between the tablet and pen which retains the pen even when shaken vigorously.The eNote Pro does not disappoint on the performance front. Things are generally snappy, especially when viewed in the context of e-ink screens, which require longer refresh times. While the eNote Pro does most things standard tablets do, it truly excels with the intended functions of reading and writing.Functioning as an e-notebook is the meat and potatoes of the e-ink experience, and the eNote Pro does not disappoint. The home screen is a standout feature, putting the most important features a click away. There are calendar and email widgets, as well as easy access to notes, bookshelf, and apps. There’s also a search bar readily accessible.Penstar’s EMR stylus is inductively powered by the screen, not requiring charging like active styli. Grab it and start writing! The pen has a metallic barrel and a plastic cone at the bottom and a plastic clip for snapping onto the tablet. It features an eraser at the top and three programmable buttons on the barrel. It feels good in my hand and provides both a dedicated eraser and programmable buttons.However, I have mixed feelings about the writing feel. It’s good, but not quite a paperlike feeling. It still has a bit of the slickness of writing on a glass screen, but there is still a subtle resistance. Thankfully, the pen is not “tappy,” so it is a quiet writing experience even for someone like me who switches between print and cursive. Perhaps using an etched screen or protector would give it a more paperlike feel, but likely at the cost of screen sharpness.The new pen-sensitive buttons are a standout feature I never knew I needed, but now can’t see myself living without because they are so useful! There are ten shortcut buttons faintly etched (perhaps a tad too faintly if you are in a darker environment) on the left bezel that react only to the pen, allowing access to the homescreen, notes, bookshelf, voice recording, settings, and three user-configurable apps or functions. Since these buttons are responsive only to the pen, they won’t inadvertently trigger when holding the eNote Pro with your left hand.The native note app is great, with all the basics covered plus some extras. There’s a choice among pencil, pen, and markers, each with various line weights and colors. You can add callouts and flourishes to your notes. Eraser options include pixel, range (lasso an area to erase it), and stroke. There is a shape tool with numerous options. The lasso tool lets you select items in your notes and move or resize them, as well as copying and pasting. A number of pre-installed note templates provides plenty of options or you can create and import custom templates. The handwriting to text conversion does a pretty good job of deciphering even my awful handwriting. One other interesting implementation is system-wide pen settings, creating configurations for a pen, a marker, and a highlighter across all apps.The native reading app handles several formats, but I tested it mainly with EPUB and PDFs. For EPUBs, you can adjust the way the book is displayed by choosing font size and family, line spacing, and layout type. Since I am visually impaired, I use large fonts and my ebooks were still rendered correctly. The physical side buttons flip pages. There’s also AI text to speech, but the voices are serviceable at best.In addition to creating a reading note embedded in the book, you can mark up the e-book directly on the pages with the same tools as the note app. This introduces features such as generating an index of annotations and being able to quickly navigate between them. There’s bookmarking pages as well an excepting feature which creates a clipboard of selected content. You can reflow the text in PDFs and choose between flipping or scrolling pages. The side buttons can flip pages or zoom in and out.Final thoughtsThe eNote Pro is fantastic The build quality is on point, looking and feeling like a high-end device should. The Kaleido 3 screen is bright and colorful because there’s not an etched screen or factory-applied screen protector. This compromises between image quality and writing feel, but it’s the right choice. As an e-notebook, it does an admirable job of providing the features needed for integrating this device into your workflow. The homescreen is understatedly awesome and makes the most used features easily accessible. The notes and reading apps provide solid features, and the upside is more can be added with updates. Add in the AI recording function helping you take and leverage notes, and it’s even better.There are a few minor and one major shortcomings with the eNote Pro. It’s lacking a few creature comforts like a fingerprint reader and SD card expandable storage that. The notes and reading apps have the basics plus more covered, but there are things like auto-shape correction missing. However, the biggest drawback is a lack of Google Play certification. Not only does this prevent obtaining apps from the Google Play Store, but it also means certain apps needing Google Play Services to operate can’t be installed they won’t function fully. This is a feature that can be added later through software updates, In the meantime, there are other app stores available offer many but not every app. If you are technically inclined, apps can be sideloaded by installing .apk files, but any that require Play Services framework won’t be compatible.The eNote Pro is a phenomenal e-ink tablet. Quality hardware, including a gorgeous Kalideo 3 screen and the most useful hardware shortcut buttons on any tablet—e-ink or otherwise—partnered with software that makes it a competent e-notebook. Getting everything you need in the box makes the eNote Pro an even more compelling option and value. I highly recommend this tablet for anyone wanting a color e-ink notebook that can do “tablety” things It is currently a superb all around device with the potential for becoming even better through software updates!

Only Android 12
Android 12 and can’t be upgraded to 15, 16 or 17 in the future

First, this is my first experience with this kind of device, and i am very surprise by this penstar!1: I love the fact that the pencil is quickly responsive when you takes notes. It almost feel like real paper. One thing to consider is when you takes notes on a power-point doc, the delay is approximatively 2 sec before the writting appear on the screen, so i switch to writing board and that is ok. Still not the main purpose of the penstar.2: There is a lot of option for the writing, color, style, forme ect.3: The screen light can be change as you like, witch i really like because i didn’t get tired at all and i see everything clearly anytime of the day.4: The design look professionnal, stylish and the cover is include, so you don’t have to order one.5: The rapidity of the tablet is something i was expecting from it but i don’t have any other experience.6: The camera is a grest value to it because i can take a photo and add it to my note and write beside, very useful. No, it is not android or apple quality, but its not something that bother me because this is not what i was expecting from the penstar.7: To consider, you have to subscribe to have illimited access of the voice text converter. The text converter require wifi . But, without wifi, the tablet still is almost completely fonctionnal.8: I use it almost 5-6 hours to discover the tablet the first day and the batterie had gone to 98% at 50%, it is very good because i did a lot of thing with it. It will last a lot longer if you just read or do little thing with it.9: For my first tablet, i am impress and i decide to keep it, very excited i am to use it at my job and school :)Thank !