If you’ve been shopping for a note-taking tablet that doesn’t make your eyes feel like sandpaper, TCL has been quietly building toward something interesting. At MWC 2026 in Barcelona, the company showed off two new entries in its tablet lineupand each one is aimed at a pretty different type of buyer.
TCL Note A1 NXTPAPER
The first tablet is the TCL Note A1 NXTPAPER. This one actually made its debut at CES back in January. However, TCL has decided to use MWC to give it a bigger spotlight. It’s built around TCL’s NXTPAPER Pure display technology. For those unfamiliar TCL’s NXTPAPER display tech uses a special coating to cut down on glare and blue light while keeping a full 120Hz refresh rate.
This means you get the eye-friendly feel of an e-ink device without the sluggish refresh. This is compared to more traditional e-ink tablets that can feel frustrating, especially if you try to use it for anything beyond reading. The 11.5-inch screen supports 16.7 million colors, so it’s not the washed-out look you’d get from your usual e-readers with color displays.
It ships with the T-Pen Pro stylus included. TCL claims it delivers under 5ms of latency with 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity. Under the hood, you’ll find the MediaTek Helio G100 chip, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. It also packs an 8,000mAh battery with 33W fast charging.
The Note A1 also packs a decent suite of AI tools. This includes real-time transcription, automatic meeting summaries, and an “Inspiration Space” that helps organize your notes and ideas. According to earlier pricing details from TCL, the Note A1 NXTPAPER is expected to retail for $549.
TCL TAB A1 Plus
The TCL TAB A1 Plus is the brand new one. It’s a more of a traditional Android tablet with a 12.2-inch 2.4K display powered by TCL’s own CSOT panel technology. Unlike the Note A1, this one skips the NXTPAPER treatment entirely. If you prefer bolder and more vibrant colors, this could be a better choice.
Under the hood, the tablet runs on the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 chip with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. It also features a full metal unibody design with IP54 water and dust resistance. On the software side, you get Google Gemini built in as an AI assistant, along with Circle to Search. TCL hasn’t announced pricing for the TAB A1 Plus yet.
