TCL just refreshed the Tab A1 Plus with its NXTPAPER tech and a bigger battery

TCL has refreshed its budget Tab A1 Plus tablet, and the new model comes with two significant upgrades. As its name suggests, the new Tab A1 Plus NXTPAPER features TCL’s in-house paper-like display tech that emulates an e-ink display on an LCD. In addition, the tablet now packs a substantially larger battery.

What’s new on TCL’s latest budget tablet

The Tab A1 Plus NXTPAPER retains the same 12.2-inch IPS display as the original model, with a 2,400 x 1600 resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate, and 500 nits of brightness. TCL has added its NXTPAPER tech on top, which lets users switch between color ink, grayscale ink, and standard display modes with a dedicated button.

Battery capacity has increased from 8,000mAh to 10,000mAh, and wired charging speed has also gotten faster from 20W to 33W. The front camera has also received a bump from 5MP to 8MP, but the rear 8MP camera remains unchanged.

Other specs carry over from the original Tab A1 Plus. The tablet runs on a Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 chipset with 6GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which is expandable up to 2TB via a microSD card. It has a metal unibody design with IP54 splash and dust resistance, stylus support, quad speakers, and Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity.

Pricing and availability

The Tab A1 Plus NXTPAPER is priced at $399, but TCL is currently offering an early bird discount that brings its price down to $299 for a limited time. The tablet is available in a single aerolite gray color through TCL’s website and Amazon.

The Tab A1 Plus NXTPAPER is part of TCL’s push to bring its NXTPAPER tech to more devices, but it’s not the only budget tablet to feature the display tech. The $199 TCL Tab 8 NXTPAPER 5G, which launched late last year, is currently the cheapest tablet with TCL’s e-ink-like display.