Sony's 'Kindle you can write on' is the ultimate tablet for A* grade students

10-inch e-ink notepad is like an iPad Pro sent forward in time from the 1950s

Sony Digital Paper DPT-CP1
Duncan Bell
By Duncan Bell
published

Sony was one of the pioneers of e-ink/e-paper displays and it continues to back the technology to this day. The latest addition to the line-up of freakishly real-looking recreations of the printed page is the 10-inch DPT-CP1.

Monochrome and made for reading and – more to the point – annotating books and journals, it's a bit like what a sci-fi writer of the 1950s might have predicted the iPad Pro would look like. Or you could think of it as a very expensive Kindle with a PhD, that you can write and doodle in the margins of.

The slimline, “notebook-sized” 10-incher joins its older, 13-inch cousin to service all of your reading,  annotating and note-taking needs. 

It's less than 6mm thick and weighs only 240g (the 13-incher is the same depth but  weighs in at 349g. 

Sony's Digital Paper feels like writing on paper, with the included stylus having a choice of two tips – a pen-like one and an e-pencil. 

Bob Nell, director of Digital Paper for Sony Electronics – yes, that's a thing – says, “Now, with a choice of two models, more people can experience what we refer to as ‘paper perfected,’ enjoying the easy readability of the glare-free screen and precision handwriting associated with the paper-like look and feel of Digital Paper.”

And that really is it. A tablet may be more versatile, but using an e-ink display like this looks and feels much more like using paper. In Sony's native Japan, where calligraphy is still a widely respected art form, this probably seems more normal.

Sony Digital Paper DPT-CP1 in action

You can transfer files for annotation via USB or from Sony’s free mobile app for Android and IOS, or from PC or Mac. Then, 'on-the-go professionals and students' can scribble away to their heart's content. 11GB of usable storage (16GB in total), is enough for 'up to 10,000' PDF documents.

There's support for interactive PDF and Smart Forms, with forms easily filled out using drop down menus and checkboxes. The usual tools – auto-save, page jump, pan and zoom and automatic page rotation based on the aspect ratio of each document – are on hand.

As ever with e-ink displays,  there's no glare and it's easy to read even in sunlight, making the tablet suitable for very extended use. Also helpful in that area is a battery life of up to a week with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on, and up to three weeks with them off.

• 10-inch DPT-CP1 is available for pre-order now, priced $599.99 (no UK pricing to date). The mobile app will be available in June 2018 from Google Play and Apple App Store.

CATEGORIES
Tablets
Duncan Bell
Duncan Bell

Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years. 

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."


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