iFLYTEK Firmware Version 2.4

Current sub-version: 2.4.2 (and 1.8.5 on the AINote Air2)

Over the past several months, iFLYTEK has released a succession of firmware updates for its E-Ink tablets, adding new functionality, refining existing features and making numerous smaller changes to the overall user experience.

This review covers firmware version 2.4 on the iFLYTEK AINote 2 and version 1.8 on the smaller AINote Air 2. Despite the disparity in version numbers, the underlying software experience on the two tablets is remarkably similar. There are a handful of differences between them, which I will highlight where appropriate throughout this review, but there is sufficient overlap that maintaining two separate firmware reviews has become increasingly redundant.

Previously, I maintained individual firmware pages for the AINote 2 and AINote Air 2. However, with both devices sharing essentially the same operating system and much of the same functionality, keeping two near-identical reviews updated was becoming an unnecessarily laborious exercise. I have therefore consolidated them into this single review, noting any device-specific discrepancies as and when they arise.

It is also worth acknowledging that there is something of a gap between this review and my previous coverage. The last AINote 2 firmware I reviewed was version 2.1, and iFLYTEK has released several updates in the intervening months. Consequently, some of the changes discussed here may have been introduced in one of those intermediate releases rather than specifically in version 2.4.

Unfortunately, retrospectively establishing exactly when individual features were introduced is surprisingly difficult. On the tablets themselves, I can view the release notes for the firmware currently being installed, but once another update supersedes it, the previous changelog is no longer readily accessible. As far as I have been able to ascertain, iFLYTEK does not maintain a comprehensive public archive of historical firmware release notes on its website either.

For that reason, rather than attempting to reconstruct an incomplete chronology of every incremental update, this review concentrates primarily on the software as it exists today. I will look at the current interface, functionality and workflow of both tablets, highlight the differences between the two firmware branches where they exist, and discuss the features that I have found particularly useful, frustrating or noteworthy during my time using them.

Operating system

Both the iFLYTEK AINote 2 and AINote Air 2 run Android 14 and have access to the Google Play Store, meaning that third-party Android applications can be downloaded and installed directly onto the tablets.

As with any E-Ink device running Android, however, the presence of the Google Play Store should not be interpreted as a guarantee that every application will work well. Apps designed for conventional LCD and OLED displays can sometimes behave unpredictably on E-Ink, particularly when they incorporate animations, rapidly changing content or interface elements that rely upon colour. Some applications work remarkably well, some don’t work at all, and others are functional but not especially pleasant to use.

This is not a criticism unique to iFLYTEK; it is an inherent consideration with every Android-based E-Ink tablet.

To mitigate this slightly, iFLYTEK provides two display modes: Crisp and Fast. Crisp prioritises image quality and produces the cleaner of the two presentations, but refresh rates are considerably slower. Consequently, applications containing frequently changing screen content can feel ponderous and unresponsive. Fast mode makes the opposite compromise. Refresh rates are increased considerably, making movement and rapidly changing content appear more responsive, but image quality deteriorates and ghosting can become more conspicuous. Which mode works best therefore depends heavily upon the application being used and whether clarity or responsiveness is the greater priority.

Although iFlyTek offer a little configuration of refresh rates, other brands such as Boox and Bigme have even more granular control baked into their software.

Home screen

Although the tablets are capable of considerably more than handwriting, the entire interface feels unapologetically centred around note-taking.

The main home screen is essentially a comprehensive overview of your notebooks. A folder structure occupies the left-hand side of the display, while the larger area to the right shows the notes contained within the currently selected folder.

Folders and subfolders can be created, providing a straightforward hierarchical system for organising a substantial collection of notebooks. Notes themselves can be displayed in either a list or grid, filtered to show those that have been manually flagged as important or encrypted, and sorted according to title, last updated date or creation time.

Tapping a notebook opens it within iFLYTEK’s native note-taking application, which I will examine in considerably more detail later in this review. A long press selects a notebook instead, after which it can be moved, renamed, encrypted, deleted or uploaded to the cloud.

Search

Above the folder hierarchy is a global search bar, and this is one aspect of the software that I find particularly impressive.

Search encompasses content across the tablet, including notebooks, handwritten text within those notebooks and entries in the scheduling application. In my experience, it is both extremely quick and remarkably accurate, particularly when identifying handwriting.

An internet connection is required to get the most from this functionality, however, as some of the processing and indexing, particularly handwriting recognition, appears to rely upon iFLYTEK’s online services. Nevertheless, when connected, the ability to search for words that I have physically handwritten and have the relevant notes returned almost instantaneously is genuinely useful.

Navigation and shortcuts

Beneath the notebook folders are shortcuts to several of the tablet’s principal functions. These include the Schedule application and the native reading application, both of which I will cover individually later.

There is also an AI Support application, which can provide answers to questions about using the tablet, alongside access to the user guide. Additional shortcuts provide access to the email client, installed applications and system settings.

General navigation is predominantly gesture based. Swiping upwards from the centre of the bottom edge opens the task switcher, from which I can jump between currently running applications or return to the home screen.

There is also a touch-sensitive strip incorporated into the lower bezel that provides several useful shortcuts. Swiping inwards from the left opens a basic AI chat interface, while swiping inwards from the right launches Quick Notes.

I particularly like the latter. Quick Notes appears as a floating window over whatever application I am currently using, allowing me to jot something down without abandoning what I was doing. The window can subsequently be minimised and restored whenever required, making it particularly convenient when reading or researching something and wanting to make notes alongside it.

The touch-sensitive strip can also be used for page navigation. Sliding a finger left or right from its central area moves backwards and forwards through pages, providing an alternative to tapping or swiping directly on the display. Unfortunately, I found this method too fiddly and jerky to use, particularly with documents that had hundreds of pages – the tiniest movement propels you more pages forward/backwards than you want!

Control Centre

The upper-right corner of the interface displays the time, remaining battery capacity and Wi-Fi status. Swiping down from this area opens the Control Centre.

From here, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Miracast screen sharing and Airplane Mode can be toggled, while additional controls allow me to perform a manual screen refresh, capture a screenshot and switch between portrait and landscape orientations. There is also another shortcut to the AI Support application.

The Control Centre additionally contains a volume slider, although its usefulness differs between the two tablets. The AINote 2 does not have an integrated speaker, so audio output requires an external Bluetooth device. The AINote Air 2 does have onboard audio and can therefore reproduce sound without additional hardware.

The Air also has an integrated front light, something absent from the standard AINote 2. Controls within the Control Centre allow both the brightness and colour temperature of this illumination to be adjusted, ranging between colder and warmer lighting.

Finally, there are controls for configuring the default pen used throughout the system, including the preferred brush and stroke thickness.

Keyboard and text input

The virtual keyboard is another component of the operating system that I find surprisingly pleasant to use. It responds quickly to taps and feels considerably less cumbersome than typing on some E-Ink devices, where display latency can make even entering a few words feel laborious.

More importantly, conventional key-tapping input is only one option. iFLYTEK also provides handwriting-to-text and voice-to-text input, giving me several different ways of entering information depending upon what I am doing.

This flexibility is emblematic of the operating system more generally. Android and Google Play provide the broader versatility of a conventional tablet, but iFLYTEK’s own interface is clearly designed around handwriting, transcription, organisation and productivity. The result is an operating system that retains much of Android’s flexibility without simply feeling like a standard Android tablet transplanted onto an E-Ink screen.

AIAide

The AINote 2 also has a dedicated button on its upper edge that launches a feature called AIAide. This is essentially a voice-controlled AI assistant that can interact with certain parts of the operating system.

Some of its capabilities are genuinely quite useful. I can ask it to find documents or notebooks containing a particular word or phrase, request a summary of a specific notebook, or instruct it to add an event to my schedule. Being able to perform these actions conversationally, without navigating through menus or manually searching for information, has considerable potential.

Unfortunately, its capabilities are also rather inconsistent. Although AIAide can create new schedule entries, I have been unable to persuade it to amend or delete existing ones. When I attempt to do so, it behaves as though it does not understand what I am referring to, which feels particularly incongruous when it is perfectly capable of creating those events in the first place.

It can also be used to launch applications through voice commands, although my experience with this has been decidedly erratic. Some requests work exactly as expected, while others simply do not, and there is not always an obvious rationale for the discrepancy.

Consequently, while I can appreciate the potential of AIAide, in its current incarnation I do not find it dependable enough to become an integral part of my workflow. I occasionally experiment with it, but for most everyday tasks I find it quicker and more predictable to interact with the tablet conventionally.

Native note-taking software

Note-taking is very much at the heart of the iFLYTEK experience, and unsurprisingly, the native application is one of the most comprehensive components of the software.

One of the first things I noticed is the versatility of the canvas. Every notebook supports both conventional pagination and an infinite vertical canvas simultaneously. There is no need to decide when creating a notebook whether it should be paginated or infinite. I can swipe horizontally to move between individual pages, while a two-fingered vertical pan allows me to continue writing further down the current page. Pinch-to-zoom is also supported.

I really like this approach because it avoids an arbitrary restriction imposed by some other note-taking platforms. Sometimes I want clearly delineated pages, while on other occasions I simply want more space beneath what I have already written. With iFLYTEK, both approaches coexist within the same notebook.

Templates

The default template includes a dedicated title area at the top of the page. Anything handwritten within this area is automatically recognised and converted into text, which is then used as the notebook’s filename. It is a small feature, but one that makes creating and subsequently identifying handwritten notebooks considerably more convenient.

There are numerous alternative templates available, including lined, squared and blank paper. Custom templates can also be installed by copying PNG or JPG images into the appropriate template directory, while PDF templates can be imported as well.

Pens and writing tools

The main toolbar runs vertically along the left edge of the display, with the first option providing access to the brush selector.

There are eight ostensibly different writing tools: ballpoint, fountain pen, fine liner, gel pen, pencil, marker, paintbrush and quill. On paper, that sounds like an impressively extensive assortment. In practice, however, I think the quantity somewhat exaggerates the actual variety available. Several of the brushes produce remarkably similar results.

The ballpoint, fountain pen, gel pen and paintbrush, for example, have only relatively subtle differences in line thickness, pressure response and the characteristics of their strokes. The fine liner is similarly familiar, albeit without the pressure sensitivity of several of the other brushes. The pencil, marker and quill are more distinctive and produce recognisably different strokes.

Depending upon the selected brush, there are multiple stroke thicknesses available, generally starting at size 1 and going up to a range of something between 12 and 16 depending on the brush. However, there is no option to change the ink colour/shade.

The eraser is considerably simpler; either a (lasso) selection eraser, or an area eraser offering four preset thicknesses.

Typed text

Text boxes can be inserted alongside handwritten content, with text entered using the virtual keyboard discussed in the previous section. This also means that voice-to-text and handwriting-to-text can be used as alternatives to conventional typing.

On the larger AI Note 2, there is also the option of attaching iFLYTEK’s keyboard folio for more substantial typing sessions.

There is a reasonable collection of formatting controls for typed content, including three heading levels, bullet points, bold, italics, underline and strikethrough.

Smart Pen

The Smart Pen is one of the more distinctive aspects of iFLYTEK’s note-taking software. At its most fundamental level, it operates as a lasso selection tool and can be activated either through the toolbar or using the button on the stylus.

After selecting handwriting, I can reposition it, cut or copy it, convert the selected content into a task, or send it to the AI and ask questions about it.

Most of these functions will be familiar to anyone who has used a lasso tool on another E-Ink tablet. Curiously, though, some fairly conventional transformation options are absent. Selected handwriting cannot, for example, simply be resized or rotated.

Where the Smart Pen becomes considerably more interesting is through its recognition of three handwritten symbols: a circle, triangle and star.

Drawing one of these symbols and then writing immediately afterwards tells the software to treat the subsequent handwriting in a particular way. Text following a circle can be transformed into a task within the native scheduling application (more on that later…). Content following a star becomes a Focus item, essentially identifying it as particularly important within the scheduling system. A triangle is used to create a heading. This provides a convenient way of dividing a lengthy notebook into logical sections rather than leaving it as an undifferentiated succession of pages.

Page overview and headings

The Page Overview provides a vertically scrolling list of every page within the current notebook, making it substantially quicker to navigate larger documents than repeatedly swiping through them one page at a time.

Switching to the Mark view displays shortcuts for the notes generated using the Smart Pen shapes. As a result, these headings can effectively form a rudimentary table of contents for larger notebooks, allowing me to jump directly between different sections.

Recording, transcription and translation

Voice recording and transcription are areas in which iFLYTEK’s software becomes considerably more ambitious.

The recording tool can capture speech and transcribe it into text while somebody is talking – this happens in real-time as you speak. There are also facilities for translating between languages in real time.

These features ordinarily require an internet connection because the speech processing takes place online. This is worth bearing in mind, both because the functionality is dependent upon connectivity and because some users may have reservations about transmitting sensitive recordings to an external service for processing.

With iFLYTEK’s Pro subscription, which I will discuss in more detail when I cover the wider ecosystem, compatible language packs can instead be downloaded for local processing. This allows transcription to take place on the device without requiring an internet connection.

Once a transcription has been completed, the software can use AI to generate a summary of the recording, identifying the principal topic and extracting key points from the discussion. Different templates can also be applied to generate summaries suited to different types of content.

This combination of recording, transcription and summarisation is potentially very useful for meetings, lectures, interviews and other situations where simply recording the audio still leaves the considerable task of reviewing it afterwards.

Handwriting recognition and export

OCR can be used to convert handwritten notes into typed text, and there is an extensive collection of options for getting information out of the application.

Notebooks can be exported as PDF, Word or plain text files, while recorded audio can be exported as MP3. Naturally, plain text exports contain only the textual content, while MP3 exports are concerned solely with the associated audio.

For most export formats, I can choose exactly which pages of a notebook I want to include rather than being forced to export the document in its entirety.

There is also an interesting web-sharing facility. A notebook can be published as an online link protected by an access code, and an expiration date can be specified so that the shared content does not remain accessible indefinitely. Again, I can choose which pages are included before generating the link.

Mind maps

Another comparatively unusual addition is iFLYTEK’s mind mapping tool. This provides a dedicated diagramming environment for creating structured diagrams and flowcharts.

It will inevitably be more useful to some people than others, but for anyone who prefers to organise ideas visually, plan projects through interconnected concepts or construct hierarchical diagrams, its inclusion substantially broadens the note-taking application’s remit beyond straightforward handwriting.

Notebooks can also be encrypted and their contents searched, complementing the system-wide search functionality discussed previously.

Overall

Taken as a whole, iFLYTEK’s native note-taking application is exceptionally capable. There is an enormous amount of functionality here, ranging from relatively mundane features such as templates and text boxes to much more sophisticated tools for transcription, AI summarisation, handwriting recognition, task creation and mind mapping.

Not every aspect is quite as impressive as the feature list initially suggests. Eight separate brushes sounds considerably more exciting than it actually is when several of them produce very similar results, and the Smart Pen conspicuously lacks some elementary transformation tools such as resizing and rotation.

Nevertheless, I particularly like the way different parts of the software interact with one another. Handwritten content does not necessarily remain isolated within a notebook: it can become a heading, feed into your todo list, be found through a global search, be interrogated by AI or be converted into conventional text.

Combined with the freedom to use both paginated and infinite canvases within the same notebook, extensive transcription functionality and a substantial selection of export options, it makes for a versatile and unusually comprehensive note-taking environment.

Native reading and annotation software

iFLYTEK’s native reading application supports EPUB, PDF, TXT, MOBI and AZW3 files. There is also an integrated Office viewer capable of opening DOCX, XLSX and PPTX documents.

Opening the library presents three tabs across the top of the screen. Bookshelf contains imported e-books and documents, Office Center provides access to Microsoft Office files, while Bookstore contains a curated collection of public domain books that can be downloaded directly to the tablet.

Library management

The Bookshelf provides a reasonably comprehensive set of organisational tools. Hierarchical folders can be created to categorise larger libraries, and books can be displayed either as a grid or a list.

Files can be sorted alphabetically by title or according to when they were created or last updated. There are also filters for displaying particular file formats or showing only books containing reading notes.

There are several ways to get books onto the tablet. Files can be transferred over the local Wi-Fi network, copied across using USB or imported from the cloud.

Interestingly, Microsoft OneDrive can be bound directly to the reading application, making it the only third-party cloud storage service with native integration here. There is no equivalent facility for Google Drive or Dropbox. Of course, because the tablets have access to the Google Play Store, their respective Android applications can be installed and used to access files, but they are not integrated directly into the iFLYTEK reading application in the same way as OneDrive.

Reading

Once a book is open, most of the conventional features I would expect from an E-Ink reading application are present.

A progress indicator shows my position within the book, while numerous display controls allow me to adjust characteristics such as brightness, sharpness and contrast. For reflowable documents, there are additional controls for changing the font, text size, margins and line spacing.

The application also provides straightforward access to the book’s table of contents, bookmarks and text search.

Both EPUB and PDF documents can be written on directly using the stylus, with the same selection of pens available in the native note-taking application. This makes it possible to treat a document much more like its physical equivalent, writing comments or markings directly onto the page rather than being restricted entirely to digital highlights.

Highlights, excerpts and annotations

Long pressing on a word or passage selects it and opens a contextual menu containing options to Highlight, Excerpt, Inquire or Copy.

Copy behaves exactly as I would expect, placing the selected text onto the clipboard so that it can subsequently be pasted into another application.

Inquire provides something approximating conventional dictionary and translation functionality. I can select a word and request a definition or translation, but rather than consulting a locally installed dictionary, iFLYTEK processes the request using AI.

There are advantages to this approach, particularly when dealing with more complicated queries or translations, but for simple word lookups I actually find it inferior to a conventional offline dictionary. An internet connection is required, and there is a perceptible delay while the request is processed. Looking up an unfamiliar word should ideally be almost instantaneous, so the absence of a local dictionary feels like an unnecessary limitation.

There are three principal ways of making notes while reading: highlights, excerpts and handwritten annotations.

A highlight simply preserves the selected passage of text. Excerpts are more sophisticated. The highlighted passage is retained, but I can also attach a handwritten note to it, effectively providing a digital sticky note for adding my own thoughts or additional context.

Handwritten annotations are slightly different because they are image based. Rather than extracting my handwriting as text, the software essentially captures a screenshot of the page together with my handwritten markings.

There is a dedicated area for reviewing all of the notes associated with a document, and these can be filtered according to their type. Highlights are retained as text, handwritten annotations are image based, while excerpts can contain a combination of the original textual passage and a handwritten image.

This distinction becomes particularly relevant when exporting annotations.

Exporting reading notes

Reading notes can be exported in Word or PDF format, but there is also the option of exporting them as an iFLYTEK notebook.

I particularly like the latter because it creates a useful bridge between the reading and note-taking sides of the operating system. Rather than annotations remaining permanently siloed within the book in which they were created, they can be transferred into the native note-taking application and subsequently treated as part of my wider collection of notes.

For anyone using the tablet for research, studying or reviewing documents, this integration may make the annotation system substantially more useful.

Limitations

Overall, I find iFLYTEK’s reading application very capable, although it does not have quite the sophistication of the best native reading software I have encountered on competing E-Ink platforms.

One particularly conspicuous omission is advanced PDF cropping. There is no facility for intelligently cropping a PDF so that, for example, an individual column or particular section of a densely formatted page can occupy the entire display. This can make academic papers, magazines and other documents with complex layouts less comfortable to read than they would be with more sophisticated PDF manipulation tools.

The lack of an offline dictionary is another disappointment. AI-powered definitions are more elaborate in principle, but when I simply want to know what a word means, requiring an internet connection and waiting for a remote service to respond feels like an unnecessarily convoluted solution to a problem that conventional e-readers solved years ago.

Nevertheless, these omissions do not detract too heavily from what is otherwise a well-designed reading and annotation environment. Format support is broad, library organisation is good, EPUBs and PDFs can be annotated directly, and there are several useful mechanisms for extracting information from what I am reading.

Perhaps most importantly, the reading application does not exist entirely in isolation. The ability to export annotations into the native note-taking application gives it a meaningful connection to the wider iFLYTEK workflow, and for reading, annotating and subsequently working with documents, it provides most of the functionality I am likely to need.

Ecosystem

The iFLYTEK ecosystem is fairly comprehensive, but it is also comparatively insular. In terms of native cloud integration, iFLYTEK supports its own proprietary cloud service, which is used to synchronise notebooks and other information between devices.

There is no native integration with services such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive or Dropbox. Of course, because these tablets run Android, I can install third-party cloud applications from the Google Play Store and potentially use additional synchronisation software to transfer files between the tablet and an external cloud service. However, this is a workaround rather than an integral part of the operating system. If I want straightforward, automatic synchronisation of my iFLYTEK notebooks, I am effectively locked into using iFLYTEK’s own cloud.

There is also a rather significant restriction attached to the free service. If a notebook is not accessed for 50 days, iFLYTEK will permanently stop synchronising it with the cloud. In other words, a notebook that I create and then leave untouched for a little more than seven weeks will no longer continue to synchronise unless I subscribe to the company’s Pro plan.

Pro subscription

At the time of writing, iFLYTEK;s Pro Plan costs $6 per month or $60 per year.

The subscription removes the 50-day synchronisation restriction, meaning that notebooks continue to synchronise regardless of how frequently they are accessed.

It also unlocks offline voice transcription. As discussed earlier, transcription ordinarily relies upon iFLYTEK’s online processing, but Pro subscribers can download compatible language packs and perform transcription locally without requiring an internet connection.

Another benefit is access to a broader selection of AI models. The standard service provides access to GPT-5, while Pro expands the selection to include GPT-5.2, GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.5 Flash and Gemini 3.7 Flash.

Pro subscribers can also create text-based notebooks from the companion applications, which are available for both desktop computers and smartphones.

Finally, the subscription includes an extended warranty. iFLYTEK describes this as a “one-time replacement for repair service” within two years of device activation and during the annual subscription period. That appears to provide some form of replacement cover if the tablet develops a problem, although I have not examined the terms and exclusions closely enough to comment on precisely what circumstances are covered.

The subscription is therefore considerably more than an AI upgrade, but I am less enamoured with the fact that continued cloud synchronisation of older notebooks is one of the features placed behind the paywall.

This is something worth considering when calculating the total cost of ownership. Most E-Ink tablet manufacturers either provide an allocation of cloud storage without an ongoing fee, support external services such as Google Drive or Dropbox, or offer some combination of the two. iFLYTEK’s approach is considerably more restrictive, and anyone wanting to remain fully invested in its ecosystem may need to factor an ongoing subscription into the cost of owning the tablet.

AI Note companion app

The AINote companion application is actually rather good and extends a substantial proportion of the tablet experience onto other devices.

I can view synchronised notebooks from the app, including their associated voice recordings. Those recordings can be played back, while their transcriptions and any AI-generated summaries are also accessible.

Text-based notes can be created directly within the companion app and subsequently synchronised with the tablet. My calendar and tasks are synchronised as well, meaning that I can access my schedule and to-do list without having the E-Ink tablet in front of me.

This makes the companion software considerably more useful than an application that exists solely for transferring files. It feels like a genuine extension of the iFLYTEK platform, and being able to access notes, recordings, transcriptions, tasks and schedule information from my phone or computer makes the overall ecosystem much more cohesive.

Connectivity and privacy

One consequence of iFLYTEK’s emphasis on AI, transcription and cloud synchronisation is that many of its more sophisticated features are inherently dependent upon an internet connection.

This also introduces an unavoidable privacy consideration. Features such as cloud-based voice transcription and AI processing necessitate sending information from the tablet to remote servers for processing. Depending upon what I am writing or recording, that information could potentially be sensitive.

iFLYTEK does provide the usual privacy policies and legal framework governing how information is processed, but whenever personal information is transmitted to and processed by a third-party service, there is inevitably some additional degree of exposure. That is not an accusation that iFLYTEK is misusing data, nor is it a problem exclusive to its tablets. It is an intrinsic consideration with practically any cloud-based AI service.

Users working with particularly confidential material should therefore spend some time understanding what is processed locally, what leaves the device, and which services they are comfortable using. The availability of offline transcription through the Pro subscription at least provides an alternative for one of the more data-intensive features.

AI agents and skills

One of the most intriguing recent additions to the iFLYTEK ecosystem is support for connecting external AI tools through installable skills.

This allows compatible AI agents, including tools such as Codex and Claude Code, to be authorised to interact with information held within the iFLYTEK ecosystem. Once the appropriate skill has been installed and permission granted, these tools can search and read synchronised notes and schedules, as well as create and edit content.

Separate subscriptions or accounts may be required for the corresponding AI services, so their inclusion within iFLYTEK does not necessarily mean that they can be used without additional expense.

Nevertheless, this is a particularly interesting development because it moves beyond simply embedding an AI chatbot into an E-Ink tablet. Instead, iFLYTEK is beginning to expose parts of its ecosystem to AI agents that can potentially perform useful work on the user’s behalf.

I have not encountered this degree of AI agent integration on the other E-Ink platforms I have tested, and it gives iFLYTEK’s ecosystem a genuinely distinctive capability. How useful it ultimately becomes will depend upon the range of skills available, their reliability and how comfortable individual users are granting external AI services access to their notes and schedules.

Overall, the ecosystem is something of a dichotomy. The companion applications, transcription facilities, AI functionality and emerging agent integrations are sophisticated and, in several respects, genuinely innovative. At the same time, the proprietary nature of the cloud service and the 50-day synchronisation restriction make the platform feel unnecessarily restrictive.

There is therefore a great deal to like about the iFLYTEK ecosystem, but getting the most from it means accepting a comparatively closed cloud infrastructure and, potentially, another recurring subscription.

Schedule (Calendar) App

The Schedule app combines calendar functionality with task management and provides another example of how iFLYTEK attempts to integrate handwritten information with the wider operating system.

The application is divided into three principal sections: Calendar, Tasks and Focus Stars.

Calendar

The Calendar tab provides a conventional overview of upcoming events and appointments.

Google Calendar can be synchronised with the application, allowing events to remain consistent between the iFLYTEK tablet and other devices.Microsoft Outlook Calendar support is considerably more limited. Outlook calendars can be displayed within the application, but the integration is effectively read-only. Events created on the iFLYTEK tablet will not synchronise back to the Outlook calendar.

One feature I particularly like is the ability to create calendar events using handwriting. Within the Schedule area, I can simply write a time alongside the title of an event, and the software will recognise the handwriting and automatically create the corresponding calendar entry. It feels much more natural on a handwriting-focused device than repeatedly opening dialogue boxes and entering information with a virtual keyboard.

Each day also has a Memo area for handwritten notes. This is useful for information that relates to a particular day but does not necessarily warrant becoming a formal appointment or task.

There is also a Daily Summary feature that uses AI to generate an overview of the day’s schedule and tasks. It is another relatively small feature, but one that fits well with iFLYTEK’s broader philosophy of using AI to organise and interpret information rather than simply providing a chatbot.

Tasks

The Tasks tab provides a straightforward to-do list. New tasks can be created directly within the Schedule application and organised into categories, allowing related items to be grouped into separate collections.

More interestingly, tasks can originate elsewhere in the operating system. As discussed in the note-taking section, handwriting selected within a notebook can be transformed into a task, while the Smart Pen’s circle gesture provides an even quicker method of converting handwritten information into a to-do item.

I like this integration because it means that I do not necessarily have to interrupt my train of thought to open a separate task manager. If something I write while taking notes subsequently needs to become an actionable item, I can send it directly to the Schedule app.

Focus Stars

The final tab is Focus Stars. These occupy a slightly ambiguous position somewhere between a task and a reminder.

Unlike a conventional task, a Focus Star does not necessarily represent something that needs to be completed. Instead, I regard them more as important pieces of information that I want to keep prominent or remember.

Again, there is integration with the native note-taking application. Using the Smart Pen’s star gesture, handwritten information within a notebook can be transformed directly into a Focus Star and subsequently accessed from the Schedule app.

Overall

The Schedule app is not an extraordinarily sophisticated calendar or task manager in isolation, but I think that somewhat misses its purpose. Its real value comes from the way it interacts with the rest of the iFLYTEK software.

Handwritten notes can become tasks or Focus Stars, calendar events can be created by simply writing them down, individual days can contain handwritten memos, and AI can provide a summary of the day’s activities.

Consequently, the Schedule app feels less like an independent productivity application and more like an extension of the core note-taking experience. For anyone intending to use an iFLYTEK tablet as a digital notebook and day-to-day organisational tool, it is a useful and thoughtfully integrated addition.

Other native software

Beyond the note-taking, reading and scheduling applications, there are only a handful of additional apps pre-installed on the iFLYTEK tablets.

Email

There is a native email client supporting Gmail, Outlook and other IMAP mailboxes. It works perfectly adequately for basic email, but it is a decidedly rudimentary application and does not offer anything particularly compelling over the dedicated apps available through the Google Play Store.

In fact, if I am using a mainstream provider such as Gmail, I find it considerably easier to simply install the official Gmail app rather than spend time configuring the native client. The built-in application is there if you want it, and it does the fundamentals reasonably well, but there is little reason to choose it over a more fully featured alternative.

Files and Cloud Drive

There is also a basic Files application for navigating the tablet’s internal file system, alongside a separate Cloud Drive app for accessing files stored remotely.

As mentioned previously, native cloud integration is currently limited to Microsoft OneDrive. Google Drive and Dropbox cannot be bound to the Cloud Drive application in the same way.

Interestingly, iFLYTEK itself acknowledges this limitation within the Cloud Drive interface. When adding cloud storage, the software recommends installing OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox from Google Play to provide additional file and note management options.

This illustrates one of the advantages of having Google Play access in the first place. Although iFLYTEK’s native cloud support is restrictive, I am not entirely confined to what the manufacturer provides. I can install the respective Android applications for other cloud services and access my files through those instead.

Camera and Gallery

The smaller AINote Air 2 also has an integrated camera and consequently includes Camera and Gallery applications for taking and viewing photographs.

Images captured with the camera can be imported into a notebook or inserted into a PDF, which provides some useful integration with the rest of the software. Beyond this, however, the functionality appears fairly limited. For example, I cannot find an option to perform OCR on a photograph and extract its contents as editable text.

As a result, the camera feels more like a supplementary tool for capturing and inserting images than a fully integrated document-scanning system. It is useful to have, but I would like to see iFLYTEK make considerably more use of it within the wider software.

Third-party applications

And that is pretty much the extent of the additional software installed by default. Aside from iFLYTEK’s principal productivity applications, the basic utilities discussed above and the Google Play Store, the tablets are refreshingly uncluttered.

Google Play obviously changes the equation considerably because I can subsequently install whichever compatible third-party applications I require. As discussed earlier, compatibility on E-Ink is never guaranteed simply because an Android application can be installed, and some apps work substantially better than others.

Nevertheless, I prefer this relatively restrained approach to pre-installed software. iFLYTEK concentrates most of its development effort on the applications that define the tablet’s core experience, while Android and Google Play can fill many of the gaps for users who require additional functionality.

Final verdict

Writing a conclusion for iFLYTEK’s firmware is surprisingly difficult because, when I consider its individual components in isolation, there is very little that I actively dislike.

The note-taking application is very good. The reading application is very good. The Schedule app is thoughtfully integrated with the rest of the operating system. There are omissions, certainly. I would like a local dictionary in the reading app, for example, and something as elementary as being able to resize and rotate selected handwriting feels conspicuously absent from the note-taking application. But these are shortcomings within what are otherwise extremely capable pieces of software.

In other areas, iFLYTEK actually goes further than most of its competitors. Its transcription and translation capabilities are excellent, AI can be used to generate several different types of summaries, handwritten information can flow surprisingly naturally between notebooks, tasks and the calendar, and the emerging integration with external AI agents is particularly interesting.

There are therefore areas in which competing platforms are better, but equally there are areas where iFLYTEK is arguably ahead of them. On functionality alone, this is one of the most sophisticated E-Ink software platforms I have used.

And yet I still find myself slightly reluctant to recommend it above the very best alternatives.

I think the reason ultimately has less to do with the quality of the software and more to do with the ecosystem surrounding it.

The subscription problem

I am not fundamentally opposed to subscriptions. If an ongoing service provides sufficient additional value and incurs a genuine ongoing cost to provide, I have no objection to paying for it.

What I dislike is when relatively fundamental functionality becomes contingent upon maintaining an indefinite subscription, particularly when comparable products provide similar functionality as part of the initial purchase.

The most obvious example here is cloud synchronisation. iFLYTEK provides no native mechanism for synchronising notebooks with Google Drive, Dropbox or another third-party cloud service. For automatic notebook synchronisation, I am therefore encouraged to use iFLYTEK’s proprietary cloud.

That in itself would not particularly concern me. The problem is that notebooks which have not been accessed for 50 days cease synchronising unless I pay for the Pro subscription.

I struggle to see any benefit to the user in this restriction. Rather than imposing a conventional storage allowance, iFLYTEK has attached continued synchronisation to how recently I have opened a notebook. From my perspective, that feels like an artificial source of friction that conveniently disappears when I start paying a recurring fee.

Offline transcription raises a similar concern. The tablet is demonstrably capable of performing transcription locally because Pro subscribers can download the necessary language packs. The distinction is therefore not a hardware limitation. iFLYTEK has simply decided that local transcription belongs within its premium tier.

Again, that is the company’s prerogative, and some users may consider offline transcription sufficiently valuable to justify the subscription on its own. Personally, I do not.

My broader concern with this business model is what it means over the lifetime of the device. Once I become dependent upon proprietary cloud services and subscription functionality, the manufacturer has considerably more influence over my future ownership experience. Features can potentially move between tiers, subscription benefits can change and prices can increase.

That does not mean iFLYTEK will necessarily do any of those things. It simply means that I am more dependent upon its future commercial decisions than I would be with a platform where the functionality I purchased is predominantly included with the device.

I have much the same reservation about reMarkable’s subscription model. It is not something I am criticising specifically because iFLYTEK happens to do it.

The competition matters

This would be less consequential if iFLYTEK offered an experience substantially beyond anything else available. But the E-Ink tablet market is now sufficiently competitive that it does not exist in isolation.

Viwoods is perhaps the most pertinent comparison. Its software has its own limitations, and there are certainly things that iFLYTEK does better. iFLYTEK’s translation functionality is more sophisticated, its AI capabilities are extremely well integrated, and its ability to transcribe speech as it is being recorded is excellent.

Viwoods handles transcription differently, recording the audio first and processing it afterwards. However, it also provides functionality that iFLYTEK lacks, including local dictionaries, greater flexibility when manipulating selected handwriting and, in my opinion, a more sophisticated calendaring system. Plus, Viwoods provides a wide variety of AI LLMs out-of-the-box – with iFLYTEK, you have to pay the subscription fee for additional LLMs.

The point is not that one platform comprehensively eclipses the other. Quite the opposite. They are sufficiently close that the differences frequently amount to one manufacturer being slightly better in one area and the other having an advantage somewhere else.

And that is precisely where the subscription becomes important to me.

If two tablets provide broadly comparable software experiences, but one gives me its firmware functionality without an ongoing subscription while the other places some of its capabilities and unrestricted cloud synchronisation behind a recurring payment, I personally gravitate towards the former.

Other manufacturers take different approaches to cloud storage and synchronisation, frequently imposing storage limits rather than restricting files according to when they were last accessed. I find that model considerably easier to accept. A finite amount of free storage represents a comprehensible resource limitation; stopping an old notebook from synchronising because I have not opened it recently feels much more arbitrary. And the fact that I cannot switch to a third-party cloud drive makes it feel even more restrictive.

A very good platform with an unnecessary caveat

That leaves me in the slightly peculiar position of being impressed by iFLYTEK’s firmware while simultaneously feeling less enthusiastic about the platform as a whole.

Judged purely on its software, it is very good. The fundamental applications are capable, handwriting is deeply integrated throughout the operating system, transcription is a particular strength, and iFLYTEK is experimenting with AI in ways that are genuinely useful rather than merely attaching a chatbot to the interface and calling the device “AI powered”.

There is no single deficiency that makes me think the firmware is substantially inferior to the best E-Ink platforms. It is more a collection of relatively minor omissions combined with an ecosystem that asks me to accept compromises I do not necessarily have to accept elsewhere.

For somebody who makes extensive use of transcription, translation and AI, the balance may be entirely different. Such a user may genuinely value the Pro subscription and regard its annual cost as relatively inconsequential compared with the functionality it provides.

For me, however, the subscription does not currently offer enough additional value to make me want another recurring expense. More importantly, I dislike having unrestricted synchronisation and functionality that the hardware is already capable of providing placed behind that recurring payment.

That is ultimately the source of my hesitation with iFLYTEK. It is not that the firmware is poor. Far from it. In several respects, it is amongst the most accomplished software available on an E-Ink tablet.

It is simply competing in a market where “very good” is no longer sufficient to exist in a vacuum. When alternatives offer similarly accomplished software without creating the same degree of subscription dependency, that becomes part of the purchasing decision too.

So while there is an enormous amount that I admire about iFLYTEK’s firmware, I cannot quite shake the feeling that the software would be considerably easier to recommend if the ecosystem surrounding it were a little more open and the Pro subscription felt genuinely optional rather than the means of removing restrictions from an otherwise excellent platform.

Firmware Overview

Reviews of Older Versions of iFLYTEK Firmware

My rating	Firmware version	Tablets using this firmware
	2.4 (current version) Aug 2026	iFlyTek AINote 2 iFlyTek AINote Air2
	2.1 May 2026
	1.9 Feb 2026
	1.8 Dec 2025
	1.7 Nov 2025
	1.6 Oct 2025
	1.4 Mar 2025

iFLYTEK E-Ink Tablets

My rating	Item	Description
	iFlyTek AINote 2*	10.65" monochrome
	iFlyTek AINote Air2*	8.2" monochrome