iFlyTek AINote 2 Review

Design & build

The iFLYTEK AINote 2 immediately commands attention through its physical refinement. At a mere 4.2 millimetres in thickness and weighing only 295 grams, it is not an exaggeration to say that this is the thinnest and lightest ~10″ e-ink tablet that I have ever reviewed. Its extreme slenderness gives it a certain ethereal quality in the hand, as though one were holding a polished slate of air rather than a piece of consumer electronics.

Visually, the device is elegant and understated, with a minimalist aesthetic that favours subtlety over ostentation. The body is primarily composed of plastic, which, while contributing significantly to its featherweight profile also imparts a degree of flexibility. This pliancy arises both from the material of the chassis itself as well as the plastic Mobius Carta e-ink panel, which is known for its lightness and resilience (but lacks the structural rigidity of glass-based displays). The result is a device that looks and feels refined.

To mitigate the otherwise utilitarian plastic finish, iFLYTEK has adorned the periphery with a strip of lustrous silver metal, which lends a subtle air of luxury and elevates the visual presentation. The corners are gracefully rounded, aiding both aesthetics and ergonomics, and the stylus neatly clips to the right edge via magnets.

The bottom edge hosts a USB-C port accompanied by a small indicator LED, responsible for both power and data transfer. On the top edge, a centrally positioned button summons the device’s voice-activated AI assistant (AIAide), while to the right lies the power/sleep button. The left and right edges are smooth and devoid of any ornamentation or functional intrusion, which complements the device’s clean, minimalist character.

A particularly interesting element of the design is the touch-sensitive “Quick Bar” that spans the entire lower bezel. This thin strip allows for gesture-based navigation – swiping left or right to turn pages, swiping inward from the left to open the AI assistant in text mode, or swiping from the right to open a quick notebook. It is an elegant integration of hardware and software.

Turning the device over, the rear panel features four rubber feet, one at each corner, which both prevent slippage and align neatly with the indents of the magnetic folio cover (see below). Additionally, a row of five POGO pins suggests the future availability of a keyboard folio.

In terms of build integrity, the AINote 2 is somewhat ambivalent. There are no obvious creaks or rattles, yet a distinct hollow resonance becomes apparent when tapping the lower half of either the front or rear panel – as if the thin exterior shell/screen momentarily and lightly rebounds against an internal component. The upper half, by contrast, sounds solid and composed. This subtle discrepancy does not necessarily imply fragility, but it does instill a faint sense of an imperfection in the build.

Aesthetically, I find it beautiful – slim, poised, and impeccably proportioned. It is a joy to hold in one hand for extended periods, and its lightness makes it very portable among large-format e-ink devices. Yet that very thinness did initially imparts a psychological delicacy; I found myself instinctively more careful than usual, as though the tablet’s own refinement demanded gentler treatment (it took around a week for the feeling that it might break in my hands to lift!). The auditory difference between tapping the top and bottom halves, though a minor quirk, slightly undermines the impression of complete structural cohesion.

In sum, the iFLYTEK AINote 2’s design is an impressive exercise in minimalism and material efficiency – a triumph of lightness and elegance, tempered only by the discrepancy in rigidness between the upper and lower halves of the tablet, and the occasional hint of (psychological) fragility that accompanies such extreme thinness.

Hardware specs

Internally, the iFLYTEK AINote 2 is equipped with a fairly conventional mid-tier configuration for an e-ink tablet. Its octa-core processor comprises four ARM Cortex-A72 cores and four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, clocked at 2.2 GHz. Complementing the CPU are 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage. There is no microSD slot, so users are confined to the onboard capacity for documents, notes, and local files.

To quantify its performance, I conducted three consecutive runs of Geekbench 6, taking the mean of the results. The AINote 2 achieved a single-core score of 321 and a multi-core score of 893. Relative to the broader e-ink ecosystem, these numbers place the device in the mid-to-lower performance bracket. It is not underpowered so much as unexceptional. These results suggest that while it should handle routine tasks without difficulty, more resource-intensive applications (e.g. resource-hungry third-party apps) may encounter bottlenecks or slower response times, particularly when multitasking.

The AINote does not utilise proprietary super-fast refresh technologies (such as Boox’s BSR and Bigme’s xRapid), which provide even smoother performance in third-party apps (often at the expense of battery life).

In practical use, however, the experience is more nuanced. The native applications (note-taking, e-book reading, and the general interface) remain largely responsive and sufficiently fluid. E-ink devices, after all, rarely require heavy computational throughput to function smoothly within their intended domain.

That said, I did observe intermittent sluggishness in a few specific scenarios:

• toggling Wi-Fi on and off,
• interacting with the email client, and
• when the AI assistant was generating output text.

These episodes felt more like software inefficiencies rather than deficiencies in the hardware itself. Given the modest Geekbench scores, the processor is certainly not a powerhouse, but the occasional delays seemed disproportionate to the load being applied. Future firmware refinements could likely mitigate these issues.

Overall, the hardware architecture is competent but not especially ambitious. It offers sufficient power for the activities that an e-ink tablet is primarily designed to facilitate, while the occasional performance hiccup, though noticeable, does not fundamentally compromise usability, unless you envisage a lot of interaction with the email client or AI chat.

Screen

The 10.65-inch display on the iFLYTEK AINote 2 is marginally larger than a sheet of A5 paper, which gives it a particularly amenable aspect ratio for reading long-form text, reviewing documents, and general handwriting. iFLYTEK has opted for a Mobius Carta e-ink panel, and this choice has clear implications for the tablet’s behaviour and overall personality. Unlike standard Carta panels, which rely on a glass backplane, Mobius panels use a plastic substrate. This renders the display considerably lighter and somewhat flexible, qualities that integrate well with the device’s exceptionally thin chassis.

Mobius Carta screens seem able to tolerate a slight degree of flex – more so than the brittle rigidity of glass – which (to me) makes them more robust and resilient although I know of no studies that back this up. Anecdotally, I’ve used a great many e-ink tablets and only ever suffered the pain of one broken screen – and that was a glass-based Carta (the Kobo Elipsa 2E). That said, one personal anecdote does not constitute anything resembling statistical evidence.

This display is a monochrome (greyscale) panel, and I find myself increasingly appreciative of this older paradigm. While colour e-ink technologies such as Kaleido 3 or Gallery 3 hold obvious appeal, they suffer from intrinsic compromises – most notably darker background layers which inevitably require the front light to be active in order to compensate. By contrast, the AINote 2’s screen presents a background that is strikingly white, even among its monochrome peers. The contrast between the background and the rendered “ink” is very vivid; text appears bold, dense, and sharply delineated. It is rare that I find myself pausing simply to appreciate the clarity of a monochrome panel.

The surface is touch-sensitive, accommodating taps, swipes, and the typical gestures expected of a modern e-ink interface. For stylus input, the device uses Wacom EMR, which remains – without hesitation – my preferred digitiser technology. The precision and the fact the stylus does not require recharging separately tend to surpass Active Pen solutions in writing feel and practicality in my opinion.

There is no frontlight, a design decision that may polarise potential users. For me, the omission does not register as a fatal inconvenience; the high contrast and low reflectivity of the panel make it surprisingly usable in environments that are only moderately lit. Still, it does mean the device is less adaptable at night or in situations where adjustable illumination would otherwise alleviate reading comfort. The frontlight omission also has some benefits – text feels closer to the surface of the screen, and writing feels on the surface rather than slightly below it.

Finally, the screen surface itself has a finish that imparts a modest resistance to the stylus tip. It avoids the overly slick glassiness that can plague some e-ink tablets, though I will elaborate on this tactile aspect in the next section on writing feel.

Writing feel

Writing on the iFLYTEK AINote 2 is, in general, a pleasant and engaging experience. The screen’s subtle texturing, produces a satisfying scratch as the stylus moves across it. The default nib is soft enough that it does not produce the hard tapping sound common to firmer tips, and there is a respectable amount of surface friction – enough to anchor the hand and prevent the unnerving slipperiness one sometimes encounters on smoother displays.

However, after using the tablet for a couple of days, I found the friction to be not entirely uniform. On occasion, it varies in intensity, momentarily becoming either slightly more resistant or unexpectedly smooth. The result is a mild sensation of the nib catching or dragging, not to the extent that it interrupts writing, but enough to make its presence known. After some experimentation, I traced this inconsistency not to the screen but to the included stylus. The nib has a tendency to flex slightly as you write, and this bending, along with a little wearing of the tip, produces a feeling reminiscent of a worn felt-tip pen – complete with a faint squeaking sound that reinforces the analogy.

Crucially, when I switched to a different Wacom EMR stylus, the inconsistency disappeared entirely, suggesting that the behaviour is an artefact of the bundled pen rather than the tablet’s digitiser or screen surface.

The software provides eight brush types, most of which implement pressure sensitivity. While this is commendable, I found the differentiation between the brushes surprisingly subtle. The ballpoint, fountain pen, fineliner, and gel pen all produced lines so similar in character that distinguishing them became more an exercise in observation than an intuitive experience. Even the paintbrush tool – typically more expressive on other EMR devices – had an unexpectedly subdued variation.

On the positive side, latency is minimal. Strokes appear with immediacy, and the ink feels convincingly close to the surface of the display, which enhances the feeling of writing directly on paper.

Overall, I would describe the tactile writing experience as very good – solid, enjoyable, and responsive. It may not reach the absolute pinnacle set by the very best e-ink writing devices, but it remains thoroughly competent and pleasant to use, particularly once paired with a more refined EMR stylus.

Hardware features

The iFLYTEK AINote 2 offers a respectable selection of hardware features, though its approach is somewhat restrained compared to the more lavishly equipped high-end e-ink tablets. What it includes, however, tends to be functional, coherent, and aligned with the tablet’s intended role as a reading- and writing-centric productivity device.

The device incorporates a competent microphone, which is used both for issuing voice commands to the AI assistant and for audio recording. The recordings are clear enough for meetings or quick voice memos. However, there are no internal speakers, which immediately limits the tablet’s versatility. Any attempt to play back recorded audio requires a Bluetooth headset or external speaker.

Connectivity is handled via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, both of which behaved reliably during my testing (although I did experience a slight performance bottleneck when turning wifi on and off). Bluetooth pairing with my headphones was smooth and uneventful. While the hardware should, in principle, support a Bluetooth keyboard, I did not have an opportunity to verify this in practice. The USB-C port on the bottom edge allows for charging and data transfer and works as expected, without any quirks.

On the back of the device, the five POGO pins remain an intriguing inclusion. Their presence suggests the future possibility of a keyboard folio, which would make considerable sense given the device’s productivity-oriented software. For now, they serve only as a hint of what may eventually be added to the ecosystem.

One notable omission is the absence of a G-sensor. As a result, the tablet cannot automatically rotate between portrait and landscape modes when physically turned. Rotation must be triggered manually via software. While not catastrophic, it is a feature that most modern tablets – e-ink or otherwise – include by default, and its absence feels slightly anachronistic.

The power button includes an integrated fingerprint scanner, providing a simple and effective form of biometric security. Adjacent to this is a dedicated AI assistant button on the top edge, which summons the assistant quickly without navigating through menus.

Finally, the touch-sensitive bar beneath the display deserves special mention. This “Quick Bar”, as iFLYTEK labels it, allows:

• a AI Chat interface to be invoked (distinct from the AI Assistant mention above which is invoked with the button)
• a quick-note pop-up window to appear, and
• page-turn gestures for reading or navigating documents.

Unfortunately, you can’t customise the operations behind the Quick Bar, and although I found the ability to open a Quick Note useful, I rarely used the AIChat because it wasn’t that good (in terms of both speed and quality), and the page scrolling was too finicky for anything with more than twenty pages.

Overall, the hardware features on the AINote 2 feel well-considered, if not lavish. There is enough here to create a cohesive and flexible user experience without straying into gratuitous embellishment.

Battery

The AINote has 4000mAh battery which is a decent size for a ~10″ e-ink tablet, but of course, the efficiency of the software is also a major factor of the battery life.

The table below shows how much battery is depleted by performing certain operations for an hour.

Test (1hr)	AINote2 (% battery used)
Note-taking	8%
Reading	1%
Wifi On	+1%

So, you could expect to drain about 8% of the battery per hour when note-taking, and 1% per hour when reading. Having Wifi turned on uses an additional 1% per hour.

I calculate typical battery life from these figures by assuming 3 hours of note-taking and 3 hours of reading each day, so you could expect to use up about 27% of the battery per day, which would give you about 3.7 days of usage before needing to recharge.

Comparatively, this is quite low down in the pecking order of e-ink tablets I’ve tested, primarily due to the power consumption of the native note-taking app.

Accessories

Along with the tablet, iFLYTEK also sent me a stylus and folio.

Stylus

The stylus supplied with the iFLYTEK AINote 2 is serviceable, though it falls short of excellence in several conspicuous ways. Its black, mostly cylindrical barrel is simple and pragmatic, with a single flattened edge designed to prevent it from rolling off a desk, and magnetically snap to the side of the tablet. On this flattened surface sits a side button, which defaults to an eraser function. A secondary action can be assigned to it, offering options such as a stroke eraser, selection eraser, or the Smart Pen (see my software review for details). Alternatively, the secondary function can be disabled entirely. Primary and secondary functions are triggered depending on how far away the stylus is from the screen when the button is pressed – if it is more than 1cm away, the primary function (stroke eraser) is invoked, and less than 1cm away switches to the secondary function.

At the opposite end of the stylus is a spring-loaded eraser. This mechanism introduces a very slight rattling sensation when the pen is shaken or moved, though not to an extent that becomes distracting during actual writing. The stylus measures approximately 155mm in length with a 9.2mm diameter, substantial enough to grip easily without venturing into the chunkier dimensions found on some EMR pens.

The stylus tip is rigid but soft, which prevents the sharp tapping noise associated with harder nibs. However, the softness is accompanied by a small but unwelcome degree of flex. As the nib bends during writing, it creates an experience uncannily reminiscent of a worn felt-tip marker. When the nib is new, this behaviour is merely curious; as it begins to wear down, it becomes actively detrimental. The friction against the screen becomes uneven, varying depending on the direction of the stroke, and it occasionally produces a faint squeaking or creaking sound. These small inconsistencies accumulate into a writing experience that is, at best, mildly distracting and, at worst, noticeably unpleasant.

The body of the pen itself is perfectly adequate – ergonomic, lightweight, and comfortable to hold over long writing sessions. Its issues stem not from the barrel but from the nib design and internal mechanics, which lack the refinement found in more mature EMR styluses.

Fortunately, because the AINote 2 uses Wacom EMR, the stylus ecosystem is vast and well established. A wide array of third-party and OEM EMR pens – many of which offer superior nib stability and overall build quality – are fully compatible with the tablet. Substituting the included pen with a more robust EMR stylus immediately restores the quality of the writing experience.

In sum, the bundled stylus is acceptable but distinctly uninspiring. It functions, but its nib’s eccentric behaviour undermines the otherwise solid writing performance of the device.

Folio

The folio accompanying the iFLYTEK AINote 2 is understated to the point of near anonymity, yet it possesses a quiet appeal that aligns well with the tablet’s own restrained design language. It consists of two rigid panels joined by a soft textile hinge, a configuration that allows it to open and close without resistance while maintaining a reassuringly stable structure.

The exterior is finished in a blue faux-leather texture, understated and pleasantly tactile without striving for any illusion of genuine leather. Inside, the material becomes softer, shaping a gentle surface against which the tablet rests. A small silver iFLYTEK logo in the bottom-right corner of the front cover is the only visual embellishment, and even this avoids ostentation.

The AINote 2 attaches magnetically to the folio, and the system is more robust than the folio’s simplicity might suggest. The four indents on the interior align neatly with the tablet’s rubber feet, allowing the device to snap into place with a firm magnetic pull. Once affixed, the tablet feels secure and is unlikely to fall free without deliberate effort.

There is also a small recess to fold the pen loop into, should the user prefer to keep it concealed. However, while the stylus can attach magnetically to the right edge of the tablet itself, the attachment is tenuous; the pen detaches quite easily. As such, the folio’s pen loop is the far more reliable option.

Despite its practical strengths, the folio does not exude a sense of luxury. It is functional rather than premium, favouring utility over embellishment. Yet, for me, this is part of its charm. The cover is remarkably thin and lightweight, mirroring the ultra-slim profile of the tablet and adding very little bulk or heft. It preserves the device’s portability without smothering it under layers of padding or decorative flourish.

I did harbour some initial concerns about whether such a minimal cover would offer adequate screen protection, given the AINote 2’s pronounced thinness. Thus far, however, the folio has held up admirably.

In summary, the folio is modest but effective – a practical, unobtrusive companion that complements the tablet’s aesthetic ethos without drawing attention to itself.

Software

My review of this tablet should be read in conjunction with my review of the current firmware (see table below), which includes aspects such as the Operating System, User Interface, and Native Apps.

The hardware and software reviews have been separated because the firmware used at the time that this review was written may not be the same firmware being used currently. This could result in the review quickly becoming outdated. Also, as several tablets may use the same firmware, this would mean going back and updating every single tablet review from a particular manufacturer to account for the new firmware. By splitting them up, if there is a firmware update, I am able to make the updates on a single page.

Current versions of this brand’s firmware are shown in the table below, along with the tablets running them.

My rating	Firmware version	Tablets using this firmware
	1.6 (current version) Oct 2025	iFlyTek AINote 2
	1.4 (current version) Mar 2025	iFlyTek AINote Air2
Older iflytek firmware versions may be found here

Brand

For some people, it is also worth considering the brand as whole, including aspects like customer service, ecosystem, values, and criticisms.

My full overview of the iFLYTEK brand can be found here, but I have provided a summary below.

Final verdict

The iFLYTEK AINote 2 leaves me in a somewhat paradoxical position: profoundly impressed by the hardware, yet with mixed feelings about the firmware that animates it. As a physical object, the device is an unequivocal triumph. Its astonishing thinness and feather-light weight give it an almost ethereal presence in the hand, and the minimalist industrial design – clean edges, elegant proportions, and that subtly luxurious metal trim – delights me every time I pick it up. The Mobius Carta display, with its unusually white background and excellent contrast, is precisely the sort of screen I gravitate toward: monochrome, unburdened by pixel-masking colour layers, and free of a front light. It renders text with a richness and crispness that is genuinely pleasurable, and for my personal sensibilities it strikes the ideal balance between visual purity and tactile restraint.

I am equally fond of the folio cover, whose understated simplicity complements the tablet’s design language without adding appreciable bulk. The stylus, too, is fundamentally competent, though the nib’s disconcerting flex and uneven friction do undermine what would otherwise be a satisfying writing experience. Performance from the octa-core processor is respectable rather than remarkable, yet it is entirely adequate for the native applications and for lighter third-party workloads. Battery life is similarly middling – neither stellar nor disappointing, simply serviceable. My one lingering hardware grievance is the hollow, slightly loose acoustic sensation that emanates from the lower half of the chassis when tapped; because this is an action one performs frequently on an e-ink display, the effect becomes a near-daily reminder of some internal component that feels insufficiently anchored.

Where the device falters is in the domain of firmware. The handwriting recognition is the central culprit: it ranges from inconsistent to outright poor, and because so many ostensibly innovative features depend upon it – the Smart Pen’s task markers, focus stars, and section headers, among others – its unreliability vitiates an entire stratum of functionality. Now, I’d be the first to admit that my handwriting isn’t the neatest, but feel free to judge for yourself in the handwriting-to-text conversion example below

The AI features, too, feel only half-realised. Voice commands are inconsistent, intent parsing is often clumsy, and response generation is slow and frequently superficial. While there are flashes of ingenuity throughout the OS, the overall impression is one of conceptual ambition hindered by uneven execution.

And there is a considerable reliance on online services for features like AI, OCR, and voice transcription/translation, which will be legitimate concerns for some users, both in terms of privacy (potentially sensitive information being sent to third-party servers) and long-term functionality (what if the services become unavailable at a future date?) Of course, if you want AI features, then you really have no choice but to send your data to a server for processing – the LLM models require far more processing power than is available on any consumer device. But, there’s no reason why handwriting and voice recognition could not be run locally on the tablet. In fact there is an option to download local language packs (English, Chines, Japanese, and Korean) for voice transcription, but these are accompanied by a “VIP” logo, suggesting that they may in the future be a premium feature that requires additional subscription costs (although this is just speculation – this is now a distinct possibility). The fact that every day I am confronted by a pop-up ad (which I can find no way of disabling) urging me to subscribe to a 90-day trial of additional cloud storage space kind of reinforces this previous point.

Thus, I find myself genuinely enamoured of the AINote 2 as a piece of hardware, yet hesitant to recommend it as a complete tablet experience. With more mature and coherent firmware – particularly improved local OCR, more robust AI behaviour, and greater systemic polish – it could become a superlative device in its category. As it stands, it is a beautifully designed tablet whose potential is constrained by software that is not yet commensurate with the elegance of its physical form.

Buying options

The iFlyTek AINote 2 can be ordered from:

• iFlyTek (direct)
• Some Amazon Stores

Technical Specs