This page discusses the Viwoods brand of E-Ink tablets (e-readers that provide note-taking functionality by writing on the screen with a stylus).
Overview
+ Excellent returns policy
+ Very good customer service
+ Some smart and useful innovations
+ Good attention to detail
+ Have great potential
- Relatively new brand (unknown quantity)
- AI integration could mean future subscription costs
Viwoods are still very a relatively new e-ink brand, so they do yet have much of a brand reputation. This means that there is still a level of uncertainty about their long-term viability.
However, initial signs look very promising - they have integrated some unique (and useful) tools into their firmware, and their customer support is responsive and helpful.
Viwoods* are a relatively new e-ink tablet brand, bursting onto the scene in the latter part of summer 2024 with the AI Paper and AI Paper Mini.
As they are a Chinese company, and were funding the first wave of products through a crowdfunding campaign, I was a little dubious about their sustainability. Each year, I see several unknown Chinese e-ink manufacturers hit the market with lots of big ideas fail to materialize and then disappear into the ether, leaving their customers without whatever device they paid for, or with a poor-quality generic device that just has their logo slapped on it.
Viwoods seemed to fit this mold, so I didn’t really pay much attention to them. However, they did seem to be generating a fair bit of excitement within the community.
After a few months, I was getting a lot of calls from website visitors to review the AI paper. These reviews, along with signals that Viwoods would stick around for the long-term (e.g. putting effort into building out their website, quick and transparent communication with me to confirm product details, and gradual firmware development etc.) caused me to make contact with them to find out more. And they kindly sent me a review unit.
After reviewing the AI paper, I was even more convinced that Viwoods had the potential to become a major player in the e-link tablet market.
They are still a new brand without much publicly available history or reputation, which does lead to some risk and uncertainty, but there are also some very positive signs that they are here to stay.
Ecosystem
The current ecosystem only offers temporary storage on the Viwoods cloud. The idea is that it is just a transport medium so that you can move files between the tablet and other devices. All files stored on the cloud are deleted after 24 hours.
Therefore, there is currently no file synchronization or native method to backup your notebooks. In addition, there is no native support for third-party cloud drives, such as OneDrive, Dropbox, etc. However, it is possible to install the respective Android app for each cloud service.
Viwoods offers several useful services that interact directly with ChatGPT (e.g. for analyzing/summarising your handwritten notes). Although these features are currently free to the end user, Viwoods presumably still have to pay ChatGPT. This means there is a potential that, at a future date, Viwoods may have to pass of this cost to the end user (perhaps as a monthly subscription fee similar to Remarkable’s Connect subscription). Even if Viwoods feel that they can absorb the costs in their business model right now, there is nothing to stop ChatGPT hiking up the price of AI generation, leading the Viwoods brands to only be sustainable if these costs are paid for by their customers. It might never happen, but I feel it is something important to be aware of.
Customer Service
My interactions with Viwoods customer service team have been very good. I got a response for a simple support request via email in just ten minutes, which resolved my query efficiently. The reply was written in good English. It was polite and plain and simple (no superfluous, boilerplate marketing spiel, as some brands are fond of).
Security/Privacy Concern
One day during my testing of the Al Paper, I sent a file to the Viwoods cloud using ViTransfer, but I was unable to locate it from another device.
Whilst trying to figure our what had happened, I noticed that the Viwoods account logged into the tablet was not my own – it was an email address that I’d never seen before! All of my notebooks and other files on the tablet were still my own but the file I exported had presumably been sent to this other person’s Viwoods Cloud.
I immediately logged out and tried to re-login with my own Viwoods account, but was unable to do so, because the tablet was bound to this other account and I needed to type in the other user’s password to unbind it.
The next step was to email Viwoods support, who (to give them credit) responded very quickly and had fixed the issue within a couple of hours – they just needed my tablet’s serial number to bind the correct account to it.
Although I was happy that it had been swiftly resolved, I obviously still had concerns about data privacy and security, and requested further explanation (particularly as it had resulted in me inadvertently sending my data to someone else’s account – thankfully I knew it would be deleted in 12 hours, but nevertheless…).
The first response I received explained that a surge in users had caused the Viwoods server to crash, but that my data was safe because it is saved locally on the tablet and requires
manual action to export.
Needless to say, I wasn’t satisfied with this response. Whilst a surge in users could cause a server outage, it didn’t explain how my tablet had become bound to a random Viwoods
account.
Additionally, I did manually export a notebook because I didn’t realise that the bound account had changed (there was no visible notification of this change, until I went into the settings).
The second response I got from Viwoods was more reassuring. I’ve reproduced it below so that nothing is omitted or incorrectly paraphrased:
Hi Dan,
Thank you for your detailed response and for sharing your concerns.
1. You’re correct that a server crash should not lead to incorrect associations between accounts and devices. The issue arose when we activated our backup server during the crash. Unfortunately, some registration information was lost during this transition, which led to new accounts being incorrectly linked to devices that had lost their registration data.
2. Please rest assured that you are the sole owner of your device, and it has never been shared with anyone else.
3. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused by your file being uploaded to another user’s Viwoods cloud account. This is indeed a significant security concern. To enhance security, we will consider implementing a confirmation prompt before any data uploads, ensuring users verify their logged-in account. While we have addressed the major issues of incorrect account associations, this additional step will provide further reassurance.
4. Additionally, in light of this incident, we have decided to lift the requirement for users to utilize a Viwoods account for password, fingerprint, and file encryption services. This will allow you to choose whether or not to register for a Viwoods account without impacting your ability to use these features.
We appreciate your understanding and patience as we work to improve our systems and protocols.
Best regards,
Although this experience was very concerning, Viwoods were very quick to respond and fix the issue. They also acknowledged the concern, fixed the underlying issue, and appear to be learning from it and improving their security. However, it is obviously still very worrying that this could happen in the first place.
Tablets
As a relatively new brand, there are only two tablets in Viwoods product range.
| My rating | Item | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Viwoods AI Paper* | 10.65" monochrome | |
| Viwoods AI Paper Mini* | 8.2" monochrome | |
| Older Viwoods tablets may be found here | ||
Firmware
Despite being new on the scene, Viwoods firmware is very good.
It has some unique features (particularly related to AI for analyzing/summarizing handwriting) that I’ve not seen before and believe have a lot of potential.
The user interface is also decent; however, it is still a little limited compared to the bigger players on the market. But this is more a case of more time being needed rather than a lack of effort. It is really very impressive what Viwoods have managed to achieve in such a short space of time!
| My rating | Firmware version | Tablets using this firmware |
|---|---|---|
| 3.9 (current version) Sep 2025 | Viwoods AI Paper Viwoods AI Paper Mini | |
| Older Viwoods firmware versions may be found here | ||
Buying options
Currently, Viwoods tablets are available from:
