Viwoods Firmware Version 3.11 (Full Review)

Current sub-version: 3.11.2

This page takes a deep dive into the firmware that is pre-installed on Viwoods e-ink tablets to help potential customers decide if Viwoods tablets have the software functionality that they need.

New in this version

• Added ‘todo’ to calendar
• File format filtering in book library (Learning)
• Screenshots in ‘Picking’ can now be organised into albums
• New AI models (Gemini 3.0-Pro and Qwen)
• Viwoods Files now supports browsing the entire Android filesystem
• Advanced Settings to configure system-wide Android settings
• Various other optimisations, improvements and bugfixes

In this latest update, Viwoods have introduced a ‘todo’ feature to the Daily calendar, which allows you to create text-based tasks (handwritten tasks in the calendar are still supported on a separate tab). Because they are text-based, ‘todo’ tasks are more structured than handwritten tasks. They can be set as ‘completed’ and have due dates. In addition, you can add a ‘todo’ item from other apps, such as Paper notebooks. You circle a handwritten tasks and select the option to add it to your todo list, and it will be converted to text and added to your list. ‘Todo’ tasks are shown onn the homescreen.

File format filtering has been added to the book library – you can now filter your books by ePub, Pdf, etc.

Screenshots in the ‘Picking’ library can now be organised into albums. And new AI models (Gemini 3.0-Pro and Qwen) are now accessible in the AI Chat.

Advanced Settings are now available, which means you have full access to the system-wide Android settings (just like any other Android device) rather than being limited to the settings menus that Viwoods provides. And you can also browse the entire Android directory structure in the Viwoods Files app (although functions like copying and moving files around the filesystem are not available).

These are the main improvements that stuck out to me, but (as usual with Viwoods) there were a lot more minor bigfixes, optimisations, and improvements included (see the screenshots above).

Operating system

The Viwoods firmware is, at its core, a custom launcher layered atop Android 13. That fact alone immediately differentiates it from more hermetically sealed e-ink ecosystems. Underneath the bespoke interface lies a full Android substrate, which means third-party applications can be sideloaded via APK files without difficulty. The Google Play Store is not configured out of the box; you must manually certify the device to enable it. The process is not especially arduous, but neither is it frictionless. It requires intent and a modicum of patience. This is not a tablet that assumes you want Google services – you must actively opt in.

The home screen is dominated by a left-hand navigation bar and a configurable grid of applets occupying the majority of the display. The grid layout itself can be adjusted in the settings, allowing different combinations depending on the type of information you want visible at a glance. By default, the interface is divided into six sections: Paper, Daily, Meeting, Learning, Knowledge Base, and Apps.

• The Paper section surfaces your two most recently accessed notebooks and provides a shortcut to create a new one.
• Daily displays your schedule and task list.
• Meeting mirrors Paper but is dedicated specifically to meeting notebooks.
• Learning shows your two most recently opened books or PDFs and includes an import button for new material.
• Knowledge Base presents your two most recent entries and the option to create a new one (I will discuss the knowledgebase in more detail later)
• Apps lists the eight most recently used applications on the device.

Tapping on any of the section headings expands that domain into its full application view. For instance, selecting Paper reveals the complete notebook library. This dual-access design is mirrored in the left navigation bar, which replicates the same sections as dedicated buttons, alongside additional utilities.

The top five buttons correspond to Paper, Daily, Meeting, Learning, and Knowledge Base respectively, each opening the comprehensive view for that category. Beneath these are system-level utilities:

• Viwoods Files (a file browser)
• Viwoods Discussion (a community website and help resource portal)
• the built-in email client
• a complete app drawer (showing all your installed apps)
• system settings

In the top-right corner of the display, the time, Wi-Fi status, and battery indicators are persistently visible. Swiping down from the top right with your finger opens the control panel. Here, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth toggles are available (long-pressing leads to configuration menus), alongside a manual refresh button. Notably, you can also trigger a manual refresh from any screen by swiping down from the top left.

Additional control panel options include:

• WLAN Cast: screen sharing via local Wi-Fi, accessible through a web browser, complete with QR code pairing for mobile devices.
• App Display: refresh mode configuration for third-party apps, including contrast adjustment and light-colour filtering.
• Memo: a shortcut to the memo application (will be explored later)
• WLAN Transfer: browser-based file transfer to and from the tablet
• Take a screenshot
• Toggle airplane mode
• Assistive Touch (see below)
• Toggles for the three capacitive bezel buttons (Back, Home, AI), useful if you want to disable them because you find yourself pressing them inadvertently while holding the device.

Sticking with the physical touch-sensitive buttons on the lower bezel, a long press on the Home button opens the task manager, showing all active applications for quick switching or closure. Holding the AI button activates voice input into the AI chat interface, converting speech to text.

Assistive Touch enables a floating ball that persistently overlays whatever is on the screen. This floating button provides rapid access to knowledge-capture tools, though I personally find it intrusive; it perpetually occupies a portion of the display and requires constant repositioning. I should say this is a personal bugbear – several eink brands offer this feature, and I disable it at the first opportunity, but I do know of several other people that find it useful. Fortunately, the same three capture functions (Crop, Annotate, and Record) are accessible by swiping down from the top right with the stylus, which I find far more elegant.

These three tools are central to the operating system’s philosophy:

• Crop allows you to select a region of the screen (for example, a paragraph from a web article) and then share it, send it to the AI engine for summarisation, convert it to text, or save it directly into your Knowledge Base.
• Annotate captures the current page and lets you write directly on it; the annotated screenshot can then be archived or shared.
• Record overlays a semi-transparent note-taking layer on top of whatever you are viewing, allowing concurrent reading and writing.

This triad of functions is extraordinarily powerful. Because they operate system-wide, you are not constrained by the limitations of any single application’s native annotation tools. Whether you are browsing the web, reading a PDF, or using a third-party Android app, you retain a universal method of extracting, marking, and storing information.

At first encounter, the Viwoods operating system feels intricate – perhaps excessively so. There is duplication in navigation (headings on the home screen and parallel buttons on the side bar) that seems superfluous. The separation of notebooks into regular notes and meeting notes, rather than consolidating them under one app, feels unnecessary. The distinction between finger-based and stylus-based swipe-down gestures from the top right – one opening the control centre, the other opening the knowledge capture tools – can also cause momentary confusion. It takes time to internalise the logic.

Yet beneath this initial opacity lies a remarkably sophisticated and cohesive system for note-taking, annotation, and knowledge aggregation. The learning curve is undeniably steep. But once acclimatised, the architecture reveals itself to be deliberate rather than chaotic. The OS does not prioritise simplicity; it prioritises capability. And when you finally ascend that learning curve, the breadth of functionality available at your fingertips is genuinely formidable.

Native note-taking software (Paper & Meeting)

The primary Viwoods note-taking application is called Paper. However, there is also a second note-taking app called Meeting, which is specifically designed for recording meeting minutes. Both occupy their own sections on the home screen.

Logically, I struggle to see why these exist as two separate applications. At their core they do the same thing: they are both handwriting notebooks. There are a few differences. The Meeting app includes templates designed specifically for meeting minutes and an AI command capable of generating structured meeting summaries from your notes. But conversely, it is also missing several tools that the Paper app includes. There is no second pen shortcut, no ability to insert images, no support for layers, and the toolbar cannot be repositioned. The interface layout is also different – the Meeting toolbar sits horizontally across the top of the page, whereas Paper uses a vertical toolbar on the left or right.

The only plausible justification I can see is organisational separation – keeping meeting notes distinct from ordinary notebooks. But even this feels unnecessary. The same outcome could easily be achieved within a single note-taking application using folders or tags. As it stands, the duplication feels somewhat artificial, and I cannot help thinking Viwoods would have been better served consolidating both into one unified system.

Notebook Organisation

Opening the Paper section presents a library view of all your folders and notebooks. Across the top are buttons for creating a new folder, creating a new notebook, searching, and sorting.

Running vertically down the left side is a navigation bar used for filtering notebooks:

• The first option shows both folders and notebooks together.
• The second removes folders and displays notebooks only.
• The third allows you to create notebooks based on PDF templates. This is particularly useful because it allows you to import multi-page PDFs (planners, forms, worksheets, etc.) and write directly on top of them while preserving any embedded hyperlinks. Viwoods provide monthly and weekly planners by default, but you can import your own PDF templates as well.
• The next option shows only favourited notebooks.
• After that comes locked notebooks.
• The final option filters notebooks by tags.

Long-pressing a notebook reveals a contextual menu with options to share, move, rename, lock, favourite, tag, or delete it.

The Meeting section follows broadly the same structure, though with a key omission: there are no folders for organising meeting notebooks. Filtering options are limited to favourites, locked notebooks, and tags.

One small design quirk I noticed concerns the vertical navigation bars. The notebook-management screens in both Paper and Meeting have their own vertical toolbar occupying the same physical space on the left as the main system navigation bar on the home screen. Visually they look quite similar, which can be confusing at first glance. If you tap the hamburger icon in the top left, the original system navigation bar slides out and overlays the app-specific one. It is not a major issue, but it does give the interface a slightly cluttered, layered feeling.

Creating and Using Notebooks

When creating a new Paper notebook, you are prompted to name it and select a template. There is a substantial selection of built-in templates, and you can add your own custom templates. As mentioned earlier, importing a PDF allows you to create a multi-page notebook from that file.

Some templates include a clever feature: a space at the top for writing a title. Once you handwrite the title, the system automatically converts it into text and uses it as the notebook’s file name.

Opening a notebook reveals a largely uncluttered canvas. A vertical toolbar sits along the left side of the page (although it can be relocated to the right), and the bottom-right corner displays the current page number alongside the total number of pages. Pages are navigated by swiping left or right or using page overview (see below).

Writing Tools

The toolbar contains a comprehensive array of note-taking tools.

At the top is the exit button. Beneath it are two pen shortcut buttons, which can be customised to quickly switch between your preferred pen tools.

Viwoods provide seven writing instruments, which is a respectable range:

• Calligraphy pen: produces thicker downstrokes and thinner upstrokes, creating a pleasant handwritten aesthetic.
• Fountain pen: lightly pressure sensitive.
• Ballpoint pen: similar pressure sensitivity to the fountain pen.
• Fineliner: consistent stroke width with no pressure sensitivity.
• Pencil: includes graphite texture along with pressure and tilt sensitivity.
• Highlighter: semi-transparent strokes that build intensity when layered.
• Thinkers Pen: a unique Viwoods tool with a slightly sketchy, marker-like texture, somewhat reminiscent of writing with a whiteboard marker.

For most pens you can choose between five stroke thicknesses and five greyscale colours (white, light grey, medium grey, dark grey, and black). The pencil retains its natural graphite appearance and cannot change colour. The highlighter instead offers grey, red, yellow, blue, and green (of course, on monochrome tablets the colours are not visible and are represented as grayscale shaeds, but when you export the page/notebook and view it on another colour-screened device, the colours are displayed).

Editing and Annotation Tools

Three eraser modes are available:

• Standard eraser
• Selection eraser
• Erase entire page

Undo and redo controls are also present.

The text tool allows insertion of text boxes onto the page. These can be typed using the on-screen keyboard, or you can write directly into the box and have your handwriting automatically converted into text.

Notably, this handwriting-to-text conversion is built directly into the virtual keyboard itself. That means it works anywhere text input is required – web forms, search fields, emails, and third-party apps etc. You simply write inside the text box and the system converts it into typed text. It is an excellent feature and because of it universality, surprisingly practical in day-to-day use.

Text boxes can be moved, resized, and edited. Long-pressing text reveals options such as copy, cut, paste, delete, or sending the text to the AI engine for further processing.

AI Processing

The AI button allows you to process the current page – or up to five pages – using Viwoods’ cloud AI interface. An internet connection is required, though a Viwoods account is not.

Several processing options are available:

• Analyse Content: generates a summary of the selected pages.
• Generate Email: drafts an email based on your notes.
• AI Text Conversion: converts handwriting into typed text.
• AI Assistant: sends the page to the AI engine and lets you input a custom prompt.

Viwoods also allow users to create and store their own custom AI commands, which can then be triggered with a single tap. For instance, if you typically write notes in one language but communicate in another, you could create a command that automatically translates your handwritten notes into English.

This system is undeniably powerful. However, the reliance on AI introduces limitations. The handwriting-to-text conversion can only process five pages at a time. If you want to convert a longer notebook, you must process it in batches. Other e-ink platforms often perform handwriting recognition locally using OCR, allowing entire notebooks to be converted in one action without requiring internet access.

Selection, Media, and Layers

The lasso tool allows you to select handwritten content or drawings. Selected elements can be moved, resized, copied, or cut. Handwriting selections can also be used to create calendar events or to-do tasks, with the handwriting converted into the event title.

Handwritten selections can also be:

• Converted into text boxes
• Sent to AI for summarisation
• Checked for grammar and spelling
• Processed using custom commands

The record tool allows audio recordings to be embedded directly into notebooks. Recordings can later be converted into text and inserted as a text box, or processed by AI.

Images can also be inserted from files stored on the device.

Notebooks support up to five custom layers. Layers function like transparent sheets stacked on top of one another, allowing you to separate elements such as sketches, shading, or annotations. The bottom layer is always the template, which cannot be edited but can be written over. Templates themselves can be changed on a per-page basis.

Page Management and Sharing

The page overview button displays thumbnails of all pages in the notebook. Long-pressing thumbnails allows pages to be selected, moved, copied, or deleted.

Pages or entire notebooks can be exported in PNG or PDF format and shared in multiple ways:

• QR code link
• Email
• Viwoods’ ViTransfer system (discussed later)
• Bluetooth
• Connected cloud drives
• Third-party applications

Notebooks can also be locked for privacy. When locked, their thumbnails are hidden from the library view and access requires a PIN or fingerprint.

Finally, the overflow menu includes options to rename the notebook, add new pages, share the notebook, or associate it with a specific date in the Daily calendar (more on this later).

Overall Impression

As mentioned earlier, the Meeting app is almost identical to Paper but with a slightly smaller toolset and meeting-specific templates.

Overall, the Viwoods note-taking system is extremely capable. The integration of AI tools offers powerful ways to process handwritten content and can streamline workflows dramatically for certain users. The ability to embed voice recordings and images also adds a layer of versatility rarely seen on other e-ink tablets.

The reliance on cloud AI for handwriting recognition does introduce some constraints – particularly the five-page processing limit – but even with that caveat, this remains one of the most feature-rich note-taking environments currently available on an e-ink device.

For users who want to transform handwritten material into structured digital information, the Viwoods system is arguably among the most powerful implementations on the market.

Native reading & annotation software

Tapping the Library icon on the home screen opens the Viwoods reading application, which displays all your ebooks and PDFs. You can arrange books into your own hierarchy of folders and subfolders, allowing for fairly granular categorisation if you have a large collection.

There are several filtering and viewing options available. Books can be filtered by file type – such as PDF, EPUB, MOBI, or AZW – and the display can be switched between a grid view or a list view. Sorting options include ordering by last modified date or title, and there is also a search function for locating books by name.

Long-pressing an ebook reveals a contextual menu with options to move, rename, or delete the file.

There is also a separate tab labelled Reading Notes, which lists all books for which you have created highlights or handwritten annotations. Tapping one of these books opens a list of all annotations and highlights associated with it.

Importing Books

Within the reading library there is a button to import new ebooks or PDFs. However, this method requires a Viwoods account and relies on the ViTransfer system.

That said, this is far from the only way to add books to the device. Files can also be transferred via USB, WLAN Transfer, Bluetooth, or even email. The limitation is simply that within the reading library itself, importing is restricted to the ViTransfer method.

Reading EPUB Files

Opening an EPUB presents a relatively straightforward reading interface. A toolbar sits at the top of the screen, while the current page number and total page count are displayed at the bottom.

Tapping the page number expands a navigation bar along the bottom of the screen, showing:

• The book title
• The current chapter
• Page numbers
• A slider for quickly jumping to a different location

There are also buttons for skipping directly to the next or previous chapter. Page turning itself is handled with a simple left or right swipe.

Annotation Tools

The toolbar includes several writing and annotation tools. The pen tool offers the same seven pen types available in the Paper note-taking app, along with the same colour and thickness options. There is also an eraser, plus undo and redo controls.

A particularly useful tool converts the stylus into a text-selection pen. This makes highlighting passages far more precise than trying to drag your finger across the screen. One limitation, however, is that selections cannot span multiple pages.

Navigation and Notes

Also on the toolbar is the table of contents button, which allows you to jump directly between chapters.

Next to this is the Reading Notes icon, which shows all highlights and handwritten annotations within the book. These two types of notes are stored differently:

• Handwritten annotations are saved as screenshots of the page, including your writing.
• Highlights are stored as text excerpts.

Long-pressing entries in the Reading Notes list allows you to select multiple items and perform actions such as renaming, deleting, or exporting them. Selected annotations and highlights can be exported together into a single PDF file. If you select highlights only, they can also be exported as a text file.

Exports can be sent to numerous destinations, including connected cloud drives, third-party apps, the local file system, email, Bluetooth, or via QR code.

Display Settings

The Display Options menu allows you to adjust the presentation of EPUB files. You can change the font size, choose between six font styles, and adjust parameters such as boldness, line spacing, justification, and page margins.

However, there is an important caveat. Because EPUB text is reflowable, altering display settings causes the layout to change. When this happens, any handwritten annotations you made directly on the page will disappear from the document itself. Fortunately, the original annotated screenshot remains preserved in the Reading Notes section.

There is also a bookmark tool, which allows you to mark pages and revisit them later. However, bookmarks display only the page number rather than any contextual snippet, so if you accumulate many bookmarks it can become difficult to remember exactly what each one refers to.

AI Integration

Another toolbar button opens the AI Assistant. This sends a screenshot of the current page to the AI chat interface, where you can input a prompt describing what you want done with it – for example, generating a summary.

Just like in the note-taking app, you can create and save custom AI commands, allowing complex prompts to be reused with a single tap. This can be particularly useful if you regularly perform tasks such as summarising pages, extracting key points, or translating text.

Reading PDFs

When opening a PDF, the interface remains largely the same, though certain tools change due to the fixed layout nature of PDF documents.

Instead of font and layout controls, the display menu provides options for:

• Zooming in and out
• Sharpening text
• Emboldening
• Adjusting contrast
• Fitting the page width to the screen

Because the text does not reflow, any handwritten annotations remain anchored to their exact position on the document.

PDF reading also includes an additional area-selection highlighter. Rather than tracing text line by line, you can draw a rectangular selection around an area of text to highlight it. This is particularly useful for complex layouts, such as columns, diagrams, or sidebars, where conventional linear highlighting can struggle. I consider this to be a very unique and useful tool that is not available on other platforms.

PDFs can also be viewed in landscape mode, which can be helpful for larger documents or technical material.

Text Selection and AI Tools

Highlighting text (either by long-pressing or using the stylus selection tool) opens a contextual dialogue with several options.

You can:

• Send the selected text to the AI engine for processing
• Run custom AI commands
• Translate the passage
• Look up a dictionary definition
• Copy the text to the system clipboard
• Share the excerpt
• Save it as a highlight

Highlights are then stored in the Reading Notes section.

Overall Impression

Overall, the Viwoods reading app is capable and well thought out, but (in my opinion) it does not quite reach the level of refinement found on platforms with particularly mature reading ecosystems, such as Kindle or Boox.

The core display settings are all present, but certain advanced options are missing. You cannot install custom fonts, nor can you adjust character spacing, word spacing, or paragraph spacing. Likewise, there are no advanced layout modes for PDFs beyond zoom and fit-to-width.

Where Viwoods does distinguish itself is through its AI integration. The ability to send passages of text, or entire pages, directly to an AI engine with detailed custom prompts opens up some genuinely powerful workflows.

The dictionary function is also implemented through AI, which brings both advantages and drawbacks. On the positive side, it allows for more expansive definitions, follow-up questions, and contextual explanations. On the negative side, it is slower than a traditional locally stored dictionary and requires an internet connection. For readers accustomed to instantly tapping a word and receiving an immediate definition, the AI-based approach can feel noticeably less immediate.

In short, the Viwoods reading app is solid and versatile, even if it lacks some of the polish and deep customisation offered by the very best native reading platforms. For users who value AI-assisted reading and text processing, however, it offers capabilities that few other e-ink devices currently match.

Ecosystem

One aspect of the Viwoods ecosystem that I genuinely admire is how little it forces you into creating an account. Unlike many competing e-ink platforms, a Viwoods account is not required to access most of the device’s functionality, and that includes the AI features.

I have been using Viwoods tablets for over a year now and, aside from testing purposes, I have rarely logged into my Viwoods account from the devices. Despite that, I can still use handwriting-to-text conversion, run AI queries, and access almost all of the system’s capabilities. Even the fingerprint scanner is not tied to a Viwoods account, which is refreshing in a landscape where many devices increasingly bind core functionality to cloud identities.

In practice, the only feature that appears to require a Viwoods account is the ViTransfer service, which allows files to be transferred to and from the tablet via the Viwoods website.

Internet Dependency

Although an account is largely optional, a persistent internet connection is not. The AI functions – which permeate almost every area of the system – rely on cloud processing. Without an internet connection, many of the headline features simply do not work. That is not to say you cannot use the Viwoods firmware offline – it’s just that features such as dictionary lookups and handwriting-to-text will not work until you reconnect.

There are also the usual privacy considerations associated with AI services. Any information you send to the AI engine may potentially be processed or stored on external servers that are geographically located in a different legal jurisdiction to your own, with different privacy laws. That is not unique to Viwoods – it is an inherent aspect of most cloud-based AI tools – but it is something users should be aware of.

ViTransfer

The ViTransfer system acts as a temporary file-transfer bridge between your tablet and other devices.

It is important to understand that this is not cloud storage in the traditional sense. Viwoods do not provide a built-in cloud service for backing up or synchronising your entire library across devices, as many other e-ink manufacturers do. Instead, ViTransfer functions more like a digital drop-box.

Files are uploaded manually and given an expiration date, after which they disappear from the service. You can adjust the expiry time, but it is clearly intended as temporary transfer storage rather than long-term backup.

To retrieve or upload files, you log into the ViTransfer page on the Viwoods website using your Viwoods account.

Third-Party Cloud Backups

While Viwoods do not provide their own cloud storage, they do allow integration with third-party cloud services, including:

• Google Drive
• OneDrive
• Dropbox

Once configured, the system automatically creates two folders on your cloud drive:

• Viwoods-Note
• Viwoods-PDF

The Viwoods-Note folder contains backups of your notebooks and annotations in the proprietary .note format. This format is primarily intended as a backup archive.

The Viwoods-PDF folder contains the same documents exported as PDFs, which means they can be opened on any other device using a standard PDF reader.

One particularly commendable aspect of this system is its breadth. Viwoods does not merely back up notebooks. It also backs up other parts of the system, including:

• Calendar entries
• Knowledge base items
• Memos

These are again stored both in their raw format and as PDFs. As far as I am aware, very few (if any) other e-ink tablet manufacturers provide such comprehensive backups of the entire device environment – having said that, most other e-ink devices do not have integrated calendars and personal knowledgebases.

Multi-Device Behaviour

However, the system has a notable limitation when using multiple Viwoods tablets.

Backups are organised into separate subfolders for each device, and documents are not synchronised between devices automatically. For example, if you create a notebook on the AiPaper, it will not automatically appear on the AiPaper Mini.

If you want to work on the same notebook across multiple devices, you must manually copy the file between the respective device folders. This works, but it is far less seamless than the synchronisation systems offered by other platforms.

File Management

Viwoods tablets include a built-in file browser that allows you to navigate the device’s storage. The interface provides folders corresponding to the main system apps:

• Paper
• Daily
• Meeting
• Learning
• Knowledge Base
• Memo

There is also access to the full Android file system and any cloud drives you have connected.

Long-pressing a file allows you to import it into the Viwoods system, but there are surprisingly few tools for organising files internally. There are no straightforward options for copying or moving files around the folder hierarchy within the file manager itself.

File Transfers

Aside from ViTransfer, files can also be transferred to the tablet using several other methods:

• USB cable
• Bluetooth
• WLAN Transfer
• Cloud drives

However, files that appear within the file system are not always immediately visible inside the native applications. For instance, a document placed in storage may need to be manually imported into the reading library or notebook system before it becomes accessible within those apps. This adds an additional step that can feel unnecessarily convoluted.

Overall Impression

The Viwoods ecosystem contains many features that users actively request from e-ink devices: minimal account dependency, third-party cloud integration, broad backup coverage, and multiple file-transfer methods.

However, the system is also complex and occasionally disjointed. File management, transfer methods, and backup mechanisms all exist, but they do not always feel elegantly unified. There are several parallel systems that overlap in purpose, and navigating them can sometimes feel a little messy.

My suspicion is that many of these features were implemented a little rapidly in response to user demand, which has resulted in an ecosystem that is powerful but not always entirely cohesive.

I will return to this point in more detail in the final verdict.

Other Native Software

On many e-ink tablets, the software outside of reading and note-taking often feels peripheral – small utility programs that exist more as a checkbox feature than as something genuinely useful. Viwoods take a noticeably different approach. Several of their additional native applications are tightly integrated into the system and, in some cases, form a central part of the workflow.

Two of the most important are the Daily calendar and task manager, and the Knowledge Base application.

Daily (Calendar and Task Manager)

Opening the Daily app reveals three different calendar views: monthly, weekly, and daily. Events can be created in much the same way as with any conventional calendar application.

You can enter event details using either the on-screen keyboard or the handwriting input built into the keyboard. A particularly nice feature is the ability to hold down the microphone icon and ask the AI assistant to create an event – for example, “Create a meeting with John tomorrow at 2pm.” The system will then open the event creation window with the relevant fields already filled in.

Events can also be synchronised with Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook, allowing schedules to remain consistent across other devices.

In addition to standard typed events, the calendar allows you to write directly on top of the monthly and weekly views. This can be useful for making quick annotations or reminders that you want visible at a glance. These handwritten notes do not synchronise with external calendars, but they remain visible on the device itself.

Beneath the calendar in both the monthly and weekly views is an area for tasks, notes, and linked documents. This area is divided into three tabs:

• Tasks: a vertical checklist where you can create task items using handwriting or typed text.
• Notes: a blank canvas for writing notes related to that specific day.
• Others: displays all Paper notebooks, Meeting notes, Knowledge Base entries, and Learning items associated with that date. You can also manually attach items to a particular day.

Within the tasks and notes sections you still have access to the usual tools such as pens, erasers, the lasso selection tool, and AI functions.

It is also possible to export a particular day’s tasks and notes as a PDF.

For many users, the Daily app can become a kind of personal activity log, recording both what has been done and what needs to be done. In my view, it is probably the best integrated native calendar system available on an e-ink tablet, and it can make personal time management remarkably efficient.

Knowledge Base

The second major native application is the Viwoods Knowledge Base, which acts as a repository for information collected across the device.

The knowledge base is divided into three categories:

• PickNotes
• VisualNotes
• AINotes

Earlier I mentioned the “picking menu”, which appears when you swipe down from the top right corner with the stylus. This menu provides three options: Record, Crop, and Annotate.

If you choose Record, a note-taking canvas appears over the top of whatever app you are currently using. You can take notes while reading or browsing, and the overlay can even be made semi-transparent so that the content beneath remains visible. These overlay notes are stored in the PickNotes section of the knowledge base.

The Crop and Annotate tools create full-page screenshots or selected screen regions that you can mark up with handwriting. These annotated images are stored in the VisualNotes section.

Finally, anything you choose to save from the AI chat interface is stored in the AINotes section.

PickNotes can be organised using hierarchical folders, while VisualNotes can be organised into albums. Currently, however, AI notes have no organisational tools at all. All three categories can be searched by file name, but the overall organisation options remain somewhat limited.

Individual knowledge-base items can be exported as PDF files, with the same sharing destinations available as in the note-taking app – cloud drives, QR codes, email, third-party apps, and so on.

The result is a kind of central repository for information that does not belong in notebooks or reading annotations.

However, there is a limitation. Items remain separated into their respective categories. For example, if you take a screenshot stored in VisualNotes and then generate an AI summary of that screenshot, there is no way to organise those two items together under the same folder or tag. While the knowledge base does centralise information capture, its organisational tools still feel somewhat underdeveloped.

AI Assistant

The AI Assistant is another core component of the system. It provides a chat interface that can be accessed either through the keyboard or via voice input.

Viwoods offer a surprisingly wide selection of backend AI models. At the time of writing these include:

• Three versions of ChatGPT
• Three versions of Google Gemini
• Two versions of DeepSeek
• Two versions of Qwen

That variety gives users a fair amount of flexibility depending on the type of response they prefer.

The same AI interface is deeply integrated throughout the system. When you perform a dictionary lookup while reading, the word is sent to the AI interface. When you convert handwriting to text in a notebook, a screenshot of the page is sent to the AI interface for processing. In effect, the AI assistant acts as a central processing engine for many different features across the tablet.

Memos

Viwoods also include a Memos application. From what I can tell, this is essentially a simplified version of the main note-taking system.

It lacks most of the advanced tools and integrations found in the Paper app and instead focuses on quick note creation. One additional feature is the ability to set reminders, which appears to be the primary reason for its existence.

Personally, I struggle to see the necessity of a separate memos app when you already have Paper notebooks, Meeting notebooks, and note sections within the Daily calendar. The reminder function could easily have been integrated into the main note-taking system. That said, some users may appreciate the simplicity of a lightweight note application.

Email, Browser, and Third-Party Apps

Viwoods tablets also include a basic email client, which can connect to Gmail, Outlook, Microsoft 365, or generic IMAP/POP mailboxes. It is fairly simple but perfectly functional.

There is also a basic web browser included for general browsing.

Because the system is built on Android, users are not limited to the built-in apps. After a short configuration process you can enable the Google Play Store and install third-party applications. Viwoods also include their own app store, which provides access to additional software and even alternative app stores such as APKPure and Aurora Store.

In addition, Viwoods ship their tablets with several commonly used reading applications already installed, including:

• Kindle
• Kobo Books
• Libby
• Marvel Unlimited
• The New York Times
• Bookshelf
• Wattpad

Of course, most of these require a third-party account or subscription.

Third-Party App Performance

Third-party applications generally run quite well on the device, within the natural limitations of an e-ink display.

Web browsing, for example, is perfectly usable. However, more demanding tasks, such as working with large spreadsheets or watching high-frame-rate video, will inevitably struggle (as they would with pretty much any eink tablet). That is simply a limitation of e-ink technology rather than the Viwoods hardware itself.

Viwoods provide several display refresh modes for third-party apps:

• Best Display
• Fast Mode
• Ultra Fast Mode
• Quick Refresh Mode

There are also options for automatic ghosting removal, contrast, and Light Color Removal.

These display controls are not quite as extensive as those offered by brands that focus heavily on running third-party apps, but they are generally sufficient for most tasks.

Overall Impression

Taken as a whole, the additional native apps on Viwoods tablets are far more substantial than what many other e-ink brands provide.

The Daily calendar, Knowledge Base, and AI assistant form a tightly integrated system that allows information to flow between different parts of the device in a way that feels unusually cohesive.

The Daily app in particular stands out as an excellent productivity tool, and the interoperability between the various applications is arguably one of the strongest aspects of the Viwoods platform.

Combined with the ability to install third-party Android apps, users ultimately have a very wide range of possibilities for how they choose to use their Viwoods tablet.

Final Verdict

Viwoods’ firmware is one of the most intriguing software ecosystems currently available in the e-ink tablet space. It is ambitious, feature-rich, and at times surprisingly sophisticated. But it is also imperfect – occasionally inelegant, occasionally overcomplicated, and sometimes clearly still evolving.

To understand the system properly, it helps to consider how quickly it has developed.

Since Viwoods released their first e-ink tablet in 2024, I have watched their firmware evolve at a remarkable pace. In roughly eighteen months, the development team has added an enormous amount of functionality. What began as a pleasant but somewhat limited system has grown into something that is now genuinely competitive with the major brands in the e-ink tablet market.

The speed of that progress has been nothing short of incredible.

Improvements to the AI integration, the Daily calendar, the knowledge capture tools, and the increasingly comprehensive note-taking environment have transformed the platform into something far more capable than it was at launch. Viwoods clearly listen to user feedback and iterate rapidly, and that willingness to evolve the platform is one of its greatest strengths.

However, that same rapid development also raises a slight concern.

My impression is that the focus has largely been on adding new surface-level features, sometimes at the expense of refining the underlying design architecture. As a result, parts of the system can feel a little fragmented – almost as though new capabilities have been layered onto the software faster than the structural foundations have been updated to support them.

A good example of this is the existence of two separate note-taking applications: Paper and Meeting.

When Viwoods first launched, this separation made sense. The two apps had very different feature sets and were designed for different purposes. But today the distinction between them is minimal. In practice, they are now extremely similar.

From a design perspective, it would make far more sense to consolidate them into a single unified note-taking application. Unfortunately, that is now difficult to implement because so many users already have their notebooks divided between Paper notebooks and Meeting notebooks. What once felt like a logical early design decision has gradually become an architectural constraint.

Despite these issues, the Paper note-taking app itself is excellent. It is comprehensive, flexible, and packed with useful tools. The integration of AI processing, voice recording, image insertion, layers, and text conversion gives it a level of capability that few other e-ink note-taking systems can match.

The Daily calendar app is another standout feature. It is one of the most thoughtfully integrated scheduling and task-management systems I have seen on an e-ink tablet, and the way it links together with notebooks and other documents makes it genuinely useful as a daily organisational tool.

The reading app is competent, though not quite at the level of the most mature platforms such as Kindle or Boox. It has the core functionality most people need, but lacks some of the deeper customisation options found on those systems.

The Knowledge Base is an especially interesting concept. The ability to collect information from across the entire device – screenshots, overlay notes, and AI responses – into a central repository has enormous potential. However, the current implementation still feels somewhat underdeveloped. Organisational tools are limited, and the inability to easily categorise related items together can leave the repository feeling disjointed.

There are also areas where integration could be improved. For example, it would make perfect sense to be able to send passages of text from ebooks or PDFs directly into the Knowledge Base, but currently that workflow is not supported.

More broadly, the user interface occasionally feels a little clumsy. Some design elements overlap, some navigation structures are duplicated, and in a few places the interface gives the impression that features have simply been bolted onto the system over time rather than integrated into a unified design framework. At times the firmware feels slightly like a technological Frankenstein’s monster – powerful, but assembled from many different parts.

It is good that Viwoods do not require users to have an account with them for the vast majority of software features they provide, even those that are cloud-based, such as AI processing. However, because AI is deeply embedded into many areas of the software, to get the most from any Viwoods device, users do need an Internet connection. And there are other potential issues with any system that relies upon AI – you will not always know where your personal information is being processed or if copies will be made. And the availability of AI services in the future is not guaranteed. AI is cheap for the end user at the moment but the costs to the provider are massive and at some point (once they have collated enough training data from users) it is very possible that costs to the end user will increase dramatically. This could potentially make the AI services we have come to rely on in our day-to-day lives no longer financially viable. In the event of this happening, Viwoods would be forced to either remove their AI services (taking away much of the functionality of their tablets) or charge users for the services.

And yet, despite these criticisms, I find that I genuinely like the Viwoods firmware.

The note-taking system is excellent, the Daily calendar is genuinely useful, and the AI integrations open up workflows that simply do not exist on most other e-ink devices. The reading app is solid, even if not class-leading, and the Knowledge Base, while still evolving, hints at something very promising.

Most importantly, the platform is clearly still moving forward at a rapid pace. Viwoods have demonstrated that they are willing and able to develop their software quickly, and if that pace continues there is every reason to believe that many of the current rough edges will gradually be refined.

In its current state, the Viwoods firmware is not the most polished e-ink software ecosystem available. But it may well be one of the most ambitious.

And if the development team can continue refining the architecture behind all these features, rather than simply adding more of them, the platform has the potential to become something truly exceptional.

Firmware overview

Reviews of Older Versions of Viwoods Firmware

My rating	Firmware version	Tablets using this firmware
	3.12 (current version) Jan 2026	Viwoods AI Paper Viwoods AI Paper Mini
	3.11 Dec 2025
	3.10 Nov 2025
	3.9 Sep 2025
	3.8 Jun 2025
	3.7 May 2025
	3.6 Apr 2025
	3.5 Mar 2025
	3.4 Jan 2025
	3.3 Dec 2024
	3.2 Dec 2024
	3.1 Nov 2024

Viwoods E-Ink Tablets

My rating	Item	Description
	Viwoods AI Paper*	10.65" monochrome
	Viwoods AI Paper Mini*	8.2" monochrome