Over the last week or so, we’ve seen the new M4 iPad Air start shipping, iFLYTEK unveil its latest AI-powered E-ink notebook, Amazon get surprisingly aggressive with Kindle Scribe discounts, and a laptop concept emerge that replaces the palm rest with an E-ink display.
Apple’s new M4 iPad Air starts shipping
Apple started shipping its newest iPad Air, after first announcing it in a press release on the 2nd of March. On paper, it looks like a fairly solid update, with the headline change being the chip.
The iPad Air now runs on Apple’s M4 processor.
That’s the same generation of chip Apple first introduced in the iPad Pro back in May 2024, and according to Apple it makes the new Air around 30 per cent faster than the previous model, and up to 2.3 times faster than the M1 version.
In practical terms, that should mean quicker photo editing, smoother work with large files, and less waiting around when you’re exporting video in your editor of choice. Apple also says the GPU now supports hardware ray tracing, which is more relevant to gaming and high-end graphics than to most iPad Air buyers, but it does show how absurdly powerful these tablets have become.
Memory has had a bump too. The new iPad Air now comes with 12GB of unified memory — or RAM, if we’re speaking like normal people — which is roughly 50 per cent more than before. That should help, especially now that iPadOS increasingly expects more from multitasking and AI features.
Connectivity has also been updated. The new Air supports Wi-Fi 7, and Apple has added its own updated wireless chip, along with a new cellular modem for the 5G versions. Apple claims the cellular model can be up to 50 per cent faster while also being more power efficient.
As before, the Air comes in two sizes: 11-inch and 13-inch. It still supports accessories like the Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard, so for anyone trying to use an iPad as a laptop replacement, those options remain firmly on the table.
What’s interesting is that pricing hasn’t changed. In the UK, it still starts at £599 for the 11-inch model and £799 for the 13-inch.
Apple seems to be positioning the Air as the sweet-spot iPad: not as expensive as the Pro, but now powerful enough for most of the same work. And frankly, that raises an awkward question for the Pro line.
I use an M4 iPad Pro myself, and I do everything on it, including video editing. So if the Air is now this capable, how many people really need the iPad Pro any more?
iFLYTEK launches the AINOTE 2 AI E-ink tablet
Last week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, iFLYTEK unveiled a new AI-focused E-ink tablet called the AINOTE 2.
The idea is fairly straightforward. It’s a digital notebook for meetings, research, and professional work, but with AI doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the background.
It has a 10.65-inch E-ink display with a 300ppi resolution, and the stylus uses Wacom EMR technology. The screen latency is said to be very low, so the aim here is to make writing feel as close to pen and paper as possible.
But the real selling point is the AI side of it.
The AINOTE 2 can record meetings and transcribe them in real time across 16 languages. It can also translate conversations into 11 languages on the fly. More usefully still, it can identify different speakers, so when you come back to your notes later, you’re not just staring at a giant slab of text trying to work out who said what. Handwritten notes can also be converted into searchable text in more than 130 languages.
Hardware-wise, it’s unusual too.
The tablet is just 4.2mm thick and weighs around 295g, which iFLYTEK says makes it the thinnest E-ink tablet in the world, with a Guinness World Records mention to back that up.
Inside, it runs Android 14 with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, and there’s a roughly 4000mAh battery which the company says can last up to two weeks, depending on how you use it.
There are some privacy-focused features built in as well. For example, transcription can run offline, meaning meetings can be recorded and processed without sending sensitive information off to the cloud.
That tells you a lot about who this device is really aimed at: executives, researchers, students, and anyone else who spends half their life in meetings trying to keep track of what on earth was just agreed.
Whether people actually want AI tucked inside a device category traditionally prized for being quiet, simple, and distraction-free is another matter entirely.
That, I suspect, will divide opinion.
Affiliate link - AINOTE 2
Kindle Scribe discounts are getting aggressive
If you’re quick, Amazon’s Spring Sale has thrown up a very decent deal on the original Kindle Scribe from 2022.
Normally, this device still sits somewhere around £360 to £380 depending on the configuration. During the current sale, though, it has dropped to roughly £230, which is about £130 off its usual price.
That’s a serious cut.
If you’re not familiar with it, the Kindle Scribe is Amazon’s large-format E-ink device with stylus support, built for reading, note-taking, and annotating documents on the same screen. It has a 10.2-inch 300ppi display, and at this price the bundle includes the Premium Pen, which normally sells separately for around £70.
You can write directly on PDFs, highlight books, scribble in the margins, or use it as a digital notebook. There are different templates too — lined paper, graph paper, to-do lists, and so on — and your notes sync back to Kindle apps on other devices.
And because it uses E-ink rather than a standard tablet display, the writing experience feels much closer to pen on paper than something like an iPad ever does.
Now, you might reasonably ask: why not just buy the newer 2024 Kindle Scribe instead?
That’s where it gets interesting.
The 2024 model is also discounted, usually to around £255 from roughly £380 and up. But in practical terms, the two devices are extremely similar. They both run the same software and offer the same core features.
The newer model mainly changed the border design around the display and started bundling the Premium Pen as standard. In day-to-day use, the actual reading and writing experience is basically the same.
Which means that if you’re looking for a large E-ink device this week, the 2022 Kindle Scribe at around £230 is probably the better buy.
At that price, it’s one of the cheapest large E-ink note-taking devices currently available.
And that is not something one says very often in this category.
If you’d like to check the Kindle Scribe out for yourself, both the 2022 and 2024 models, please use these affiliate links - Kindle Scribe (2022) / Kindle Scribe (2024).
Someone built a laptop with an E-ink touchpad. Sort of
Here’s the strangest thing I came across this week, and while I’m not convinced it will ever become a real product, it’s certainly memorable.
Compal Electronics has shown off a laptop concept that replaces the palm rest and trackpad area with a colour E-ink display.
Yes, really. The bit where your wrists normally go.
If the name Compal doesn’t ring a bell, that’s because it isn’t a consumer-facing brand. It’s an ODM — an Original Design Manufacturer — which means it designs and builds products that other companies then sell under their own branding. Firms like Apple, Dell, Acer, and Lenovo have all worked with manufacturers like this behind the scenes.
The concept is called the AI Book, and the idea is that the palm rest and trackpad area becomes a secondary interactive surface. Rather than being dead space, it could be used for jotting notes, sketching with a stylus, or keeping quick references visible while you work.
Because it’s E-ink, it can hold static information without constantly drawing power. In theory, that means reminders, notes, or notifications could remain visible even when the laptop is closed. The concept apparently includes a hinge mechanism that lets the E-ink panel flip outward, so that when the lid is shut, you can still see part of the display from the outside.
In theory, that could be useful for quick updates, calendar reminders, or notifications.
In practice, there is one rather obvious issue.
Laptop palm rests take a lot of pressure from wrists and hands while typing, and it’s not at all clear how well an E-ink display would cope with that kind of wear over time. So while it’s an interesting idea — and it has already picked up an iF Design Award concept mention — there’s every chance this stays exactly where it is now: as a concept.
Still, it points to something worth noticing.
E-ink keeps turning up in more places. Not just e-readers and note-taking tablets, but increasingly in odd little corners of the wider tech world too.
That’s all folks!
If you’ve spotted any other E-ink, Kindle or iPad stories I’ve missed, drop them in the comments or email me at markfromthespark@gmail.com.
And if you’d like to support my writing, you can always buy me a digital coffee. It genuinely does help keep this little corner of the internet ticking along:
Connect with me: X | Instagram | Threads
Subscribe to my YouTube channels: The Spark | The Weekly Spark
Buy stuff: Affiliate Page
