Viwoods

The heart of the brand

It might be a little early to establish exactly what the brand is about – as they only launched recently, following a Kickstarter campaign. The campaign received quite a bit of kickback (no pun intended!) from people who believed it was all a hoax. In the end, though, Viwoods was legit and is definitely a brand to contend with.

I think the only reason people are hesitant to buy it, at time of writing, is that the brand is new. There is quite a bit of speculation online as to who is behind the brand. The general feeling is that it must be a player with some experience, as the product is more polished than one would expect from a Kickstarter campaign.

The \”differentiator\” – if one can call it that – is the dedicated AI button on the device. Some people love it, and some are just tired of every man and his dog using the AI label in hope of more sales.

Models

Viwoods AiPaper

The Viwoods AiPaper is a 10.65\” device. From a pure hardware perspective, the device seems to be even closer to paper than the Boox Go 10.3

It has the following features:

• The thinnest and lightest tablet in its class at 4.5mm and 370g.
• Just like the Boox Go 10.3, there is no front-light in order to bring the ink as close to the surface as possible.
• The writing feeling is reportedly very good. A key differentiator from the Boox Go 10.3 is that the software facilitates pen tilt (like a real pencil).
• The tablet features an e-ink Carta 1300 screen with 300ppi resolution according to the viWoods website. It should, therefore, have even better contrast than the Boox Go 10.3, but the amount of difference may be negligible. As soon as I have a Viwoods, I will supply a verdict. The strange thing about Carta 1300 is that the official e-ink website does not mention it!

Viwoods AiPaper mini

It seems like the AiPaper mini, differs from its older sibling primarily in size and it benefits from a front-light. The tablet has an 8.2\” form factor and weighs in at only 230g.

The front-light was likely added because this size of tablet lends itself very well to reading. As a result of the front-light, the ink-to-surface distance is 1400UM as opposed to 750UM.