Forget Kindle, TCL just made my favorite e-reader of 2025

I have an on-off relationship with reading. Every so often, I’ll go on a kick where I want to get my Goodreads numbers up for the year, and I’ll grab an unread title from my bookshelf to carry for a few weeks. In that same span, I’ll probably grab a title or two from the little free libraries that dot my neighborhood in Baltimore. Reading becomes my entire personality for a few hundred pages, and then I get bored.

I don’t mean to — I pick my books carefully and know that they’re within my wheelhouse, but I just run out of steam. To me, part of the problem is that I like big books (and I cannot lie). I’ll grab David Lynch’s Room to Dream, which has 562 pages, or Stephen King’s The Stand, with over 1,000 pages, and then I’m stuck carrying a paper brick for who knows how long.

And yes, I know that e-readers have long been a much more portable solution to my self-made problem — what can I say, I like the feeling of a paper book. But when the TCL NXTPAPER 60 Ultra arrived, I figured it was time to give digital books another try. I’m glad I did, because this might be one of my favorite gadgets of the year, and here’s why.

If you’ve read any review I’ve ever written, you know I’m not a big phone guy. I’d much rather have a 6.3-inch Pixel 10 than a 6.9-inch Galaxy S25 Ultra, and I don’t mind the sacrifices needed to get there. Keep your extra cameras, your built-in stylus, and your bigger battery; just give me a comfortable phone. However, there’s something almost reassuring, almost book-like about the 7.2-inch NXTPAPER 60 Ultra that makes me willing to overlook its size.

Actually, that’s exactly what it is — TCL went to enough lengths to make its most powerful NXTPAPER device feel like a book, so much so that I kind of forget it isn’t one. It’s around the equivalent of 100 pages thick (about 7.5mm if you want to get specific), yet it has space for thousands upon thousands of pages from my Kindle library. Pop on the MagFlip folio cover and the detachable stylus, and the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra feels more like a leatherbound journal than an oversized smartphone.

That’s enough batting around the basics of size and shape, though — there are plenty of other plus-sized phones out there with robust sets of accessories. What actually makes this beast worth using is its NXTPAPER 4.0 technology that you can control via the aptly named NXTPAPER Key.

On the surface, the treatment mostly looks like a careful anti-glare layer, simply making it easier to read what’s on your screen in bright daylight. In practice, however, the adaptive color temperature and brightness go much further, allowing the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra to adjust to the ideal warmth and brightness for wherever you’re reading. I’ve seen it fluctuate from the warmth of an aged book to the coolness of a fresh paperback, and drop as low as two nits while I’m reading before bed.

Of course, you might have to remind yourself (as I have) that this isn’t just an e-reader. Although I’ve spent the vast majority of my time with the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra in Ink Paper mode for novels like The Buffalo Hunter Hunter and All The Lies They Did Not Tell, where black and white is enough, I’ve also flipped the toggle to the Color Paper setting for more vibrant reads like Matty Matheson’s A Cookbook.

By the way, Ink Paper and Color Paper modes don’t just apply while you’re reading something — they completely change how you interact with the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra. You’ll get a simplified wallpaper and app icons in Ink Paper mode, with normally colorful apps like YouTube following along in sepia tones, while everything jumps right back to its standard appearance in Color Paper mode.

For those seeking the most extreme paper-like experience, there’s Max Ink. I haven’t spent much time with this one, mainly because it locks off access to social media, music players, and video calling. Yes, it comes with a pretty nice boost to the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra’s battery life, lifting it to as much as seven days, but it takes away from the best of both worlds convenience.

Oh, and because this is, indeed, a smartphone, it comes complete with a hefty camera bump on the back, which houses surprisingly capable sensors that I’ll talk about in a second, as well as an NFC chip and a full IP68 rating against water and dust. You certainly won’t find either of those on your Kindle Colorsoft, nor will you find a dual-SIM tray that can make the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra your only device, at least if it matches your carrier’s required bands (which is bad news for Verizon subscribers).

Right, so, as I said, the best part about using the TCL NXTPAPER 60 Ultra as an e-reader is that it does so very much more than that. As you could probably imagine, if your Kindle came with a camera of any kind, it would probably be a single 12MP or maybe 16MP shooter — basically the type of sensor you’d find on a tablet. However, because the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra is primarily designed as a phone, it dives right into the deep end with a triple-camera array and mountains of megapixels to work with.

And honestly, I didn’t expect to use the camera on the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra very much — I figured it would be a here-and-there shooter since I mostly read from the comfort of my couch or bed. But I made myself take it around my hometown for a quick post-Thanksgiving trot, and I’m happier with the results than I might have expected. I won’t give the quick samples our full review treatment, but know that you can get quite a lot out of this camera in a pinch.

I feel like the four snaps above do a pretty good job of covering the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra’s bases. I like the sharpness in the row of pumpkins left out on the sidewalk, while the moodier colors of the decorative star to the left give it almost a film-like look. I’m not exactly sure how I got that color profile out of it, seeing as everything was shot in fully automatic mode, but I’m not complaining.

The NXTPAPER 60 Ultra also offers several shooting modes that seem like they’d be more at home on much more premium camera phones. I’m impressed by its Horizon Lock and Stage mode, the former of which acts as an internal gimbal for steady footage, while the latter behaves kind of like the shooting mode on the OnePlus 13, reducing noise for clearer shots of live performers.

I have, however, noticed a hiccup or two while snapping away with the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra. For starters, the zoom doesn’t always adapt when I switch sensors. Once or twice, I’ve jumped from the 50MP primary sensor to the 50MP 3x telephoto sensor, only to find that my image preview remained fuzzy. I took a snap anyway to see if TCL would fix things in post-processing, but found no such luck.

Additionally, although the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra supports up to 100x zoom, I find it almost impossible to use effectively. I tried to lock onto text on a nearby train car, only to have it soften into a red and white blur. Then, I attempted to focus on a bell tower downtown, but could barely get it in frame once I surpassed 60x zoom. Don’t get me wrong, this level of zoom on a phone that starts at £339 (around $400 if you import it) is impressive, just maybe not quite enough to replace my Pixel 10 Pro.

I’ll also admit that when I’m not using the camera, I sometimes forget that the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra really isn’t an e-reader. I spend so much of my time locked into either the Kindle app or Google Play Books that I ignore the rest of what the phone can do. However, with a Dimensity 7400 chipset under the hood and 12GB of RAM at its disposal, there’s a lot more punch at play than you’d get from a Kindle Paperwhite or Colorsoft.

Actually, I suppose the new Colorsoft is the best comparison for the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra, as its full-color display handles things like comic books and cookbooks a bit better. Its unnamed chipset won’t run the same benchmarks we usually would on a phone, nor is its 16GB of storage terribly impressive, but it’s a Kindle with one job that it does pretty well.

So, while you could probably do quite a bit more with something like the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra in your pocket — scrolling social media, smashing out emails, and streaming the Thanksgiving and Black Friday football games — the advantage of a Kindle is that you can do it for like a month without charging. Amazon rates its Colorsoft for eight weeks between charges and its Paperwhite for 12 weeks, which really is tempting for a spotty reader like myself.

While I’ll probably one day grumble about coming back to the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra and finding it dead for all the on-again-off-again reasons I’ve mentioned above, it should take a while to get there. TCL rates its 5,200mAh cell for around 26 days of standby time, which is long enough to carry me through Christmas if I put it down right now and forget to keep reading. I’m not planning to do that, fingers crossed, but you never know.

If I do, at least TCL’s 33W wired charging will get me back up and moving much quicker than the Kindle Colorsoft’s 9W wired speeds. The 50% charge I get in half an hour with the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra plugged in is plenty to keep me reading for a few days compared to the two and a half hours I’d need to juice up a Kindle. Were I a more avid reader, I might be willing to bite that bullet, but I like my lesser commitment.

So, here I am, in a position I never expected. I’ve been so ride or die for paperbacks that I willfully ignored the convenience of an e-reader. And now, I’m telling you that the best thing to do is buy yourself another phone simply to use it over a dedicated device like a Kindle. I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t really believe in the TCL NXTPAPER 60 Ultra, and that’s saying something.

It’s not easy for me to reach for a screen and scroll through a digital library when the mystery and chance that come with browsing little free libraries are more appealing. I don’t like the feeling of carrying a book (or stack of books) that can die on me — it feels so counterintuitive. And yet, I love being able to slip one more device into my coat pocket without needing to leave something behind.

Of course, I should acknowledge that I’m not at all using the NXTPAPER 60 Ultra in the way it was designed. TCL would love for you to make this your only screen, and at £339 (about $400) for the base configuration, that’s not a bad value. Its cameras are good enough, its battery life is excellent, and its NXTPAPER Key is something you won’t find on other phones. However, its slightly dated software (Android 15 in late 2025) and limited band support in the US make it harder to recommend wholeheartedly.

The NXTPAPER 60 Ultra’s unique jack-of-all-trades positioning makes it challenging to compare to other devices. It’s quite a bit more expensive than something like the Kindle Colorsoft ($249.99 at Amazon), but it does so many more things. It’s much cheaper than Apple’s iPad Mini ($459 at Amazon), too, but you’ll get a better ecosystem and longer software support from the pocketable iPadOS-powered slate. Personally, I’d take it over either one, but I’m (impatiently) waiting for the day I can pop a SIM into a NXTPAPER phone and put this whole secondary device debate to rest.

For those in the US who do want a NXTPAPER phone, TCL offers the 60 XE NXTPAPER ($284.99 at Amazon), which is similar but not quite up to spec. It has a smaller battery, slower charging, and slightly older NXTPAPER 3.0 technology. I’d hold off until TCL brings its latest and greatest stateside, because the slight gap between the two goes a long way.