On May of last year (2024) I published an article review of the TCL NxtPaper 40 (and also a video) listing its various pros and cons. And one of the cons I mentioned was that I found no use case for the NXTPaper color and B/W mode.
I wrote this in mind thinking that this was to be used for reading books and webtoons and I was right in that area. They do look better in the real mode rather than the NXTPaper mode which seeks to emulate the colors found in e-ink color ereaders such as the Boox Go Color 7 etc. So I dismissed the display change option as useless.
But now I’ve found that they do provide a use case- using the phone at night. Previously, I was using it in Real Mode and come night time, what I do is I go to Accessibility in the Settings and enable ‘Extra Dim’ and turn the knob to near the lowest setting. And while that’s nice, after 7pm its still a bit too bright.
Then I found that using the NXTPaper color mode helps because the light is dimmer while everything on the screen is still clearly visible. Only one flaw in this is that I can’t change the wallpaper– which is a pure white one. Having a darker background would have been so much better.
It has been more than year now since I’ve bought the phone and it is still easier on the eyes than other screens. I recently bought a second phone (regular OLED one) and I can absolutely tell the difference in using the two. Especially at night where I would definitely have eye strain while using the latter.
But performance wise it has degraded a little since I installed an update a few months ago. Now it lags whenever I open my gallery (which is full of videos and hig-res pics by the way) and scroll instagram reels. Watching videos on youtube or VLC is fine though.