The only problem for me - favouring smaller phones generally - is that the 60 is huge! It feels more like a notepad than a phone, frankly, especially when bundled with the 'notebook' style flap-over case and attachable silo for the pen. And that's intentional, I think. I do have this bundle here and have had it for some months now, snagged in an Amazon Prime Day sale last year. It remains for sale, even with the 70 in the mix, thus supporting the notion for me that they consider the 60, indeed, as their flagship. But it's a flagship 'phone' for that growing number of people who rarely, if ever, take phone calls any longer and want a scribing/reading pad.
I sent the 60 over to my friend Gareth Williams as he fancied a look, and you can read his findings on my blog via this link: Gareth Williams on the TCL NxtPaper 60 Ultra. I then sent the phone to another friend who doesn't have sight - Steve Nutt at CompRoom - as he wanted to test the phone and see what TCL were doing in terms of accessibility, under their skin on top of Android. His brief findings are as follows: “Everything worked normally, except for the launcher, which can easily be changed for Nova, or some other launcher that works. Basically, TalkBack Actions don’t work on TCL's launcher. Actions are where you can flick up or down with one finger to different options like Move Item, Remove, Uninstall, etc., and then double-tap the requisite option. So, to move items about on the screen, you have to long-press them and then you can move them. This worked. But I recommend anyone having one of these phones to change the launcher to one which does have these TalkBack Actions. All my general apps worked fine.” Do check out Steve's service via the link above, which caters in all sorts of ways for people without sight (or those partially sighted).
There's a new charging animation, which is neat; the addition of more home screen grid layout options (4x5 and 5x5); some 'deep sleep' and battery protection stuff; a bit of a refresh for their camera app UI; and some other tweaks here and there. Nothing to get too excited about, except that it's arrived at last - which is encouraging. A year after Google released Android 16 (who are now onto 17)! Nothing has been done about the lack of choice to merge the left/right pull-downs - Notifications left, Quick Settings panel right. An option to join them up, in the more traditional way like Samsung have now done, would give choice back to the user.
One way in which the recent updates have helped the phone, while it has been on its travels, is that the T-Pen works much more fluidly. When I was testing it a few months back, it was 'breaking up' on the screen, latency could be poor and certainly the 'edges' of the screen were not reliable to write on. In order to be sure of consistent contact/scribing, I had to stick to a middle 'oblong' at the centre of the screen. This was put down by the community as an issue to do with the fact there are magnets in the case and cover which interacted badly with the T-Pen. Even with the case/cover off, it still behaved badly because there are also magnets in the phone itself so that the cases/covers clack into place as they should.
There's a button on the side of the T-Pen. By default, press and hold to turn it into an eraser in their bundled TCL Notes app. You can also press and hold it while hovering so as to then use it on-screen as a selection/lasso - and if you hover over the screen in many apps, you get a pop-up context menu from which to choose functions. All this used to be customised in the phone's settings, but it seems that with Android 16, TCL have removed this menu and are relying on Google's built-in tools (like GBoard's write-in-text-field) or developers to build in functionality app-by-app. It seems very odd. Maybe it's a bug/mistake and they will bring it back with an update. But for now, yes, it very much depends on what app you're using. Perhaps this was another casualty of having fixed the magnets problem, as above.
TCL are after a display experience that provides genuine relief from eye strain. NxtPaper technology utilises Circular Polarized Light to mimic the way natural light reaches the human eye. By rotating light waves in a circular motion and integrating nano-matrix lithography, the display achieves exceptional clarity and vivid visuals that feel remarkably akin to reading from physical paper. Beyond its unique texture and feel, the device is anchored by seven core eye-care pillars - including zero flickering, blue light purification and anti-glare properties - all backed by rigorous TÜV and SGS certifications (whatever they are)! We get professional-grade colour accuracy during the day and TruePaper Restoration and dim-light protection to reach as low as 2 nits at night. And the screen smartly adjusts between the ambience to maintain a calm, natural and comfortable viewing experience. MuseFilm imaging technology is in the mix too, which apparently bridges the gap between high-performance digital displays and the soothing, strain-free readability of a traditional book.
This LCD panel obviously sets a high bar for eye comfort, they claim, but their move to OLED, as mentioned above, brings some trade-offs (assuming we ever see it beyond concepts at trade shows). OLED resolves the 'brightness ceiling' and contrast limitations of the LCD models, offering a jump in peak output to 3,200 nits while retaining the signature anti-glare, paper-like matte finish, they say. Crucially, this upgrade pushes the core eye-care experience even further, with Circular Polarized Light efficiency climbing to 90% and blue light emissions dropping to a minimal 2.9%. Even with the inherent challenges of OLED, TCL maintains its 'flicker-free' promise through a 3,840Hz PWM dimming rate, ensuring that the soothing, strain-free viewing experience remains intact. For people expecting a more mainstream media-consuming experience, rather than the compromise in muted colours, vibrancy, or HDR performance, the OLED advancement essentially offers the best of both worlds - the punchy, high-contrast brilliance of a flagship smartphone screen, with the gentle, natural light character that makes NxtPaper what it is on LCD.
First things first: the screen in the 'normal' mode is a delight to touch, look at and run the finger around. It does, with that top layer, make it feel very much like touching paper, with or without the T-Pen. It's smooth and silky, a bit like the 'paper screen protector' I have for my Samsung Galaxy Tab S8, but smoother/more subtle. It's amazingly bright at maximum - I have adaptive brightness on and am so often staggered to see that the slider is almost at the bottom! Compared to an OLED panel, one can get away with much lower brightness levels and still see what's going on very clearly, at least inside and away from direct sun. When you try that, you realise immediately that this is no e-ink/e-paper screen like a Kindle or Boox device. The latter simply get better with more light. This doesn't. It remains usable for me in bright sunlight, and often better than the average OLED screen (though these seem to now get brighter and brighter by the minute), so yes, it's a muted experience but I can still use it fine. This doesn't change really with the other modes, though you'll do much better reading in sunlight by not turning on the 'dark' option in the Max Ink Mode. In fact, that makes a huge difference.
There is reflection on the screen, but again, it's nothing like the average glass screen of most modern (or ancient) phones and devices. Holding this next to the latter shows very clearly that although reflections are not anything like as pronounced, they are still there - and if the light source is particularly bright (like the sun or an overhead lamp) you'll do better just moving it slightly off-axis from the direct line of light. It's hard to describe in words but, for the average OLED, I'd score reflectivity, generally, about 90% and with this, maybe 30%.
The slider switch on the side gets the user between the Modes: Colour Paper Mode, Ink Paper Mode, and Max Ink Mode. Colour Paper Mode is the least severe change and offers a 'colour ink display'. This knocks out the wallpaper, makes the background white, and offers colours throughout still, but they are muted - again, hard to describe in words, but very much like looking at a sheet of white paper and having coloured pens/crayons to draw on it. You retain access to all functions of the phone, as if the Mode were off otherwise. Perfectly usable, but you can't switch it to Dark Mode (that I can find) so it's white and bright! Ink Paper Mode is much the same as colour, except that everything's in mono. Again, wallpaper goes, turns white, no way to make it dark, just (even) easier on the eyes and even more battery-efficient. On either of these modes, video watching is acceptable (even somewhat enjoyable for a change in mono) though, yes, muted colours/shades of grey and nothing like a rich, saturated OLED experience (or even the main LCD one). But it's somehow quirky, different, and nice!
As an aside, the system can get confused with dark/light mode I have found. If you leap between the display modes a lot, the main settings' display setting, set to dark, I find in Light again. I think I have narrowed it down to Max Ink Mode. If you switch that to Light Mode, it applies it system-wide (and doesn't change it back when turning it back to dark inside Max Ink Mode). The same is also true (and even more broadly) with regards to Android's System Colours 'Themed' (or in TCL's case) 'Monocolour icon' toggle. Turn that on (which I like to do), switch over to Max Ink Mode (where they are not supported), back to normal mode - and the toggle is off. Furthermore, if you use a 3rd party Launcher of any description, make it the default, go to Max Ink Mode and back again and the system has returned you to TCL's own Launcher again. The Max Ink Mode seems ruthless in terms of system-wide changes once fired up (but more of that later).
Book(shelf) also has a Bookstore tab in the UI. This is not a 'marketplace' for reading material. You can't 'buy' books there. It's a curated repository managed by TCL. What is in there tends to be 'classics', public domain stuff or promotional content that TCL provides access to for free. Search for and download whatever you can find. It's a nice option for people starting out, for sure, who maybe don't have their own files. You do need to be signed into a TCL account (which is simple to do) in order to access the Book(shelf) repository, but for those who prefer privacy, they can bypass this feature and just use their own files. And reading on this screen, whichever mode one uses really, is just great. Not that far away from e-ink/paper except in the most challenging of lighting situations.
So the question is, does all that blurb actually work, I wonder? I have to admit that I've been using the phone for a couple of weeks now as my primary and I don't really notice any difference with eye strain or headaches. But then I didn't get them before! I'm probably not the best guinea pig for this. I know, I'll head online and see what those who do suffer are saying...
For users who experience immediate physical symptoms (migraines, blurred vision, burning eyes) when using standard high-refresh OLEDs, this technology is frequently described as a turning point. The most enthusiastic feedback comes from those who identify as PWM sensitive. They report that while other flagship phones - even those with high-end OLEDs - trigger headaches within minutes, they can use the NxtPaper for 5–6 hours without symptoms. These users often praise the combination of circular polarisation and the matte finish. They describe the experience as calm and soothing, explicitly noting that the reduction in glare and the softening of the light emission makes the screen feel less aggressive than traditional glass. Some users who are sensitive to light dislike NxtPaper precisely because of the matte finish. They find the haze or texture of the screen actually increases strain for them, preferring the sharpness of a standard glossy display. It’s a classic YMMV scenario really, where the physical structure of the screen works for some but acts as a distraction or visual irritant for others. A small group of users reports that it didn't solve their issues, often because their eye strain is linked to other factors (like blink rate or specific colour sensitivity) rather than just flicker or glare.
So it feels like a bit of a niche solution - it is built for a specific physiological need, not just for better display quality in the traditional, specs-chasing sense. The consensus among those who need it seems to be that it allows them to engage with tech in a way that feels healthier, even if the price is a slight reduction in display sharpness compared to a £1,000 flagship. If you, like me, don't really have symptoms to test with this stuff, you have to rely on others and, presumably, TCL's research done with people who suffer. I guess that if they weren't convinced, they wouldn't have got into the huge cost of producing devices globally with this tech inside. On the other hand, they might be banking on the "quirky difference from the norm" aspect in a world where handheld device innovation has somewhat plateaued. People are looking for something unique. LP records. Digital cameras. Compact Cassette tapes. Handheld gaming machines. Maybe that's cynical of me, though. As a side note, Honor seem to be working hard on this too, as described in other reviews here, but certainly working with OLED, unlike TCL, skipping the LCD stage. It'll be interesting to see where this goes, for sure.
There's no 3.5mm audio socket here, which is a shame as it was present on the 50 Pro - not that I need it! But yes, it does rely on Bluetooth or USB-C ear/headphones (or adapter for 3.5mm) which might feel surprising when the phone is clearly aimed at people who could well be consuming audiobooks as well as text. Having said that, as usual these days, Bluetooth (v5.4 here) is staggeringly good and, armed with the right accessory gear, can certainly pulverise one's eardrums! No complaints really. I think I'm over 3.5mm jacks, away from the desktop.
There are a surprising number of AI tools baked in here by TCL, something I'm not sure that I really expected from such a small player in the Android smartphone scene. I guess that they are tools which make it across to their excellent tablet lineup as well, so broader scope for their R&D for sure. It feels a bit like a Swiss Army Knife too. Text Assist, Writing Assistant, Smart Voice Memo, Real-time Subtitles, Smart Translator, Write a note, e-Signature, GIF Maker, Magnifying window, Recording, split screen and more. And TCL seem to have made the tools a bit more 'context-aware' than simply stand-alone apps. So Text Assist, Writing Assistant, Real-time Subtitles and Smart Translator are integrated into the UI. When the system detects you are in a specific scenario - like reading a PDF in a foreign language for example, or drafting an email - it injects these options into the active window’s action menu, so you don't have to head off, find the app, launch it and do any copy/pasting. I think many OEMs with an AI layer are doing it this way now and, although some may feel that it discourages control, more will be grateful that the tools are just there and they don't have to think/learn much.
The sidebar is editable/configurable and you can add pretty much what you like in terms of TCL's AI tools, apps supplied, or installed. It maxes out at 15 icons and can be configured to either be invoked by a handle on the edge of the screen or drag-in-and-hold. Tap anywhere on the screen to get rid of it. It's neat enough. We've seen it done better, but it's perfectly functional. At least it's not as dreadful as Sony's Side Sense! It’s a clean approach to AI, I guess, if not super intelligent and baked-in everywhere. Instead of filling your app drawer with loads of AI icons, they’ve tucked them into the places you might actually need/use them. You could argue, like with MotoAI again, that they're not really AI in a meaningful way, but rather 'macros'. Some of them are actually standard Android functions anyway, like e-Signature (which basically saves an image of whatever you draw and dumps it into one's default Gallery/Photos app) and Split Screen which have been around for years, and TCL is just bundling them together with an in-vogue AI Badge.
The camera setup on this 60 was a step-up from anything TCL have done before (or since) with the inclusion of a 3x optical zoom lens (and the claim of 6x lossless too by sensor-cropping) via the secondary 50MP f2.4 periscope and with OIS. Other than that, it's fairly ordinary with the main shooter another 50MP with OIS, this time with an f1.8 aperture. There's a wide-angle unit which is 8MP f2.2 and video shooting from the rear camera cluster is capped at 4K@30fps and 1080p@60. Round the front, the selfie is 32MP f2 and can shoot video at 1440p@30fps. The 6x cropped zoom seems to hold up well enough according to people who know, but it's no optical. Use the 3x and walk forward! Users seem to feel that despite strong hardware specs on paper, TCL's Achilles' heel is software optimisation. Reviews have pointed to issues with fast-moving subjects and poor focus speed. While the OIS helps, it doesn't entirely compensate for the lack of flagship-grade image processing that you'd find in something like a Google Pixel or Samsung Ultra. The 8MP ultrawide is the weakest link - a standard, budget-tier sensor that won't match the detail or dynamic range of the main 50MP shooter - or even get close. It’s fine for sweeping landscapes, but it's where you'll most notice the "mid-range" nature of the device. This is not a photographer's phone!
The Camera App's UI is nice enough. Very Apple, like most these days, with a big white button circle, middle bottom, and carousel of text-based buttons above it for changing modes. There is a 'Pro' mode in there which lets the user tinker with various settings; a Night mode which, as usual these days, pulls light from nowhere in exchange for noise; Horizon lock (which I think we saw on Honor phones) which is a kind of built-in gimbal, which kind of works but not 'live', only in the resulting video recording - then a bunch of gimmicky toys that supposedly optimise for different situations like light-trails, indoor concerts and the like. The document scanner seems to do a good enough job, saving to PDF or JPG and the 'Macro' defaults to 3x or 6x zoom. Results are decent enough but far from the closest shots I've taken on other phones. There's some more AI baked into the camera with scene detection and so-called intelligent mode recommendation, should you want to turn them on; what's becoming these days the 'standard' watermark option which is mostly an advert for the OEM really but, yes, some technical details about the shot, date, time etc.; gestures-to-fire the shutter; gridlines; levelers; the usual array of stuff. It's nice enough, but no real surprises.
The chipset used here is the MediaTek Dimensity 7400 (4nm) also found on a few Motorola phones I have reviewed over the last couple of years. It works perfectly well for all but serious gamers or people trying to do real heavy-lifting on a phone like video editing with more than a few frames/minutes. I've tested it with some lighter games - including Asphalt 9 car-racing - and I see no judder or break-up, even on this LCD screen. Sure enough, it's not going to be an OLED-like experience with bright, saturated colours that some might expect for gaming, but it copes just fine for most users, for most uses. Copying large amounts of data from my PC was fast enough but, no, clearly not like a device with a faster, more powerful chipset. But these tasks are often one-offs, getting data onto one's phone - or at most, periodic.
The chipset is supported by 12GB RAM (with the counter-productive option to double it using storage - why do they do that)! This unit has got 512GB storage, which is more than enough for me and, I'd argue, most people. In fact, 256GB would have been enough really - and this is also available in some regions. Unlike the 50, there's no microSD Card slot to expand the storage, but, as I say, I can't imagine most need to these days. The 512 and 256 both have 12GB RAM. In my testing, apart from the above caveats with regards to Max Ink Mode, apps stay open long enough - I saw no closedown at all, even when pushed!
So keen to get stuck into the T-Pen and NxtPaper stuff was I that I completely forgot to do any kind of unboxing or appraisal of the device physically, more than saying it's huge! So here we are then! In the box in the UK, I got the phone, obviously, a USB-C to USB-C cable, no charging brick, a SIM Card Tray tool, and some papers. Because I got the bundle, in another box I got the MagCase with T-Pen and T-Pen holder, which slots into the side of the inside portion of the MagCase. So the MagCase consists of three (or four if you count the T-Pen separately) parts: the case that actually attaches to the back of the phone; a T-Pen silo which, via some side-mounted slots, attaches to the side of the case attached to the phone; the T-Pen which slides into the silo (and eventually magnetically grabs it at the last stage); and the wraparound Notebook style Folio case which attaches magnetically to the inside case and has a flap which comes round the side with an elastic band to hold it all together. Thus proving, really, that TCL are expecting people to use this phone more like a notebook!
Very confusing! So, to clarify: the MagCase (Inside Case) is the slim back cover that snaps directly onto the phone. It contains a built-in, Qi2-compatible magnetic ring. Because the magnets are built directly into this inside case, it serves as the mounting anchor for everything else. The MagFlip Folio Notebook Case can't be attached without the inner case being in place. Because the inner MagCase mimics standard Qi2 magnetic array configurations, it opens up a wide range of universal accessories - Car Mounts, Wallets & Stands and so on. Just don't get a Qi2 charging device as there's no Qi charging of course! Anyway, back to the phone which is 174.5 x 81.2 x 7.6mm and 227g in weight. It has a glass front, plastic back, and frame. It's IP68-rated for dust and water.
The rest of the connectivity is good now; 5G and 4G do a good job with calls and data. My unit has one nanoSIM card slot and eSIM functionality for a second, but I understand that in some regions, the back side of the tray is not blocked so two nanoSIM cards can be used. But even then, you can only have two of the three active at any one time. Bluetooth range seems solid while I've been on walkabouts and I experienced no drop-out in range; WiFi I've tested on three routers and, again, seems solid to me; GPS too - locks on well in my location-based and mapping apps; and NFC does the job nicely between my enabled gear and buying my cheese down at Tesco! There's even an Infrared blaster included here, which, beyond testing, I've never used on any phone - I don't feel the need - but the IR Remote app offers gazillions of hook-ups with all sorts of devices (except for mine, of course)! So yes, there's that if you want it. The USB-C port is OTG, but only v2.0, so no HDMI-Out stuff available. Security is handled by the side-mounted, capacitive fingerprint scanner and face unlock. Both work very nicely so you can have fun seeing which one gets there first! Easy and straightforward to set up.
Incidentally, for more on the UI and options in menus please check out my review of the TCL 50 Pro NxtPaper (link is right up the top in the first paragraph) as much of it remains the same or similar enough not repeat everything here.
The phone leaps about in price quite a lot. On Prime Day it was £419 for this bundle. Then it was suddenly £599 at one point. It's now settled at £499 again, but if you want one, it might pay you to shop around and wait for deals. You can buy one without the T-Pen and MagCase and so forth, but that feels a bit like missing out on much of the fun of this! My one is Nebula Black, but there's also a Lunar White version out there.
However, if you view the 60 Ultra as a digital sanctuary tool - a notepad-sized device built specifically for reading, scribing and eye-health-conscious consumption - it starts to make much more sense. The NxtPaper display technology is the star here, offering a genuinely soothing, paper-like experience that lives up to its eye-care promises for many, even if it trades away the vibrant punchiness of an OLED panel. With the addition of a versatile periscope zoom lens and a comprehensive suite of "AI-elevated" productivity tools, it serves as a highly capable toolkit for those who want to disconnect from the always-on nature of modern glass-slab flagships.
The TCL NxtPaper 60 Ultra is a niche device for a specific type of user: the weary tech enthusiast who wants the power of Android but needs a break from the strain of high-refresh, high-glare OLED screens. It is a Swiss Army Knife of eye-friendly productivity, provided you have the patience to navigate its quirky software settings and the space in your pocket for its considerable footprint. It’s not for everyone - but for those it is for, there is simply nothing else quite like it on the market. (Thanks to my research assistant Gemma!)
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