The best tablets with paper-like (nano-texture) screens

Nano-texture glass is not exclusive to iPad displays: many tablets have a matte, paper-like screen, and most of them are much cheaper than Apple’s iPad Pro.

Each brand has its own name for it: nano-texture (Apple), PaperMatte (Huawei), NXTPAPER (TCL), Paperlike (Honor), Matte Display Edition (OPPO), “soft light” (Xiaomi, vivo and Honor in China). All of them do the same thing: a finely etched or coated surface scatters the light of lamps and windows, so the screen shows no mirror image. In this article, we are only interested in these matte screens, not in glossy screens with an anti-reflective coating, such as Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S10 and S11 (more on this below).

Here is the list of all tablets with matte screens available in October 2026, starting with those with the largest displays.

The table lists every tablet with a matte screen that we found, sorted by screen size. “Option” means that the tablet is also sold with a glossy screen. Prices are the makers’ launch or recommended prices (October 2026), not Amazon prices. Models sold only in China are marked “China / import”: they usually have no Google services and Chinese software.

In October 2026, ten tablets with a screen of 13 inches or more are available with a matte screen. Only five of them are sold outside China, and only two in the United States and Canada: the TCL NXTPAPER 14 and the 13-inch iPad Pro.

Unfortunately, the largest tablet with a paper-like display isn’t available worldwide. Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Africa are the announced regions where the TCL NxtPaper is sold, North America is missing from the list.

I don’t understand why this model is not available in North America, as other (in my opinon less interesting) TCL tablets are being sold in the US and Canada.

Let’s hope that the successor of the NxtPaper 14 (which may be called the NxtPaper 14 Plus) will be released worldwide!

Huawei calls its matte glass PaperMatte. According to Huawei, it is made by “high-precision nano-level etching”; the third generation (2025) adds a light-diffusing film under the cover glass to reduce the grainy look of earlier versions (Huawei Central).

The MatePad Pro 13.2 (2025) has a 13.2-inch 2880 × 1920 OLED screen at 144 Hz; in Europe, it is only sold with PaperMatte glass. In 2026, Huawei released its successor, the MatePad Pro Max: same size, 3000 × 2000 pixels, only 4.7 mm thin and 509 g with PaperMatte glass, which is optional here (in Germany, the PaperMatte version costs more and comes with the keyboard). Outside China, both run HarmonyOS 4, which runs Android apps but has no Google services (Huawei, Notebookcheck).

The other large tablets with a matte screen are harder to buy:

• Huawei MatePad Edge (14.2 inches, OLED, China only): optional “Soft Light” matte screen. It runs HarmonyOS 5 (HarmonyOS NEXT), which runs no Android apps at all.
• Xiaomi Pad 7 Ultra (14 inches, OLED, 2025) and Xiaomi Pad 9 Pro Max (13.3 inches, LCD, September 2026): both are available with Xiaomi’s “nano soft-light” matte glass, for CNY 600 and CNY 300 more. China only (IT之家, IT之家).
• Lenovo Idea Tab Pro Gen 2 (13 inches, LCD, March 2026): a matte anti-glare edition exists. Sold in Europe and China, not in North America.
• vivo Pad5 Pro Soft Light Edition (13 inches, December 2025) and Honor Pad X10 Pro Max (13 inches, “soft light” version, 2026): China only.

All of them are listed in our list of the largest tablets.

• Huawei MatePad Pro 12″ (2026): 12-inch OLED, 1600 nits, PaperMatte as standard in Europe. No Google services.
• Huawei MatePad Air (2026): the first Air with optional PaperMatte (a little more expensive in Europe).
• TCL TAB A1 Plus NXTPAPER: 12.2 inches, 120 Hz, sold in the US since August 2026. The best choice for a 12-inch matte tablet with Google services in North America.
• Honor Pad 20 and Pad 20 Pro Paperlike Edition: 12.1 inches, 700 nits; Honor promises 50 % less sparkle. Sold internationally, but not in the UK or North America.
• OPPO Pad 5 Matte Display Edition: 12.1 inches, 900 nits.
• Huion Kamvas Slate 13: 12.7 inches, nano-etched glass, made for drawing; dim (350 nits).
• Xiaomi Pad 7S Pro: 12.5 inches, “nano soft-light” option, China only.

• Apple iPad Pro 11″ (M5): the same nano-texture glass as the 13-inch model, only with 1 TB or 2 TB.
• TCL NXTPAPER 11 Plus, NXTPAPER 11 Gen 2, Note A1 and TAB A1 NXTPAPER: affordable matte tablets with reading modes (Ink Paper, Color Paper). Their screens are dim (300 to 550 nits).
• Huawei MatePad 11.5 S (2026): PaperMatte as standard.
• Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro Matte Glass: sold in Europe and the UK.
• OPPO Pad 3 Matte Display Edition (11.6 inches).
• Wacom MovinkPad 11 and XPPen Magic Note Pad: Android tablets by pen-display makers, with anti-glare glass for drawing and writing.
• Even smaller: the Huawei MatePad Mini (8.8 inches) and the OPPO Pad Mini (8.8 inches) also exist with a matte screen.

Every glossy screen is a weak mirror. A smooth glass surface reflects about 4 % of the light that hits it. That is little, but the reflection is a sharp image of lamps, windows or your face, which sits on top of the picture.

Anti-reflective coatings are very thin transparent layers that make reflections cancel each other out. With standard glass, Apple’s Pro Display XDR monitor reflects 1.65 % of the light, and Samsung cut the reflectance of the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra from 5 % to 2 %. But the screen stays glossy: the remaining reflection is still a sharp mirror image (Apple, SamMobile).

Matte (anti-glare) screens do not reflect less light: in the words of a Corning patent, anti-glare glass “only changes the characteristics of the reflected light” (patent US9279912). A microscopic relief scatters the reflection in all directions, so the lamp becomes a soft, light veil instead of a sharp spot. The best screens combine both: a matte surface with an anti-reflective coating.

Matte screens are not free of compromises. Reviewers agree on the following points:

• Grain (“sparkle”) and haze: the relief that scatters reflections also slightly scatters the light of the pixels. White areas can look a bit grainy, and the picture a bit softer. The smaller the pixels, the harder it is to avoid; that’s why good matte glass for sharp tablet screens is expensive.
• Lower contrast in bright rooms: the light veil covers the whole screen, so blacks look grey. Notebookcheck measured contrast ratios of only 516:1 and 629:1 on two Huawei PaperMatte LCD tablets (Notebookcheck, Notebookcheck).
• Brightness matters more: a dim matte screen (300 to 550 nits for most TCL tablets) is still hard to read in the sun. The iPad Pro (1000 nits) and the Huawei OLED tablets do much better.
• Scratches and cleaning: in JerryRigEverything’s test, the nano-texture iPad Pro showed marks at Mohs level 3 and scratches at level 4, against level 6 for glossy glass (iMore). Apple asks owners to clean it only with the supplied polishing cloth (Apple).
• Price: on the iPad Pro, the $100 option requires 1 TB of storage, so it really costs $700.

• Musicians reading sheet music: stage lights and music-stand lamps create bright reflections on glossy screens. A matte screen turns them into a soft veil, so the notes stay readable. See also our sister site tablets-for-musicians.com.
• Students and note-takers: the pen glides with a little more friction, closer to paper. Note that pen tips wear faster.
• Illustrators: same pen feel; for colour-critical work, many reviewers still prefer a glossy screen.
• Outdoor users and people who work next to a window: the main reason to buy a matte screen.
• Readers: a matte screen looks more like paper, especially with TCL’s reading modes.
• Eye strain: fewer reflections are more comfortable, but no controlled study shows that matte screens reduce eye strain; “eye comfort” labels are specification tests, not clinical evidence.

Who should rather choose a glossy screen? People who mostly watch films in a dim room, and photographers who need deep blacks and maximum sharpness.

Can nano-texture or matte screens release fine glass dust when you wipe them? Short answer: there is no evidence of it, and it is physically very unlikely.

• The texture is solid glass, not loose particles. Apple’s nano-texture is etched into the cover glass; Huawei and TCL also describe etched surfaces. “Nano” describes the precision of the relief (bumps less than about 2 µm high according to Apple’s patents), not free nanoparticles.
• The amounts are tiny. Even the whole top micrometre of a 13-inch screen weighs only about 0.13 g (see the table). Only a minute fraction of it could ever wear off, and almost none of that would become breathable dust.
• Screen glass is not the dangerous kind of silica. Crystalline silica (quartz dust from cutting stone) causes silicosis and is classified as carcinogenic (IARC group 1). Glass is amorphous: IARC considers amorphous silica “not classifiable” (group 3), and its recommended workplace limit is 120 times higher (NIOSH: 6 mg/m³ against 0.05 mg/m³).
• What actually wears off are thin coatings: the oleophobic (anti-fingerprint) coating and, on some screens, the anti-reflective coating. That is milligrams at most, over years.
• The real risk is a cracked screen, which can cut your fingers.

Apple’s strict cleaning rules protect the look of the screen, not your lungs. No case of harm has been reported, and none of the health authorities we checked (IARC, OSHA, NIOSH, CDC) mentions screens as a source of exposure (IARC, NIOSH).

A matte screen protector, such as Paperlike, turns any glossy tablet into a matte one for little money, and you can remove it. But the texture sits on a plastic film, on top of the glass: the picture looks more “frosted”, and reviewers find that it reduces glare less well than nano-texture glass. Built-in matte glass gives a better picture, but it is permanent and expensive. Do not put a protector on a nano-texture iPad: it cancels the effect.

There are more and more tablets with matte screens. We counted 11 new models in 2024, 15 in 2025 and already 14 in the first nine months of 2026. Matte has moved from expensive options to mainstream tablets: Huawei offers PaperMatte on almost all of its tablets, Xiaomi sells a “soft light” version of each new tablet in China, TCL now makes matte twins of its cheapest tablets, and Honor and OPPO sell matte editions outside China.

Two things have not changed: Apple still reserves nano-texture glass for the most expensive iPad Pro models, and most matte Android tablets are not sold in North America. And no matte tablet is larger than 14.3 inches.