Writing Tablet With Pen: LCD, E Ink, iPad or Smart Pen? (2026)

A writing tablet with a pen can mean five quite different things: a cheap LCD board that erases with a button, an LCD board paired with a smart pen that saves your pages, an E Ink note tablet like the reMarkable or Kindle Scribe, a regular tablet such as an iPad with a stylus, or a drawing tablet that plugs into a computer. List prices run from about $17 to more than $600. The biggest difference between them is what happens to your writing afterward, since only some of them keep it.

We make the Ophaya smart pen and an LCD tablet that works with it, so one of these five is ours, and plenty of people will be better off with a different kind. Every price here comes from the maker's own store at our October 1, 2026 check.

The five kinds of writing tablet

On a plain LCD board, your writing stays until you press clear, and then it's gone. Add a smart pen and every stroke goes to your phone as you write, so clearing the screen loses nothing. E Ink tablets and iPads keep each page as a file on the device. A drawing tablet doesn't store anything itself; it moves the cursor on a computer, and the computer app does the saving.

Feel is the other big difference, and it matters more the longer you write. E Ink tablets are designed to look and feel close to paper, while an iPad or Android tablet is glass. LCD boards land somewhere between the two. You write with a plastic stylus on a soft screen, and the line appears straight away.

LCD writing tablets: cheap scratch pads

A basic LCD board is the simplest writing tablet you can buy. At our check, Boogie Board's 8.5-inch Basics listed at $16.99 and the Jot at $24.99, and the Jot runs on a replaceable CR2016 coin cell. Use one for phone messages and quick sums, or hand it to a kid to draw on. None of it is saved: press clear and the page is gone, as our guide to how LCD writing tablets work explains.

If you only need to keep a page now and then, Boogie Board's Blackboard 2.0 Smart Scan ($44.99) is a letter-size board that you scan with your phone camera in the Blackboard app. Forget to scan before you clear and that page is gone, the same as on any other LCD board.

An LCD tablet with a smart pen: saves as you write

The Ophaya Smart Pen + LCD Writing Tablet set is $95.99. You write on the 10-inch tablet with the Ophaya pen, and the strokes stream over Bluetooth to the free Ophaya Pro+ app on iPhone, iPad or Android while you write. There's one habit to learn, and it's about order: tap to save the page in the app, then press erase on the tablet.

Since the app has every stroke, it can convert your handwriting to editable text and export pages as PDF, Word or PNG. There's also an AI assistant in the app that will summarize or translate your notes. The same pen writes in ink on Ophaya dot-code notebooks, and the 3-in-1 set ($99.95) comes with both the notebook and the tablet. The tablet runs on a coin battery that lasts around a year, and the pen charges over USB-C. Syncing, handwriting-to-text and audio recording in the app don't need a subscription.

What you give up is a device with its own screen of saved pages. This is a pen-and-phone system, so to look back at old notes you open the app, not the tablet. The lines on the tablet also show blue-green.

E Ink writing tablets: closest to paper

E Ink tablets are built to feel like paper and keep every page on the device, and they're priced accordingly. At our check, the reMarkable Paper Pure started at $399 for a 10.3-inch black-and-white model with the Marker included. Handwriting search and cloud sync are part of reMarkable's optional Connect plan, which costs $3.99 a month or $39.90 a year. Amazon had three 11-inch Kindle Scribe models at $429.99, $499.99 and $629.99. Each comes with a pen that Amazon says needs no charging, and Amazon rates writing battery at up to three weeks. The Supernote Nomad was $359 for a 7.8-inch screen, with pens from $65.

They make sense for people who write long notes, lots of them, and would rather stay off a glass screen. Expect to pay roughly four to six times what an LCD tablet with a smart pen costs, and the screens refresh more slowly than an iPad's. Our LCD vs E Ink comparison puts the two screen types side by side, and the reMarkable alternatives guide goes through the models.

A tablet and stylus: does everything, feels like glass

A regular tablet is the most flexible option. The iPad (A16) started at $449 at our check, and the Apple Pencil (USB-C) that works with it was $79, so plan on about $528 before a case. Apple's Notes app can search handwriting, and Scribble turns it into typed text. On the Android side, Samsung includes the S Pen with the Galaxy Tab S10 FE, which started at $549.99.

Your notes share a screen with email, video and every other app. For some people that's the appeal. For a student trying to get through a lecture without checking messages, it's a distraction. Writing on glass doesn't feel like paper either, and battery life is measured in hours rather than weeks. Our smart pen vs iPad comparison looks at those trade-offs.

Drawing tablets and paper pads

Pen tablets from brands like Wacom, XP-Pen and Huion plug into a computer. You draw on the pad and the line appears on your monitor. They're built for drawing and photo editing (signing documents too), but they're awkward for taking notes because you're looking up at a screen instead of down at the page.

Paper pads are a hybrid of a pen tablet and a notebook. The Huion Note X10 tracks a pen through a regular A5 notepad and stores up to 50 pages. At our check it was $89, marked down from $119.99. You get real ink on ordinary paper, and the pad sends the page to an app.

Writing tablets compared

Which writing tablet should you buy?

If your notes are throwaway, get a basic LCD board and don't overthink it. For a student who needs every page of calculus saved, on a budget closer to $100 than $500, an LCD tablet with a smart pen does the job, and the same pen works in a paper notebook on days the tablet stays at home.

An E Ink tablet is worth the money if your day involves marking up PDFs and writing pages of meeting notes. If you'll also use the device to watch lectures and check email, or you want to draw in color, get an iPad and a Pencil. When note-taking is the main job, our note-taking tablet guide compares these on that alone.

Frequently asked questions

Which writing tablet feels most like paper?

Of the screens, E Ink tablets such as the reMarkable and Kindle Scribe are designed to feel closest to paper. If you'd rather write on actual paper, use a smart pen on a dot-code notebook or a paper pad like the Huion Note X10. Both let you write in ink and still get a digital copy.

Do writing tablets save what you write?

Basic LCD boards don't. A scan model saves a page when you photograph it with your phone, while an LCD tablet with a smart pen saves every stroke as you write. E Ink tablets and iPads save pages on the device.

What's the best cheap writing tablet with a pen?

For scratch work, a basic LCD board under $25 is all you need. The cheapest way to keep some pages is a scan model like the Blackboard 2.0 Smart Scan ($44.99), as long as you scan before you clear. To have every page saved while you write, look at an LCD tablet with a smart pen ($95.99) or a paper pad ($89 on sale); either costs well under an E Ink tablet.

Can a writing tablet turn handwriting into text?

A basic LCD board can't. E Ink tablets, iPads and smart pen apps can. In the Ophaya Pro+ app you convert a page to editable text, then check the result before you share it.