Ryan Haines / Android Authority
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.
It’s a paperback, a comic book, and a 7-inch smartphone in one
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
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.
The NXTPAPER 60 Ultra is oh, so thin and pocketable... unlike a tablet.
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.
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