I've been covering phones for over 20 years so it's hard to get me excited about new handsets. But this new TCL 60 XE Nxtpaper 5G I just went hands-on with at CES 2025 is something truly unique.
It definitely has the potential to make our best Android phone list, especially if you're on a budget.
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Coming to the U.S. this year, the TCL 60 XE Nxtpaper 5G incorporates TCL's newest Nxtpaper 4.0 display. Using a dedicated key on the right side of the phone, you can easily switch between a black-and-white, e-ink-like mode to full color e-paper.
There's also a new Max Ink Mode, which delivers a more paper-like experience while minimizing notifications and distractions. This mode is ideal for reading, and it scrolled smoothly when I loaded Tom's Guide in the Chrome browser. Because this mode is optimized for reading, you're limited to what apps you can access, but I had no problem adding the camera app and jumping into that to take a picture — don't worry, it switches to full color for that.
The TCL 60 XE Nxtpaper 5G's display looks most impressive in color mode, as it offers 100% sRGG color gamut coverage along with a Delta-E color accuracy of less than 1 (0 is perfect) while showing minimal glare. I held the device at multiple angles and the images still looked great, though not as vibrant as an OLED panel.
The benefit of this mode isn't just a more relaxing reading experience — and I can definitely see myself reading comics on this device. You're also promised amazing battery life. TCL says to expect several days in color mode and up to 27 days of standby mode battery life in Max Ink mode. This would blow away everything on our best phone battery life list, but we would test it in each mode first.
Because this is 2025, of course the TCL 60 XE Nxtpaper 5G has a bunch of AI features. For example, you can swipe up with three fingers on the home screen to launch various AI writing tools for things like emails and invitations. And when you're in the browser selecting text and dragging it down to the bottom of the screen lets you summarize it, though I got a weird error notification saying that I wasn't allowed to go over 10,000 characters.
Other noteworthy features include a built-in Eye Care Assistant that adjusts the display on the fly for optimal viewing. And under the hood there's a MediaTek processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
The TCL 60 XE Nxtpaper 5G camera system consists of a 50MP main camera and a 32MP front-facing camera.
The phone will be available in Canada starting in May at $199, and TCL says that a U.S. version will follow later this year. Pricing will depend on carrier agreements but the company is targeting the $199 to $250 range.
Overall, I'm glad to see some innovation on the lower end of the price spectrum and we look forward to testing and reviewing the TCL 60 XE Nxtpaper 5G when it goes on sale. It has a shot at being one of the best cheap phones of the year.
