I have a Remarkable 2 that I used to use religiously, now use sporadically, but cannot recommend because of the user-hostile changes to the subscription and the very restrictive underlying software.
One of the promises that lead me to buy one was the hackability - "It's Linux!" "You can SSH into it!", which, on paper (heh) is still true, but in practice very much isn't.
I think something like a Boox, which runs Android, might be more open to customization, but for now I am back to pencil and paper. That doesn't run Linux, but it also won't change its terms of service anytime soon.
KeplerBoy 34 minutes ago [-]
The boox indeed is nice.
These days I do quite a bit of field work outdoors (taking measurements, ssh'ing into mobile equipment) and a laptop is a chore to use in broad daylight. With the boox I can connect a bluetooth keyboard and install termux. It's not a perfect setup, but sure beats squinting at a dim screen.
tpoacher 27 minutes ago [-]
Out of curiosity, what were the user hostile changes you mention?
nosianu 16 minutes ago [-]
You got the cloud functions for free initially. Now you have to have a subscription. Mine is still free - the pre-order buyers were left with a free subscription after that change.
deadbabe 16 minutes ago [-]
People like that tend to get bored after a while with a complete polished product and then just want to disassemble it and make it do whatever they want, and when they find out they can’t because the company has crafted a very curated user experience that is only meant to be used in a certain way they get pissed and trash the company for not making it easily hackable for their own personal edge cases.
belZaah 4 hours ago [-]
RM2 was a game changer for me: I could take notes both physically and on a computer and have them seamlessly in one place. Until after a firmware update the device became slow to respond and writing quality declined as the pen did not write continuously or wrote without the tip touching. I’m still, reluctantly, using it, but the thing is only valuable, if it’s as immediate and reliable as paper. Yet another company, that can’t leave their product the hell alone. I did not need that firmware update. My device was perfect, thank you very much
TallonRain 57 minutes ago [-]
I have two of these devices (RM2 and the Paper Pro) and haven’t experienced anything of what you’re describing despite using them extensively for a few years. I would recommend getting in touch with support about that, or trying a factory reset to see if that improves anything.
lastdong 3 hours ago [-]
Not sure if you already did, but I would reach out to support. I’ve had many firmware updates on my rM2 and never experienced the issues you’re describing.
benjiweber 3 hours ago [-]
The pen writing without touching is usually a misalignment and fixed by removing and re-inserting (or replacing) the tip ime.
e40 3 hours ago [-]
I have been on the fence, and this pushed me off it. Thanks.
tasty_freeze 3 hours ago [-]
My wife got the RM1 then the RM2, as she is very organized and takes lots of notes. She absolutely loved it except for one thing -- the swipe motion to flip forward and backwards was terrible for her. She would try 10 times to get it to finally recognize what she was asking for. So if she wanted to flip forward a few pages to find something, it could take 30-50 swipes. It is sitting in a drawer now.
If anyone else had this experienced and figured out how to make it work, let me know.
gyomu 3 hours ago [-]
So sad when something that could be fixed with a few lines of code/a pref toggle if the software were open entirely kills an otherwise great product experience for someone.
nimos 2 hours ago [-]
Mine goes somewhat unused because of this (although definitely less than 10 swipes per try). If I was to buy another ereader I'd want at a minimum physical buttons for forward/back.
lastdong 3 hours ago [-]
I don’t experience the same level of recognition issues, but I do find flipping through pages quite tiresome. After reading other comments here, it seems clear that the navigation of the e-reader needs significant improvement. I submitted some feedback about this in one of their previous feedback surveys.
Perhaps this Hacker News discussion will lead to some user experience improvements.
fladrif 21 minutes ago [-]
I'm not sure if you've used their scroll feature, but if you swipe up from the bottom with a single finger you bring up a scroll bar over all pages with a small preview for the current selected page. It works pretty well for <50 pages
nvarsj 1 hours ago [-]
They should, since these comments killed all desire I had to own one!
JohnKemeny 58 minutes ago [-]
Could it simply be dry skin?
I'm not comfortable asking your wife to lick anything, but if she were to moisturize her finger tip (??) prior to swiping, perhaps that would improve the situation?
Aeolun 22 minutes ago [-]
I have this problem but it’s mostly when I try to flick quickly. If I deliberately drag my finger over the page it generally works.
beoberha 8 hours ago [-]
I am happy to be proven wrong but I’m shocked they believe there is a market for this size at all, let alone at $450! The sample text on the stock images looks useless.
I wanted to love my RM2 so much. The write path is great. Writing notes on it during a meeting is a genuinely good experience. The read path: not so much. EInk UXs are so clunky especially when you’re used to how fluid phones are. Forget scrolling through your notes - It’s maddening.
Pretty good ereader though.
noobly 6 hours ago [-]
I only began to love my RM2 when I stopped trying to use it as a PDF reader and writer and instead only a scratch paper replacement. But it’s not as economical if limited to this.
I do wish they’d improve the PDF usability or embrace open sourcing the UI. There’s a lot of features that should be easy to implement, like split screen or floating sticky notes, but they seem almost wholly focused on the hardware. I thought it’d be the ultimate tool for studying math and saving money on books, thus paying for itself, but it’s just not there yet and I’m not sure they plan to get it there.
ryukoposting 6 hours ago [-]
Is there an alternative to Remarkable that offers good drawing/writing, but at a lower price? That's the only thing I'd want. I have stacks of dot-rule notebooks full of various notes and sketches. It'd be nice to have a replacement for all that.
nicbou 2 hours ago [-]
I considered all the options back in 2021 and went with the iPad Mini.
My reasons: much better software for sketching, not bound to a single ereader app, multiple ways to send stuff around, perfect size.
Many years later, I would still choose the same. I use it to annotate webpages, sketch, read books and read queued articles in instapaper. It's distraction-free but still connected. I can Airdrop drawings or load my handwritten notes on the Macbook app. Tap to define is so good I've absent-mindedly tried it on a paper book.
The LED screen is great for some things and bad for others. You have to turn it on and unlock it. You can't SSH into it or sync your drawings as simple files. Otherwise, it's really good.
dotancohen 4 hours ago [-]
The Boox is a little cheaper, I have one. It's mostly just an Eink Android tablet. I absolutely love it.
It will run most Android apps (modulo Eink screen support). The built-in note taking app is terrific.
roumenguha 5 hours ago [-]
Ratta's Supernote is an option. The second hand market isn't as good, though, for buyers.
ninjin 2 hours ago [-]
reMarkable (1) user here since 2019, what does the software stack look like for the Supernote? The A6 looks interesting as a form factor for someone like me that uses it solely for note taking (all I want is a "non-linear notebook") rather than annotation and reading (I use a printer and scanner for annotation/feedback and an "ancient", never-online Kindle for reading books). reMarkable has always been open-ish rather than properly open, so I would hope for Supernote to be more open to the idea of users having access to code and control over their devices (even if I never connect my reMarkable to the network).
afc 5 hours ago [-]
+1 I own two Supernote (Nomad and Manta) and I can only recommend them.
barrell 4 hours ago [-]
+2 to supernotes ratta. Amazing product, amazing company
tsfenwick 4 hours ago [-]
Love my supernote as well
kitchi 5 hours ago [-]
Honestly I found the base iPad excellent for this. The writing experience isn't a lot like paper, but is still quite good. You can get a little closer by applying a matte screen guard.
branon 8 hours ago [-]
I found the lack of backlight and built-in dictionary to mostly cripple the e-reading experience on rM2.
Format support wasn't great either, only PDF and EPUB. Which does cover most bases, to be fair. AZW3 and MOBI aren't dealbreakers, but... really, no TXT?
pkhuong 8 hours ago [-]
RM Pro (and this new product) has a backlight. I print everything to pdf when I want to read on the remarkable.
squigz 8 hours ago [-]
No dictionary on an e-reader?! What the heck? Can you at least install your own or is there simply no lookup functionality at all?
loughnane 6 hours ago [-]
Granted I've only used a remarkable as an e-reader, but i read a lot of paper books.
I don't understand why this is such a necessary feature. Most people don't read paper books with a dictionary handy.
nowahe 2 hours ago [-]
I'm not a native English speaker, but I read a lot of books in their original English. Being able to quickly look up a word you've never encountered is a god send
I find myself really missing this feature when I occasionally read a paper book, thinking about clicking the word on the page to get a definition.
dbalatero 3 hours ago [-]
I'd suppose it depends on things like your vocabulary level, if the content you're reading is your first language, if you're reading more niche things, etc.
squigz 5 hours ago [-]
Of course not, because that would be annoying and unwieldy. On the other hand, you can add expansive dictionaries for every language to an ereader for the low, low weight of... nothing at all.
I suspect if you compare the usage of dictionaries among paper book readers vs ereader users, the latter use them more often - probably at least partially because they're so much easier to use. I suspect the incidence of not understanding a word would be pretty much the same.
For myself, I read a lot of older books with archaic and niche terms, so it's practically required to be able to look things up if I want to really understand what's going on.
(As an aside, I looked up a definition on Google just writing this to ensure I was using a word properly. :P)
shepherdjerred 4 hours ago [-]
It's incredibly useful for obvious reasons
kadoban 1 hours ago [-]
You can install koreader pretty easily. It's way better than their built in reader.
Arainach 8 hours ago [-]
The reMarkable isn't an e-reader. It can display books, but that's not its primary purpose. If you want an e-reader, there are many significantly cheaper options.
kstrauser 8 hours ago [-]
But… don’t you sometimes want a dictionary when you write? That’s not a reading-mode-only tool by a long shot.
Arainach 8 hours ago [-]
No. I don't use the dictionary on my Kindle. I've never missed it on my reMarkable. Not while reading and definitely not while writing.
kstrauser 7 hours ago [-]
Huh. Everyone’s workflows are different. I surely wouldn’t want to be without one.
esseph 3 hours ago [-]
It may be once every 2-3 years, if that, when I pull out a dictionary. Never something I seem to need.
FireBeyond 6 hours ago [-]
I feel that this is a "writer" around the note concept, versus long-form writing (where a dictionary could certainly make more sense). But I'm sketching, diagramming, etc., more so than anything else (I don't own, though I've been interested in this and the Scribe, and given that I barely use the Pencil on my iPad, I'm having difficulty justifying it to myself, although I might check out the return policies...)
adgjlsfhk1 5 hours ago [-]
For the price it feels like it should be a good e-reader also.
squigz 8 hours ago [-]
The fact that they're so expensive is, to me anyway, a pretty good reason to expect basic functionality like that.
Arainach 8 hours ago [-]
Every feature is an eternal maintenance price until the company goes bankrupt (or an opportunity to piss off the handful of users who use it when you cut it). I'd much rather they focus their limited time on polishing things that matter more.
squigz 8 hours ago [-]
Yes, nobody is denying that "every feature is an eternal maintenance price"
But the maintenance price of such basic features is absurdly low. Seriously, we're talking about a basic dictionary lookup. We're not talking about massive, expansive features that will require many hours of maintenance.
Anyway, if you don't use a dictionary at all, even while reading - and you think a "handful of users" use them - then this conversation probably is not going to go anywhere.
branon 8 hours ago [-]
There is no lookup functionality at all that I could find. You cannot install your own dictionary on the stock firmware.
I wound up down the https://toltec-dev.org/ rabbit hole which was fun and gets me additional features but has its own issues (suspend/resume is dodgy sometimes now)
Again to be fair the rM2 is not sold as an _e-reader_ per se. But regardless I do find the e-reading experience weak.
beoberha 8 hours ago [-]
Yeah I’m not suggesting anyone go out of their way to buy it as an ereader but it does the job for me considering it would otherwise be a paperweight.
squigz 8 hours ago [-]
> Again to be fair the rM2 is not sold as an _e-reader_ per se. But regardless I do find the e-reading experience weak.
It's just such basic functionality that... why would you not, if even a small function of the device is indeed to read files?
Honestly from what I'm reading in this thread I'm rather turned off by ReMarkable now, which is sort of disappointing. Still, I'm glad to see more and more e-ink options.
wltr 51 minutes ago [-]
Ditto! I was a fan, planned to buy it some day later (it’s a bit expensive for my use case of mostly reading, I utilise old Kindle for that).
chrisweekly 7 hours ago [-]
I hear you but would bet heavy you haven't tried using a navigable PDF like hyperpaper.me, which solves most of this frustration.
beoberha 5 hours ago [-]
For losing the bet, you can pay me the 20 bucks I wasted on hyperpaper ;)
It was my last ditch effort to make me use my RM2 but I found it didn’t fit how I wanted to take notes and was still pretty clunky.
fluidcruft 8 hours ago [-]
I'm actually in the market for something this size, but it's too expensive for me given what I know about reMarkable's inconvenience. I'd pick it over a kindle scribe, but not sure I'd pick it over a boox or supernote. I haven't decided if I actually care about color yet. MyDeepGuide's review of reMarkables color tech has me pretty interestes in it... but I don't know I actually need color personally. I have a colleague who has a reMarkable and it seems pretty annoying software wise. Especially at this size I want ebooks easily loaded.
I mostly have a very aged Kindle that needs replaced and I would like a small digital notepad. Boox fits the bill generally. I have a larger boox, it's a little quirky and a bit too heavy to hold comfortably but works fine after some configuration.
calmbell 6 hours ago [-]
Check out the Boox Palma 2. I love mine and it has an actual operating system (Android 13).
fluidcruft 6 hours ago [-]
The Palma 2 doesn't have writing support does it?
I have been looking at the Boox Go 7... I have a Boox Note Air and generally like it a lot after the major software upgrade it got when Air 2 was released and also particularly running Android has been quite handy (for syncing journal articles with Zotero). But I am also very curious about Supernote Nomad and may go that way if I decide backlight doesn't matter. I do like backlight for reading in be without bothering my wife...
And so I keep spinning in indecision...
ocdtrekkie 6 hours ago [-]
Heh I saw that mentioned on a review of this unit, but running Android makes it a nonstarter. The price point is much more reasonable though.
MobiusHorizons 5 hours ago [-]
What’s wrong with android? I enjoy that it makes boox devices more expandable. For instance I installed termux and used a bluetooth keyboard for a very interesting development environment (vim + c compiler)
MrMorden 5 hours ago [-]
I'm fine with Android, but not Android (or any other OS) from 2022.
homarp 4 hours ago [-]
at least you can sideload what you want
rtpg 6 hours ago [-]
tbh the write path on just paper is so good, and at least for me it's very rare that I need to actually digitize anything.
I just invested in a printer that works and print out a lot of stuff I want to deeply annotate. Otherwise I have the ipad for some other stuff.
I really enjoy eink for reading but it's really a super specific market. Competing against the ipad is tough! The generalist devices tend to get so good that the specialized devices stop being worth it.
beoberha 5 hours ago [-]
Agreed, but paper fails at organizing. My brain loves folder structures and hyper specific note files. Remarkable seemed like the perfect device for me.
I’ve settled on markdown in vscode and a todo list app.
rtpg 2 hours ago [-]
My experience has been that it's very easy to flip through a pile of papers, and I tend to "know" where the info is.
The beauty of physical interfaces like for paper is that you really can just flip through a stack while talking to someone and find what you need.
The big thing that I think works well in paper world is simply having things organized chronologically. I often remember around when I collected a piece of info.
dotancohen 5 hours ago [-]
You've probably heard of Org mode. Go look it up - md and a todo app is exactly poor man's Org mode.
volemo 4 hours ago [-]
I’m a big lover of the ecosystem and a heavy Emacs, but after several attempts I couldn’t get into Org mode: (1) it’s too complex and full featured, while my loose mind requires a strict and minimalistic system to be productive; (2) mobile support is quite lacking — yes, there’re beorg and Mobileorg, but they don’t do it for me for one reason or another.
So I’ve a custom GTD-like system build using iOS reminders, .md files, and a couple of scripts.
dotancohen 38 minutes ago [-]
Yes, or Org mode can be quite complex if you let it be. I mostly only use the same features as markdown supports: headings and code fences.
For mobile (Android) I use Orgro.
jimsimmons 4 hours ago [-]
does not have paper ergonomics
GCUMstlyHarmls 4 hours ago [-]
I googled "just paper" thinking it was another device...
m463 7 hours ago [-]
I had a remarkable 2. I loved it until I got a pocketbook inkpad lite. Big enought, but with a backlight.
and I loved that until amazon killed "download" for kindle books.
beached_whale 7 hours ago [-]
On my scribe i just buy the books elsewhere and copy them over to it.
CGMthrowaway 8 hours ago [-]
>I am happy to be proven wrong but I’m shocked they believe there is a market for this size at all, let alone at $450
I was literally about to order one until I read the comments
alsetmusic 8 hours ago [-]
Agreed. This is a product I want to own. I've checked in a couple of times over the last year or so, but I genuinely have no use for it. I don't write by hand. When I do, my handwriting is terrible. Even I have trouble making sense of it.
It doesn't surprise me at all that they think there's a market for the device at this size (though the price is debatable), assuming it worked quite well. Sounds like that's a bit much to hope for, given OP's experience.
Edit: your => OP's
al_borland 8 hours ago [-]
I was interested until I saw the price. For a lower price I’d probably risk it and see if/how it might integrate into my life. However, I think it has a high chance of failing to integrate, so $450 is too much to risk.
I say this as someone who bought a Daylight tablet for $700 and is now looking to sell it, since I didn’t fit anywhere and it just sits.
sanilnz 5 hours ago [-]
What were your thoughts on Daylight as a product?
al_borland 4 hours ago [-]
Out of the box I was already disappointed. All their marketing shots showed a knit cover, which I know is a small aesthetic thing, but gave it a certain vibe. I looked all over the site before ordering to try and find confirmation or look at where to order it. I didn’t find it, so assumed it came with it and rolled the dice. It did not. They shipped some puffer jacket style sleeve it could be stored in instead. This was disappointing, as the tactile experience of using it went from something I thought would be the cozy image they were selling, to just another hard plastic tablet. It felt like bait and switch. I reached out to support, and talked to them again I some other forum. They said they updated the site to make it clear, but when I looked it was buried deep in an FAQ and their sales page still showed it in almost all the images (it’s still in a significant number of their marketing images, even though they said they couldn’t make it work).
But I felt bad sending it back over that, especially for a new company, so I figured I’d give it a fair shot.
I spent some time trying to use the default launcher and figure out its quirks. Eventually I got annoyed with it and installed a more traditional launcher. At this point it just turned into a generic Android tablet with a worse screen. Since I’m in the Apple ecosystem, it was a bit of an island, and generic tablets have never fit well into my workflow, I gave up on the iPad after those sat around too.
I did like the pen, mostly because it didn’t require any batteries or charging. The Apple Pencil needing to be changed makes it a non-starter for me, I find that experience to be awful. So props to Daylight for going the battery free route, like a normal pencil or pen would be.
The pen alone wasn’t enough for me. I don’t write that many hand written notes. And while I kind of liked that aspect, since it didn’t integrate with my other stuff, it wasn’t something I could really invest in, and wasn’t good enough to find a bunch of new cross platform tools to make it fit.
The novelty of the black and white screen wore off quickly. Outside of note taking, a lot of app and websites really lean on color to provide meaningful information that was all lost. The amber backlight I found hard to see, so adjusted it more white. There were some random buttons on the side of the tablet that didn’t seem to do anything. Maybe if I spent more time outdoors my perspective on the screen may have shifted, but I don’t. Overall it was very “meh”, for me.
If you want a general purpose tablet, an iPad Air is cheaper and better in almost every way. If you want it black and white, the iPad has a color filter for that. If you want a screen that works in bright sunlight and a pen that doesn’t need a battery, those are the two areas where the Daylight can one-up the iPad, but that person may be more of a Remarkable customer.
gaoryrt 1 hours ago [-]
Thank you for sharing this.
SchemaLoad 7 hours ago [-]
The idea is kind of cool, but just doesn't seem useful enough to justify a very expensive dedicated device. For the same price you could buy both an ipad, a matte screen protector, and a real notepad and pen. The ipad does all of the tech significantly better, and the physical notepad is a more enjoyable physical writing experience.
The product seemed to be mostly aimed at tech bros with more money than they know what to do with.
noobly 5 hours ago [-]
You won’t be scrolling TikTok on the Remarkable, though.
refulgentis 6 hours ago [-]
This is quite reductive and sophomorically so - "tech bros" as signifier of moneyed & tasteless? on HN? :) - reMarkable has been around for years, well-reviewed, and rightfully so - it's a quite distinctive experience from "an ipad [with] a matte screen protector."
I am not sure I will invest this much, but it's pleasantly surprising to see meaningful advancements in form factor and technology enabled over the longhaul in the products remarkable has made.
llm_nerd 6 hours ago [-]
If you think $450 is a lot, they seriously think they're getting $729 CAD in Canada. On straight conversion is should be $621, not to mention they're almost certainly getting a tariff hit in the US that they don't get in Canada.
MengerSponge 5 hours ago [-]
Does that price in CAD include sales taxes? Because the US price never does.
dragonmost 5 hours ago [-]
Canada never includes taxes either so that's an extra 10% to 15% for most provinces.
LMMojo 7 hours ago [-]
I have a Mobiscribe, which is about this same size. I would like something closer to Letter size, but the smaller size is really handy for handheld use. I can easily hold the Mobiscribe in the palm of my hand and do work (typing on a keyboard, working a screwdriver, pounding my head against a wall) and not have to worry about fumbling my Mobiscribe. Do I think the price point on this Remarkable device is correct? Nope. I wouldn't buy it at this price.
Mistletoe 6 hours ago [-]
It’s just that $449 can buy me so many paper tablets and I really like paper. There’s no subscription for paper, it is tangible, it lasts thousands of years as long as it isn’t burned. I can flip through and see my ideas all in one place that digital files never seem to replicate.
SoftTalker 6 hours ago [-]
Same. These tablets have so many features that they are inherently distracting. Just use a pad of paper and a pen or pencil. You’ll save hundreds and be less frustrated.
stonecharioteer 6 hours ago [-]
I think the sweet spot is 10 inches. I have a Boox Tab Mini C and a Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra. Both feel unweildy for different reasons. For my next tablet I'll get something in 10 inches. I wish Samsung made better options for that size.
gabeyaw 29 minutes ago [-]
I've had the rm2 for a few years now. I recently installed toltec and koreader and I can now sync it with zotero with the zotero plugin. Reading 2 column pdfs in koreader is a much better experience and I also like the dictionary search when holding down a word. I just use the regular RM software as a disposable notepad now. I had to downgrade the RM software to get toltec, but I don't feel like I'm missing much from the latest update.
michaelmior 14 minutes ago [-]
That Zotero sync seems nice! I wrote a daemon that does a (one-way) sync from a Zotero folder to my reMarkable that works pretty well, but it's rather hacky.
splitbrain 4 hours ago [-]
I am using the original RM1 nearly daily for the last 8 years or so as my primary note taking device. I bought it used because it was ridiculously expensive new. I was grandfathered in when they introduced the subscription. I really love the device, but I would never buy it with connectivity locked behind a subscription.
hboon 4 hours ago [-]
Do you know if you are on a grandfathered plan (I am too) and you get an additional device, does the new device need another subscription? Or is the plan tied to the account/login?
qwqsqa 4 hours ago [-]
It is tied to your account and you stay grandfathered in.
hboon 4 hours ago [-]
Thanks.
Galanwe 2 hours ago [-]
I loved my RM1, by far the best e-ink reader/note taker I have had.
I had to switch to a Boox though, as I grew bored of having to maintain a Windows VM with a downgraded Calibre to convert my Amazon purchases to ebooks for reading on the Remarkable. I now have my Boox with the Amazon Kindle app and can natively read my books, and the writing feeling is almost as good as on the Remarkable.
cyberpunk 1 hours ago [-]
Why do you need a windows vm for calibre? It’s java, it works on windows linux and mac (and likely bsd too)?
Galanwe 33 minutes ago [-]
From what I remember, it was because I needed an old version of the Amazon Kindle app, to download a less secured version of Kindle books, to then convert them to epub with an old deDRM plug-in. Essentially the whole process is not doable nowadays with stronger DRMs.
dcminter 1 hours ago [-]
Python, not Java.
choilive 9 hours ago [-]
Its unfortunate that the supply chain for eink/epaper displays all seem to be centering on typical mobile device aspect ratios (like 16:9 for this device) particularly because remarkables are marketed as productivity oriented replacements for notebooks.
I would much rather have a A6 or A5 sized display or any other standard size for paper notebooks.
krabizzwainch 8 hours ago [-]
I have a Supernote Nomad and love the size of it, which is A6 sized. I struggle to see how making one more narrow than an A6 pad is useful. This Remarkable kind of looks more like a long post it note or grocery list instead of a notebook.
spankibalt 6 hours ago [-]
> I struggle to see how making one more narrow than an A6 pad is useful.
The trick to something narrower is to get comfortable with doodling in landscape mode, e. g. for classroom notes, and scroll (and orientation-switch) accordingly when neccessary. Ideally you'd have physical complementary buttons present, but a good touchscreen with palm rejection works as well. To-do lists and the like can be done vertical mode. In other words, a digital notepad.
Now you only have to built a corresponding smartphone-sized, pen-focused, modular and connectable open-standards general-purpose computer. :) ... :(
The reMarkable looks too underpowered and maybe too enshittified (subscriptions, lock-ins) to be used for anything else but a digital notepad.
mwcz 8 hours ago [-]
Is it the case that these devices are converging on 16:9? I don't know about the supply chain, but there seems to be no lack of e-ink tablets at A5/A6 sizes and/or with better ratios than 16:9.
Remarkable has the roughly A6-sized Paper Pro, Kobo has three e-ink devices with styli and good screen ratios, and Supernote has models named A5 (and A5 x2) and A6 after the paper sizes. I think the options are quite good.
SuperShibe 7 hours ago [-]
Paper Pro is roughly A4-sized
jrk 5 hours ago [-]
eInk devices are very much not converging to 16:9 or wider aspect ratios. This device is intentionally the size and shape of a reporter's notebook, but there are virtually no other eInk tablets which diverge significantly from more common paper aspect ratios – they all (ReMarkable, Supernote, Boox, Kindle, etc.) are and continue to be exactly what you say you want.
choilive 2 hours ago [-]
I believe most of those are 4:3, but point taken.
nathan_compton 9 hours ago [-]
I was deeply enthusiastic about epaper devices for awhile and I tried all kinds of things. Eventually, I decided paper is better. I used to like the idea of my notes being capture automatically but you can just take pictures of them if you use a notebook.
nvarsj 43 minutes ago [-]
I embraced an iPad w/ paper-like surface during my grad degree, simply because I needed the organisation (annotating papers, multiple subjects, project notes, etc.). It worked really well for that.
Funnily though, professional life is a lot simpler. I just need a single paper notebook with my running todo list. Everything else is stored in google docs or obsidian. Having an eink or tablet for taking notes would feel like friction without much benefit.
codazoda 8 hours ago [-]
I also got enthusiastic about them, but I ended up embracing the Kindle Scribe. I just completed my 12th monthly notebook, so I’ve been at it for over a year now.
I was using regular notebooks but I was collecting too many and I was worried about storage and loss.
I wrote about the experience a few months into it.
I do not read on mine, it’s exclusively for writing. Possibly because switching is too slow.
beeflet 8 hours ago [-]
I've come to the same conclusion. It's just easier, especially for things that involve diagrams. $10 worth of notebooks and pens is a much better value than something that is more fragile, has to be charged, etc and orders of magnitude more expensive.
Also, I tend to only write things down as a note-taking and memorization exercise, or to think out a certain idea. I usually don't have to read the notes again. So the archiving functionality of having digital paper-like notes is not nessisarially more useful, and it is often more difficult to search through than physical notebooks. Anything I really need to read later, I can write succinctly in a text file or something.
I also don't like getting locked into a certain ecosystem. Xournal++ is the only open-source cross-platform app I can find, and it's not that good.
Even for reading physical books, you can find a lot of used paperbacks for less than $10, which is very little when you consider the value of the time you spend reading them, the ease of flipping through pages and being able to dog-ear them, and the collectible aspect of the book covers covers. An eink tablet be nice for reading textbooks and papers that are more expensive and require pirating, however. But for now I just use a regular screen in portrait.
rgoulter 7 hours ago [-]
> I usually don't have to read the notes again.
Yeah.
For several kinds of notes, the value from writing is in doing the writing to assist thinking. Once I write it down, it doesn't need to hang around in my head.
spaceisballer 6 hours ago [-]
I’m in the same boat. My Boox Go 10.3 is collecting dust. I used it for a while, but I just find it easier to flip back through paper notes as opposed to tapping or swiping through files. I don’t want to connect to work WiFi either on it. So now I’ve found pens I enjoy writing with and decent notebooks with paper I like and it’s great. I actually spend time journaling on paper. But I do have both a Boox Palma for reading and also a Kobo Clara.
xattt 8 hours ago [-]
OCR has also been getting incrementally better and has been surprisingly good if you have the handwriting for it.
beeflet 8 hours ago [-]
Can you easily do keyword searches on your own handwritten notes?
packetlost 6 hours ago [-]
Sure, OCR can generate a plain text file.
oulu2006 7 hours ago [-]
I like the remarkable paper pro -- been using it for 8 months consistently.
syntaxing 7 hours ago [-]
My biggest reservation about remarkable is the subscription service. How is the experience if you don’t pay for the Connect service?
toomim 7 hours ago [-]
It's fine. You really don't need to pay for the connect service.
SuperShibe 7 hours ago [-]
not exactly what you asked for but there's a community project you can selfhost[1] that emulates the cloud on your own server
I use rmfakecloud even though i'm grandfathered in to the cloud. It's great.
I locked the fw on my remarkable 2 to 2.x and used ddvk hacks and it's just worked for years. I don't need any new features.
Groxx 5 hours ago [-]
I've been considering downgrading tbh. The new stuff is mostly good, but the infinite-page conflicts a lot with other gestures (I really wish I could disable it) and it's overall noticeably slower nowadays.
summermusic 7 hours ago [-]
I'm curious too, because there is a help page[1] linked in the FAQ that appears to be completely blank!
huh that loads for me. appears to require some javascript tho.
please note that no subscription != no cloud. of the features listed in the help page all but "tags" require an remarkable cloud account and may stop working if remarkable cloud ever shuts down.
chrisweekly 7 hours ago [-]
rm2 owner since it was released over 5y ago. connect service works well but is wholly optional.
burgerone 54 minutes ago [-]
What I don't understand is why I should pick a 480€ piece of paper over an actual piece of paper. For that price I could get a decent tablet or just type things into a note taking app.
PokerFacowaty 46 minutes ago [-]
The idea always has been that it's writing on paper with all the convenience of a tablet like syncing your notes. A notebook will feel like paper, but won't sync, an iPad will not feel even close to paper.
I was considering reMarkable when upgrading my ebook reader with note taking capabilities, but it's mostly a notepad with an option for ebooks (and not the other way around) and the subscription model on top of $500 hardware was ridiculous.
aweiher 8 hours ago [-]
I'm considering a new reMarkable, but the lack of an official sdk for the cloud API is a major concern.
The community has built amazing tools for remarkable device, but their work is constantly being broken by software updates. This isn't a sustainable situation. For a company that charges for a cloud service, providing a stable, official API should be a priority. It would not only support the community's innovation but also provide a reliable foundation that developers and users can trust for the long term.
As long as a stable, official API isn't provided, I won't be buying a new device from them.
wenc 9 hours ago [-]
I’m not sold on e-ink devices being a creation device. The refresh rate is too slow and the resolution is too low.
I realized there was already a device that was perfect for note taking on an infinite canvas.
I use an iPad and Apple Pencil (bought refurb on backmarket.com) with paper like surface [1] I install nothing in it except Apple Freeform. (No distractions)
High refresh rate, Retina display, excellent pen pressure, and fast chip. Cheaper than RM2 if bought refurb.
> I install nothing in it except Apple Freeform. (No distractions)
How do you uninstall Safari? That's the most distracting app of all.
kstrauser 7 hours ago [-]
It’s not exactly that, but:
Open Shortcuts.
Go to Automations.
Create one, for App, when Safari is opened, run immediately.
Create a new blank shortcut.
Add one action: go to Home Screen.
Now when you open Safari, it instantly closes again. You can disable that by turning off the automation. It’s more of a slap on the wrist than a handcuff, but a reminder that you don’t want to use the app on that device.
hedora 5 hours ago [-]
You can also hide it via screen time so the icon does not appear.
noduerme 4 hours ago [-]
I've loved my Boox Nova C color for a few years... but the ability to run Android apps including paint and drawing apps is the real showstopper. I'd love to try this tech for the paper feel but I really like the Boox interface, including their homegrown reader and notes apps. I've been really pleasantly surprised at how their software just keeps getting better and addressing minor UI issues with each (optional) update, without ever getting bloated or annoying. If anything, they've just gotten better at making their own UI more transparent and seamless. Totally apart from the great experience I've had with their hardware, I think their software is just extremely well thought out compared to almost anything else out there.
JeremyHerrman 1 hours ago [-]
Pen-based handhelds designed around writing seem to gravitate to larger form factors than phones.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the similarity in size to the Apple Newton MessagePad from the 90s:
Original MessagePad: 184 x 114 mm (7.25 x 4.5 in)
reMarkable Paper Pro Move: 195.6 x 107.8 mm
(7.7 x 4.24 in)
No comparison in thickness though, with the Newton being about 3x the thickness of the reMarkable (19 mm vs 6.5 mm).
ge96 9 hours ago [-]
Funny I almost wish I bought an RM2 (again)
I got a PineNote and it had a $100 import duty
This device for me is odd/too small it's like you'd have 2 phones. Though I've seen those e-ink phones.
The writing feel is great on the RM2 and the battery life wow. Charge it once a month deal.
whatevertrevor 8 hours ago [-]
I wish Remarkable had better software compatibility though. Importing books from Kindle is a multi-step process, a bunch of formats aren't supported, and their first party app doesn't even work on linux.
Haven't tried OCR on it, but I've heard other e-Readers have them beat on that end too.
floren 9 hours ago [-]
I would really like to get a PineNote but by the time I came to that conclusion, tariffs made it very unappealing :(
atoav 18 minutes ago [-]
Actual paper is pretty good, very cheap, has very good haptic feedback and readability, needs no subscription, doesn't restric you to certain pen manufacturers, you can still read the contents when the paper-mill ceases to exiet and has a very well proven track record when it comes to archival, accessability etc.
So if devices like these try to beat paper, even if the hardware is perfect, it comes down to software and how open it is. As a serious note-taker one would think this was the perfect device for me, but I checked out the software side of things and it did not convince me. Paper is still superior.
grogenaut 8 hours ago [-]
My wife's RM can't sync right now due to some time bug. RM's answer was to buy a new one and start paying the cloud subscription.
Regardless, expected better support response for a product in this price range.
2 hours ago [-]
elemeno 1 hours ago [-]
I had a similar problem with mine where the clock was out and preventing it from syncing or updating.
The solution i was told (and which worked for me) was to plug it into a computer for a while - I assume that some time syncing must happen in the background when it’s connected via usb.
holletron 2 hours ago [-]
Had the very same issue, couldn't even update the firmware - after some tinkering turns out the solution is fairly simple - ssh into it, disable ntp, set the correct time, enable ntp, reboot.
dmitrygr 8 hours ago [-]
RM/RM2 run linux and you can SSH in and copy files to/fro. It is not hard
elliotec 5 hours ago [-]
What an awful experience for a device that explicitly should not have to do this.
yupyupyups 5 hours ago [-]
It's very nice that the option is available though.
elliotec 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, I absolutely agree with that.
grogenaut 4 hours ago [-]
They told her how to ssh but nothing else. Painful for her on a product she loves that is actually fine
seam_carver 4 hours ago [-]
Kindle Comic Converter recently added fullscreen manga support for all ReMarkable models using a new PDF output option, the previous EPUB output option added large margins.
This feature is only available in the beta version built from current master, not in the current 9.0.0 release.
october8140 7 hours ago [-]
My dream product for this kind of thing is a pen that is able to remember what to write on any paper. Like if you click it open it's a new "note" and it syncs to your computer/phone.
6DM 7 hours ago [-]
I think live scribe is what you're looking for. I've never used it but at some point they were buying them for people at my first job.
Note that LiveScribe uses special paper with a patterned watermark. That differs from “any paper”, as requested.
That said, special paper isn’t a huge ask, and it increases accuracy immensely. I worked for a company that used this tech years ago, and it was impressive not only for text, but marking up maps, collecting data from forms, etc.
aetherspawn 5 hours ago [-]
This looks really good, has anyone used it?
I like the analog ability to toss paper all over my desk without worrying about damaging whatever I balance it on.
And I do like physical paper because you can split a stack and make “more screens”
bee_rider 6 hours ago [-]
I’d like a device that sticks to my pencil. I like my pencil (that’s why I don’t want an eink tablet that “feels like paper”).
I guess this is getting a bit niche. But it seems like these companies are already trying to play in a niche market segment…
Maybe I just need a camera to scan my notes or something, haha.
7 hours ago [-]
lazyasciiart 7 hours ago [-]
The current not-actually-available instance of this is Nuwa Pens
datameta 7 hours ago [-]
This might be a simple take but - smaller and more expensive?
transcriptase 7 hours ago [-]
Hard to say. I’m not sure who the target segment is for “dozens of superficially descriptive blocks of text that say absolutely nothing paired with dramatic photos of adults with trust funds”, but apparently I’m not in it.
jarrettcoggin 7 hours ago [-]
It's supposed to be compared to the Remarkable Paper Pro, which is priced at $629. This is priced at $449.
cebert 9 hours ago [-]
I’ve been considering purchasing a ReMarkable device primarily for note taking. Has anyone tried both the Kindle Scribe and ReMarkable devices? It’s difficult for me to determine which one to go with and they’re quite expensive.
drum55 9 hours ago [-]
I have a RPP and it’s an almost device, it’s so close to good in many ways and falls flat in others.
My biggest gripe with it originally was that the next and previous page gestures worked perhaps one in three attempts, which has been fixed in the most recent software that reduced the perceived latency of everything dramatically. Beyond that it’s a weird experience, it’s sort of usable with open source tools but requires a lot of hacks to not have it sync with their cloud offering if you want privacy. Even if you use their cloud services it often feels a bit clunky and half considered where buttons and controls end up being.
I love the hardware, it’s an amazing looking screen, it feels ultra premium, the folio cases people have made for it fit perfectly in my bag.
beoberha 8 hours ago [-]
“Almost device” is a perfect way of putting it. I only have an RM2, but I was never able to get into a flow where I’d easily and happily reference the notes I’d taken. The UX was so clunky it took forever to navigate the folder structure and the cloud sync was frustratingly proprietary.
whatevertrevor 8 hours ago [-]
I agree (as another RM2 user). It's great for writing stuff down, but for retrieval it's at best high-friction, sometimes just plain irritating.
If a workflow for exporting my remarkable notes as SVG to obsidian but then also running OCR over them so I can search through them (without converting them to editable text because that's usually a formatting nightmare) existed, I'd be so happy as it would solve the retrieval problem.
SoMomentary 5 hours ago [-]
Their latest update just introduced indexing for handwriting + text, so now you're able to search through all of your notes! This has been a huge QoL upgrade for me.
sbrother 9 hours ago [-]
I have it too and feel the same way.
If I could easily just use it as a text terminal -- with emacs and ssh support -- I would use it every day. But when I looked up the hacking side of things it looked like a lot of work and kind of sketchy.
Figs 9 hours ago [-]
> requires a lot of hacks to not have it sync with their cloud offering if you want privacy
That killed my interest in their previous devices.
jonprobably 8 hours ago [-]
Partner had remarkable. I bought a scribe. Tried both side by side for a month.
Scribe lets you read your kindle books, draw on them, and write notes. Hard to get the notes off the device.
RM lets you sync automatically. The rest of their software is total junk (see App Store ratings). It was more glitchy. Marginally better writing. Monthly fee.
Both make exporting notes more difficult than it should be.
My current go to - paper and pen with chatgpt app on phone - snap a photo to extract my writing.
I kept the scribe for reading books - rarely use it over the kindle app on my phone.
Hope it works for you though- love the idea.
Tepix 4 hours ago [-]
> My current go to - paper and pen with chatgpt app on phone - snap a photo to extract my writing.
I‘m not sure what you‘re writing but sending it all to a US cloud - do you not care about privacy at all?
whatevertrevor 8 hours ago [-]
I'm trading classes with my partner on my remarkable (she's teaching me Social Choice Theory, me her Physics), I agree with almost everything you said but there are a few reasons why I'm going the Remarkable route here:
- I don't need to take pictures manually, all lectures are automatically stored, and much easier to flip through instead of a library of photos (which I'd have to later organize).
- I use the screenshare feature which turns my Remarkable into a whiteboard. I could get an actual whiteboard but then we're back to taking manual pictures in the middle of lessons, which will definitely be an impedance.
ordinaryradical 9 hours ago [-]
I have the Remarkable 2 and my only gripe is being unable to use a mechanical keyboard with it. In every other regard it is truly a delight, perhaps even a perfection of certain modes of thinking.
baby_souffle 9 hours ago [-]
Kindle scribe has been a disappointment.
Unless you're going to go through all the work needed to jailbreak, your subject to whatever software changes Amazon wants to push on you with next to no notice.
I haven't looked much since shortly after a launch of the original scribe but I was infuriated to find out that they didn't have a straightforward or simple API for extracting notes and that wasn't something they had on the road map for immediately after release either.
To the best of my knowledge, there is still no convenient way to extract handwritten scribbles and store them as an SVG alongside OCR inside of an obsidian vault. I would love to be proven wrong on this though.
If you don't plan to do a ton of handwriting, the scribe is a gorgeous and large screen. Reading long form documents on it would be a treat if it wasn't such a pain in the ass to side load and synchronize PDFs.
Now I just do everything through my iPad with a pencil and it's almost as good...
whoisburbansky 9 hours ago [-]
OTOH, koreader on the Scribe post jailbreak is easily the best large format PDF reading experience I've ever had.
codazoda 8 hours ago [-]
These days you can email a searchable PDF of your notebooks. I would guess you can extract these with simple tools, though I keep mine as PDF.
t0lo 9 hours ago [-]
I have a boox go 10.3 it's alright- the android app functionality makes it more useful than others
These things not being android based is always a deal breaker for me because I have so many sources of DRMed audiobooks or ebooks that would just be a hassle on a lot of these e-ink devices, which is something I really want out of these note tablets.
I got a boox air note 4c with the original intention of using it for comic books with some basic coloring, but have found it significantly more useful for notetaking over anything else. UX is still abysmal in some ways that make starting notes a chore, but it's increased my note taking and journaling significantly.
captainkrtek 8 hours ago [-]
Nearly the same price as a new iPad mini (costs $50 less). Maybe it takes notes better (though I took notes with my mini just fine), but struggling to see the value at this price point.
Arainach 8 hours ago [-]
The value is in the lack of features. This is a hard concept for most people who haven't used one (or a similar device) to grasp.
Running Android or iOS apps is an anti-feature. Having cellular data is an anti-feature. Our world is full of trillion dollar corporations fighting as hard as they can to distract us, drive engagement, and get us staring at their wall for as long as possible.
My reMarkable 2 is the best focus device I have. It's the best writing device by far, the best "draw some woodworking plans" device, the best "work on a crossword puzzle" device, and a very good reading device (page navigation is slower than Kindle, but being able to read PDFs designed for 8.5x11 which are unreadable on Kindle makes it a wash).
On an iPad, at any moment there could be a toast from Signal, or Discord, or Messenger, or whatever. There's a web browser full of infinite content on Reddit and YouTube. I can go on a plane and have a physical book in front of me but it's no match for the allure of the internet if there's Wi-Fi. The reMarkable is one of the only devices out there that fixes the distraction aspect, and THAT is the single biggest thing between me and achieving things.
wenc 6 hours ago [-]
> On an iPad, at any moment there could be a toast from Signal, or Discord, or Messenger, or whatever. There's a web browser full of infinite content on Reddit and YouTube. I can go on a plane and have a physical book in front of me but it's no match for the allure of the internet if there's Wi-Fi. The reMarkable is one of the only devices out there that fixes the distraction aspect, and THAT is the single biggest thing between me and achieving things.
Don't install any of these apps, and use a Shortcut (described somewhere else on this page). It's really not that hard -- I've done it. Then stick a paper-like sheet on it.
And voila, your iPad is now a better ReMarkable. The Apple Pencil is more amazing than most pens, the resolution and refresh rate on a Retina Display is unmatched.
The key to not getting tired on a tablet is responsiveness -- something no eInk device achieves. I regularly do math derivations on Freeform for hours without being distracted.
I realized after trying a bunch of expensive distraction-free devices over the years that for me, none of them were worth it.
captainkrtek 8 hours ago [-]
I hear you. I bought an iPad specifically for studying and note taking (reading textbooks, annotating, etc.) and just didn’t have many apps installed. I have ADHD and certainly can struggle with distractions on my phone, but keeping the iPad simple worked fine focus-wise.
SchemaLoad 6 hours ago [-]
Even so, you could just have the ipad and not install messaging apps or social media. Or turn off notifications. Or even disconnect it from the internet. Delete the wifi password so you have to manually connect it when you need to download apps or whatever.
Apple provides a fairly sophisticated set of focus modes and distraction prevention features.
hinkley 8 hours ago [-]
A lot of people get bitchy if you have a tablet or laptop open in a meeting.
wenc 6 hours ago [-]
Only if you type.
Oddly, no one gets offended if you scribble with your Apple Pencil. It looks like you're taking notes.
anamexis 8 hours ago [-]
This is a tablet. Are people predicating their bitchiness on what kind of screen it has?
hinkley 6 hours ago [-]
Is there a web browser and social networking on this 'tablet'?
You're using a very literal definition of tablet that seems more argumentative than constructive. Care to try rephrasing?
fluidcruft 8 hours ago [-]
That doesn't seem like a particularly defensible reason to invest in one tool vs another to me. ymmv
hinkley 6 hours ago [-]
The amount of tech we purchase trying to solve social problems in enormous.
bigyabai 8 hours ago [-]
If you get both with a stylus the price ends up being more-or-less equal. As someone who isn't in the Apple ecosystem it seems like a bit of a toss-up for me.
egypturnash 8 hours ago [-]
Four hundred and fifty dollars for a simulation of a roughly-A5 notebook.
Everything else is the same. Am I missing anything?
hboon 4 hours ago [-]
I think it's more like it's like reMarkable Paper Pro but smaller.
The difference being the reMarkable Paper Pro not only has color + reading light on top of reMarkable 2, the writing experience as well as the stylus are different from the reMarkable 2.
apparent 6 hours ago [-]
Can anyone weigh in on the Gallery versus Kaleido screen tradeoffs? I understand Gallery has better color but slower refresh but don't know how big a deal this is for various use cases.
dlcarrier 2 hours ago [-]
I have a Bigme Galy, that uses a Gallery 3 display, as well as a Kobo Libra Colour, which uses a Kaleido 3 display.
I regret buying the Kobo Libra Colour, solely because of the display. You pretty much need the backlight on any time it isn't in direct sunlight, and even then the contrast is worse than a first-generation monochrome E Ink display, and the saturation is pretty low. Monochrome text is also a bit fuzzy.
The Bigme Galy display works in the same lighting as monochrome displays, with nearly as good of contrast. Saturation with primary colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow) is excellent, and with secondary colors it's not as good but still better than the Kaleido display. Magenta is the most vibrant, so green struggles the most.
The Gallery display does take several times longer to refresh in full color mode, but it has a monochrome mode that refreshes at a similar rate to monochrome eink displays on ebook readers, so you get dynamically chose between color or speed.
Both ereaders have laughably bad software, so that didn't have a net affect on my preferences.
speakspokespok 7 hours ago [-]
For those on the market for something the size of a standard sheet of paper whats recommended? Side loading PDFs and the size I mentioned are the main requirements. I'd prefer not to jail-brake but I have and I can.
loloquwowndueo 7 hours ago [-]
Boox Note Max. a4 size, expensive as hell ($650 I think), but it runs Android, can install stuff from the play store or side load apk. Ships with a very capable document reader can handle ebook formats, pdf and has good support for drawing and annotations.
Scene_Cast2 6 hours ago [-]
There's also the Box Tab X C, the color variant. Has color (and thus a backlight and the DPI tradeoff), and the pen is not Wacom.
There's also the Fujitsu Quaderno gen 3 as well - half the weight but can't do epub or mobi.
wuschel 20 minutes ago [-]
Regretably, the Boox Note Max or Remarkable might be a better choice than any Fujitsu reader. I am on my second device from Fujitsu and I will not purchase another one.
Like the Sony DPT readers, the Quaderno is would be great product ... however,
1. there is no customer service in the EU/US markets. Something broke? Bin it.
2. the devices are quite fragile, with poor longevity.
3. the closed source software does not support modern systems such as Apple's M4 Macbook series.
Disclaimer:
conqrr 7 hours ago [-]
Kindle scribe if you can get it for cheap. I think it goes for $240 sometimes and it's a steal for 10 inch of eink. Not the best for writing, PDF may have few rough edges but pretty decent overall.
ivape 7 hours ago [-]
I think most people into these devices always advise getting the largest writing surface possible. This is a "cute" device, but if you are serious enough about note taking (which you'd have to be to get one of these things at these prices), then you are limiting yourself with this size.
MrJohz 3 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure that's true. For example, Supernote have done very well with their A6X/Nomad range (confusingly about the size of an A5 sheet of paper), I think partly because they're the only company that has targeted that size. Personally, I much prefer having a smaller page to make notes on, and that's part of the reason I went for the Supernote.
If you're reading and annotating a lot of full-sized PDFs, then bigger is better. But for just taking notes, drawing diagrams, etc, I found a smaller device was a lot more portable and convenient.
emadabdulrahim 6 hours ago [-]
Can't see myself paying more than $200 for this device.
eichin 4 hours ago [-]
Hmm, I kind of want a Boox Palma with a stylus, and this is almost that, but not quite...
ezfe 6 hours ago [-]
Loved my remarkable pro, but it was too expensive.
debugging 9 hours ago [-]
$700+, that's a little steep folks for replacing paper :)
mrcsharp 8 hours ago [-]
I have the ReMarkable 2 so I am biased here but these devices do more than replace paper.
My fav feature so far has been screensharing from the ReMarkable 2 while on online meetings.
So while their whole thing is about replacing paper, it actually does a lot more than just that.
debugging 7 hours ago [-]
The problem with such an expensive device is the fear of dropping it, for me at least I don't think I would be comfortable using it on a daily basis. It must be a great device though, too bad the local electronic stores don't have them on display.
7bit 2 hours ago [-]
Looks like a great product. Always wanted one -- if they would cost a third of what they do. At this price point absolutely not! In general, these kind of products are too expensive, regardless of what make and model.
cyberax 4 hours ago [-]
I'm using my RM2 as an e-Reader, after installing Toltec and KoReader. And it turned out to be the best e-Reader I've ever used, the sharpness of the text and the form-factor are perfect for long books.
But their note-taking software is just crap. They have very weak language support, no Chinese, no Russian, or any other languages with non-Latin scripts. They don't even have software keyboards for them!
oliyoung 7 hours ago [-]
Wonderful idea
Inexplicable price point
mariusor 53 minutes ago [-]
Small company, low volume product, high production premiums. Not everyone can afford Amazon and Apple level volumes.
fuzzythinker 9 hours ago [-]
Really can't see how it can sell well priced this high.
mandeepj 9 hours ago [-]
I find the name is a bit unrelated! Move as in move your data?
rapfaria 9 hours ago [-]
Move like mobile phones
Now the "Pro"...
whatevertrevor 8 hours ago [-]
The Pro is because it's a colored display. Though I do agree I can't wait until we're done with the whole "Pro" branding non-sense everywhere in hardware.
kstrauser 8 hours ago [-]
I understand that they deliberately make focused devices with no desire to have a million distracting features. That’s nice. I appreciate it.
But for the life of me, this thing screams to have a calendar app. My life involves plenty of meetings now. If I could take this to one meeting and look at it to see what my next meeting will be, I think I’d never want anything else.
Not anything fancy. Not even a way to add or edit appointments. Just show me a list of where I’m supposed to to be today.
(And to anyone who’s about to point out that I could lot that info down at my desk before I get up to walk to the meeting room, lemme stop you right there. That’s not happening.)
It is a Linux variant. Has been rootable in the past.
geor9e 8 hours ago [-]
Cool but wish it was either a phone case (draw in e-ink on back of phone) or had good sync to my macbook (my letter paper size remarkable table is absolute garbage at sync - very painful process). This isn't convenient enough to warrant existing imo.
I used to be a huge fan of these guys, going as far as buying their extremely expensive $800 device as gifts for a few friends, but now I advise anybody and everybody against ever giving them money
Two separate reasons.
One: they design hardware very poorly, and when advised and shown, do not fix it. I am convinced this is on purpose, and this saddens me. I can share my email exchange where i advised them on this. Did not go anywhere. This has been the cause of a lot of broken USB C ports on remarkable2. I have documented this extensively with photos on multiple devices. No sane person places a USB-C port that will interact with the a real user in the real world, handling insertion/removal forces on the very very edge (less than 1mm from edge) of a very very thin (0.4m thick IIRC) PCB, without affixing it to something else as well -- to take the load. They did. Predictably, it breaks.
Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/eu4P8fnaNtV9vhMo7 . The video in there, via microscope, you can see how the contacts peeled off. Larger photos show the PCB and how the connector is "affixed". Final photo is after it was fixed, but before the epoxy was added by me
Two: they took features that were part of the original very expensive product, bought under the understanding that "I pay you much $$, you do not nickel and dime me ever again", and locked them behind paywalls of monthly service years after original purchase. They did sort-of grandfather-in all existing users, but not if you reset the device or gift/transfer it. Devaluing/crippling products post facto is something that should never be rewarded. Companies that do that should fail.
Please help reMerkable fail for the above anti-user behaviour. They deserve it.
benji_is_me 8 hours ago [-]
Another hardware issue they have is the tip of the Marker Plus. It has a thin collar around the nib that (in my experience) is brittle and breaks off, at which point the marker becomes useless because the nib flexes. There are lots of posts on Reddit complaining about the same issue.
They replaced mine the first time this happened. Now my replacement broke and they aren't replacing it :(.
With that being said, I'm still very happy with my RM2. I purchased a "V-Pen" as a replacement and it's working okay. I'm lucky enough to have a free connect subscription for life because I purchased it early enough.
sowbug 8 hours ago [-]
When I bought mine, I appreciated that they seemed to be pricing it to make a profit as a product, not as a loss-leading foothold for future subscription revenue. How naive I was to think they wouldn't do both.
choilive 8 hours ago [-]
I have a friend that went through 3 remarkables due to failures, I didnt dig into the root cause but I suspect you might be right on the USB-C port since they all "stopped charging".
whatevertrevor 8 hours ago [-]
They also have the USB C charging quirk/cheap-out that if they're completely drained they will only charge with a low powered trickle charger until the device gets to some minimal level of charge, and then you can use a higher power source.
the video in there, via microscope, you can see how the contacts peeled off. Larger photos show the PCB and how the connector is "affixed". Final photo is after it was fixed, but before the epoxy
choilive 2 hours ago [-]
Hilarious. Especially compared to the USB-C connector on an iPhone, which is secured by 6 (!!!) screws to the frame.
mmastrac 9 hours ago [-]
I use a magnetic charger adapter for mine. I can see how these could break over time but the magnet has never failed me.
mrcsharp 8 hours ago [-]
Sorry, but A$799 for this one makes no sense when the ReMarkable 2 is A$699.
vzaliva 9 hours ago [-]
May I use to read books (epubs?). I am not carrying another device, but it could replace my Kindle.
whatevertrevor 8 hours ago [-]
If your primary use case is to read books off of Kindle, I'd say no, because Remarkable doesn't run on Android, and as such has no Kindle app. You can de-DRM Kindle books to read on it, but then you're adding these steps for no real gain.
If you're reading comics, then maybe, because this device is expensive precisely for the colored-e-ink screen. But even then better alternatives for that usecase probably exist, as the e-ink space is filled with Android based devices with better format compatibility.
calmbell 6 hours ago [-]
Check out the Boox Palma 2. It has been an excellent Kindle replacement for me and is in the same smartphone form factor as the Paper Pro Move.
9 hours ago [-]
MengerSponge 5 hours ago [-]
It looks like they hired somebody from Redmond to name their products.
pimlottc 5 hours ago [-]
I know what Remarkable is, but without clicking the link, I have no idea what this new product is.
hinkley 8 hours ago [-]
Huh. The smaller one is cheaper. Look at that.
senectus1 7 hours ago [-]
these clowns continue to produce fantastic technology that cant be properly managed in the enterprise space.
We have C levels's clambering for these things but we cant secure them and manage them. FIX IT! we'll buy them and use them but you guys need to grow up and mature your product first!
fooker 6 hours ago [-]
It’s standard Linux underneath that you can lock down or modify.
If your enterprise does not have the expertise to handle that, you need chromebooks I guess.
senectus1 2 hours ago [-]
lock down and modify is 1/10th of what enterprise management is about.
keyle 5 hours ago [-]
Can't wait for the Paper Nano! /s
I really just want to turn my Remarkable 2 as an extended monitor with note taking... I'm on an article, send it there in one click or so and done.
I haven't used it in a while so that might be something that exists now and I'd be oblivious to it...
fragmede 3 hours ago [-]
There's a Remarkable Chrome extension to send things over to it, as well as apps for iphone and Android, dunno if you've seen that.
Rendered at 08:52:41 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
One of the promises that lead me to buy one was the hackability - "It's Linux!" "You can SSH into it!", which, on paper (heh) is still true, but in practice very much isn't.
I think something like a Boox, which runs Android, might be more open to customization, but for now I am back to pencil and paper. That doesn't run Linux, but it also won't change its terms of service anytime soon.
These days I do quite a bit of field work outdoors (taking measurements, ssh'ing into mobile equipment) and a laptop is a chore to use in broad daylight. With the boox I can connect a bluetooth keyboard and install termux. It's not a perfect setup, but sure beats squinting at a dim screen.
If anyone else had this experienced and figured out how to make it work, let me know.
Perhaps this Hacker News discussion will lead to some user experience improvements.
I'm not comfortable asking your wife to lick anything, but if she were to moisturize her finger tip (??) prior to swiping, perhaps that would improve the situation?
I wanted to love my RM2 so much. The write path is great. Writing notes on it during a meeting is a genuinely good experience. The read path: not so much. EInk UXs are so clunky especially when you’re used to how fluid phones are. Forget scrolling through your notes - It’s maddening.
Pretty good ereader though.
I do wish they’d improve the PDF usability or embrace open sourcing the UI. There’s a lot of features that should be easy to implement, like split screen or floating sticky notes, but they seem almost wholly focused on the hardware. I thought it’d be the ultimate tool for studying math and saving money on books, thus paying for itself, but it’s just not there yet and I’m not sure they plan to get it there.
My reasons: much better software for sketching, not bound to a single ereader app, multiple ways to send stuff around, perfect size.
Many years later, I would still choose the same. I use it to annotate webpages, sketch, read books and read queued articles in instapaper. It's distraction-free but still connected. I can Airdrop drawings or load my handwritten notes on the Macbook app. Tap to define is so good I've absent-mindedly tried it on a paper book.
The LED screen is great for some things and bad for others. You have to turn it on and unlock it. You can't SSH into it or sync your drawings as simple files. Otherwise, it's really good.
It will run most Android apps (modulo Eink screen support). The built-in note taking app is terrific.
Format support wasn't great either, only PDF and EPUB. Which does cover most bases, to be fair. AZW3 and MOBI aren't dealbreakers, but... really, no TXT?
I don't understand why this is such a necessary feature. Most people don't read paper books with a dictionary handy.
I find myself really missing this feature when I occasionally read a paper book, thinking about clicking the word on the page to get a definition.
I suspect if you compare the usage of dictionaries among paper book readers vs ereader users, the latter use them more often - probably at least partially because they're so much easier to use. I suspect the incidence of not understanding a word would be pretty much the same.
For myself, I read a lot of older books with archaic and niche terms, so it's practically required to be able to look things up if I want to really understand what's going on.
(As an aside, I looked up a definition on Google just writing this to ensure I was using a word properly. :P)
But the maintenance price of such basic features is absurdly low. Seriously, we're talking about a basic dictionary lookup. We're not talking about massive, expansive features that will require many hours of maintenance.
Anyway, if you don't use a dictionary at all, even while reading - and you think a "handful of users" use them - then this conversation probably is not going to go anywhere.
I wound up down the https://toltec-dev.org/ rabbit hole which was fun and gets me additional features but has its own issues (suspend/resume is dodgy sometimes now)
Again to be fair the rM2 is not sold as an _e-reader_ per se. But regardless I do find the e-reading experience weak.
It's just such basic functionality that... why would you not, if even a small function of the device is indeed to read files?
Honestly from what I'm reading in this thread I'm rather turned off by ReMarkable now, which is sort of disappointing. Still, I'm glad to see more and more e-ink options.
It was my last ditch effort to make me use my RM2 but I found it didn’t fit how I wanted to take notes and was still pretty clunky.
I mostly have a very aged Kindle that needs replaced and I would like a small digital notepad. Boox fits the bill generally. I have a larger boox, it's a little quirky and a bit too heavy to hold comfortably but works fine after some configuration.
I have been looking at the Boox Go 7... I have a Boox Note Air and generally like it a lot after the major software upgrade it got when Air 2 was released and also particularly running Android has been quite handy (for syncing journal articles with Zotero). But I am also very curious about Supernote Nomad and may go that way if I decide backlight doesn't matter. I do like backlight for reading in be without bothering my wife...
And so I keep spinning in indecision...
I just invested in a printer that works and print out a lot of stuff I want to deeply annotate. Otherwise I have the ipad for some other stuff.
I really enjoy eink for reading but it's really a super specific market. Competing against the ipad is tough! The generalist devices tend to get so good that the specialized devices stop being worth it.
I’ve settled on markdown in vscode and a todo list app.
The beauty of physical interfaces like for paper is that you really can just flip through a stack while talking to someone and find what you need.
The big thing that I think works well in paper world is simply having things organized chronologically. I often remember around when I collected a piece of info.
So I’ve a custom GTD-like system build using iOS reminders, .md files, and a couple of scripts.
For mobile (Android) I use Orgro.
and I loved that until amazon killed "download" for kindle books.
I was literally about to order one until I read the comments
It doesn't surprise me at all that they think there's a market for the device at this size (though the price is debatable), assuming it worked quite well. Sounds like that's a bit much to hope for, given OP's experience.
Edit: your => OP's
I say this as someone who bought a Daylight tablet for $700 and is now looking to sell it, since I didn’t fit anywhere and it just sits.
But I felt bad sending it back over that, especially for a new company, so I figured I’d give it a fair shot.
I spent some time trying to use the default launcher and figure out its quirks. Eventually I got annoyed with it and installed a more traditional launcher. At this point it just turned into a generic Android tablet with a worse screen. Since I’m in the Apple ecosystem, it was a bit of an island, and generic tablets have never fit well into my workflow, I gave up on the iPad after those sat around too.
I did like the pen, mostly because it didn’t require any batteries or charging. The Apple Pencil needing to be changed makes it a non-starter for me, I find that experience to be awful. So props to Daylight for going the battery free route, like a normal pencil or pen would be.
The pen alone wasn’t enough for me. I don’t write that many hand written notes. And while I kind of liked that aspect, since it didn’t integrate with my other stuff, it wasn’t something I could really invest in, and wasn’t good enough to find a bunch of new cross platform tools to make it fit.
The novelty of the black and white screen wore off quickly. Outside of note taking, a lot of app and websites really lean on color to provide meaningful information that was all lost. The amber backlight I found hard to see, so adjusted it more white. There were some random buttons on the side of the tablet that didn’t seem to do anything. Maybe if I spent more time outdoors my perspective on the screen may have shifted, but I don’t. Overall it was very “meh”, for me.
If you want a general purpose tablet, an iPad Air is cheaper and better in almost every way. If you want it black and white, the iPad has a color filter for that. If you want a screen that works in bright sunlight and a pen that doesn’t need a battery, those are the two areas where the Daylight can one-up the iPad, but that person may be more of a Remarkable customer.
The product seemed to be mostly aimed at tech bros with more money than they know what to do with.
I am not sure I will invest this much, but it's pleasantly surprising to see meaningful advancements in form factor and technology enabled over the longhaul in the products remarkable has made.
I had to switch to a Boox though, as I grew bored of having to maintain a Windows VM with a downgraded Calibre to convert my Amazon purchases to ebooks for reading on the Remarkable. I now have my Boox with the Amazon Kindle app and can natively read my books, and the writing feeling is almost as good as on the Remarkable.
I would much rather have a A6 or A5 sized display or any other standard size for paper notebooks.
The trick to something narrower is to get comfortable with doodling in landscape mode, e. g. for classroom notes, and scroll (and orientation-switch) accordingly when neccessary. Ideally you'd have physical complementary buttons present, but a good touchscreen with palm rejection works as well. To-do lists and the like can be done vertical mode. In other words, a digital notepad.
Now you only have to built a corresponding smartphone-sized, pen-focused, modular and connectable open-standards general-purpose computer. :) ... :(
The reMarkable looks too underpowered and maybe too enshittified (subscriptions, lock-ins) to be used for anything else but a digital notepad.
Remarkable has the roughly A6-sized Paper Pro, Kobo has three e-ink devices with styli and good screen ratios, and Supernote has models named A5 (and A5 x2) and A6 after the paper sizes. I think the options are quite good.
Funnily though, professional life is a lot simpler. I just need a single paper notebook with my running todo list. Everything else is stored in google docs or obsidian. Having an eink or tablet for taking notes would feel like friction without much benefit.
I was using regular notebooks but I was collecting too many and I was worried about storage and loss.
I wrote about the experience a few months into it.
https://notes.joeldare.com/handwritten-notes-on-the-kindle-s...
I do not read on mine, it’s exclusively for writing. Possibly because switching is too slow.
Also, I tend to only write things down as a note-taking and memorization exercise, or to think out a certain idea. I usually don't have to read the notes again. So the archiving functionality of having digital paper-like notes is not nessisarially more useful, and it is often more difficult to search through than physical notebooks. Anything I really need to read later, I can write succinctly in a text file or something.
I also don't like getting locked into a certain ecosystem. Xournal++ is the only open-source cross-platform app I can find, and it's not that good.
Even for reading physical books, you can find a lot of used paperbacks for less than $10, which is very little when you consider the value of the time you spend reading them, the ease of flipping through pages and being able to dog-ear them, and the collectible aspect of the book covers covers. An eink tablet be nice for reading textbooks and papers that are more expensive and require pirating, however. But for now I just use a regular screen in portrait.
Yeah.
For several kinds of notes, the value from writing is in doing the writing to assist thinking. Once I write it down, it doesn't need to hang around in my head.
[1]https://github.com/ddvk/rmfakecloud
I locked the fw on my remarkable 2 to 2.x and used ddvk hacks and it's just worked for years. I don't need any new features.
[1] https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Using-reMarkable-wi...
please note that no subscription != no cloud. of the features listed in the help page all but "tags" require an remarkable cloud account and may stop working if remarkable cloud ever shuts down.
I was considering reMarkable when upgrading my ebook reader with note taking capabilities, but it's mostly a notepad with an option for ebooks (and not the other way around) and the subscription model on top of $500 hardware was ridiculous.
The community has built amazing tools for remarkable device, but their work is constantly being broken by software updates. This isn't a sustainable situation. For a company that charges for a cloud service, providing a stable, official API should be a priority. It would not only support the community's innovation but also provide a reliable foundation that developers and users can trust for the long term.
As long as a stable, official API isn't provided, I won't be buying a new device from them.
I realized there was already a device that was perfect for note taking on an infinite canvas.
I use an iPad and Apple Pencil (bought refurb on backmarket.com) with paper like surface [1] I install nothing in it except Apple Freeform. (No distractions)
High refresh rate, Retina display, excellent pen pressure, and fast chip. Cheaper than RM2 if bought refurb.
[1] https://a.co/d/dHLwPp1
How do you uninstall Safari? That's the most distracting app of all.
Open Shortcuts.
Go to Automations.
Create one, for App, when Safari is opened, run immediately.
Create a new blank shortcut.
Add one action: go to Home Screen.
Now when you open Safari, it instantly closes again. You can disable that by turning off the automation. It’s more of a slap on the wrist than a handcuff, but a reminder that you don’t want to use the app on that device.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the similarity in size to the Apple Newton MessagePad from the 90s:
Original MessagePad: 184 x 114 mm (7.25 x 4.5 in)
reMarkable Paper Pro Move: 195.6 x 107.8 mm (7.7 x 4.24 in)
No comparison in thickness though, with the Newton being about 3x the thickness of the reMarkable (19 mm vs 6.5 mm).
I got a PineNote and it had a $100 import duty
This device for me is odd/too small it's like you'd have 2 phones. Though I've seen those e-ink phones.
The writing feel is great on the RM2 and the battery life wow. Charge it once a month deal.
Haven't tried OCR on it, but I've heard other e-Readers have them beat on that end too.
So if devices like these try to beat paper, even if the hardware is perfect, it comes down to software and how open it is. As a serious note-taker one would think this was the perfect device for me, but I checked out the software side of things and it did not convince me. Paper is still superior.
Regardless, expected better support response for a product in this price range.
The solution i was told (and which worked for me) was to plug it into a computer for a while - I assume that some time syncing must happen in the background when it’s connected via usb.
This feature is only available in the beta version built from current master, not in the current 9.0.0 release.
https://us.livescribe.com/
That said, special paper isn’t a huge ask, and it increases accuracy immensely. I worked for a company that used this tech years ago, and it was impressive not only for text, but marking up maps, collecting data from forms, etc.
I like the analog ability to toss paper all over my desk without worrying about damaging whatever I balance it on.
And I do like physical paper because you can split a stack and make “more screens”
I guess this is getting a bit niche. But it seems like these companies are already trying to play in a niche market segment…
Maybe I just need a camera to scan my notes or something, haha.
My biggest gripe with it originally was that the next and previous page gestures worked perhaps one in three attempts, which has been fixed in the most recent software that reduced the perceived latency of everything dramatically. Beyond that it’s a weird experience, it’s sort of usable with open source tools but requires a lot of hacks to not have it sync with their cloud offering if you want privacy. Even if you use their cloud services it often feels a bit clunky and half considered where buttons and controls end up being.
I love the hardware, it’s an amazing looking screen, it feels ultra premium, the folio cases people have made for it fit perfectly in my bag.
If a workflow for exporting my remarkable notes as SVG to obsidian but then also running OCR over them so I can search through them (without converting them to editable text because that's usually a formatting nightmare) existed, I'd be so happy as it would solve the retrieval problem.
If I could easily just use it as a text terminal -- with emacs and ssh support -- I would use it every day. But when I looked up the hacking side of things it looked like a lot of work and kind of sketchy.
That killed my interest in their previous devices.
Scribe lets you read your kindle books, draw on them, and write notes. Hard to get the notes off the device.
RM lets you sync automatically. The rest of their software is total junk (see App Store ratings). It was more glitchy. Marginally better writing. Monthly fee.
Both make exporting notes more difficult than it should be.
My current go to - paper and pen with chatgpt app on phone - snap a photo to extract my writing.
I kept the scribe for reading books - rarely use it over the kindle app on my phone.
Hope it works for you though- love the idea.
I‘m not sure what you‘re writing but sending it all to a US cloud - do you not care about privacy at all?
- I don't need to take pictures manually, all lectures are automatically stored, and much easier to flip through instead of a library of photos (which I'd have to later organize).
- I use the screenshare feature which turns my Remarkable into a whiteboard. I could get an actual whiteboard but then we're back to taking manual pictures in the middle of lessons, which will definitely be an impedance.
I haven't looked much since shortly after a launch of the original scribe but I was infuriated to find out that they didn't have a straightforward or simple API for extracting notes and that wasn't something they had on the road map for immediately after release either.
To the best of my knowledge, there is still no convenient way to extract handwritten scribbles and store them as an SVG alongside OCR inside of an obsidian vault. I would love to be proven wrong on this though.
If you don't plan to do a ton of handwriting, the scribe is a gorgeous and large screen. Reading long form documents on it would be a treat if it wasn't such a pain in the ass to side load and synchronize PDFs.
Now I just do everything through my iPad with a pencil and it's almost as good...
I got a boox air note 4c with the original intention of using it for comic books with some basic coloring, but have found it significantly more useful for notetaking over anything else. UX is still abysmal in some ways that make starting notes a chore, but it's increased my note taking and journaling significantly.
Running Android or iOS apps is an anti-feature. Having cellular data is an anti-feature. Our world is full of trillion dollar corporations fighting as hard as they can to distract us, drive engagement, and get us staring at their wall for as long as possible.
My reMarkable 2 is the best focus device I have. It's the best writing device by far, the best "draw some woodworking plans" device, the best "work on a crossword puzzle" device, and a very good reading device (page navigation is slower than Kindle, but being able to read PDFs designed for 8.5x11 which are unreadable on Kindle makes it a wash).
On an iPad, at any moment there could be a toast from Signal, or Discord, or Messenger, or whatever. There's a web browser full of infinite content on Reddit and YouTube. I can go on a plane and have a physical book in front of me but it's no match for the allure of the internet if there's Wi-Fi. The reMarkable is one of the only devices out there that fixes the distraction aspect, and THAT is the single biggest thing between me and achieving things.
Don't install any of these apps, and use a Shortcut (described somewhere else on this page). It's really not that hard -- I've done it. Then stick a paper-like sheet on it.
And voila, your iPad is now a better ReMarkable. The Apple Pencil is more amazing than most pens, the resolution and refresh rate on a Retina Display is unmatched.
The key to not getting tired on a tablet is responsiveness -- something no eInk device achieves. I regularly do math derivations on Freeform for hours without being distracted.
I realized after trying a bunch of expensive distraction-free devices over the years that for me, none of them were worth it.
Apple provides a fairly sophisticated set of focus modes and distraction prevention features.
Oddly, no one gets offended if you scribble with your Apple Pencil. It looks like you're taking notes.
You're using a very literal definition of tablet that seems more argumentative than constructive. Care to try rephrasing?
If you want a really nice A5 notebook it can run you an entire twenty five bucks. https://www.dickblick.com/products/leuchtturm1917-sketchbook... Wanna share what's on it? Your phone has a camera, right?
* Phone-sized instead of tablet-sized
* Has color
* Has reading light
* Sensors detect when a folio is open or closed
Everything else is the same. Am I missing anything?
The difference being the reMarkable Paper Pro not only has color + reading light on top of reMarkable 2, the writing experience as well as the stylus are different from the reMarkable 2.
I regret buying the Kobo Libra Colour, solely because of the display. You pretty much need the backlight on any time it isn't in direct sunlight, and even then the contrast is worse than a first-generation monochrome E Ink display, and the saturation is pretty low. Monochrome text is also a bit fuzzy.
The Bigme Galy display works in the same lighting as monochrome displays, with nearly as good of contrast. Saturation with primary colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow) is excellent, and with secondary colors it's not as good but still better than the Kaleido display. Magenta is the most vibrant, so green struggles the most.
The Gallery display does take several times longer to refresh in full color mode, but it has a monochrome mode that refreshes at a similar rate to monochrome eink displays on ebook readers, so you get dynamically chose between color or speed.
Both ereaders have laughably bad software, so that didn't have a net affect on my preferences.
There's also the Fujitsu Quaderno gen 3 as well - half the weight but can't do epub or mobi.
Like the Sony DPT readers, the Quaderno is would be great product ... however,
1. there is no customer service in the EU/US markets. Something broke? Bin it. 2. the devices are quite fragile, with poor longevity. 3. the closed source software does not support modern systems such as Apple's M4 Macbook series.
Disclaimer:
If you're reading and annotating a lot of full-sized PDFs, then bigger is better. But for just taking notes, drawing diagrams, etc, I found a smaller device was a lot more portable and convenient.
My fav feature so far has been screensharing from the ReMarkable 2 while on online meetings.
So while their whole thing is about replacing paper, it actually does a lot more than just that.
But their note-taking software is just crap. They have very weak language support, no Chinese, no Russian, or any other languages with non-Latin scripts. They don't even have software keyboards for them!
Inexplicable price point
Now the "Pro"...
But for the life of me, this thing screams to have a calendar app. My life involves plenty of meetings now. If I could take this to one meeting and look at it to see what my next meeting will be, I think I’d never want anything else.
Not anything fancy. Not even a way to add or edit appointments. Just show me a list of where I’m supposed to to be today.
(And to anyone who’s about to point out that I could lot that info down at my desk before I get up to walk to the meeting room, lemme stop you right there. That’s not happening.)
all the information is pretty public: https://developer.remarkable.com/documentation/software-stac...
Ironically the $2 aliexpress lcd pad I bought gets more use than my remarkable these days (same as https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BBPV4491 )
Two separate reasons.
One: they design hardware very poorly, and when advised and shown, do not fix it. I am convinced this is on purpose, and this saddens me. I can share my email exchange where i advised them on this. Did not go anywhere. This has been the cause of a lot of broken USB C ports on remarkable2. I have documented this extensively with photos on multiple devices. No sane person places a USB-C port that will interact with the a real user in the real world, handling insertion/removal forces on the very very edge (less than 1mm from edge) of a very very thin (0.4m thick IIRC) PCB, without affixing it to something else as well -- to take the load. They did. Predictably, it breaks.
Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/eu4P8fnaNtV9vhMo7 . The video in there, via microscope, you can see how the contacts peeled off. Larger photos show the PCB and how the connector is "affixed". Final photo is after it was fixed, but before the epoxy was added by me
Two: they took features that were part of the original very expensive product, bought under the understanding that "I pay you much $$, you do not nickel and dime me ever again", and locked them behind paywalls of monthly service years after original purchase. They did sort-of grandfather-in all existing users, but not if you reset the device or gift/transfer it. Devaluing/crippling products post facto is something that should never be rewarded. Companies that do that should fail.
Please help reMerkable fail for the above anti-user behaviour. They deserve it.
They replaced mine the first time this happened. Now my replacement broke and they aren't replacing it :(.
With that being said, I'm still very happy with my RM2. I purchased a "V-Pen" as a replacement and it's working okay. I'm lucky enough to have a free connect subscription for life because I purchased it early enough.
the video in there, via microscope, you can see how the contacts peeled off. Larger photos show the PCB and how the connector is "affixed". Final photo is after it was fixed, but before the epoxy
If you're reading comics, then maybe, because this device is expensive precisely for the colored-e-ink screen. But even then better alternatives for that usecase probably exist, as the e-ink space is filled with Android based devices with better format compatibility.
We have C levels's clambering for these things but we cant secure them and manage them. FIX IT! we'll buy them and use them but you guys need to grow up and mature your product first!
If your enterprise does not have the expertise to handle that, you need chromebooks I guess.
I really just want to turn my Remarkable 2 as an extended monitor with note taking... I'm on an article, send it there in one click or so and done.
I haven't used it in a while so that might be something that exists now and I'd be oblivious to it...