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.
Remarkable itself does not promote the devices as hackable. That's the community that has evolved around it taking advantage of the company leaving the device open in this way. Furthermore, there is quite a thriving ecosystem[1] of custom software for the devices, so your assessment of it not working in practice is empirically untrue.
> the very restrictive underlying software
This is by design, based on publicly espoused principles, and everything about the product branding makes it very explicit and obvious. No one should buy a Remarkable device and be surprised about how restrictive it is.
> the user-hostile changes to the subscription
The "user-hostile" changes to the subscription is that they are charging for it.
It is worth emphasizing that nothing is restricted with device usage if you do not have a subscription. They expect you to pay if you want to use anything which runs through their cloud services, which is undeniably reasonable.
You can sync to other cloud providers without an active subscription.[2]
I almost bought one before I realized I’d be subscribing to it. No, that’s absolutely not reasonable given the price of the unit.
These things aren’t syncing videos. They’re moving some text and PDFs around. Even Apple gives you permanently free iCloud services when you own any Apple device, with the complaint being that they should give you more storage, not that you can’t use it at all.
They do have free cloud sync. It's capped based on the frequency of updating files rather than on a particular file size.
> Your notes will always be stored locally on your paper tablet, but only files used and synced online in the last 50 days will continue to be stored in the cloud and updated in our apps.
That’s a bizarrely low cap on a service with nearly zero marginal cost, and clearly meant to make you upgrade.
I load my Kobo with things like CACM issues and books I buy on sale and then flick through them at leisure when I’m on a plane or such. So now I can’t fetch the July journal issue because it’s aged out?
Nah, I’ll pass. It’s not controversial to say ReMarkable pushes you toward a paid plan. They’d even agree with that, I’m sure. It’s no great sin. Lots of things are subscription these days. It does mean I wouldn’t use it, though, because the non-rental alternatives are also pretty great.
This is really unreasonable entitlement. Expecting perpetually free cloud services of any kind is wholely unreasonable. Clouds have monthly costs. The only reason companies like Apple can offer them is because they are very well capitalized. They offer them to addict you. Small companies and startups that don't have access to cheap capital cannot afford to do that, and it's much more honest for them to not do that!
Do they sell one that is functional without the cloud though.
I’m not buying any device that requires a paid subscription to a cloud to get full functionality since if that goes away so does the ability to use the device.
A policy that’s served me well having friends IRL who keep getting bitten by services/IoT changing/going away/end of life.
Sell me a functional product with a subscription and I’m interested, everything else, no way.
I largely agree, but I do think it's worth noting that they do actually have a screen sharing feature.
I don't use the screen sharing feature, and have no desire to use it, so it is quite irritating that they require the subscription to automatically sync my under a megabyte documents on the occasion that I need that.
Fortunately, it does still have Google drive integration which does not require a subscription. It does require a bit of manual work, but it's not bad
That’s my point, though. People slag on them all the time for being cheapskates with their iCloud offerings. And even they give you a fully usable, unlimited feature iCloud account for free to sync all your devices together. I’m certain it costs way more per user to provide iCloud, with its constant syncing, than it costs ReMarkable to see if your PDFs are still up to date.
Primarily, syncing your documents between multiple Remarkable devices and their apps on your phone. The page on their site for it spells out everything pretty well.
I asked a friend who bought the new remarkable. He likes it but he says his old one was quite easy to link to google drive but the new one is not like that. Is it the same experience as you have?
FWIW I didn’t like the Boox experience: For writing you’re limited to the stock notes app, which I didn’t find usable: You can’t even zoom in it (something I thought would obviously be possible when choosing the smaller Nova 2). It also has a full Android system, which comes with advantages for sure but invites distractions and leads to very disappointing battery life.
I've been using a boox note air for many years and you definitely can zoom on that.
Android is great for this use case because it lets me syncthing notes and use sheet music apps and use both kindle and kobo and calibre library and offline wikipedia and my own tools. As far as I'm concerned if you try to use it as a generic android tablet you're doing it wrong, but android is a massive step above what everyone else is offering (i.e. none of that)
I know this probably doesn’t exactly fit your use case, but I’ve actually been able to do this with a Kindle Touch (yes, from 2011)! It was a super serene experience to have your books synced over into KOReader.
> if you try to use it as a generic android tablet you're doing it wrong
I agree, but I felt that’s what the system invited me to do (may just be my tinkerer genes though). Update notifications, etc, web browsing, hoops to jump through to share files ...
How‘s your note sync workflow? Can you reasonably easily and quickly access your handwritten notes from a laptop? Last I checked there was some manual export step to jump through.
I haven’t used it much for a few years at this point, but it definitely wasn’t there when I bought it, making it a grossly unfinished product for my use case (taking notes - crazy on a device made for taking notes, right?).
Nice to know that it’s available now that I don’t really need it anymore.
> It also has a full Android system, which comes with advantages for sure but invites distractions and leads to very disappointing battery life.
While some models have a disappointing battery life, it's most definitely because of BSR[0] not because of them running Android. I had a Note Air 3 and that thing got easily 2 weeks of battery life with heavy use while the BSR version (Note Air 3C) barely survived 2 days.
Yes, same. I have one that was grandfathered into the "no subscription" system, which means I can't buy another one (not sure if I will keep the ability not to have a subscription), and can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone else.
I do have a Boox Note Air4, which I bought with the intention of replacing the ReMarkable. On the plus side, it runs Android apps, but on the minus side, the UI is much less polished than the ReMarkable. Having said that, if I had the choice between the two, and weren't grandfathered into the no-subscription option, I would pick the Boox.
I believe the lifetime free subscription is an account setting, not a per device setting. If you go to my.remarkable.com and check the connect subscription page, it should say it's free as a reward for being an early customer.
You can also connect more than one device to the account nowadays.
Yes. Your grandfather status will automatically carry over to your new device.
I have purchased all the Remarkable units since day 1. My grandfather status has been in interrupted.
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.
Ha, I actually thought about getting a Boox when I started spending some time in my garden to work this summer cause of that exact same reason. Good to hear that it's actually feasible.
Both of you caught my curiosity so I went reading about these. On paper they seem perfect but it sounds like there are build quality issues and their warranty leaves a lot to be desired (reports of devices failing after months and warranty says it's $275 to fix, user fault) so I am steering clear.
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.
Very frustrating because it hides syncing your data into 3rd party clouds, not just their priority one. So I can't sync with Google Drive without paying them, which is very weird.
Isn't that an argument for Remarkable? You had the cloud functions for free and you've been grandfathered in. New buyers always knew that they'd need a subscription for that. Seems perfectly fair, even if you dislike the functionality (which is still very optional)
1. The user hostile changes I mentioned were a degradation of the initial experience, i.e. herding people into Remarkable's Cloud offering which, while it allowed for grandfathering, still was very restrictive in what sync features are available. Also, for new customers buying a RM now means a monthly subscription cost, which is why I said can't recommend it.
2. Remarkable itself was using the openness of their tablet in their marketing. If I were to buy an iPhone and then complain about the walled garden, that would be one thing. If I buy a product that prides itself as being hackable, I don't think I'm wrong to expect that.
Lastly, saying "I can't recommend this because of XYZ" is a far cry from "trashing the company".
> 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.
Can you expand on this a bit? Can't you still run third party software on the newer iterations?
Yes. The Paper Pro (and presumably the Move) require you to explicitly enable developer mode in order to enable ssh access where older devices had it enabled by default. USB still works. It is, however, not easy to toggle dev mode on and off - so once you activate it you will probably keep it active.
It mostly depends on your needs, the Note Air series is good if you are on the go while the bigger models like the Note Air Max are fit for a more stationary use.
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
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.
I bought a pinenote after the charing port on the rm2 stopped working. With the rm2 it would refuse to wake sometimes if it's not charged to 100% slowly, the pen ghosting issue continued to get worse the longer it was in use even with a replaced tip, the web interface wasn't the most practical to add new books with (via SSH it's also a bit annoying as forced to reverse engineer their JSON format), deleting files via the interface at one point didn't delete them on disk so had to remove them via SSH, and so on.
I never had a subscription and locking features which could be run locally on the device behind a service is rather annoying.
And yes, those issues were worse after the a firmware update.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I like using my iPad better than my RM2 for similar reasons (I have both, but really only use the iPad anymore). The pickup is much better on the iPad, in my opinion.
However, one thing that I think makes the biggest difference is adding a screen protector. I particularly like the ones from https://paperlike.com/. It adds a layer that makes it less like writing on glass and more like writing on paper. For me, this was the biggest increase in usability for taking notes.
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).
The software support is decent. Currently it's running an old version of Android that allows you to side load apps. They are supposedly working on moving the OS over to a custom Linux build, but we haven't really seen anything with that. They do release updates fairly frequently and they have a publicly viewable Trello software development board so you can see the status of features they are working on.
Same, the writing experience on the supernote is extremely good (most reviewers say it’s the best because it mimics writing on a stack of paper) and the parts are supposedly replaceable
The Boox Go 10 is ~$400 and has a note-taking app built in. While it runs Android, the note taking experience is poor with apps other than the built-in one.
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.
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?
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.
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...)
It’s bursty for me, too. I won’t use one for ages, then I read something like Infinite Jest where I’m looking something up every other page. That’s super easy on Kobo readers and I’d hate not having it elsewhere.
No, you are. Not everyone reads when they have their phone on them, or otherwise have their phone on them 24/7. When I'm reading, my phone is at least on a table, if not in another room.
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.
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.
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)
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.
When reading on my iPad or Kindle (back when I had one of those), I would regularly encounter a word used in a context slightly different from my understanding of the word - so I'd quickly skim the definition to fill in the gap in my knowledge that this made apparent.
I _do_ miss that functionality on the reMarkable devices. It seems odd to me that it's not included; a dictionary isn't a huge file, and the devices have more than ample storage for their intended purpose. I used my daily for a couple of years, and I don't think I've ever deleted anything from them.
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.
The rM2 basically isn't an e-reader. It's a PDF viewer with a focus on annotation, and it's a notebook. Any ability to read ebooks is just circumstantial.
You and the other commenters who are saying this know that... devices can do multiple things, right? That's why phones don't just call people anymore.
Anyway, I don't really see why reading a PDF means one wouldn't need a dictionary. A lot of PDFs - that I read anyway - tend to be more technical stuff; looking stuff up is helpful there too.
I’m a little surprised at the pushback, too. I read lots of things on other devices where it’s easy to select a new word and see its meaning. And it seems like such an incredibly cheap feature to implement and support that I can’t imaging not having it.
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.
> 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.
reMarkable is adamant that their devices are "digital notebooks" - no more, no less. They intentionally do not implement features that aren't in support of this use case.
FWIW, I think that makes sense from their perspective. There are a ton of eReaders out there, but reMarkable is the only company that I'm aware of that focuses specifically on this use case, to the detriment of others. They don't _want_ them to be world-class eReaders, because then they would have to support the features that market wants. They want to support a smaller market niche.
They're clear about that, too. If anything, I wish more companies would focus on a specific use case and stick to their guns when it comes to scope creep.
Huh. Other people have said similar but yours is the first post that resonated with me. Ok, sure. That makes sense. It still feels odd to me because it seems like all the “hard” parts are in place, but that’s their business model.
I do still contend that a subscription fee on top of the cost for a single purpose device is a bridge too far, though. I’d strongly consider one to see if it’s truly that great as a note taker if it weren’t for that. I’d hate renting features on a premium device.
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.
Supernote has a similarly sized product if you want the format but with more software functionality.
There's also a company called Viwoods making "AI" enabled e-ink tablets. I have heard significantly less about them so far, but they have a mini version which is roughly e-reader sized.
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...
The Palma 2 doesn't have stylus support. I seriously considered the Supernote Nomad, the modular design is neat, but went with the Palma 2 for the backlight and the Boox software, which seems to be superior to Supernote for everything but writing and notes. If my primary use case were note-taking rather than reading, I would have gone with the Supernote Nomad.
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)
Why would Boox disable sideloading on their own Android build? Your comment makes as much sense as saying Google is going to disable sideloading on LineageOS and GrapheneOS. Boox doesn't give a flying shit about Google's Android certification program. Google has no claws on devices that have to sideload Play Store.
Is that true for people building off of open source android components (like Boox is doing)? What would you recommend as an alternative? As others have said, I doubt Google can disable sideloading when google play must be sideloaded on the device.
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.
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.
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.
The RM2 also fails at organizing: no text search in PDFs and not in notes, if you don't convert every handwritten note into text on a new page; only tags, which means if you don't add tags everywhere, you can't find anything by searching; etc. It's extremely expensive for the functionality it offers.
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.
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.
Don't, it's just an expensive replacement for pen and paper, and the best overall pro is that you have your notes in one place. That's it. No text search, etc. make it so much less useful than it could be.
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.
Good point, and it may. The site oddly claims that "taxes and duties included". But that would be an ill-advised move for them for a couple of reasons.
-No Canadian expects that. Our standard is taxes calculated in the final calculation.
-Tax rates differ by province. In Alberta it's 5%, while in Ontario it's 13%, for instance. Which is a big reason taxes are calculated in the final calculation.
So maybe they think they're simplifying prices, but it's not an advised way to do it it. And the "duties paid" for an electronics vendor is a super weird claim in 2025.
Hi, hyperpaper creator here– sorry it didn't work for you :(
Just curious if there were any problems specifically with the planner, or if it was just the fact that the rM really didn't work for you at all? Always looking to improve it and fill in any gaps in the product.
Also when did you try it? Because I will admit the first version was definitely clunky
Huh. Glad I didn't lose real $. Did you customize your hyperpaper template? I can't quite picture "how [you] wanted to take notes" not being supported, given all the flexibility. shrug
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have one, and I used the ipad alternative that a friend has, and the ipad is just better. I haven't used the RM2 in over a year, since the functionality is just lacking compared to even a paper notebook - which is a ridiculous comparison.
I suggest you eagerly await their downfall, as you have understood what so many could not: a $3 paper notebook is better. They'll run out of fools, eventually.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
Landscape mode would make sense, if scrolling on eInk wasn't completely awful. I can sometimes deal with it on really light websites like Wikipedia, but I just prefer not to.
I will say that my supernote really is just a digital notepad. I keep all my work to do lists organized on it. But since it's Android and supports side loading apps, I have the Kobo app and read a ton on it even without a backlight.
> Landscape mode would make sense, if scrolling on eInk wasn't completely awful.
I don't see how that can't be improved.
This smells more of a fundamental problem to me where vendors enshittify their devices to try wooing complete non-users, e. g. people who are too incompetent to work their head around using a penabled smartphone-sized machine and its notetaking/sketching applications exactly like they would use an analog pendant (the classic pocket notepad/pencil combo), or people who bore others with tedious litanies about how "the screen is too small". The latter crowd is well-cared for options-wise, so this is virtually a non-problem. I want to carry around and use a digital pocket notepad on steroids, and not a bloody whiteboard.
> I will say that my supernote really is just a digital notepad.
I only tested the Nomad's pen functionality (as well as ergonomics resulting from its size) and was very pleased. It's weaknesses lie elsewhere.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 work in more applied fields. When I’m doing a long derivation, I draw figures and arrows and my notes spill over from my current view into a larger view.
I find the page concept limiting (for me). I scrawl something but I need an infinite canvas to relate multiple ideas (my mind doesn’t work so linearly). That’s when refresh rate matters a lot.
Also matters when skimming. Eink displays are not conducive to skimming over many pages. That problem is solved on LED displays and paper, but not epaper.
I use a Kindle Scribe for reading eBooks and occasional note taking.
Personally, I like the bigger form factor better, both for reading and writing, could even be a bit bigger for reading PDFs.
After a short period of writing on ePaper, I'm now back to real paper. It's just a much better writing experience, lighter in the pocket, cheaper, more flexible (rearrange, give away, lay out on a table), more practical (write while you read, use big sheets when you need it), etc., etc.
A folded sheet and a small pen is all it takes. ePaper for writing might have a use case in professional workflows, but for personal use, it's a nice idea in theory, but not in practice, in my opinion.
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.
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.
I don't know of any other book provider with an extensive catalog. Also Amazon often have authors into a exclusive agreement, so it's not like it will change anytime soon.
I really love that there seems to be a general renewed interest in e-paper devices. I personally have made the Daylight Computer my primary mobile computing device (even over a smartphone, which I really only use if I need GPS, which I only really need if I'm driving, and I sold my car :-D) and it has been lovely.
I use my DC-1 all the time, but I have so much more impulse control over my usage. The lack of color and the lack of notifications means it is very much not overstimulating, and I only use it if I make a conscious decision to.
Quick edit: it might be worth mentioning that I wrote this on my DC-1.
What are your primary use cases of the Daylight DC-1? I am curious as a reluctant iPad Pro M4 user who thought he'd use it for reading and annotating PDFs but finds himself sucked into streaming apps and YouTube instead a bit too often.
I would say coming from my cell phone at least, I would describe my usage as far more intentional than it was on my phone. I used to wake up and immediately start scrolling on <application of choice at the time, recently bluesky>. Since I've relegated my phone to the sock drawer, I actually find myself waking up and getting out of bed, starting my day, and then going on my tablet.
Honestly, a large percentage of my time on my tablet is using bluesky and youtube, but as I said, it feels much more intentional than on my phone. I don't get sucked into rabbit holes. I check on my friends, check out my subscriptions, and then move on (to be fair on the youtube side, I also use newpipe to block all recommendations, comments, etc so it's much easier for me to avoid the rabbit holes because of that too).
Another very large portion of my usage is in handwriting notes, and medium to long form reading. I don't find myself annotating PDFs, but that is not really a workflow I have sought after.
If you are really worried about using youtube and other vices, the DC-1 may not be for you. Other e-paper devices (particularly E-Ink TM devices) are going to struggle a lot more with youtube than the DC-1 does. Youtube in here is not as overstimulating and addictive, but it is still very much available and usable.
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.
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.
If people are looking for an alternative I have a ~3-4 year old Supernote a5 that's still going strong and still get updates once in a while. No subscription, cloud sync is included, mounts via usb if you want to, no faffery.
The hang up for me is the second hand market for the supernote is rough, even the old a4 and a5. People really do seem to love them.
Are you willing to part with yours haha
They’ve poured effort into replicating the feel of a notebook: restricted toolset, textured screen, stylus handwriting, etc., but I'm at a loss why this is worth hundreds of dollars plus a subscription instead of just using paper notebooks.
- Paper-like feel? Actual paper still wins.
- Undo, folders, search, tags? Flipping through a notebook and adding sticky notes gets you there faster.
- Templates? A $10 pad of graph or dotted paper gives infinite variety.
Handwriting-to-text and cloud sync is perhaps the strongest case, but even there it's probably faster to draft on paper and digitize with keyboard or speech.
Does-it have a lockscreen and is it reasonnably good in term of security? That would be the only incentive for someone who want to keep handwritten notes without having to lock the notebook in a safe every time it is left unattended.
I am not thinking security against state actor, rather people within same household/office who might have too much curiosity.
I bought a Remarkable and ended up returning it. It was a cool device, but you're exactly right, I had a hard time justifying the cost over a $10 notebook.
I've been a reMarkable customer for quite a while now. I started with the reMarkable 2, then upgraded to the reMarkable Paper Pro. While I was using it consistently, it was a great device that allowed me to keep track of my notes in way I'd never been able to before.
They have some great features. Chief among them IMO is the ability to stream the tablet's screen to a desktop app, which you can then in turn share into a Zoom call and the like.
The issue for me is that as I began to spend more and more time in VR/AR - first with the Meta Quest 2/3 and Pimax Crystal, and then with the Apple Vision Pro - I simply stopped taking written notes while working. Now I mostly use it as a very fancy (and expensive!) eReader.
Couple that with the fact that most of what I was writing down as notes is now context that I shove in prompts and/or agent context files... I simply don't use it enough to justify keeping it.
They've fallen behind IMO with the rise of AI. This device would be amazing if they would automatically transcribe documents on the backend, feed them into a RAG, and allow access via a chatbot. They don't, though, and their API is undocumented and difficult to use. That kills it for me.
I should probably list it on eBay or Facebook Marketplace at this point, and put those funds toward something that gets more use.
I’m pretty shocked to hear that someone like you exists already. Lots of questions. First, now that you spend so much time in VR, why does that kill your need to take notes? Are you somehow taking notes in VR? Do you find that these notes are as effective and personal as real writing? Do you put everything you write into an LLM now and trust that it’ll be searchable forever and the AI won’t lose its context?
> I’m pretty shocked to hear that someone like you exists already.
Which part? The VR part, or the AI stuff?
For VR, the tech honestly isn't there yet. I fell down that rabbit hole when I started playing combat flight sims regularly, and then managed to get my employer to buy me an AVP. I never really had "VR sickness", but what little discomfort I did have faded within a couple of week. I probably spend ~40-60h / week on average in VR now, but honestly don't keep close track of it.
> First, now that you spend so much time in VR, why does that kill your need to take notes?
Not at all, it's just effectively impossible to do so by writing while wearing a VR headset. The AVP comes closest to allowing it, but the passthrough resolution isn't quite good enough to make it work well.
> Are you somehow taking notes in VR?
Yep. For most things I use Markdown in Neovim. I have an mkdocs site configured to run locally whenever I have a terminal open, and push changes to a remote git repo regularly. I've considered moving to Obsidian, but am still not sold on the proprietary stuff.
Increasingly, I've been using STT and AI tools to speak my thoughts and record them that way. I've not settled on a "final" tech stack for that, but Limitless (and their Pendant) has been working well enough so far.
> Do you find that these notes are as effective and personal as real writing?
No.
Despite the VR and AI stuff, I'm an analog person at heart. I'm in my early 40s. I wear a fully analog watch (I don't find smartwatches worth it). I collect and restore fountain pens, and have one with me pretty much at all times.
Handwriting it by far the most effective way to keep notes. I believe that's because it's slow enough that you have to synthesize your thoughts at the same time you're writing, which in turn leads to better initial understanding and likely commitment to long-term memory.
> Do you put everything you write into an LLM now and trust that it’ll be searchable forever and the AI won’t lose its context?
Sort of.
I don't put everything in there, of course. Limitless is for non-work stuff, as I work in healthtech and don't want our IP stored there without a BAA in place. It works well enough for personal stuff, though.
For work, I have a transcript file that I keep for each day that I use my STT stuff that contains the raw text that I said. That's accurate enough that I trust it. From those files, I have AI create a summary of topics. Those are then fed into a simple RAG that can reference the summaries and the original files as needed.
I figure this approach means that I can always create new summaries or move to another workflow in the future if I want. For now, it's been at least as effective in terms of lookup as manually typing notes. Transcription errors are very rare and easy enough to figure out if I ever need to correct them. They're far more comprehensive, though. I can dump an entire meeting into a transcript, then go back and figure out exactly what was said and by whom.
Feeding Zoom's transcripts into the RAG has saved my ass a couple of times. I've privately asked a chatbot what I'd said about a given topic in the past while on a call, then used that context to make sure I'm using the same arguments in support of a position that I did six months ago - or found that position has changed and called that out to the others on the call.
I had am RM2 for years before upgrading to the Paper Pro. I love the Paper Pro. It provides me with an environment of deep thinking. It feels too big to carry all day long and I always felt even with the Type Folio I didn't want to damage the screen. I just ordered a Paper Pro Move to carry with me.
The one feature I miss is the ability to split the screen and have two items open at the same time. Like a PDF journal in one and taking notes on it in the other.
> The one feature I miss is the ability to split the screen and have two items open at the same time. Like a PDF journal in one and taking notes on it in the other.
Can you do that on the RPP? I've not really kept up with features other than to check for AI integrations (which they still don't have to my knowledge)
I took the plunge, I loved my RM2 but about a year ago I fell down stairs and landed on it.
I’ve ordered refurbed Paper Pro and Move.
Things that excited me about the device:
- with significant AI use I feel I need this more than ever. Drafting, thinking, note taking, annotating etc.
- it looks wonderful for todos, shopping lists etc.
- width designed to work with Paper Pro (and the landscape mode experience seems solid from reviews), so I will try the dual device setup
- I didn’t always have RM2 with me, and I’m hoping this will now change to genuinely always.
- I learned to love the constraints and for example I’ve discovered a love of Brandon Sanderson, Liu Cixin, Cory Doctorow, and countless other authors precisely because I went all in on DRM free ebooks, I want to expand that to graphic novels also hence the paper pro.
- I do get random inspiration and obsidian has been my powerhouse for oh the go notes but I’m hoping scrybble.ink will now let me bring remarkable documents into obsidian.
- very un-invasive to take notes in conversations etc.
Sure it’s a complete indulgence, but it helps me to enjoy note taking, being my library with me etc. and I find constraints foster my creativity and exploration and I lean into them.
Initially, I was very ready to buy this. A small notepad that I can carry easily in meetings? Sounds great!
But then I did exactly what they're probably scared of and thought about that impulse some more.
Most people bring either full-on laptops or huge padded notebooks with them into meetings. Me bringing my full-sized reMarkable was never an issue, and writing on it has been glorious. Bringing a smaller device wouldn't net the benefit I initially thought it would.
What I would LOVE to do with a Paper Pro is replace my BOOX Page 7 with it. I use my Page to read books and stuff on Reddit and posts on Hacker News. It works perfectly for this. However, Onyx has a very shady history with Android. They refuse to contribute to Android upstream, their ABIs are closed-source and, IIRC, their devices are stuck on older Android versions due to GMS certification issues. I trust reMarkable much more than I trust Onyx.
Nonetheless, they are dead-set on making their devices purely for note taking, so I have no reason to buy this, as cool as it looks.
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!
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.
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.
I was tempted by a remarkable, my colleagues love theirs (as does my dad).
However my need is personal rather than professional usage, so I didn't get one in the end.
What I have found that is (to me) better is an ipad mini "pencil", with goodnotes. The pen is ok, not as good as a wacom, but it'll do.
Goodnotes does have a subscription, but it also works on mac as well, so it allows me to get access to it when my ipad is else where. It exports to PDF well.
I only really use it to make notes/designs. The handwriting transcription isn't going to work well for my handwriting, but it does a reasonable job, given how hard my scrawls are to read. For that it works well, is about the same price as a remarkable, and does other things apart from note taking.
But, that is also its downside. You can do other things, which means distractions. Obviously you can make your notes richer by copy/pasta from the internets, but also you can be distracted by the internets too.
I used to have terrible handwriting to the point of not being able to read it myself, but it got better. It is a matter of practice and being more intentional with it, taking that little extra effort to make the letters readable. If something is worth writing down, it's probably worth the extra effort
I feel like the real opportunity for e-ink displays is white boards. I would love a 4 ft x 3 ft e-ink display that I could mount on the wall with calendar and note widgets and that I could also draw on like a white board.
Plus, remote teams would really benefit from a shared whiteboard device. A device with infinite scroll in both directions and shared editing. I mean, really adding infinite scroll and collaborative editing to existing remarkable devices would cover that use case.
This device has planned obsolescence written all over it. The pen includes a built-in rechargeable battery. The device's battery is also not user replaceable. These are the same issues that the Remarkable Paper Pro has.
They use the Linux kernel and some GPL software. They've made a change with Remarkable Paper Pro to only allow SSH access once the user has put the device in "developer mode". The device is marked as compromised until it is restored to factory or something else is done to it. It's not clear to me how the device is restored to factory or restored at all.
They provide tarball dumps via https://github.com/reMarkable/linux-imx-rm instead of a proper git repository for the kernel. Why is it so hard to find people able to push a git repository to Github? These dumps are also rather useless if they still lack the source code for the frame buffer and the display. https://github.com/reMarkable/linux is the Linux kernel for the older remarkable 2 and the remarkable 1. The kernel code from the Github repository for my remarkable 2 wasn't the one they shipped in the latest version running on my device a few months ago. There was a newer minor patch version running on my device.
The devices are very tied to the cloud account and their application. You must have an account and you must use their application if you want to use this device fully, even offline. The network over USB feature makes it possible to back up/download/restore documents. EPUB document handling is abysmal without their application installed on the PC. They really want their customers to use their software, to have an account and to use their cloud services. It's a non-starter if you really don't want to be locked in. EPUB documents still have issues on my Remarkable 2 due to the bugs their USB based document transfer tool has. Many documents simply fail to transfer without any feedback. They probably only update the account-based software they force people to use to get as much money from subscriptions as possible.
Hardware repairs for these devices are also not looking good. You're most like out of luck if the warranty has expired for your device. They couldn't care less. They’ll gladly sell you yet another device which has to be recycled when the battery isn’t able to hold a charge for more than a few minutes.
I wouldn't recommend any product from this company. This company's good old days are over. They've taken money from investors. They want to charge their customers as much as possible. The en*****ification is almost complete.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
More tangential, but is anyone using screenless (or any) graphical tablets for taking notes/work? I try to have digital notes for things I know I will rewrite, extend or might want to search, and paper more for drafts and ephemeral todos. Thought that it could be nice to have modifiable and potentially searchable written notes. When on the go, I'm not likely to write anything important, so paper + phone for accessing other notes is fine. And when stationary, having a graphical tablet seems like a good deal.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
And then, two years later, all you use it for is Netflix. Maybe you won't, but that's how things will end up for me,
because that's what happened. A device that just isn't capable of that is how to solve the problem. It's not a solution for everybody, but it's what's worked for me.
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.
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.
My only disappointment with it is the "time to fresh sheet of paper to write on" metric. As in, a paper notebook, I can open to a section I know is empty and be able to jot something down within seconds. I can then tear it out and refile it without much hassle. There's quick sheets, but it's still too many buttons to press.
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.
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.
What I use is boox note air, in fact I am writing this on it while browsing hn on it right now. I have edge and OneNote installed on it so all my notes and tabs are synced to my other devices (iPhone, MacBook, Windows PC). It really is amazing for hand writing and reading ebooks, PDF, websites. My setup is super usable, but: it is a Chinese device running American proprietary software...
Unfortunately, that picture doesn't update automatically, so if you add things to that page, you have to retake the picture. Worse, if you don't take a picture of a page, there's no digital copy of it! If you've left your paper notebook at a different location, you can't take pictures of it unless you go to where it physically is! Inconceivable, I know, but it turns out there are benefits to a digital notepad. If you're too poor/cheap to spend money on high quality tools, that's your problem, but no, your paper notebook doesn't let you draw a lasso around a section of the page, copy and paste it onto a new page, and then resize it.
I have a RMPP and like it for reading and briefly annotating papers, journaling, drafting fiction. But I am so disappointed that they do not have split screen functionality. One of the core use cases for the device is reading a document and taking notes on it. Not being able to have a PDF open on one side of the screen and a notebook on the other is a huge miss.
I do, but that's not what I'm looking for. If you annotate a PDF directly you then have to detangle your notes from the PDF on export. It is very different from having a document open that you can scroll/flip through and taking notes in their own space at the same time.
I take a lot of notes, schematics, etc in paper notes a5 and I was thinking about moving to digital world, but definietely not for the price of any remarkable device…
Got kindle for reading - and I just love it, got back at reading everyday, and that was problematic with standard, paper books.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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
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.
Does anybody know if they're working on improved epub support? Would make it a much more compelling buy if it wouldn't just convert epubs to pdfs. If this could be a replacement for my kindle + notepad, that would make it a great device.
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.
Are there no tablets that support proper digital formats that would support the basics of paragraph selection and text reflow? (assuming you convert all your handwriting into digital text)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ignoring my browser's language setting, defaulting to my IP's origin and then the language switcher widget is at the bottom of the page, and it doesn't work.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I bought an RM1 and was ultimately highly disappointed in the software, and, for all its supposed openness, the lack of any open software development.
They sold me a tablet they touted as having hundreds of pressure levels and most of the simulated writing implements only recognize about 4.
My biggest complaint is that I hoped to be able to use it to make sketches and diagrams I could use on websites or art projects, or do live drawings like it was a digital version of an overhead projector. It works like garbage for both use cases because the software ecosystem has no support at all for anything but the ultra-low-quality stroking algorithms that are used on-device. Put those pen strokes that looked so beautiful on e-ink up on a 4k monitor and they just look like the cheapest of cheap garbage because there's no pressure interpolation at all...!!!
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.)
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.
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!
I noticed in the 3.20 release notes they said they're working on this, and to contact them for early-access. https://remarkable.com/business though you'll have to scroll past the marketing guff for a bit.
Was so excited about Remarkable, and got disappointed with basically everything I was excited about. Not for me. I do look like the look and feel of the thing though, shame i know it won't fit what I need.
Remarkable needs to give the user the option to turn off the "infinite paper". That was the stupidist change ever made. I only ever activate it on accident.
Paper has edges. Remarkable is marketed as digital paper. Give me some fricken edge FFS.
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.
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.
Remarkable itself does not promote the devices as hackable. That's the community that has evolved around it taking advantage of the company leaving the device open in this way. Furthermore, there is quite a thriving ecosystem[1] of custom software for the devices, so your assessment of it not working in practice is empirically untrue.
> the very restrictive underlying software
This is by design, based on publicly espoused principles, and everything about the product branding makes it very explicit and obvious. No one should buy a Remarkable device and be surprised about how restrictive it is.
> the user-hostile changes to the subscription
The "user-hostile" changes to the subscription is that they are charging for it.
It is worth emphasizing that nothing is restricted with device usage if you do not have a subscription. They expect you to pay if you want to use anything which runs through their cloud services, which is undeniably reasonable.
You can sync to other cloud providers without an active subscription.[2]
[1] https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable [2] https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Using-reMarkable-wi...
I almost bought one before I realized I’d be subscribing to it. No, that’s absolutely not reasonable given the price of the unit.
These things aren’t syncing videos. They’re moving some text and PDFs around. Even Apple gives you permanently free iCloud services when you own any Apple device, with the complaint being that they should give you more storage, not that you can’t use it at all.
They do have free cloud sync. It's capped based on the frequency of updating files rather than on a particular file size.
> Your notes will always be stored locally on your paper tablet, but only files used and synced online in the last 50 days will continue to be stored in the cloud and updated in our apps.
That’s a bizarrely low cap on a service with nearly zero marginal cost, and clearly meant to make you upgrade.
I load my Kobo with things like CACM issues and books I buy on sale and then flick through them at leisure when I’m on a plane or such. So now I can’t fetch the July journal issue because it’s aged out?
Nah, I’ll pass. It’s not controversial to say ReMarkable pushes you toward a paid plan. They’d even agree with that, I’m sure. It’s no great sin. Lots of things are subscription these days. It does mean I wouldn’t use it, though, because the non-rental alternatives are also pretty great.
This is really unreasonable entitlement. Expecting perpetually free cloud services of any kind is wholely unreasonable. Clouds have monthly costs. The only reason companies like Apple can offer them is because they are very well capitalized. They offer them to addict you. Small companies and startups that don't have access to cheap capital cannot afford to do that, and it's much more honest for them to not do that!
Do they sell one that is functional without the cloud though.
I’m not buying any device that requires a paid subscription to a cloud to get full functionality since if that goes away so does the ability to use the device.
A policy that’s served me well having friends IRL who keep getting bitten by services/IoT changing/going away/end of life.
Sell me a functional product with a subscription and I’m interested, everything else, no way.
I largely agree, but I do think it's worth noting that they do actually have a screen sharing feature.
I don't use the screen sharing feature, and have no desire to use it, so it is quite irritating that they require the subscription to automatically sync my under a megabyte documents on the occasion that I need that.
Fortunately, it does still have Google drive integration which does not require a subscription. It does require a bit of manual work, but it's not bad
Does screen sharing go through their cloud service or is that a local device-to-device system, similar to AirPlay?
> "Even Apple"
Literally the company of all time with most money
That’s my point, though. People slag on them all the time for being cheapskates with their iCloud offerings. And even they give you a fully usable, unlimited feature iCloud account for free to sync all your devices together. I’m certain it costs way more per user to provide iCloud, with its constant syncing, than it costs ReMarkable to see if your PDFs are still up to date.
Topographic maps would be amazing for these but I doubt we see that anytime soon
Nice to know. I was considering it but that is a deal breaker for me. I'm tired of companies trying to steal back what the sold me.
You can completely and fully use the device without any subscription. They only charge for the usage of their cloud services.
Remarkable has not "stolen" anything back which they sold.
On the contrary, they grandfathered in users which bought a device prior to their charging for a subscription so that they all have free access.
> They only charge for the usage of their cloud services.
What features require usage of their cloud services?
Primarily, syncing your documents between multiple Remarkable devices and their apps on your phone. The page on their site for it spells out everything pretty well.
https://remarkable.com/shop/connect
I asked a friend who bought the new remarkable. He likes it but he says his old one was quite easy to link to google drive but the new one is not like that. Is it the same experience as you have?
> I'm tired of companies trying to steal back what the[y] sold me.
That's an interesting way of describing that. Don't mind if I steal this quote for when I might need it. Messaging matters!
If anyone complains say it was AI generated. Who cares about copyright nowadays right?
:D Sad, but funny!
FWIW I didn’t like the Boox experience: For writing you’re limited to the stock notes app, which I didn’t find usable: You can’t even zoom in it (something I thought would obviously be possible when choosing the smaller Nova 2). It also has a full Android system, which comes with advantages for sure but invites distractions and leads to very disappointing battery life.
I've been using a boox note air for many years and you definitely can zoom on that.
Android is great for this use case because it lets me syncthing notes and use sheet music apps and use both kindle and kobo and calibre library and offline wikipedia and my own tools. As far as I'm concerned if you try to use it as a generic android tablet you're doing it wrong, but android is a massive step above what everyone else is offering (i.e. none of that)
> because it lets me syncthing notes
I know this probably doesn’t exactly fit your use case, but I’ve actually been able to do this with a Kindle Touch (yes, from 2011)! It was a super serene experience to have your books synced over into KOReader.
> if you try to use it as a generic android tablet you're doing it wrong
I agree, but I felt that’s what the system invited me to do (may just be my tinkerer genes though). Update notifications, etc, web browsing, hoops to jump through to share files ...
How‘s your note sync workflow? Can you reasonably easily and quickly access your handwritten notes from a laptop? Last I checked there was some manual export step to jump through.
What firmware do you have your Nova 2? The stock notes app has zoom as of 2024-01-03 at least. Not sure when that was added.
I haven’t used it much for a few years at this point, but it definitely wasn’t there when I bought it, making it a grossly unfinished product for my use case (taking notes - crazy on a device made for taking notes, right?).
Nice to know that it’s available now that I don’t really need it anymore.
> It also has a full Android system, which comes with advantages for sure but invites distractions and leads to very disappointing battery life.
While some models have a disappointing battery life, it's most definitely because of BSR[0] not because of them running Android. I had a Note Air 3 and that thing got easily 2 weeks of battery life with heavy use while the BSR version (Note Air 3C) barely survived 2 days.
0: https://shop.boox.com/blogs/news/boox-super-refresh-bsr-tech...
Yes, same. I have one that was grandfathered into the "no subscription" system, which means I can't buy another one (not sure if I will keep the ability not to have a subscription), and can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone else.
I do have a Boox Note Air4, which I bought with the intention of replacing the ReMarkable. On the plus side, it runs Android apps, but on the minus side, the UI is much less polished than the ReMarkable. Having said that, if I had the choice between the two, and weren't grandfathered into the no-subscription option, I would pick the Boox.
I believe the lifetime free subscription is an account setting, not a per device setting. If you go to my.remarkable.com and check the connect subscription page, it should say it's free as a reward for being an early customer.
You can also connect more than one device to the account nowadays.
That's good to know, thank you very much!
Yes. Your grandfather status will automatically carry over to your new device. I have purchased all the Remarkable units since day 1. My grandfather status has been in interrupted.
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.
Ha, I actually thought about getting a Boox when I started spending some time in my garden to work this summer cause of that exact same reason. Good to hear that it's actually feasible.
Both of you caught my curiosity so I went reading about these. On paper they seem perfect but it sounds like there are build quality issues and their warranty leaves a lot to be desired (reports of devices failing after months and warranty says it's $275 to fix, user fault) so I am steering clear.
Out of curiosity, what were the user hostile changes you mention?
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.
Very frustrating because it hides syncing your data into 3rd party clouds, not just their priority one. So I can't sync with Google Drive without paying them, which is very weird.
This is not the case.
https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Using-reMarkable-wi...
I was under the impression that this isn't so much "sync" as it is just enabling manual file management with these services.
Is that incorrect?
Isn't that an argument for Remarkable? You had the cloud functions for free and you've been grandfathered in. New buyers always knew that they'd need a subscription for that. Seems perfectly fair, even if you dislike the functionality (which is still very optional)
Yes, this is the correct interpretation. I'm baffled how this is getting spun as a bad thing.
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Two things:
1. The user hostile changes I mentioned were a degradation of the initial experience, i.e. herding people into Remarkable's Cloud offering which, while it allowed for grandfathering, still was very restrictive in what sync features are available. Also, for new customers buying a RM now means a monthly subscription cost, which is why I said can't recommend it.
2. Remarkable itself was using the openness of their tablet in their marketing. If I were to buy an iPhone and then complain about the walled garden, that would be one thing. If I buy a product that prides itself as being hackable, I don't think I'm wrong to expect that.
Lastly, saying "I can't recommend this because of XYZ" is a far cry from "trashing the company".
> 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.
Can you expand on this a bit? Can't you still run third party software on the newer iterations?
Yes. The Paper Pro (and presumably the Move) require you to explicitly enable developer mode in order to enable ssh access where older devices had it enabled by default. USB still works. It is, however, not easy to toggle dev mode on and off - so once you activate it you will probably keep it active.
Which Boox in particular would you recommend?
It mostly depends on your needs, the Note Air series is good if you are on the go while the bigger models like the Note Air Max are fit for a more stationary use.
The enshittification is everywhere ...
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
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.
The pen writing without touching is usually a misalignment and fixed by removing and re-inserting (or replacing) the tip ime.
My pen is misaligned with the point on the paper by about 1-2 mm often, and no amount of swiping the side of the pen, etc. could fix it so far.
I bought a pinenote after the charing port on the rm2 stopped working. With the rm2 it would refuse to wake sometimes if it's not charged to 100% slowly, the pen ghosting issue continued to get worse the longer it was in use even with a replaced tip, the web interface wasn't the most practical to add new books with (via SSH it's also a bit annoying as forced to reverse engineer their JSON format), deleting files via the interface at one point didn't delete them on disk so had to remove them via SSH, and so on.
I never had a subscription and locking features which could be run locally on the device behind a service is rather annoying.
And yes, those issues were worse after the a firmware update.
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.
I have been on the fence, and this pushed me off it. Thanks.
The pen issue you are describing is most frequently caused by a worn out nub. Have you tried replacing it?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I like using my iPad better than my RM2 for similar reasons (I have both, but really only use the iPad anymore). The pickup is much better on the iPad, in my opinion.
However, one thing that I think makes the biggest difference is adding a screen protector. I particularly like the ones from https://paperlike.com/. It adds a layer that makes it less like writing on glass and more like writing on paper. For me, this was the biggest increase in usability for taking notes.
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.
Ratta's Supernote is an option. The second hand market isn't as good, though, for buyers.
Interestingly, https://supernote.com/pages/supernote-nomad says
> Customize Your System
> A Linux-based system will be open in the future for community modifications and customizations.
> *Not built-in with the device
Anyone have details? Internet says it's a very custom Android. https://www.ereaders.org/supernote-manta-versatile-durable-e...
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).
The software support is decent. Currently it's running an old version of Android that allows you to side load apps. They are supposedly working on moving the OS over to a custom Linux build, but we haven't really seen anything with that. They do release updates fairly frequently and they have a publicly viewable Trello software development board so you can see the status of features they are working on.
+1 I own two Supernote (Nomad and Manta) and I can only recommend them.
+2 to supernotes ratta. Amazing product, amazing company
Love my supernote as well
Same, the writing experience on the supernote is extremely good (most reviewers say it’s the best because it mimics writing on a stack of paper) and the parts are supposedly replaceable
The PineNote is only slightly cheaper, I suspect that Remarkable isn't making a lot of profit on their product.
The Boox Go 10 is ~$400 and has a note-taking app built in. While it runs Android, the note taking experience is poor with apps other than the built-in one.
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.
I heard these destroy the Pencil tips and are pretty loud. Is that true?
Paper?
They specifically said they want to replace their paper usage.
> only a scratch paper replacement. But it’s not as economical if limited to this.
That's exactly the use case though. It's a replacement for pen and paper, and the lack of functionality is seen as a feature.
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?
RM Pro (and this new product) has a backlight. I print everything to pdf when I want to read on the remarkable.
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?
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.
But… don’t you sometimes want a dictionary when you write? That’s not a reading-mode-only tool by a long shot.
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...)
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.
Huh. Everyone’s workflows are different. I surely wouldn’t want to be without one.
It may be once every 2-3 years, if that, when I pull out a dictionary. Never something I seem to need.
It’s bursty for me, too. I won’t use one for ages, then I read something like Infinite Jest where I’m looking something up every other page. That’s super easy on Kobo readers and I’d hate not having it elsewhere.
I'd just use my phone, honestly. It's in my pocket and has access to much of the worlds information.
And now I'm reading/writing with 2 devices. Eh.
You're already carrying that device though, it's not an addition to your pocket. In fact, I'd argue the 2nd device is actually a problem.
No, you are. Not everyone reads when they have their phone on them, or otherwise have their phone on them 24/7. When I'm reading, my phone is at least on a table, if not in another room.
Ah, that's fair!
I guess I consider a device like that, for me, to be mostly used when traveling!
For the price it feels like it should be a good e-reader also.
The fact that they're so expensive is, to me anyway, a pretty good reason to expect basic functionality like that.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
That's how I got hooked on macos nearly 20 years ago. Dictionary + thesaurus taught me so much.
When reading on my iPad or Kindle (back when I had one of those), I would regularly encounter a word used in a context slightly different from my understanding of the word - so I'd quickly skim the definition to fill in the gap in my knowledge that this made apparent.
I _do_ miss that functionality on the reMarkable devices. It seems odd to me that it's not included; a dictionary isn't a huge file, and the devices have more than ample storage for their intended purpose. I used my daily for a couple of years, and I don't think I've ever deleted anything from them.
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.
It's incredibly useful for obvious reasons
The rM2 basically isn't an e-reader. It's a PDF viewer with a focus on annotation, and it's a notebook. Any ability to read ebooks is just circumstantial.
You and the other commenters who are saying this know that... devices can do multiple things, right? That's why phones don't just call people anymore.
Anyway, I don't really see why reading a PDF means one wouldn't need a dictionary. A lot of PDFs - that I read anyway - tend to be more technical stuff; looking stuff up is helpful there too.
I’m a little surprised at the pushback, too. I read lots of things on other devices where it’s easy to select a new word and see its meaning. And it seems like such an incredibly cheap feature to implement and support that I can’t imaging not having it.
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.
> 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.
reMarkable is adamant that their devices are "digital notebooks" - no more, no less. They intentionally do not implement features that aren't in support of this use case.
FWIW, I think that makes sense from their perspective. There are a ton of eReaders out there, but reMarkable is the only company that I'm aware of that focuses specifically on this use case, to the detriment of others. They don't _want_ them to be world-class eReaders, because then they would have to support the features that market wants. They want to support a smaller market niche.
They're clear about that, too. If anything, I wish more companies would focus on a specific use case and stick to their guns when it comes to scope creep.
Huh. Other people have said similar but yours is the first post that resonated with me. Ok, sure. That makes sense. It still feels odd to me because it seems like all the “hard” parts are in place, but that’s their business model.
I do still contend that a subscription fee on top of the cost for a single purpose device is a bridge too far, though. I’d strongly consider one to see if it’s truly that great as a note taker if it weren’t for that. I’d hate renting features on a premium device.
"Basic dictionary lookup" does not equate to "world class e-readers"
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).
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.
You can install koreader pretty easily. It's way better than their built in reader.
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.
Supernote has a similarly sized product if you want the format but with more software functionality.
There's also a company called Viwoods making "AI" enabled e-ink tablets. I have heard significantly less about them so far, but they have a mini version which is roughly e-reader sized.
Check out the Boox Palma 2. I love mine and it has an actual operating system (Android 13).
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...
The Palma 2 doesn't have stylus support. I seriously considered the Supernote Nomad, the modular design is neat, but went with the Palma 2 for the backlight and the Boox software, which seems to be superior to Supernote for everything but writing and notes. If my primary use case were note-taking rather than reading, I would have gone with the Supernote Nomad.
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.
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)
You won't be able to install anything soon once Google puts its thumb on sideloading. Investing in Android in mid 2025 is a lost cause.
Why would Boox disable sideloading on their own Android build? Your comment makes as much sense as saying Google is going to disable sideloading on LineageOS and GrapheneOS. Boox doesn't give a flying shit about Google's Android certification program. Google has no claws on devices that have to sideload Play Store.
Is that true for people building off of open source android components (like Boox is doing)? What would you recommend as an alternative? As others have said, I doubt Google can disable sideloading when google play must be sideloaded on the device.
I'm fine with Android, but not Android (or any other OS) from 2022.
at least you can sideload what you want
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.
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.
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.
The RM2 also fails at organizing: no text search in PDFs and not in notes, if you don't convert every handwritten note into text on a new page; only tags, which means if you don't add tags everywhere, you can't find anything by searching; etc. It's extremely expensive for the functionality it offers.
You've probably heard of Org mode. Go look it up - md and a todo app is exactly poor man's Org mode.
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.
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.
does not have paper ergonomics
Right, I replied to the guy who holds the stance that "paper fails at organizing".
I googled "just paper" thinking it was another device...
>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
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
Don't, it's just an expensive replacement for pen and paper, and the best overall pro is that you have your notes in one place. That's it. No text search, etc. make it so much less useful than it could be.
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.
Does that price in CAD include sales taxes? Because the US price never does.
Good point, and it may. The site oddly claims that "taxes and duties included". But that would be an ill-advised move for them for a couple of reasons.
-No Canadian expects that. Our standard is taxes calculated in the final calculation.
-Tax rates differ by province. In Alberta it's 5%, while in Ontario it's 13%, for instance. Which is a big reason taxes are calculated in the final calculation.
So maybe they think they're simplifying prices, but it's not an advised way to do it it. And the "duties paid" for an electronics vendor is a super weird claim in 2025.
Canada never includes taxes either so that's an extra 10% to 15% for most provinces.
I hear you but would bet heavy you haven't tried using a navigable PDF like hyperpaper.me, which solves most of this frustration.
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.
Hi, hyperpaper creator here– sorry it didn't work for you :(
Just curious if there were any problems specifically with the planner, or if it was just the fact that the rM really didn't work for you at all? Always looking to improve it and fill in any gaps in the product.
Also when did you try it? Because I will admit the first version was definitely clunky
Huh. Glad I didn't lose real $. Did you customize your hyperpaper template? I can't quite picture "how [you] wanted to take notes" not being supported, given all the flexibility. shrug
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.
On my scribe i just buy the books elsewhere and copy them over to it.
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.
What were your thoughts on Daylight as a product?
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.
Thank you for sharing this.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have one, and I used the ipad alternative that a friend has, and the ipad is just better. I haven't used the RM2 in over a year, since the functionality is just lacking compared to even a paper notebook - which is a ridiculous comparison.
I suggest you eagerly await their downfall, as you have understood what so many could not: a $3 paper notebook is better. They'll run out of fools, eventually.
You won’t be scrolling TikTok on the Remarkable, though.
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.
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.
Indeed, the poor design of poor extensibility strikes again...
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.
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.
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
They should, since these comments killed all desire I had to own one!
Could it be caused by dry skin?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Landscape mode would make sense, if scrolling on eInk wasn't completely awful. I can sometimes deal with it on really light websites like Wikipedia, but I just prefer not to.
I will say that my supernote really is just a digital notepad. I keep all my work to do lists organized on it. But since it's Android and supports side loading apps, I have the Kobo app and read a ton on it even without a backlight.
> Landscape mode would make sense, if scrolling on eInk wasn't completely awful.
I don't see how that can't be improved.
This smells more of a fundamental problem to me where vendors enshittify their devices to try wooing complete non-users, e. g. people who are too incompetent to work their head around using a penabled smartphone-sized machine and its notetaking/sketching applications exactly like they would use an analog pendant (the classic pocket notepad/pencil combo), or people who bore others with tedious litanies about how "the screen is too small". The latter crowd is well-cared for options-wise, so this is virtually a non-problem. I want to carry around and use a digital pocket notepad on steroids, and not a bloody whiteboard.
> I will say that my supernote really is just a digital notepad.
I only tested the Nomad's pen functionality (as well as ergonomics resulting from its size) and was very pleased. It's weaknesses lie elsewhere.
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.
Paper Pro is roughly A4-sized
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.
I believe most of those are 4:3, but point taken.
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.
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?
It is tied to your account and you stay grandfathered in.
Thanks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
OCR has also been getting incrementally better and has been surprisingly good if you have the handwriting for it.
Can you easily do keyword searches on your own handwritten notes?
Sure, OCR can generate a plain text file.
I like the remarkable paper pro -- been using it for 8 months consistently.
My biggest reservation about remarkable is the subscription service. How is the experience if you don’t pay for the Connect service?
not exactly what you asked for but there's a community project you can selfhost[1] that emulates the cloud on your own server
[1]https://github.com/ddvk/rmfakecloud
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.
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.
It's fine. You really don't need to pay for the connect service.
rm2 owner since it was released over 5y ago. connect service works well but is wholly optional.
I'm curious too, because there is a help page[1] linked in the FAQ that appears to be completely blank!
[1] https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Using-reMarkable-wi...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://a.co/d/dHLwPp1
> I install nothing in it except Apple Freeform. (No distractions)
How do you uninstall Safari? That's the most distracting app of all.
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.
You can also hide it via screen time so the icon does not appear.
You can disable javascript which in my opinion makes it unusable.
What do you mean by creation.
I'm a mathematician and my "creations" are small notes, comments, and very simple figures.
I've never (besides flipping pages) experienced any noticable lag or delay.
I work in more applied fields. When I’m doing a long derivation, I draw figures and arrows and my notes spill over from my current view into a larger view.
I find the page concept limiting (for me). I scrawl something but I need an infinite canvas to relate multiple ideas (my mind doesn’t work so linearly). That’s when refresh rate matters a lot.
Also matters when skimming. Eink displays are not conducive to skimming over many pages. That problem is solved on LED displays and paper, but not epaper.
I use a Kindle Scribe for reading eBooks and occasional note taking.
Personally, I like the bigger form factor better, both for reading and writing, could even be a bit bigger for reading PDFs.
After a short period of writing on ePaper, I'm now back to real paper. It's just a much better writing experience, lighter in the pocket, cheaper, more flexible (rearrange, give away, lay out on a table), more practical (write while you read, use big sheets when you need it), etc., etc.
A folded sheet and a small pen is all it takes. ePaper for writing might have a use case in professional workflows, but for personal use, it's a nice idea in theory, but not in practice, in my opinion.
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.
Why do you need a windows vm for calibre? It’s java, it works on windows linux and mac (and likely bsd too)?
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.
Wait, but why would you still use Amazon ?
To buy books ?
I don't know of any other book provider with an extensive catalog. Also Amazon often have authors into a exclusive agreement, so it's not like it will change anytime soon.
Piracy + supporting authors (that aren't Amazon-exclusive) in other ways seems to be more ethical ?
Python, not Java.
I really love that there seems to be a general renewed interest in e-paper devices. I personally have made the Daylight Computer my primary mobile computing device (even over a smartphone, which I really only use if I need GPS, which I only really need if I'm driving, and I sold my car :-D) and it has been lovely.
I use my DC-1 all the time, but I have so much more impulse control over my usage. The lack of color and the lack of notifications means it is very much not overstimulating, and I only use it if I make a conscious decision to.
Quick edit: it might be worth mentioning that I wrote this on my DC-1.
What are your primary use cases of the Daylight DC-1? I am curious as a reluctant iPad Pro M4 user who thought he'd use it for reading and annotating PDFs but finds himself sucked into streaming apps and YouTube instead a bit too often.
I would say coming from my cell phone at least, I would describe my usage as far more intentional than it was on my phone. I used to wake up and immediately start scrolling on <application of choice at the time, recently bluesky>. Since I've relegated my phone to the sock drawer, I actually find myself waking up and getting out of bed, starting my day, and then going on my tablet.
Honestly, a large percentage of my time on my tablet is using bluesky and youtube, but as I said, it feels much more intentional than on my phone. I don't get sucked into rabbit holes. I check on my friends, check out my subscriptions, and then move on (to be fair on the youtube side, I also use newpipe to block all recommendations, comments, etc so it's much easier for me to avoid the rabbit holes because of that too).
Another very large portion of my usage is in handwriting notes, and medium to long form reading. I don't find myself annotating PDFs, but that is not really a workflow I have sought after.
If you are really worried about using youtube and other vices, the DC-1 may not be for you. Other e-paper devices (particularly E-Ink TM devices) are going to struggle a lot more with youtube than the DC-1 does. Youtube in here is not as overstimulating and addictive, but it is still very much available and usable.
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.
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.
I would really like to get a PineNote but by the time I came to that conclusion, tariffs made it very unappealing :(
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.
If people are looking for an alternative I have a ~3-4 year old Supernote a5 that's still going strong and still get updates once in a while. No subscription, cloud sync is included, mounts via usb if you want to, no faffery.
The hang up for me is the second hand market for the supernote is rough, even the old a4 and a5. People really do seem to love them. Are you willing to part with yours haha
Sorry, no :) I'm happy with it.
There used to be people selling theirs on the supernote reddit, did that stop? I haven't been active for a few years.
It is still a thing haha, but the asking price is always pretty steep, even for the older series. I hope you enjoy yours for years to come!
They’ve poured effort into replicating the feel of a notebook: restricted toolset, textured screen, stylus handwriting, etc., but I'm at a loss why this is worth hundreds of dollars plus a subscription instead of just using paper notebooks.
- Paper-like feel? Actual paper still wins.
- Undo, folders, search, tags? Flipping through a notebook and adding sticky notes gets you there faster.
- Templates? A $10 pad of graph or dotted paper gives infinite variety.
Handwriting-to-text and cloud sync is perhaps the strongest case, but even there it's probably faster to draft on paper and digitize with keyboard or speech.
I was sceptical at first too then gave their 100-day test a try with the bigger Pro and have the Move on order.
I see the benefits over paper as:
- Search. Still in beta, but you can now search handwritten notes. Seems to work well even with my scrawl.
- Integrations. Just "send to Slack" for now but rumours from YouTuber Kit Betts that more are coming.
- Working at night. The backlight, whilst lacking in temperature control, is handy at night or when ambient lighting is poor.
- Backups. Annoying it's a paid subscription, but I consider it more like insurance against data loss at $3 per month.
Does-it have a lockscreen and is it reasonnably good in term of security? That would be the only incentive for someone who want to keep handwritten notes without having to lock the notebook in a safe every time it is left unattended.
I am not thinking security against state actor, rather people within same household/office who might have too much curiosity.
Yes. Assuming the Move is the same as the Pro, it's PIN-protected with hardware encryption at rest.
I travel a lot and bring it on the plane. It has thousands of pages of handwritten notes, and hundreds of text books and papers.
In the airport or on the plane, I download papers I want to read or have to review.
On touchdown, my reviews are synced and I can send the annotated paper by email.
It does a bit more than a literal notepad.
I bought a Remarkable and ended up returning it. It was a cool device, but you're exactly right, I had a hard time justifying the cost over a $10 notebook.
I've been a reMarkable customer for quite a while now. I started with the reMarkable 2, then upgraded to the reMarkable Paper Pro. While I was using it consistently, it was a great device that allowed me to keep track of my notes in way I'd never been able to before.
They have some great features. Chief among them IMO is the ability to stream the tablet's screen to a desktop app, which you can then in turn share into a Zoom call and the like.
The issue for me is that as I began to spend more and more time in VR/AR - first with the Meta Quest 2/3 and Pimax Crystal, and then with the Apple Vision Pro - I simply stopped taking written notes while working. Now I mostly use it as a very fancy (and expensive!) eReader.
Couple that with the fact that most of what I was writing down as notes is now context that I shove in prompts and/or agent context files... I simply don't use it enough to justify keeping it.
They've fallen behind IMO with the rise of AI. This device would be amazing if they would automatically transcribe documents on the backend, feed them into a RAG, and allow access via a chatbot. They don't, though, and their API is undocumented and difficult to use. That kills it for me.
I should probably list it on eBay or Facebook Marketplace at this point, and put those funds toward something that gets more use.
I’m pretty shocked to hear that someone like you exists already. Lots of questions. First, now that you spend so much time in VR, why does that kill your need to take notes? Are you somehow taking notes in VR? Do you find that these notes are as effective and personal as real writing? Do you put everything you write into an LLM now and trust that it’ll be searchable forever and the AI won’t lose its context?
> I’m pretty shocked to hear that someone like you exists already.
Which part? The VR part, or the AI stuff?
For VR, the tech honestly isn't there yet. I fell down that rabbit hole when I started playing combat flight sims regularly, and then managed to get my employer to buy me an AVP. I never really had "VR sickness", but what little discomfort I did have faded within a couple of week. I probably spend ~40-60h / week on average in VR now, but honestly don't keep close track of it.
> First, now that you spend so much time in VR, why does that kill your need to take notes?
Not at all, it's just effectively impossible to do so by writing while wearing a VR headset. The AVP comes closest to allowing it, but the passthrough resolution isn't quite good enough to make it work well.
> Are you somehow taking notes in VR?
Yep. For most things I use Markdown in Neovim. I have an mkdocs site configured to run locally whenever I have a terminal open, and push changes to a remote git repo regularly. I've considered moving to Obsidian, but am still not sold on the proprietary stuff.
Increasingly, I've been using STT and AI tools to speak my thoughts and record them that way. I've not settled on a "final" tech stack for that, but Limitless (and their Pendant) has been working well enough so far.
> Do you find that these notes are as effective and personal as real writing?
No.
Despite the VR and AI stuff, I'm an analog person at heart. I'm in my early 40s. I wear a fully analog watch (I don't find smartwatches worth it). I collect and restore fountain pens, and have one with me pretty much at all times.
Handwriting it by far the most effective way to keep notes. I believe that's because it's slow enough that you have to synthesize your thoughts at the same time you're writing, which in turn leads to better initial understanding and likely commitment to long-term memory.
> Do you put everything you write into an LLM now and trust that it’ll be searchable forever and the AI won’t lose its context?
Sort of.
I don't put everything in there, of course. Limitless is for non-work stuff, as I work in healthtech and don't want our IP stored there without a BAA in place. It works well enough for personal stuff, though.
For work, I have a transcript file that I keep for each day that I use my STT stuff that contains the raw text that I said. That's accurate enough that I trust it. From those files, I have AI create a summary of topics. Those are then fed into a simple RAG that can reference the summaries and the original files as needed.
I figure this approach means that I can always create new summaries or move to another workflow in the future if I want. For now, it's been at least as effective in terms of lookup as manually typing notes. Transcription errors are very rare and easy enough to figure out if I ever need to correct them. They're far more comprehensive, though. I can dump an entire meeting into a transcript, then go back and figure out exactly what was said and by whom.
Feeding Zoom's transcripts into the RAG has saved my ass a couple of times. I've privately asked a chatbot what I'd said about a given topic in the past while on a call, then used that context to make sure I'm using the same arguments in support of a position that I did six months ago - or found that position has changed and called that out to the others on the call.
I had am RM2 for years before upgrading to the Paper Pro. I love the Paper Pro. It provides me with an environment of deep thinking. It feels too big to carry all day long and I always felt even with the Type Folio I didn't want to damage the screen. I just ordered a Paper Pro Move to carry with me.
The one feature I miss is the ability to split the screen and have two items open at the same time. Like a PDF journal in one and taking notes on it in the other.
> The one feature I miss is the ability to split the screen and have two items open at the same time. Like a PDF journal in one and taking notes on it in the other.
Can you do that on the RPP? I've not really kept up with features other than to check for AI integrations (which they still don't have to my knowledge)
You can't do that yet. I have been asking for the feature for years and it has yet to be implemented.
I took the plunge, I loved my RM2 but about a year ago I fell down stairs and landed on it.
I’ve ordered refurbed Paper Pro and Move.
Things that excited me about the device:
- with significant AI use I feel I need this more than ever. Drafting, thinking, note taking, annotating etc. - it looks wonderful for todos, shopping lists etc. - width designed to work with Paper Pro (and the landscape mode experience seems solid from reviews), so I will try the dual device setup - I didn’t always have RM2 with me, and I’m hoping this will now change to genuinely always. - I learned to love the constraints and for example I’ve discovered a love of Brandon Sanderson, Liu Cixin, Cory Doctorow, and countless other authors precisely because I went all in on DRM free ebooks, I want to expand that to graphic novels also hence the paper pro. - I do get random inspiration and obsidian has been my powerhouse for oh the go notes but I’m hoping scrybble.ink will now let me bring remarkable documents into obsidian. - very un-invasive to take notes in conversations etc.
Sure it’s a complete indulgence, but it helps me to enjoy note taking, being my library with me etc. and I find constraints foster my creativity and exploration and I lean into them.
Initially, I was very ready to buy this. A small notepad that I can carry easily in meetings? Sounds great!
But then I did exactly what they're probably scared of and thought about that impulse some more.
Most people bring either full-on laptops or huge padded notebooks with them into meetings. Me bringing my full-sized reMarkable was never an issue, and writing on it has been glorious. Bringing a smaller device wouldn't net the benefit I initially thought it would.
What I would LOVE to do with a Paper Pro is replace my BOOX Page 7 with it. I use my Page to read books and stuff on Reddit and posts on Hacker News. It works perfectly for this. However, Onyx has a very shady history with Android. They refuse to contribute to Android upstream, their ABIs are closed-source and, IIRC, their devices are stuck on older Android versions due to GMS certification issues. I trust reMarkable much more than I trust Onyx.
Nonetheless, they are dead-set on making their devices purely for note taking, so I have no reason to buy this, as cool as it looks.
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!
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.
Have you tried RCU — reMarkable Connection Utility (sync files over USB or WiFi) https://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/
Regardless, expected better support response for a product in this price range.
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.
RM/RM2 run linux and you can SSH in and copy files to/fro. It is not hard
What an awful experience for a device that explicitly should not have to do this.
It's very nice that the option is available though.
Yes, I absolutely agree with that.
They told her how to ssh but nothing else. Painful for her on a product she loves that is actually fine
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.
I was tempted by a remarkable, my colleagues love theirs (as does my dad).
However my need is personal rather than professional usage, so I didn't get one in the end.
What I have found that is (to me) better is an ipad mini "pencil", with goodnotes. The pen is ok, not as good as a wacom, but it'll do.
Goodnotes does have a subscription, but it also works on mac as well, so it allows me to get access to it when my ipad is else where. It exports to PDF well.
I only really use it to make notes/designs. The handwriting transcription isn't going to work well for my handwriting, but it does a reasonable job, given how hard my scrawls are to read. For that it works well, is about the same price as a remarkable, and does other things apart from note taking.
But, that is also its downside. You can do other things, which means distractions. Obviously you can make your notes richer by copy/pasta from the internets, but also you can be distracted by the internets too.
I used to have terrible handwriting to the point of not being able to read it myself, but it got better. It is a matter of practice and being more intentional with it, taking that little extra effort to make the letters readable. If something is worth writing down, it's probably worth the extra effort
I feel like the real opportunity for e-ink displays is white boards. I would love a 4 ft x 3 ft e-ink display that I could mount on the wall with calendar and note widgets and that I could also draw on like a white board.
Plus, remote teams would really benefit from a shared whiteboard device. A device with infinite scroll in both directions and shared editing. I mean, really adding infinite scroll and collaborative editing to existing remarkable devices would cover that use case.
This device has planned obsolescence written all over it. The pen includes a built-in rechargeable battery. The device's battery is also not user replaceable. These are the same issues that the Remarkable Paper Pro has.
They use the Linux kernel and some GPL software. They've made a change with Remarkable Paper Pro to only allow SSH access once the user has put the device in "developer mode". The device is marked as compromised until it is restored to factory or something else is done to it. It's not clear to me how the device is restored to factory or restored at all.
They provide tarball dumps via https://github.com/reMarkable/linux-imx-rm instead of a proper git repository for the kernel. Why is it so hard to find people able to push a git repository to Github? These dumps are also rather useless if they still lack the source code for the frame buffer and the display. https://github.com/reMarkable/linux is the Linux kernel for the older remarkable 2 and the remarkable 1. The kernel code from the Github repository for my remarkable 2 wasn't the one they shipped in the latest version running on my device a few months ago. There was a newer minor patch version running on my device.
The devices are very tied to the cloud account and their application. You must have an account and you must use their application if you want to use this device fully, even offline. The network over USB feature makes it possible to back up/download/restore documents. EPUB document handling is abysmal without their application installed on the PC. They really want their customers to use their software, to have an account and to use their cloud services. It's a non-starter if you really don't want to be locked in. EPUB documents still have issues on my Remarkable 2 due to the bugs their USB based document transfer tool has. Many documents simply fail to transfer without any feedback. They probably only update the account-based software they force people to use to get as much money from subscriptions as possible.
Hardware repairs for these devices are also not looking good. You're most like out of luck if the warranty has expired for your device. They couldn't care less. They’ll gladly sell you yet another device which has to be recycled when the battery isn’t able to hold a charge for more than a few minutes.
I wouldn't recommend any product from this company. This company's good old days are over. They've taken money from investors. They want to charge their customers as much as possible. The en*****ification is almost complete.
The solution to your extreme anguish and relentless suffering in this mortal world: Don't purchase this particular product.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
Please do not buy from reMarkable (see sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45121821)
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...
OTOH, koreader on the Scribe post jailbreak is easily the best large format PDF reading experience I've ever had.
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.
I have a boox go 10.3 it's alright- the android app functionality makes it more useful than others
More tangential, but is anyone using screenless (or any) graphical tablets for taking notes/work? I try to have digital notes for things I know I will rewrite, extend or might want to search, and paper more for drafts and ephemeral todos. Thought that it could be nice to have modifiable and potentially searchable written notes. When on the go, I'm not likely to write anything important, so paper + phone for accessing other notes is fine. And when stationary, having a graphical tablet seems like a good deal.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://us.livescribe.com/
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.
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”
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.
The current not-actually-available instance of this is Nuwa Pens
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.
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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.
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.
> 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.
And then, two years later, all you use it for is Netflix. Maybe you won't, but that's how things will end up for me, because that's what happened. A device that just isn't capable of that is how to solve the problem. It's not a solution for everybody, but it's what's worked for me.
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.
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.
You can't use your iPad comfortably in sunlight and that is the entire point of eink devices.
> 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.
Wouldn't a paper notebook be better for that? (I feel the appeal of the device, but I don't know if it's just tech lust)
My only disappointment with it is the "time to fresh sheet of paper to write on" metric. As in, a paper notebook, I can open to a section I know is empty and be able to jot something down within seconds. I can then tear it out and refile it without much hassle. There's quick sheets, but it's still too many buttons to press.
A lot of people get bitchy if you have a tablet or laptop open in a meeting.
Only if you type.
Oddly, no one gets offended if you scribble with your Apple Pencil. It looks like you're taking notes.
This is a tablet. Are people predicating their bitchiness on what kind of screen it has?
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?
That doesn't seem like a particularly defensible reason to invest in one tool vs another to me. ymmv
The amount of tech we purchase trying to solve social problems in enormous.
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.
They're completely different categories, so doesn't make much sense in comparing. Like comparing a car to a boat.
This might be a simple take but - smaller and more expensive?
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.
I wonder what portion of power users will take the color dosplay to its fullest. I'd still settle for trying out one of the older B&W models.
It's supposed to be compared to the Remarkable Paper Pro, which is priced at $629. This is priced at $449.
Ah then I'm mistaken in my logic. However they're gaming the system while citing color e-ink R&D and/or patent procurement as the cost driver.
Can't see myself paying more than $200 for this device.
What I use is boox note air, in fact I am writing this on it while browsing hn on it right now. I have edge and OneNote installed on it so all my notes and tabs are synced to my other devices (iPhone, MacBook, Windows PC). It really is amazing for hand writing and reading ebooks, PDF, websites. My setup is super usable, but: it is a Chinese device running American proprietary software...
Four hundred and fifty dollars for a simulation of a roughly-A5 notebook.
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?
Unfortunately, that picture doesn't update automatically, so if you add things to that page, you have to retake the picture. Worse, if you don't take a picture of a page, there's no digital copy of it! If you've left your paper notebook at a different location, you can't take pictures of it unless you go to where it physically is! Inconceivable, I know, but it turns out there are benefits to a digital notepad. If you're too poor/cheap to spend money on high quality tools, that's your problem, but no, your paper notebook doesn't let you draw a lasso around a section of the page, copy and paste it onto a new page, and then resize it.
xerox machines still exist you know
I have a RMPP and like it for reading and briefly annotating papers, journaling, drafting fiction. But I am so disappointed that they do not have split screen functionality. One of the core use cases for the device is reading a document and taking notes on it. Not being able to have a PDF open on one side of the screen and a notebook on the other is a huge miss.
iirc you can insert pages into a PDF or annotate directly on the page.
I do, but that's not what I'm looking for. If you annotate a PDF directly you then have to detangle your notes from the PDF on export. It is very different from having a document open that you can scroll/flip through and taking notes in their own space at the same time.
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).
Is there any alternative with ~A5 size?
I take a lot of notes, schematics, etc in paper notes a5 and I was thinking about moving to digital world, but definietely not for the price of any remarkable device…
Got kindle for reading - and I just love it, got back at reading everyday, and that was problematic with standard, paper books.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
It is TERRIBLE IDIOTIC INANE design: 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
Hilarious. Especially compared to the USB-C connector on an iPhone, which is secured by 6 (!!!) screws to the frame.
I use a magnetic charger adapter for mine. I can see how these could break over time but the magnet has never failed me.
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.
Does anybody know if they're working on improved epub support? Would make it a much more compelling buy if it wouldn't just convert epubs to pdfs. If this could be a replacement for my kindle + notepad, that would make it a great device.
€479 euros... is a lot of money to stomach when I can get an iPad+Pencil for about the same price (does much more and is much faster).
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.
> PDF, PNG, SVG (exporting)
Are there no tablets that support proper digital formats that would support the basics of paragraph selection and text reflow? (assuming you convert all your handwriting into digital text)
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
Ignoring my browser's language setting, defaulting to my IP's origin and then the language switcher widget is at the bottom of the page, and it doesn't work.
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.
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.
$700+, that's a little steep folks for replacing paper :)
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.
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.
Loved my remarkable pro, but it was too expensive.
So it's like reMarkable 2 but:
* 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?
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.
Hmm, I kind of want a Boox Palma with a stylus, and this is almost that, but not quite...
I find the name is a bit unrelated! Move as in move your data?
Move like mobile phones
Now the "Pro"...
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.
Really can't see how it can sell well priced this high.
I bought an RM1 and was ultimately highly disappointed in the software, and, for all its supposed openness, the lack of any open software development.
They sold me a tablet they touted as having hundreds of pressure levels and most of the simulated writing implements only recognize about 4.
My biggest complaint is that I hoped to be able to use it to make sketches and diagrams I could use on websites or art projects, or do live drawings like it was a digital version of an overhead projector. It works like garbage for both use cases because the software ecosystem has no support at all for anything but the ultra-low-quality stroking algorithms that are used on-device. Put those pen strokes that looked so beautiful on e-ink up on a 4k monitor and they just look like the cheapest of cheap garbage because there's no pressure interpolation at all...!!!
Wonderful idea
Inexplicable price point
Small company, low volume product, high production premiums. Not everyone can afford Amazon and Apple level volumes.
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.)
What operating system does this run?
Linux with a custom Qt Quick-based UI: https://developer.remarkable.com/documentation/qt_epaper
all the information is pretty public: https://developer.remarkable.com/documentation/software-stac...
It is a Linux variant. Has been rootable in the past.
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.
Ironically the $2 aliexpress lcd pad I bought gets more use than my remarkable these days (same as https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BBPV4491 )
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!
They have mentioned about more enterprise/business options with SSO and MDM, but it's either in beta or coming soon https://remarkable.com/business#:~:text=A%20beta%20program%2...
I noticed in the 3.20 release notes they said they're working on this, and to contact them for early-access. https://remarkable.com/business though you'll have to scroll past the marketing guff for a bit.
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.
lock down and modify is 1/10th of what enterprise management is about.
modify also means install arbitrary software to accomplish your goals.
Was so excited about Remarkable, and got disappointed with basically everything I was excited about. Not for me. I do look like the look and feel of the thing though, shame i know it won't fit what I need.
https://lengrand.fr/impressions-on-the-remarkable-2-one-mont...
It looks like they hired somebody from Redmond to name their products.
I know what Remarkable is, but without clicking the link, I have no idea what this new product is.
Remarkable needs to give the user the option to turn off the "infinite paper". That was the stupidist change ever made. I only ever activate it on accident.
Paper has edges. Remarkable is marketed as digital paper. Give me some fricken edge FFS.
Sorry, but A$799 for this one makes no sense when the ReMarkable 2 is A$699.
May I use to read books (epubs?). I am not carrying another device, but it could replace my Kindle.
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.
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.
Huh. The smaller one is cheaper. Look at that.
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...
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.