ReMarkable’s redesigned e-paper tablet is more powerful and more papery
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
It's a very niche device but I've owned mine for nearly two years and am a big advocate. In some ways, the first model was proof of concept. Excellent hardware and writing experience, but the early versions of the software were horrible, and the device itself is very ugly. The software has improved dramatically in the time I've owned it, going from horrible to bad, then to almost acceptable, and now it's decent.
I'm happy to see the company is doing well enough to make a second generation reality. Looks like it will be an overall improved experience, with a magnetic marker, a slick-looking device and overall incremental improvements. I'd like to see some kind of trade up program though, it's expensive (and 50$ more for a marker with one extra sensor is ridiculous) and I can't justify paying that much for an incremental upgrade.
My only concern about the new specs would be the thickness, or rather the sturdiness. The first generation is thick by modern standards, but it's very sturdy. I've dropped the device, I've dropped the bag with it, I've bumped into things with it - not a scratch. Very refreshing in the age of fragile devices. Hopefully the rM2 doesn't sacrifice much sturdiness to be thinner.
One could imagine hacking something like this tablet to have a true interactive Squeak like environment on it. Or, better yet, a Squeak-like environment designed from the ground up specifically for epaper displays...
Downvoters: yes, you deserve the truth! :-)
However, if you are using an emissive display in an environment with constant and even lighting, you can set the brightness correctly and it will be just as good. Many people in such lightning conditions configure their displays wrong and mistake the misconfiguration for an inherent disadvantage of emissive displays.
The surroundings might not be lit enough for the health of eyes. This is the usual case and one of the prime issues why dead tree books and e-paper tablets lead to weak eyes.
Cheap, modular, long battery life, effective.
There has been an FCC leak: https://fccid.io/2AMK2-RM110 showing a machined aluminum back, which the motherboard is affixed to. To me this looks good.
Disclaimer, I pre-ordered V2 today and am an owner of V1.
https://youtu.be/SWY_bwFMxro?t=73
Made out of aluminium, so I don't think there should be worries about give. I think bendgate is still fresh in people's minds.
There is a “send to kindle” function which allows you to either use a desktop application, or set up an email address you can send .mobi files to!
Highly recommended if you get tired of plugging in - thats why I swapped from my old Kobo to a Kindle.
The only issue I had was waiting on shipping from Germany.
It's also pretty good IMO for taking meeting notes, because the only things one can do is listen to the meeting, take notes, and doodle (which has been shown to improve attention and detail recall [0]).
Of course, that also applies to a paper notebook and a nice pen.
[0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-thinking-benefits-of...
The rM is best thought of as a pen and paper notebook, except of effectively infinite size. There are no apps. The UI (the only user-facing program) has minimal features, most of which are there just to mimic what you can do with an actual paper notebook. There are only a few exceptions, like being able to drag your notes/scribbles on the page. The device won't integrate with any 3rd party services, it doesn't have search, etc. If a physical notebook doesn't have it, then the rM probably also doesn't.
That definitely makes the rM a very niche device, but I'm getting great use out of mine, while I never managed to get much good use of an iPad.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWY_bwFMxro&feature=youtu.be...
The conversion relies on some kind of cloud service (possibly Google's Cloud Vision API). So you need to be connected and there are privacy/security implications. And, it's very dependent on your handwriting. I cannot get coherent results with that feature, but my handwriting is as readable as base64-encoded Perl. I've seen it produce impressively good results when other people try it.
The process itself is indeed smooth, select an item in the menu and a few seconds later you have the text, which can then be emailed.
Just to make this bit clear: with effectively infinite number of pages. One would imagine that panning around infinitely large pages would be a possibility with a product like this, but the feature is not there.
Both physically and mentally this device has changed how I use tablets/devices. It feels like real paper to me, and without all of the glorified app icons and notifications screaming at me I feel more focused on the task at hand. Purpose-driven devices reduces distractions and has helped me grow professionally and I'll even go as far as saying reduced some stress and anxiety.
I am seriously considering buying a dumb phone (minimalist interface) thanks to the impact the rM1 has had on my productivity.
"If this URL looks like an ad or a press release, please consider finding an original source for the information."
I really would like to see TC just gone. It didn't use to be this bad, but they've been going downhill since... forever, really.
This is suddenly very reminiscent of John Mulaney describing Back to the Future...
It's also worth considering, when thinking about why it hasn't been banned, whether or not the main value from the threads (assuming the perfect source) would be from the link or the comments.
For some types of submission, it's the link: personal blog updates, academic papers, interesting technical achievements, detailed research, so on.
For others, it's the comments: company updates, interesting world news, most things happening in real-time, obituaries, so forth.
For others still, it's tied: blog posts on historical subjects, 'Show HN:' posts, submissions about different ways of doing things than mainstream methods.
Product launches, from my perspective, fall in the "Value in Comments" category. So then you have to decide whether it's worth the trade-off. By banning TechCrunch, would the site lose comment value?
Looking at this one, you'd really be missing some good comments by getting rid of TechCrunch links; there are all sorts of anecdotes about the product in this thread, and there are a bunch of interesting anecdotes about competing products as well.
This isn't even a review. This is someone writing from the press release.
Occasionally I'd go from regular work (notes on a project file), to a business or client meeting (pull up notes from past meetings, update with new notes), to a volunteer meeting after work (pull up the previous week's training notes). At each point I had all the information I needed without having to juggle binders or loose-leaf papers.
And I love that I can rework my notes as I write them. So, during a meeting, first draft is just scribbling stuff down, then while people are busy listening to themselves talk, I can drag my scribbles around into priorities and tasks, add a diagram, clean a few things up. This is a completely different workflow from either plain paper or laptop/tablet, and it really works for me.
The only things I would like are slightly longer battery life and more options for syncing with other services like Dropbox etc
> The company is claiming a 3x boost to battery life, using the same 3,000 mAh battery, based on performance improvements throughout and a more efficient (but more powerful) dual-core ARM processor. That means two weeks of use and 90 days of standby. This is welcome news, because frankly the battery life and power management on the last one were not great.
I'd love to have an e-ink tablet for hand writing and sketching ideas, but I'm not crash hot on it all being locked in to some closed ecosystem.
I've tried a few things in the last couple of years to take my note taking electronic, and it turns out that delay is important - if there's too much delay I end up not jotting down the couple of quick notes I need to write. Wunderlist opens very quickly on my Android phone and I ended up unconsciously using it to write down quick things. OneNote (an otherwise great tool) take an age to open and get to the right page, so I end up not using it except at my desk.
In the first mode, it comes back in about 1 second. It's enough that there's a bit of a lag and I don't like it if it happens right in the middle of something, but I haven't run into this very much.
In the second, it takes a few seconds to spin up, so I got into the habit of doing that before a meeting or whatever started. It takes about as much time to get it started up and navigate to the appropriate file as it would to fish a binder out of my bag and open it up to a blank page.
Short papers are just fine. Long documents, as long as you read them mostly sequentially, are IMHO just fine as well. But trying to read something where you need to flip around a lot is painful.
One of the use cases I had in mind when buying rM was reading stuff like IEEE 802 standards, programming language standards, hardware references, etc. But with these documents, the table of contents itself can have 10s of pages. The tools for searching and moving around are there, but the high latency of the e-ink makes them frustrating to use. And hyperlinks in PDFs are not active. And you can't bookmark something to create your personal collection of pages that you often need, which would somewhat alleviate the abovementioned frustration.
I use rM daily, but just not for reading manuals. It's just not a good use case for the device.
Also, how often do you need to buy new tips, or do they not wear out? I'm asking because the ones for DPT family are designed in such a way that they wear out. I guess I've always been more on the DPT side, because it's made by Sony, which gives me a feeling of confort, you know, a company with long history.
If price wasn't an issue, which would you prefer. rM2 does look much more refined and it is half the price of DPT-RP1 (the Sony website does list the price at ~600$ but sadly the reality is that if you want to buy that in the EU the price is approximately:
EU_price = base_price + (base_price*0.22))
And of course the shipping...
I really hope rM2 turns out to be an amazing product, because the digital paper market feels very stagnant at the moment.
I would love to hear more of your experiences with the device. Thank you,
Lots of Love Mortuus
To be fair, Sony are a company with a long history of absolutely amazing hardware crippled by comically bad software. The DPT series doesn't even show you the PDF table of contents, last I looked.
One marker nib lasts me about 10 weeks, but it seems to be very individual. Some people can write hundreds of pages on a single nib, others need a new one weekly. In any case, I wouldn't say nibs wearing out is a major concern. It would be nice if they didn't wear out, of course, but the design of the nibs seem to be crucial for giving that excellent writing feeling.
And yes, these devices are expensive. I'm in the EU myself, and some 400€ is rather steep for upgrading the rM to rM2.
But as soon as I get the email for RM2 I pre-ordered again. To your point, it is the product the digital paper market has been waiting for.
I am an avid hand-writer. I have been a Levenger Circa user for more than 20 years, and basically had a subscription to the Circa paper for the last several years, as I went through so much of it. It took me a while to adjust my workflow and so forth, but I am now a full convert to the RM and think the device and the ecosystem have enormous potential, especially for developers.
The RM folks are very dev friendly, though their docs and so forth are poor at present. I take this to be a function of focus/resources rather than intent. The architecture of the software on the device is very good and dev oriented, and the code (what they've released) is well written. The device can run a webserver! The APIs- community documented- for the server-side of the RM platform are minimal but well structured. I was fairly quickly able to dig into them and write some utilities, which work reliably. So I am very optimistic about the ecosystem around these devices.
To your questions- I write on the order of 20-30 "pages"/day on the RM, and go through 1 tip maybe every 2 weeks. The writing experience is very comfortable. Adding an "eraser" to the premium RM2 pen addresses the main ergonomic inconvenience. I also use the device for reading PDFs. There are some ergonomic nits there but on the whole it works well.
Yes, RM is a new, small biz, but to my eyes they have a great product, a great approach, solid operations, and are developer friendly. I have not used the Sony device, and can't compare it, but I see nothing but good things ahead for RM.
The software had improved dramatically- they seem to be doing a good to exceptional job at getting incremental features out on a regular tempo without breakage, no simple task- but I think a certain amount of "hammock-time" plus increased awareness of non-digital pain points was necessary for a new perspective to flip into place. (This is re: seemingly small things like using distinct per day notebooks and per week folders, rather than a single monolithic notebook with paper-like day headings etc)
And my workflow is still limited- I am not using the writing recognition at all as yet- and there are plenty of use cases I come up constantly that it doesn't address- smart task lists, various kinds of copy paste, maps (!!!). If one has any kind of paper-based or digital habits adopting the device will be a challenge and involve frustration until it clicks, and probably even after.
But I have confidence both in the device's trajectory and moreover in the ergonomics of a community developer's engagement with the org. There is a lot of open space for patient, flexible developers to build cool stuff in. Cheers.
Everything just felt better on the Sony- not just the hardware or the software, but the whole product. With some minor fixes (ex: moving the icon from the dropdown menu to the empty space on top of the screen) it could move from outstanding to just perfect.
Does it support ePub format ebooks or just PDFs?
People have made some neat stuff, and there's a Rust library for making apps: https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable
I just got a polar/readwise/orgmode/Anki setup together and I'd love to use this.
Readwise lets me make an annotation clozed while reviewing it, which is nice. It auto-converts highlights into questions.
I'm experimenting with different card types in org-anki, using yasnippets. That's a nice workflow. I need to look into auto-collapsing them after I'm done editing them.
Will buy RM2 when pocket permits. It's going to be a tough decision be an iPad and RM2, recently came across Liquidtext iPad app, it's so good.
https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/e8p22h/re...
It's not going away in a future software update :)
Links/lynx should work great on such a device.
They do render ordinary apps even. e-ink aware apps work best, but all apps work one way or another. They have even implemented some functions to make any app work well like custom contrast settings or ability to refresh screen at any point, or automatic low-latency mode for when app animates a lot, etc. Some versions even have an ability to work as an external screen (they have an HDMI port). So you buy a reader, but you in fact also get an external e-ink screen that works with any computer, in the same device. I guess it will be a long while before remarkable adds something similar? Or does it have it?
I was also pretty shocked that there was no way to get a list of all annotations you've added to a given PDF; I really wanted a way to read through a book making notes as I went, then get an overview of where I'd made notes. Even a way to bookmark a given page would have been useful.
Fix those two issues and it would have been a great device for me; the page size was juuuust big enough to display pretty much any book at a readable size.
Dunno if the privacy is any better, but you can at least view it with adblockers on.
> reMarkable’s virtually instant response and texturized surface make for an unprecedented writing experience.
There is indeed a precedent for having literally instant response with a texturized surface: pencil and paper.
Also, I wish they were able to use an e-paper with a faster refresh rate, like ClearInk claims to be (see e.g. https://youtu.be/kE_byDwLjxk?t=34).
That said, it seems to look quite attractive as is already.
The lightest of touches are registered by device. I suppose if you choose the wrong pen mode for the immediate task you might have to push hard?
Where does one do that?
One concern, the ability to access material off the Web, has been addressed.
Another has not: the Gen 2 tablet still has only 8 GB storage.
On my current, much-despised, Android tablet, I have a 128GB microSD card with over 32 GB of documents, in a range of formats -- the overwhelming majority are PDF and ePub, but also djvu, docx, txt, htmk, chm, ppt, pptx, and other formats.
With the paltry cost of storage, cripling the Remarkable with anything less than 128-256 GB staggers the mind.
I'd also very much like to have an eccessible, full-featured Linux userland, even if only console mode, as this is invaluable to me (the file extension-based counts and storage utilisation come via Termux utilities on the Android tablet). A keyboard (external, Bluetooth), and terminal driver, would be sufficient for this.
My handwriting is terrible, and while I'd love to unplug for reading/writing, I haven't found an acceptable solution for doing so beyond a Chromebook with wifi turned off and/or a "self control" web extension.
EDIT: from elsewhere in this thread, I see https://github.com/dps/remarkable-keywriter which looks interesting. Curious to hear how it plays with the remarkable 2, esp around lag
Utility afforded is immense. Termux on Android, crippled as it is, is the one thing on the platform that does not completely and abjectly suck.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13072748
Some (thin) additional details, though no specifics, on the Wiki: https://remarkablewiki.com/start
As a better paper, without any distractions, works well!! I have one at work, on my desk, I have one for each kid doing maths with them on it, it's awesome. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32922602355.html?spm=a2g0o.p...
As for the previous one (single page scribble) then I found in the past that I usually have a new single page each day on my desk for tasks minor notes of that page and it's now replacing it - this is its main usage.
We only did 1 clearing cycle so far, and paper is back to practically white. but microwave was not enough, wet cloth worked better.
The paper is somewhat glossy.
The huge downside is being unable to erase any part of the screen without erasing the entire screen - so by the end of a long brainstorming session I have lots of scribbled out parts and lines directing the eye to follow my flow.
I desperately want something like the remarkable2, but I just can't bring myself to spending $800CDN (for the package) as a replacement for paper or the "Boogie Board"!
EDIT: Ok, 719CAD if you want the marker with an eraser and the book-style cover instead of the pouch.
It's a great tool, especially considering there is almost no lag between the "pen" and the display.
However, the contrast is a bit low and makes it difficult to view in moderate to low light.
Great for outdoors though. I have one with four magnets on the back and keep it on my fridge.
Also pumped to see them officially releasing a Chrome extension to send to reMarkable. Long overdue. It doesn't look like it's out yet, so here's a link to the unofficial version I made last year (used by over 700 other reMarkable owners):
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/send-to-remarkable...
Open source at https://github.com/michaelschade/remarklater
https://remarkable.engineering/
Isn't easy to find from the official site (remarkable.com), and I've yet to find a simple "Hello, world"-example from ReMarkable...
Ed: i see there already are some comments on this topic. I think I just might pre-order an rm2.
I made the mistake of buying an equilpen2 at an apple store years ago. I say mistake not because I didn't like the product (I used it for hundreds of pages of notes over the year or two after I bought it and loved that it let me write on regular paper) but because the company gave up on the product and eventually released destructive app updates that deleted all my notes from my local machines.
I was only able to recover my content because I had it synced to dropbox and now I'm paranoid about content creation devices like this potentially losing my content in the future if the company goes belly-up.
Can I just... connect a USB cable and transfer files? Why do I want an app at all?
The apparent requirement to transfer files through an app was the reason I didn't get a remarkable 1.
Well this sucks if it is not leftie friendly as the price and features had me sold.
Does the reMarkable adapt to left-handed people? If you're left-handed, don't worry. A few of our colleagues are also left-handed. They want to make sure all lefties have an excellent experience with their reMarkable device. You'll be able to set up your reMarkable to left-handed mode when you first set up your device. We've also made it easy to switch between right-handed and left-handed modes in the main settings.
Glad the OEM thought this through.
But I'll be honest--I don't purchase "left-handed" notebooks or use them backwards or left-handed books or anything so maybe it doesn't actually matter as much as right-handed people think it does when righties writing articles imagine what lefties think.
At that thickness, I'd be worried about sturdiness and, in particular, bending, à la the problems with the iPhone 6.
I can stick an iPad Mini or similar tablet into a jacket pocket or backpack and jog a couple of miles to a bus stop daily without concern. Will we be able to do the same with this, I wonder?
I happen to have Sony's competing 13" e-paper tablet already and I'd be nervous about putting it into a backpack without something non-bendable next to it to prevent flexing.
It could be jostling around with corners of large books, laptops, cables, random containers, etc. It can also have more space to accelerate when you swing your bag around, whereas a phone is held firmly your leg when you run/jump/etc.
Durability in a bag is what separates great electronics manufacturers from decent ones. If I buy something and it doesn't survive bag life for several months, which is quite common, then I write off the manufacturer as a creator of fragile throw-away devices. But I've never had a phone have any sort of problem from pocket stresses.
When I take my tablet (in a case) out and about, it goes into a laptop sleeve before it goes into a bag. For me, it's not bending I'm worried about, but scratches.
The writing experience, battery life and hackability are very appealing to me, but it also looks like it's not as good a reading device as high end readers, where really good lighting and water resistance are common. It's also slightly big for me. The size would be great for academic pdfs, or reference works but for normal books, or even for normal note taking (rather than sketching) it's a little on the large side. Maybe if it had less bezel, the size could be closer to best of both.
I don't mind it having a high price point, but I hoped that it would compete with high-price point e-readers (kobo forma / kindle oasis) too.
Note to ereader makers: Please, PLEASE make the screen saver show the last page read! I'd throw away my Kindle and buy a new one just to get that. I'd pay extra for it. I will stop complaining about my ereader if you do this.
Would this be... not having a screensaver? Or are you thinking of something more specific?
Having typed it out, it's sorta odd that there's a screensaver at all, rather than just always acting like it's up and running. I'd probably love it if ereaders would just show a "booting..." indicator when necessary, and otherwise never have an "off" screen except when serving some critical need (e.g. low battery warning).
It's like in a modern car when you stop for a stop light - the engine turns off. Step on the gas, and the engine turns back on.
It took my brain about 13 months after first trying the RM1, failing to transition my workflow to it, setting it aside- then all of a sudden, the crystallization moment, a flash of how it would work. I switched over and haven't looked back.
Re: screen saver- the RM has 4 different power modes- active, then 2 levels of sleep, then off. The last page is visible both in active mode and also in the first level of sleep. The screen goes blank on the second level of sleep, then dark when off. Given the openness of the software I suspect the duration of first level of sleep could be tweaked.
Found an article in the "remarkable 2" section of the support site. No mention of support for offline/private syncing, which is a real shame. (The "read more" links go to v1 pages and seem to be autogenerated.)
- Search was fixed in 1.5
- USB is still not a drive, but there's the web UI and also third-party apps.
- Zoom: Not sure what you mean, but rasterization was fixed/removed in 1.6.
After reading an in-depth review from GoodEReader [1], I concluded that an iPad, although not with an ePaper display, could also function as a regular tablet with access to a ton of apps. This was something that the ReMarkable was not able to do. The ReMarkable tablet does allow you to have SSH access though, as noted by other comments here.
Just my 2c, if you are also looking at this for a paper replacement.
[1] https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/hands-on-rev...
- It's sometimes unstable, and crashes while I draw. Not super often but maybe 4 or 5 times a week. I don't lose any data other than the last ~5-10 strokes.
- There is a notebook called Quick Sheets that is permanently there, even if I try to remove it's metadata over SSH. It gets generated on boot. No idea why this is here.
- You can SSH in, and there's a good hacker community around the tablet. A lot of cool open source software is written for it.
- Putting a file on the device for the first time, after doing the same on a kindle for years, is an adventure to say the least. There is no calibre plugin for it that I've found.
- I have never been able to use EPUBs properly on this tablet, a lot of my books just crash it. I have to convert them to PDF first on calibre. So highlighting is just markup on the PDF and not really selecting any text, but you can write directly on the book with notes.
- The first time I opened an EPUB, it took a while (10s) to load. When I tried to change the font of the EPUB on the reMarkable, it just stayed on the loading icon for hours, and I gave up on EPUBs then, and resorted to PDFs.
- There is no dictionary on the EPUB reader. I miss this feature a lot. And even if there were, I wouldn't be able to use it because I have to convert my EPUBs to PDF.
- Metadata for EPUBs or PDFs isn't visible, only the raw filenames. So no sorting by author, genre, etc.
- drawing and marking up is phenomenal, as is reading on such a huge screen. I absolutely love reading and journaling on this tablet.
- I have never succeeded in exporting my notebooks or marked up PDFs using the built in software after marking up or writing in 100+ pages, I have to use some community written software instead.
- It's $500 total after pen and cover.
- There is no backlight.
- OCR is done in the cloud, and not on the device.
- The iOS companion app is goofy, a lot of the navigation within the app seems to be done in a hacky way, instead of using the usual iOS SDK components. (They segment screen portions for scrolling on pages and for navigating the app, and it leads to just the most bizarre behavior).
I want to love this tablet. And all we need is a software update. The hardware was almost perfect, and now with USB-C, a magnet on the pen, and an eraser, the hardware is even closer to being perfect (I think the only thing left is a backlight).
Some examples of the open source stuff can be found on github [1] and their wiki[2].
[1] https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable [2] https://remarkablewiki.com/tips/start
>No idea why this is here
I agree it would be nice to turn off quick sheets for those who don't use it. For me, I love quicksheets. I often want to just grab the device, jot something down immediately, and put it away. Sure I could create a 'notes' file and put it somewhere obvious, but quicksheets reduces the time and effort for these quick notes.
I'd also love an open Kindle alternative. This is too much for my budget, but hope prices will come down in 1 year.
Heck, even the interface on the remarkable itself is written using Qt!
Lack of backlight not a big deal for me; rather use a room light if necessary.
I tried to use iPad Pro as a full-time note-taking device and found that after writing on it for up 3-4 hours during the day, my eyes get very tired by the evening. I tried various things to mitigate it, such as using dark background, changing brightness etc, and nothing seems to help enough to make iPad a notebook replacement.
I absolutely love the functionality offered by iPad-like device such as reading Kindle, browse web, notes taking, PDF annotation, scanner apps etc. I absolutely want to be able to use it as single device to hold all my hand-notes and downloaded or scanned documents. But can't avoid the eye strain.
Devices like reMarkable etc can be used at length if your ask is just to carry around all your notes. I have misplaced all my notes from grad school days. I would love an easy way to be able to write and archive for posterity all my notes.
I personally settled for Onyx Boox Max 3. It is at way higher price point, but is more functional - has Kindle, OReilly apps etc and quite functional note taking app.
I tried the earlier version of reMarkable ran into a limitation that limited its usability for me. It did not allow copying a section of text and pasting it into a new document. I might be mis-remembering, but I think it did not even allow pasting a copied section of a note into a new page in the same notebook. All this severely limited what I could use it for. It was just a paper replacement, and not much more.
Boox Max 3 did not have these limitations. Whats great about iPad-like devices is that you don't even expect that you will run into these corner cases.
I hope this update to reMarkable add such small features that increase the usability. I absolutely hope that these kind of devices succeed. They are a solution to the problem of keeping and carrying with you a separate set of notes on varied topics where no single paper notebook would do justice, and they are usable for very long stretches of time with no more eye strain than with using paper.
Can you tell me if the Onyx Boox Max 3 works with USB-C to USB-C cables? I had a Onyx Boox Nova and it was noncompliant somehow, I had to only use the USB-C to A cable that came with it. I ended up selling it for that reason -- I didn't want to carry around a single cable just for this device when all my other devices are USB-C.
Software aside, this is expensive ($479 when you select the pen with the eraser and the book cover), and the screen is not back-lit, so this won't be usable without other source of light.
Why is it so hard to find an e-ink device that's good for reading books, PDFs, and web content (e.g. Pocket)? So far, everything I've tried has fallen short.
Colors, please!
A US Letter sized pad made of 20lb paper is 1lb per 100 sheets[1] so an 88 page pad would weigh 400g, neglecting the cardboard backing. If it were made of 16lb paper then you would get a bit over 100 pages in 400g.
1: 20lbs means 500 sheets of the basis size weighs 20 lbs. The basis size for US Letter sized paper is 4 sheets (22x17), so 2000 sheets weighs 20lbs.
- the display is not very sharp, has poor contrast, and no active illumination
- also, despite there being no display illumination, reading in the sun was not possible, as it immediately resulted in the display bulging notably from the absorbed sun/heat.
- seriously buggy software
Let me know, if you have information that the new revision has improved on those aspects.
I was a little leery, after my experience buying a similar e-ink tablet years ago through indiegogo, which took forever to get delivered, shipped with a painfully obsolete version of Android, and bricked itself in short order, but this seems like a very solid product.
Being able to do work-related stuff other than taking notes would be easier to justify the premium price.
There’s a script to upload files from Instapaper on, not sure how well it works.
I'm really sad that nobody has adequately addressed interoperability in the digital inking space; I'd gladly switch to an iPad or reMarkable, but so far I'm still the neckbeard inking in Xournal on an old Thinkpad.
That said, it runs linux so you could conceivably backup the files yourself. You can ssh into your tablet, run sftp, w/e. But they are in some proprietary .lines format.
There's a wiki with more details (the file format stuff is further down): https://remarkablewiki.com/tech/filesystem
It may be possilbe you could hack it to run xournal, but I've no idea.
I have an IPad Pro, but I'm not in love with the writing experience or reading an eBook.
Came close to buying one last year, but went for an iPad Air instead as they are cheaper and more versatile.
While I’d still love an e-ink display, I found a screen protector for the iPad that has a paper-like texture and makes it significantly nicer to draw on.
Onyx also has one, it's a bit cheaper than the remarkable.
All of these devices have major flaws and upsides.
It's one of those cases where the hardware is amazing but the software is just too painful to use (and I really wanted to like it)
Does anyone know on whether it is possible to read kindle purchased books or converted ebooks? What about custom software?
Answer: Yes!
This made ReMarkable a non-starter for many companies that have policies around where internal data may be stored.
>Our cloud service is a service we provide to our customers. You are more than welcome to use your reMarkable offline and store your documents in local storage if you prefer.
Aside: I have setup (via SSH) rclone to sync files to my own cloud storage, but that's not something that is officially supported.
[1] https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000264829...
But I already have Onyx Boox for my note-scribbling-on-e-ink needs, and if push comes to shove, I can run termux from there :D
But... the devices are absolutely the most fragile electronics I've touched in 20 years. I've had two break on me in as many months, babying them and being incredibly careful.
The first one developed a line of stuck pixels within the first week of use. It happened while I was using it, which was surreal to watch. They replaced it, but I had to pay shipping, which wasn't cool.
The second locked up a few days ago. I rebooted it, thinking it'd be OK, but discovered that the capacitive touchscreen was not recognized. I'm not the only one. You can see dozens of people complaining about this here: http://bbs.onyx-international.com/t/boox-note-pro-capacitive.... Now I have to use the pen, which doesn't work everywhere in the interface (e.g. for reading PDFs, it's impossible to turn pages) and the device locks up after ten minutes. So I'll be sending this one back too, because I'm outside of the limits for a full refund. Maybe the third one will last more than a month.
Their design and quality control are horrific. The high price of the device only makes sense from the perspective of them having to replace everyone's device three or four times.
I hope e-ink screen having android devices become commonplace and onyx gets competed out of existence.
- Scribbling with the pen is nice
- I works nice as an ebook-reader
- Don't have to think about synchronization, have dropbox, syncthing, e.t.c
- both Google Books and Kindle app works really fine, have my magazine subscription app there
- has bluetooth, used it with bluetooth keyboard, writing experience was decent, even with ~0.25 refresh rate
- using termux is gimicky but I like having my cli tools t hand
Cons:
- attempting to use any other apps is clunky
- stylus works well mostly just with the simple note app
- startup takes long
- is expensive
I have 7.8 inch Onyx Boox Nova Pro
I own a Kindle DX but the screen is not big enough and the software is showing its age.
The fact that you can even use a pencil I this device is a big plus.
Very similar reading experience. The RM1 is faster than the DX, but the software is slightly less reader friendly (harder to get to table of contents, go to specific pages, etc). I didn't use zoom on the DX, don't know if RM1 has it or how usable it is.
The ability to notate on PDFs on the RM1 is very valuable.
Also, is it too much to expect colour?
I reached out to the manufacturer to find out.
I would very much like to order it, but it doesn't support linux :( Please, please add linux support!
https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000266133...
That said, there are whole lot of sync tools that users have created which work very well with Linux (for example, I personally use remarkablefs, which is a Fuse based filesystem to mount your remarkable)
https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable/blob/master...
Also, any integration with the Android app store?
You write or draw with real pens and still can scan and digitize the things you write.
And in price the Rocketbook wins hands down.
How can I import pdf files & export them to a cloud solution?
Unfortunate attitude that perpetuates (browser) lock-in.
Works well, I'm guessing for other platforms, similar things exist using remarkable's api.
Obviously the company making it has its reasons for pricing but a product like this needs to be priced as an accessible consumer electronics product (ie $50-$100).
I would be happy with a cheapish form factor option, it doesn't have to be the slick looking product that is the only option currently available.
it’s terrible. the response time makes it very awful.
Only caveats - I like aftermarket cases more than Remarkable's. I bought one one from Amazon for about 30$.
Also I've been using staedtler's digital pencils, works great!
No browser, no clutter, just... really, really useful paper that's always there and doesn't get misplaced later.
That being said, there is still room for improvement, particularly with reading (vs writing, which this device is very good at).
I mostly use it this to replace stacks of notebooks (my brain thinks better with pen and paper in hand, but with all the digital conveniences in hand. This device is the best that I've tried for writing (and I've tried many, including an ipad pro)
Cons: historically, the price. No blacklight. Clearly the device has been optimized for writing, not reading, although supposedly 3rd party ebook readers like Apollo are good (the device is not locked down and has a hacker community).
I've long thought about getting one of these, but don't want to shell out $500 if I can't comfortably write on it.
Writing resolution is pretty good and most importantly it tracks the tip precisely. It's not as sharp as a real 0.2mm mechanical pencil, but you can write legibly down to ~2mm line height (1).
The larger factor is the contrast: the reMarkable screen is light grey so I usually write larger than I would on white paper.
(1) not at the very edge of the page, but maybe v2 fixes that
That is the goal of this device. The original Remarkable was superior to the surface and the iPad, and according to their marketing the next one will be twice as fast.
Are you accusing the people who posted these links of being employees of Remarkable? If so, you could just look at their comment histories to see if it seems likely before posting a general accusation.
I am fascinated by this product. It is far more interesting to me than much of what Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, or Amazon have done in a tablet form factor in many years. I'm not surprised that others may have a similar level of interest.
Much more explanation for anyone who wants it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
In this case, a new product was launched today, it's normal for companies to coordinate that with press, and it's normal for multiple submissions on a story to show up on HN. It's also normal for humans to overinterpret streaks as something other than the randomness they usually are; we all do it, but it's not good to do it in ways that insinuate dishonesty in fellow community members.
Ianal but this website is probably violating GDPR:
That being said I’ve always admired the Remarkable tablets.