ReMarkable 2.0 – A digital notebook that feels like paper
remarkable.com
remarkable.com
Hacker News might be interested in the active development community around the device: https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable
The device is open. It's just an embedded linux device. You can ssh into it, and run arbitrary code. The SDK is based on Qt. You can also connect a keyboard to it over a USB-on-the-go port.
I have been imagining porting a lightweight Qt-based virtual terminal to the device and using it as an e-ink unix terminal. Alas, I have not yet had the cycles to complete this project.
https://www.amazon.com/waveshare-7-5inch-HAT-Raspberry-Consu...
I also copied my plugins (Goyo for focus, etc) and config from my linux box.
The device is exposed over USB as a composite device, consisting of a virtual Ethernet port and a virtual serial port. Network communications may happen over that link, as well as SSH/SCP'ing files.
It also supports USB OTG, so one could plug in a libre-compatible Wi-Fi card and use that.
- Is the ReMarkable capable of running an open source OS behind the hood? Is it a hacker-friendly piece of hardware in case ReMarkable runs out of business in the future?
I was thinking about getting the ReMarkable 2 if only because my Kindle's display is too small. For ebooks it's okay but I do would like to be able to use an eink reader for sheet music as well.
Yes, the most common one is Calibre, which is also great for converting formats and bulk operations. There is a "DeDRM Plugin" for it on GitHub that does what you're asking.
> Is the ReMarkable capable of running an open source OS behind the hood?
Yes, and there has been some success with this including Parabola-rM. However, there seems to be no open driver for the radio chipset (so no WiFi!).
You go to amazon.com/myk, switch to the Content tab, three dots next to the book, Download & transfer via USB. You then drag-and-drop them into Calibre with this add-on set up: https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools
There's some initial setup required to get your decryption key (easy if you have their e-reader — just enter the key you'll find in device info, slightly complicated if you don't), but once that's done, the friction for decrypting ebooks is pretty negligible.
You'll have to convert them to epub or PDF to be able to read them on ReMarkable, but that's as easy as right-clicking a book within Calibre and choosing "convert".
Most of the other ebook decrypters are basically slapping some interface on top of this Calibre plugin and hiding it behind a paywall.
There is a significant omission here. Converting Epub to PDF doesn't necessarily yield a good quality.
As a matter of fact, at some point I was so annoyed by the relatively nondeterministially poor quality (I stress "relatively"), that now, every time I purchase something from the Kindle store, I download and use the pirated PDF version, which is never worse than the Calibre output (I guess pirates actually use Calibre and tweak the process per-book).
It's very annoying to highlight a converted ebook, and find 80 pages into it, that the conversion cut text lines/diagrams in half.
Is this ever true! I use three different workflows for converting ePub to PDF, and then look through each one and pick the one that converted best for that particular book. Generally speaking, the default Calibre conversion is almost always the weakest.
I've taken to using calibre or similar programs to output the epub as a pdf (with my preferred sytle at RM screen dimensions). I've also bulk cropped pdf's to the RM screen size instead of using the built in crop feature.
It has an integrated reader as well I think but I never tried, I heard it's not great.
My principle need for a tablet has always been ebook consumption. The ebook readers on Linux I've seen all look like hot garbage. Sure, Calibre allows you to manage massive ebook collections. Now let me have a book experience that doesn't look like 1999.
To my knowledge there is no tool that does both. Nor, better, that also includes the purchase and download steps at Amazon.
I personally have automation for all 3 individually but have not wired them together. I think there is a nice little business awaiting someone who does that.
For example, I'm bound to a specific PDF reader that has a very powerful annotations system. The last time I checked Epub readers, there was nothing that satisfied my requirements.
A couple of additional notes:
- the downside of reflowing is that you may not be able to take annotations that require absolute positioning
- for almost all the PDF books I've read (books; magazines are a different story, but that won't work with Epub anyway), a 3:2 10" tablet is enough; if the text is not large enough, good PDF readers can mass-crop the pages. Of course, there are ugly exceptions - books that have a different text positioning on odd and even pages (I hate them).
I don't imply it's best suited for everybody, that's the reason why I didn't specify the name.
Is that component opensource?
Although, I think a lot of their operating system is open source and on their github page (linux kernel and uboot configuration): https://github.com/reMarkable
Their Qt-based shell software, xochitl, is not open source.
It's in no way comparable to a some other devices (mentioned on HN too) where e.g. manufacturer actually cares about it. I agree it's technically better than "locked down bootloader with few chances of ever being unlocked" like some newer devices are, just not "miles better".
Plus the fact that it does run GNU/Linux rather than Android makes it more hacker-friendly out of box, at least for some types of hackers.
what sort of devices?
I don't want to buy an expensive hackable pad of paper that I then have to fight the manufacturer to keep hackable.
I'm fed up of tech that stops me owning it properly so that idiots can be saved from their ignorance.
I'm waiting for v3. Let's see what happens then.
https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000266143...
> Wi-Fi connection and log-in is required
> You need to be connected to a Wi-Fi network and logged in to a reMarkable account (my.remarkable.com) in order to use the handwriting conversion feature.
Now I'm not sure what effect this site has on the average customer, and if making it more selling for me would make it less selling for them, but they actually lost me, and after reading your comment I'm seriously likely to pre-order. And it's not about your positive evaluation, of course. So I've got a feeling all these marketing people do advertising wrong somehow.
I think we're simply such a small user-base that they don't think to include it on their landing pages. Most people probably don't care. But since we're on HN, we most likely care to some degree.
I found it super helpful, and I believe it's based on technology originally developed for teaching guitar.
Not sure if it's open for programming your own songs in or not, and much of the library is behind a paywall.
Also my experience with using those things is that you would be better off spending the time to learn sheet music because once you get past twinkle twinkle little star, the falling note style videos don't work. You can't keep up with them live and paused they only show you the very short term future.
Having said that, an e-ink reader that could read visual cues would be awesome, but I feel it could be very frustrating unless it was incredibly smart. Maybe some kind of blink gestures might be useful.
Also, eink screens are nice to look at but so expensive for non-kindle sizes.
chucking the ipad because of that is like chucking the baby out with the bathwater because the bathwater got cold. The baby still has value. you just replace the water.
And even if I'm mistaken and none of this matters, well, after all a sale is a sale.
They have been on HN a lot[1][2], and one of the founders posted here on some of the threads. My understanding is that they couldn't reach all of the openness they were hoping for, and in recent times they've taken VC money and (I predict) that will affect version 2 negatively for hacker types.
I recommend the Youtube channel "My Deep Guide", he uses Remarkable long term as a normal person (not trying to hack it) and has done several video reviews over the years about firmware changes, what he likes and dislikes; it's not a "great device thanks for the freebie, like and subscribe" hype channel, it's thoughtful and detailed: e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1B04TSL2cY (Looks like he's just done reviews of Remarkable version 2, I'll have to watch)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16321531
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
"All your work is instantly synced to the cloud"
Ugh. Nope nope nope.
But now maybe sounds like I could turn that off and just rsync the files to my Debian tower.
That is more win.
Yes, I can confirm this. I have never connected my device to wifi. I backup my notes to my home server using rsync.
I mean rsync via USB (but over ssh protocol - the USB mounts as a network device, rather than as a disk drive).
> Or can you rsync by WiFi without allowing it to send requests to their services?
I have never connected the device to wifi, so I don't know about this.
LAN-only.
When I'm elsewhere it can continue to not have the passwords to anyone else's wifi.
For those with more expansive threat models, intentional dvice or network spoofing or cloning might bebrisks.
Since firewalling is performd off-device (on the home-LAN router), this will resut in an unsecured evice.
My preference would be for some on-device configured networking limits. Putting full reliance in fixed-site infrastructure migh be unpleasantly surprising.
That's assuming the device doesn't use straight IP addresses for whatever it's communicating with. That's possible, but pretty unlikely.
Again my point is that relying on off-device, local-netork hardware and configs is brittle.
https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000264829...
I think I'm missing out on features I don't care about, like OCR and emailing docs to people, but it's well worth it.
Shouldn't be too hard to figure out what it's communicating over the network, then put together a server to match that and do useful things with it.
It's opt-in, FWIW, it doesn't work unless you log in to a ReMarkable account and you can just store everything locally. It has ~6GB of usable space (8GB but 1-2GB reserved by OS)
And if you mod it, it looks like you can fairly trivially handle the syncing yourself: https://github.com/verbavolant/reMarkable-autosync
I have a sense that "lack of restrictiveness" is not something most users prioritize, as witnessed by Apple's phenomenal success. My daily driver is Linux (I've used Kubuntu for over a decade) yet I own Apple devices and am rarely bothered by things being locked down because for the most part, the constraints are tastefully picked (well based on my aesthetic they are -- others may disagree).
I watch MKBHD reviews regularly and it's not lost on me that Android phones for instance are so much more cutting edge and unrestricted relative to Apple devices. (I've owned Android devices in the past and have to admit they're objectively better in many ways -- Google apps for instance are more responsive and have more features than their iOS counterparts).
But I still find myself preferring the iPhone experience because everything feels right.
p.s. I ordered a reMarkable 2 earlier this year, but canceled my order because I decided that an iPad Pro (for consumption) + fountain pen/paper (for scribbling) fit my habits better. No knock on the reMarkable -- from all the YouTube reviews I've seen, it seems like a solid device.
It's just that from a social perspective, it's unlikely I'd use a reMarkable in a meeting room. It's still a touch too tech-y and liable to make others feel I'm not paying attention/being present (a sentiment which somehow pen-and-paper don't convey -- folks are ok with me jotting down notes with pen and paper. Don't know why. It's weirdly psychological.)
p.p.s. it sounds like reMarkable might gain a few extra orders by including "dev-friendliness" as a benefit. Why not add it to the marketing material? (I remember when Apple laptops were marketed to creatives, but the dev crowd -- who weren't being marketed to -- jumped on board when OS X became the main OS).
Maybe because everybody had the experience of taking notes at school, university, work meetings. And everybody spent time googling and chatting on their digital devices when they should not.
I'd call it groupthink but your assessment is probably fairer.
If I'd seen the "open-source" pitch it might have enticed me to stay onboard.
Us 'hackers' have the dual detriment of being cheap people and demanding on company resources. It's just more profitable to focus on the larger client base.
That said, it may work well if they launch their own software sharing platform.
They could add all of that, though thatd be disrupting their intended Apple-like presentation of the product.
I'm in the second batch and because of delays, I won't get it until early October (they claim) but it's the hackability that sold me on it, rather than anything else. I have an 11" iPad Pro and Apple Pencil and a 2018 Kindle Oasis (second-gen is I guess the parlance), so I don't actually need something like this, but I want it.
That said, I don't think they are marketing it wrong at all -- they might just not be marketing it to all potential audiences. This is definitely an enthusiast device with a niche audience -- people that want really a really good drawing/writing experience that is as similar to paper as possible. There are a number or e-Ink devices similar to this and most run Android, which has the advantage of opening it up to more consumer apps (Kindle, Kobo Reader, etc) but also tends to lead to a less ideal writing/drawing experience.
Some of the people who really want that pen on paper experience are like you and I and are really intrigued by the open nature/hackability of the device but the vast majority really want something simple and task focused. If you look at the Reddit for the reMarkable and the community around YouTube/Facebook/etc, although there are plenty of people who are hacking on it, that's not the core audience at all. In fact, the original reMarkable was criticized a bit for not being intuitive enough, even though the ink performance was always excellent. Even now, the biggest complaints are about the lack of features (primarily an e-reader), even though this is very much a uni-task device.
Small companies like this have limited marketing budgets so I don't think going after hacker enthusiast types at first is the right move -- especially when the people willing to spend $500 on an e-Ink notebook in the age of the iPad is fairly small. That said, I hope that the marketing can expand to the DIY/hacker crowd more after the rM2 is released because I do think that could attract some additional users and also help contribute to the ecosystem.
I understand what you mean but it makes me uncomfortable.
> there are plenty of people who are hacking on it.
https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable Has many great examples indeed.
I was remembering mostly as binary patches on the UI components and it seems that it developed further, with source project on GitHub... I feel a lot more comfortable with this kind of community than with Android mods, which always felt like colourful forum posts Over git, binary packages over source and leet speak over documentation.
In the mean time, no one has come with a way to export Apple iOS notes to markdown + images.
It has no capability to be used as an e-reader? eg ePub's, etc.
Ouch. That outright kills the idea of this for me. :(
I have a feeling the HN crowd is a rather unusual one :)
High-quality normal user experience and a good power-user experience luckily aren't mutually exclusive at all (just appear together much too rarely).
All a business needs to be successful is a good product, and word of mouth. Advertising gets people to buy stuff they don't need. Instead companies scrimp on the product and spend more on advertising. The sooner society finds a way to clothe, house and feed everyone the better all of us and our planet will be.
Do you know of any RSS or saved articles sync? I use Feedly right now. Would love to save Reader Mode versions of long form to read/annotate. Right now I print them but…a lot of paper.
The problem with this project was the lack of a affordable e-ink display with a decent refresh rate.
Would love to see a real terminal on the ReMarkable. A terminal + vim + usb keyboard would be the perfect distaction-free writing tool.
Related: https://github.com/dps/remarkable-keywriter
> Would love to see a real terminal on the ReMarkable. A terminal + vim + usb keyboard would be the perfect distaction-free writing tool.
I agree: e-ink display + terminal + vim + mechanical keyboard would make me very happy.
Having an outdoor-friendly typewriter where text is saved seamlessly would be awesome for focused writing. I did my best to make it easy on a phone+keyboard+kindle (with SolarWriter https://msolomon.github.io/solarwriter-website/ ), but the Remarkable is so so close to the ideal experience—it just needs keyboard support.
someone seems to have ported a terminal already https://github.com/dixonary/fingerterm-reMarkable
If this is something where I know I can get good integration with Emacs/Org-mode on my desktop (letting me insert diagrams on the fly into org-mode files, making one searchable interface between handwritten notes and typed notes, etc), I'd be very tempted to preorder right now. Especially if the handwriting recognition stuff they have is something I could hook around.
Yes, the notes just live on the filesystem. You can fetch them using scp or rsync. They are in a proprietary file format, but they are not encrypted, and I think there are some open source projects on github that let you view them on your desktop.
> Especially if the handwriting recognition stuff they have is something I could hook around.
I think the handwriting stuff lives on their cloud and is proprietary, so I have never tried it.
You absolutely could homebrew a touchscreen ePaper "slate" with a similar broad set of features, but much like the Libre laptops (Purism, Novena, etc.) it's going to be slow, power-hungry, and chunky compared to a complete consumer device like the reMarkable.
> I have been imagining porting a lightweight Qt-based virtual terminal to the device and using it as an e-ink unix terminal. Alas, I have not yet had the cycles to complete this project.
That would be really cool! I pre-ordered a RM2 (my 1st such device) and am in the November cohort... if you make time for said terminal, I'd love to know about it.
That's all I needed to hear. Preordered.
But Onyx definitely has a much wider variety of E Ink devices that's for sure.
[1]: https://gizmodo.com/i-unabashedly-love-this-android-e-ink-ta...
Hadn't heard of this. Can you provide some references? A quick DDG search didn't turn up anything.
Feel free to tell them here: https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Continually impressed with this company.
I could, however, see them building out a 'developer community'-focused microsite. But I wouldn't expect them to put anything related to that on their homepage, as it would likely be confusing and irrelevant to their target audience.
Emacs in '-nw' mode uses mostly black/white, with external keyboard via USB OTG.
Everything is just files in there. The notes formats are proprietary, but there's tools out there for them.
My main complaints are that it's not encrypted at rest, and the only way to use cloud features are to go through reMarkable's cloud (and you can't host a private instance). Makes it really hard to get approved in an enterprise environment.
Do you find that bothers you, or can you just hold it like a notebook?
The reading experience on the remarkable is however not as feature rich as eink tablets that label themselves as 'ebook readers' but otherwise I think it's fine. I primarily use mine to draw and write notes, which it does very well but I also read.
The (L)GPLv2 requires offering physical copies of the source, so the required information is in a printed notice in the box (on the first tablet).
(L)GPLv3, which e. g. Qt is under, allows for only distributing the source digitally.
The full list of licenses for all pieces of software are on the device as well, and the SSH information is available as a part of the license page (explaining how the (L)GPLv3 requires companies to give access to the devices/anti-tivoization).
The (L)GPL requirement seems to be also fulfilled with https://remarkable.engineering/deploy/copyleft_sources/ apparently (the github repos are probably just more convenient for them).
“Appreciate the kind words and support. We are working to improve our products based on the feedback from our customers. If you are still wondering about SSH support for reMarkable 2, the answer is yes, the reMarkable 2 will have SSH access, just like reMarkable 1.”
Not same as guaranteeing the same level of openness, but it is indicative and promising at the very least.
I currently use one with a brydge ipad keyboard which fits quite well.
Also, their GUI/DE is closed so there's no (easy) way to extend it with nice functionality. In my opinion the software was the bad part about that device that lead to a really bad experience with that device.
The hardware was great though. Wasn't super fast but it was light, felt good. I was very excited when I first took it out of the box.
They did a lot of great stuff with the ReMarkable but unfortunately it felt a lot closer to the semi-open Android than the Linux on my desktop.
I use a Barnes & Noble e-ink Nook (Kindle competitor) to run AnkiDroid [1][2]. I have tried to use some note-taking Android apps on the device, but they all had horrible feedback due to the very slow CPU and very limited memory of the device.
Is it possible to run either an Android app (AnkiDroid) or a Qt/Python Linux application (Anki) on the ReMarkable 2? If so, I would happily buy such a device.
[1] https://apps.ankiweb.net/ [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki
Aug 28, 2020, 3:44 PM GMT+2
Hello there.
Users can gain root access to the device by using SSH, so the device is open for developing your own software.
The GPL and LGPL version 3 requires us to give users access to their own devices. It's part of the anti-tivoization clauses in the licenses.
A lot of our software is open-source. You'll find a lot of our open source code here: https://github.com/reMarkable/. If you're interested in developing for the reMarkable, a good place to start would be on here https://remarkable.engineering/deploy/.
Note that we do not currently provide any support for SSH related issues. Accessing the device and making changes through SSH is at the customers own risk.Some of the projects on https://github.com/reHackable talk about having to be re-installed after upgrades, and other unfriendly vendor behaviour (e.g. https://github.com/reHackable/scripts/wiki/webui_invincibili...), which is slightly worrying, it'd be more assuring if they had better support for 3rd party software, or at least just a webpage saying "yes you can install 3rd party software, but note that it's not preserved over upgrades". The company I work for also sells a linux box, allows 3PS, and does have such a web page. Such a webpage might also cater to all the other people here commenting that their marketing dept is ignoring us.
Full review: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsSI9-gaSSmiXwb7Vjk5V...
I ultimately passed on the device for a few reasons:
1. The RM1 and 2 both don't allow file transfers as a mass storage device. If you want local, non cloud based transfer, you need to use a flaky local web UI that hasn't been improved in years
2. The internal storage still hasn't been updated from 8 (6 usable) GB. This is an obvious attempt to sell cloud storage in the future
3. While the hardware is amazing the software moves at a snail's pace. This is either management holding development back by trying to simplify the device out of existence or the team simply lacks the resources or ability to improve it
4. There has been almost no attempt to improve reader functionality in years. Things as simple as font resizing are 30x slower than on a Kindle
5. It seems obvious to me that management doesn't understand the target audience for the device
Wow, thanks, I was very interested in this for marking up documents + notes. I guess I could still use my kindle for most of my reading anyway, but the video gave me the impression the RM2 was very fluid and fast.
If I'm understanding correctly, the screen's responsiveness to input is great, but the UI's responsiveness is not?
• The ReMarkable is primarily like a sheet of paper you can write on (or a paper notepad).
• This "sheet of paper" can also have a background template (like dots, a grid, or an arbitrary image), different for every page. (You can add your own images/templates onto the device with scp and editing a JSON config file.)
• When you read PDFs on it, each page (at your specified zoom level / crop region) is rasterized (reasonably quickly) into such a background image, with the result that you can write on the PDF page if you want. (These won't be "PDF annotations" in the PDF-standard's sense AFAIK, which some people complain about: it's just like writing/drawing on some image. But you can export your annotated PDF as PDF/PNG/SVG.)
• When you read EPUBs on it, the whole epub gets converted by some incredibly slow process into the equivalent of what it does for PDF (my understanding is that it's basically rasterizing each page). This means that if you're reading an EPUB (that you downloaded from the internet or transferred from your Kindle or whatever), and you do something as simple as changing the font size, you can expect it to take tens of seconds(!) even for a small 200-page book, as it's "regenerating" an image for each (resulting) page of the book. Once that is done, though (i.e. you don't change/resize font again), it's reasonably quick and straightforward to use.
So, now, I don't bother with trying to read EPUBs on the device; I convert to PDF first on my computer (where I can more quickly and interactively tweak font size, page size, etc), then read the PDF on the device. That works very well.
- The screen size is slightly smaller than a regular A4 or Letter sized sheet of paper. You can go to "Adjust View" on the reMarkable and choose a smaller region of each page to fill the available screen (i.e., get rid of the margins and header/footer), which increases the size a bit.
- Academic papers often have footnotes / references on the last page or two, and if you care about them you'll want to flip back and forth (or in some cases you may also want to flip between two separate documents), which is quite a bit more annoying on this device than it would be on paper. Using https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable-hacks adds some features that make it better.
On the plus side, on this device I feel more free to write on it and mark up etc (can always undo / erase cleanly), while on paper (even printouts, let alone books) I somehow hesitate a bit more.
In the FAQ at https://remarkable.com/store/remarkable-2:
> reMarkable 2 features USB-C for faster charging and data transfer.
Even if this does not mean that mass storage is or will be supported officially, maybe unofficial support could be added using the Linux Kernel's USB Gadget API g_mass_storage as a module. More info:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/usb/mass-storage.rst
https://developer.ridgerun.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_use_mass_storage_gadget
https://github.com/reMarkable/linux
https://remarkable.engineering/ -- toolchain here
To be fair it looks like a pretty small team (7 people listed with 2-3 actively developing) so I doubt it is management. More likely not a priority right now, limited resources, or in the too hard basket.
There is this repo in their Github org: https://github.com/reMarkable/vfatbuse
Looks like the CTO had a crack at implementing mass storage in v1
This is the only other method I've found: https://github.com/nick8325/remarkable-fs
You'd think scp would work also but I haven't found info on the subject and I don't own the RM1 to try.
edit: found someone's scp script: https://github.com/reHackable/scripts/blob/master/host/repus...
The changelog is public so you can see the rate of development if you're interested: https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/11500546010...
I get it isn't possible from an end user point of view to connect as mass storage. But I wonder if it might be possible with the hardware after modifications to the kernel configuration.
> If you're considering the RM2 for anything other than a sketch/note pad
It is marketed as a sketch/note pad and that's about it. The e-reader feature is like the youtube functionality on a Switch. It's there because "lolwhynot" and little more.
I have one and I really love mine. But all I wanted was a digital notebook. If I wanted more than that I would have gotten a Surface tablet or an Ipad Pro. It's definitely expensive for what it is, but it's not really marketed as a mass market device either.
I personally disagree with this. I almost bought one because I wanted a good notebook and a lot of notes I write these days is specifically related to ebooks and pdf documentation that I work against. I almost ordered one after seeing this post.
However, from the review it appears like this will be impossible to annotate documents with. I want to be able to highlight text on an epub (like I can on my kindle) and write notes to reference later about that section. I want to draw some diagrams as I'm reading the book to make sure I'm understanding code/workflows properly, etc...
I'm not sure why that's so out of the realm for a notebook style device.
It's almost equivalent to being able to write directly on a textbook, however you can export your marked up document as a PDF.
Pretty much by definition people buying e-readers are buying them to read with.
Clearly the Surface/iPad are not comparable to e-screens for that specific purpose and the obvious UX (usability) fail in the Remarkable in that regard means there is still a significant market gap for people who want an e-reader which bridges those two worlds, particularly (for me and many others) reading technical manuals.
It isn't though. It's a note taking device and marketed as such. Heck, when it was released, the e-reader functionality was even more deficient than it is today and barely mentioned. It's a note taking device and marketed as such. They improved the e-reader aspect a lot since then, so now it's kind of usuable as one, sortoff, but it's very much not an e-reader first.
Conceding the point to you though means that there is still clearly a gap for those of us who want to read technical manuals (unless there is a device that somebody can recommend) between the brilliant linear-reading experience of e-readers and the smooth larger screen random-access UX experience of tablets like those you cite.
Thank you.
Cheers.
3 - They have issued numerous updates to the software. 4 - They have made improvements to reader functionality. As I and others have noted - font resizing and first use of epubs is slow because those files are converted to a pdf which is what is actually displayed on the device. 5 - The company would not be on a 2nd generation device if they did not understand their target audience. What is clear (to me) is that they don't see everyone as their audience ala Apple or Amazon.
It's not a constant factor. This is best understood as a bug. Here's what the reviewer demonstrated: If you change the font size, then the interface locks up and you can't do anything, until the backend has generated new page images for the entire PDF—no matter how many pages there are. He showed that, while it was fast for a small document, it locked up for about 50 seconds when resizing the font on The Count of Monte Cristo (a large novel, perhaps 1200 pages). Furthermore, he said that if, during that time, you changed any of the other settings (resizing again, changing line spacing, etc.), it would take another 50 seconds, and another if you pressed two of the buttons, and so on. It is very clear that no QA person (whose reports are heeded) tested out those operations on a decent-sized novel or technical manual. (If they tried Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire—not the largest book in the series—then, going by word count, it would have locked up for 20.5 seconds.)
A sane viewer app—one of which the reviewer demonstrated—would redraw the current page, then give control back to the user, while continuing to redraw other pages in the background. It's a bit tricky, because until you render the previous pages at some level, it might not be clear where the page break for the current page would be; but you could choose an arbitrary point, use that temporarily, and eventually correct it when rendering catches up.
The reviewer did show convincingly that the viewer app is very lacking in features or basic polish. (Another example: You can zoom into a page, selecting a smaller section of it to view. However, you cannot drag this view around the page; if you want to see elsewhere on the page at the same magnification, you must undo the zoom, then select a new region to zoom into.) This is odd for an e-ink device, whose homepage has a section titled "An eye-friendly reading experience: Comfortably read PDFs or ebooks for hours on end without backlight, glare, or eye strain."
One major annoyance, though, is that it's clunky to switch between documents---I like to take notes in a separate document from the articles (mainly so I don't have to deal with the hassle of trying to export marked-up PDFs, which is a very suboptimal experience---the ios/mac apps are, uh, not good.). There's a pretty big lag there.
But the reading experience qua reading is so much nicer that I keep it anyway.
Plus, I can draw, animate, and watch youtube on the same device. It's been quite nice.
I was going to get the ReMarkable, but am very happy with my Ipad
I've tried reading PDF's on my Kindle, but it's just so frustrating to navigate around the page. But the iPad is perfect.
Most documents have more than enough margin that the final cropped document is then readable on the RM1. (Eventhough I wear readers I don't like to see microtype). Those same programs can also be used to split two column papers.
RM1 has a built in crop tool but I find it slows things down a bit and it won't work to split a two column layout.
I pre-ordered the RM2 a couple a months ago and just got an email notifying me about a slight COVID-related delay. I don't really mind, I am confident that the company can deliver without to much fuzz.
Curious if those have been issues for you or not. I wonder if it's just how my mind works, or if I'm not "doing it right"?
I have the same problem with e-readers and books, I miss the ease of moving backward and forward in a paper book.
Also, I have observed that I remember better what I read in physical books. Maybe it's because the content is associated to something real out there in the world with a cover, a weight, and a position of the content in the book and a position of the book in my bookshelves.
It's kind of weird because the first intuition is that the support where you read something shouldn't matter.
If I'm reading more than maybe 10 pages, or if it is material that I'm flipping back and forth in a lot, I print.
It feels like paper because you actually write over it with a real pen.
There are some things I miss from paper but overall I found the pros to overweight the cons.
I haven't found that flipping back and forth on iPad is that horrible, to be honest.
Not sure how helpful this will be but I'll share what I've been doing for now. I use the following apps:
* Mendeley (to organize papers)
* PDF Expert (to annotate PDFs)
* GoodNotes (mostly when working out the maths)
My usual workflow is:
* Read through the paper
* Annotate in the paper using Apple pencil as I read through
* Figure out the maths on the iPad when needed
* When I get back to a computer, upload the annotated file to Mendeley and type summary notes in Mendeley
A few things that I like/dislike about iPad when compared to paper.
+ Search for information on the web while reading paper more easily
+ Check notes/annotations quickly from my computer
+ Share notes easily
+ Search notes easily
+ Clean desk =D
- More context switching needed when I need to scramble something
- Mendeley misses some basic features on iOS (e.g. attach PDF to existing paper) so need to context switch with computer at some point after reading the paper
I would say that for 90% of the papers I go through, where I don't dive that deep in the paper, the experience is just as good on iPad. For the 10% of the papers I read where I go in-depth, redo proofs, etc, it's a little more tedious. While it's for sure not perfect, given the above pros, I can live with the cons.
On the other hand, I love https://paperpile.com/app
We launched about a year ago and are REALLY close to a 2.0 release.
Do you have any recommendations for a tablet to use with Polar?
Noticed you have a typo on the homepage under the uni logos.
"Discovery why Polar [...]" should read "Discover why Polar [...]"
e-Ink is a blessing after so much time on screens, and the rudiments make it quite hackable. So I get a device that pretty much CAN'T try to grab my attention, a calm device, and I can modify it to do more if I want.
(For example, since it can OCR and send notes, I've prototyped a little "message queue" on the other end to receive my notes, parse them ["TEXT Jake this is a text"], and do actions.)
I've even produced some custom e-ink maps which look great for no-phone navigation. (Feel free to let me know if that's interesting to you, happy to share an example and how.)
Is the ReMarkable really worth $500 ($400 + the $100 pencil which seems like a requirement)? For that amount you're getting a low end iPad which has greatly wider use cases. I understand that for the "paper on pencil" feel an iPad is no where near... but then again you can also just write using real paper and pencil.
Clearly I'm not the target demo, so what are the real target markets?
It's an ideal "work support" device for what he does, vs an iPad which can do everything _if_ you find a good app, but still won't do those things as well, and is full of distractions like notifications and other anti-productivity cruft.
To be fair, the iPad is only as anti-productive as you want to make it. The default is distracting, but those notifications can easily be turned off or not installed.
I think the main draw for the Onyx over a reMarkable is that you get access to full fat Android and all the apps in the Google Play store. An iPad still provides more functionality since it can watch videos and take pictures (my tablet has no webcam, speakers, etc.), but for reading (books, web, HN, Reddit, webcomics, etc.) the eInk screen is just so much nicer.
I also run the Android version of Microsoft Office and use it with a Bluetooth keyboard as a typewriter.
I'm sure it's great, but for something sold as, as far as I can tell, a notebook replacement, it's... a little crazy it seems? Like, no amount of better is gonna be $570 better than my paper notebook.
If I really need to annotate PDFs, is the ReMarkable really $600 better than the tablets they're literally giving away for free these days?
If I really need to run arbitrary software on something that I can also use to read and annotate PDFs, is the ReMarkable really competitive against an entire Core i5 laptop with a touchscreen and stylus?
Yes, the ReMarkable has a one of a kind writing experience. I'm not arguing it's not better in certain aspects than the alternatives. But the premium here seems absolutely nuts.
Bigger than a Kindle, syncs with phone/laptop, doesn't feel like screen time.
For me it replaced a small whiteboard, printer paper, planner, and sketchpads.
If you do storyboarding, wireframing, process mapping, planning, or frequent note taking, it's brilliant.
To my knowledge, it's the best thinking tool available.
Edit: it's also brilliant for meeting notes.
Also, anything backlit is a non-starter for me. Too much screen time and I love working outside.
If you like to read outside in the sun, then an iPad is not an option. This is where eInk shines, in my opinion. I have a Kindle and it’s so enjoyable to read on in full sunlight. Exactly the opposite of an iPad (or any light-emitting display for that matter).
But as humans, would we notice 21ms lag while writing even if we paid close attention?
I wonder if you could have a separate layer which physically (chemically) responded to the pressure to make it look like the screen was drawing your line, but which only lasted for about 50ms after the pressure is removed.
This chemical layer would be visible for just enough time for the real eInk pixels to actually refresh underneath the "pressure mask".
> You'd be stuck with essentially one "material" though -- eg color or brush or whatever -- but I could see its utility as a dedicated single-purpose device (like only intended for sketching/notes -- which I guess is mostly true of remarkable anyways)
I'd be curious about human perception of color matching/etc at the <50ms level - I'd suspect if you had _something_ that then became the actual color/brush, our visual system would probably just backfill to say it'd always been that color/texture.
To me 1ms doesn't seem worth it given the diminishing returns. Something like 5-10 would be way easier to do.
I found it fine for note-taking, but lots of people would still notice the latency, especially those using creative tools where there is a strong feedback loop between what you see and what you draw.
They are now claiming 9ms lag. I suspect this is imperceptible for the use case of note-taking and marking up PDF documents (e.g. highlighting, making notes in the margin).
But then again, 20ms is going to be more than fine for that use case as well.
That being said, the iPad Pro is clearly a high-end general-purpose device, with a price to match. The device that fits our pocketbook is always superior to the device that is amazing, but remains in a box in the manufacturer's shop because we can't justify the price.
But honestly they're different devices. Similar in many ways of course but different too. I don't think it's really apples to apples.
In general, this point makes me think of computational photography. If you have extra computing power, you can do things that are synthetic, but nevertheless real enough to deliver satisfaction, in real time.
I wouldn't mind a little latency if they get the paper feel right.
It also has access to procreate or Adobe fresco if you're still up to getting abused by Adobe as opposed to whatever remarkable can come up with. It seems odd to be coming down on the iPad pro for drawing/writing - it's a lot of money but the experience is on par with much more expensive Wacom devices.
An ipad is a walled garden of expensive hardware and software that does everything, at a high price. Those are completely different worlds, and if we're talking "it costs a lot of dollars", I already own a universal tablet monitor. I don't need something that does less and costs more.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/05/sony-and-remarkables-dueli...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpwbVwfWIKE&t=17m53s
About precision, I'm not really sure. There's a bunch of writing footage in this video, which might have what you're looking for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9wudCMFWPQ&t=8m10s
I know little about it, but it looks great too.
Cheers.
But limited functionality is kinda the whole point. No distractions and all that.
Even if you aren't using it as a camera, eink displays aren't great for content that needs to be updated frequently. Aside from the slow refresh, they physically wear out relatively quickly.
If you are using it as a primary display on a phone showing dynamic content, you are going to be refreshing it as quickly as you can the entire time you are using it. I think modern low end panels can maintain about 7 fps or a refresh every 0.15 seconds. That's a two order of magnitude difference.
[1]https://www.gizmochina.com/2019/10/24/hisense-a5-with-an-e-i...
[2]https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/kingrow-k1-the-healthy-ph...
E-ink has become cheaper and more responsive since we gave it a shot, glad to see companies like Mudita trying to bring something like this to life. https://mudita.com/
No distractions, easy on the eyes. Would be nice if the contrast were even better for low light environments. Maybe this 2.0 would do it.
I seem to have lost my pen though, so I'm not sure what I'll do for any annotation now.
But, the eBook (as in published books) experience is pretty bad compared to basically anything. What even the RM2 does is just load the epub/pdf into the editing buffer and other than somewhat faster navigation and a hidden menu, it's not good at all for consumption.
If they could just side load the Kindle or kobo app I'd buy it in a second. For now, I'll keep reading ebooks on my phone.
PDFs are also a bit friendly for annotation, at least in my experience with GoodReader on the ipad.
I also export trip itineraries, lists, project files and so on to PDF and keep them on my ReMarkable. It's handy for that.
> The reMarkable paper tablet supports the open ebook format EPUB without DRM, a format available with many ebook retailers.
> Some ebooks are DRM-protected (Digital Rights Management), which the reMarkable does not support at this time.
> The Amazon Kindle ecosystem is not open to third parties, so you can't read Kindle books directly on the reMarkable.
https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000265873...
https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000265873...
It "supports" epub in that I can load a DRM-free epub file onto it and then view it on the device, but it's not formatted well. The default font is unnecessarily large, some italicized text isn't being italicized, icons and other images are missing, and other layout elements aren't being rendered (sidebars for instance). This could be a problem with this specific file, but the PDF version renders fine and I think this might be the same trouble I was having with another epub file.
If I weren't such a cheapskate, or if there were a budget for these kind of things where I teach the guitar, I'd probably experiment with this for teaching...
It reads epubs and rtfs, but not mobi or lit or a few others. Its text handling and formatting aren't great but they're working on it. If I was reading a novel I'd stick with an ereader but if I had 20 research papers to go through it's the remarkable by a long shot.
However, there is no better device on this planet for reading long-form PDF documents, research papers, or scans of textbooks. It wins. I wish the annotations were more useful (they're sort of kept a separate layer) but the reading experience is great.
Andy Matuschak has some good notes on the current version here too:
>The company says it used a new textured resin layer on top of the glass to make writing on the reMarkable 2 feel more like writing on paper, which I don't buy. If anything, the original reMarkable's screen had a more pronounced, paper-like grittiness that doesn't come through here. That's hardly a dealbreaker, though, because writing on the r2 still feels absolutely fantastic, I think this one strikes a better balance of tactility and flow. [0]
[0] https://www.engadget.com/remarkable-2-tablet-e-ink-hands-on-...
Am I reading things correctly that the only external interface to the device is through their cloud tool?
e-reader app ports, screen mirroring, full OS replacements, etc. It's a relatively niche device so of course there are significant gaps in what's available, but it's active and the depth is fairly impressive.
Unfortunately, the e-ink monitor space has still just two major players - Dasung/Onyx and there is a need gap for 'Affordable E-Ink large external displays'[1]. I hope that these newer e-Ink tablet/reader makers graduate soon to make large external monitors, but then again I've been hoping that for past several years.
[1]https://needgap.com/problems/43-affordable-e-ink-large-exter...
https://getrocketbook.com/products/rocketbook-core?variant=3...
Regarding the reMarkable, I’d probably be open to it if reviews indicated it was a premium eReader in addition to everything else.
That said, they have been releasing updates for years and improving the experience. The writing experience is by far the best of any tablet I've ever personally used. It does feel like writing on paper. The 2.0 looks really slick.
Finally, the hackability of the device is awesome. You can SSH to it without having to enable any special settings, and start messing around with stuff right away.
- Bigger screen would be great for my use case
- Software. As have been said repeatedly here the tablet is open. This is true in the sense that in order to comply with the GPL3 it's very easy to SSH to the tablet which runs Linux. This is awesome. However I think a little more support to developers would be great in the form of documentation instead of reverse engineering. Lot's of people think of ways of improving the software and this would make it much easier and better for end users (for example better file transfer, more file formats... in a reliable way)
Edit: formatting
The only thing they have in their favor is that they shipped v1 succesfully.
The device itself is great; the OS is a little slow and takes a little getting used to navigate; recent updates made it better. The tactile feel is great.
I usually ask one of my friends to get similar products when they visit India but with the pandemic, it doesn't look like it'll happen for a year.
I note that you can sync files easily enough -- but I'm curious on what the interop experience is like for people that don't use Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX. Syncing, updating, making notes & squiggles changes off-device and sending it back, etc.
https://www.amazon.com/Cimetech-Electronic-Scribble-Erasable...
You're welcome.
there are some smart pens that do what you're asking for - https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/best-smart-pens/
I don’t tend to press down very hard, but I don’t really think about it as I’m writing.
- no USB disk mode to download your notes
- 8 GB storage (of which about 6 are available)
- any Linux support seems to be nebulous/unofficial, especially because of point 1
- no search feature
- no backlight
- no landscape mode
Personally I've cancelled my pre-order, not worth the 450 GBP in my opinion.
The website is very unclear about the I/O options of the device, which I don't get at all, that's clearly one of the most important things about it; I'm not writing stuff down for the bin after all.
How do I get stuff off it? Is OCR done on the device? What formats does it support? etc. etc.
It says it has USB-C "for file transfers", but then also "Sync notes and documents via Wi-Fi only", wayyyy down below it says "PDF and ePUB", but obviously when I'm taking notes I'm not generally interested in a PDF, because that works with _zero_ of my workflows.
Their opener is strong; it's an obviously interesting product. Yet everything else is unspecific fluff that wastes my time and only irks me by being vague or silent about core functional aspects of the product.
I have loved and used paper and pen as a primary tool for thinking since I was young. However, typing is much faster, and now that is my tool - the keyboard. Still, this clearly has its place.
My main interest now is whether it can be 'rooted' and a native Linux OS used on it, and/or whether it can be used with end-to-end encryption compatible self-cloud services like Nextcloud.
To me, open hardware and software is a necessary way forward for humanity.
Edit: I see it's very hackable indeed, from comments above, e.g.: http://www.davisr.me/projects/parabola-rm/
That would be really compelling to me. Especially if you can get the latency down into the 10 ms range.
I was working with a three-color e-ink board from Pimoroni recently and a full screen refresh would take 20+ seconds. Looks very nice when it's done, but definitely unusable for anything real-time.
Its just that they don't have the best response time. Thats really my limiting factor.
I don't expect them to replace the iPad, for instance, but for using as a true digital notebook and book reader (magazines too, if the color e-inks get better) they look and feel ideal for this, except for the lag time in responsiveness, that's the part that kills it for me every time I investigate it.
I now have a Onyx Boox Note that has inferior hardware. But at least I can use Google Drive and easily export documents.
I'm happy they have made a Chrome plugin because when I got my device, before returning it, I had a go at making exactly that: A Firefox extension that renders a simplified version and pushes it to ReMarkable as PDF https://github.com/sergioisidoro/push-to-remarkable
My main thing would be reading pdf's - specifically with Polar (https://getpolarized.io/ ). I use it for keeping track of notes/annotations and syncing across devices. Does anyone know if it would work with ReMarkable?
(Or does anyone have a Polar alternative?)
I have no doubt it's a quality product, and i guess i just don't value my handwritten notes highly enough to warrant one :)
Check https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable for more open source projects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwkSVVwZO9o has a demo.
I want to be able to load up the homepage of TheVerge.com and browse as I would on any other device, except with text that's as easy to read as if it were on paper. I'd have to use paged scrolling, and images would be black-and-white, but that would be okay—they'd be crisp and clear.
This tablet is close to what I want, but it doesn't look like the software is there. (Or maybe it's hardware too—is one gigabyte of ram enough for a web browser these days if you don't use multiple tabs?)
That said it was announced months ago, so the seeing it on HN the first thought on my mind was PR campaign.
To a certain extent that is the point of sites like HN, but there's always the implication that it's just something someone stumbled upon rather than an "advertisment". (I figure more often than not OP is a stakeholder of some sort whenever it involves a product for sale)
Not accusing anyone of anything, but it took a surprising amount of scrolling to have someone actually mention the deficiencies such as the reading functionality being subpar.
https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/remarkable-2-hands-on-r...
I couldn't give a stuff about writing (though it's a nice secondary feature) - I do however want to be able to throw a tech manual at my e-Reader (say, an O'Reilly programming manual) and be able to flip through it back and forth easily like you can on a tablet.
The Remarkable looks beautiful in the link, but gives absolutely no indication as to whether that long-standing core flaw in e-readers has been solved here, which is very, very unreassuring.
It's pretty expensive, but potentially worth it if you read a lot of technical books.
But eReaders don't traditionally have remotely comparable UX performance so are only suitable for linear reads like novels.
My question is whether Remarkable have solved that. It's far more important to me and similar potential users than the writing/whatever stuff they are selling on the webpage linked.
For me, the writing on a screen is enough, I take a lot of notes in meetings, and having these digitised would be incredibly useful for me.
Additionally, being able to annotate PDFs would also prove great for me, I don't want to print out large amounts of paper, but I would like to take notes.
I understand Google's business position, but it was a shame to let an entire market segment die overnight.
Sadly my Re2 preorder has been delayed so long I went ahead and ordered an iPad so I could get down to work. iPad, and especially the apple pencil, has been incredibly useful and I'm looking forward to a head-to-head comparison. No longer sure I'll be keeping my re2
When I write on (real) paper, I try to use the thinnest pen that I can still grip. I think I hold the pen at an odd enough angle that if the pen is fat enough before tapering, it starts covering the point where the tip touches the paper. Once that happens, I feel like I'm writing while holding one end of a yardstick. The alternative is to start angling the pen so I can still see the tip, but that makes writing awkward - I rather just type at that point.
Having said that, I’m actually considering getting this upgrade just to focus on taking notes and brainstorming.
Disadvantages: - can only transfer with WiFi - not A4 sized (I find this important for most of books and papers)
Advantages: + epub support (DPT only works with PDF) + customization (DPT software is completely uncustomizable, but good enough for most daily use, e.g. the screen can be synced to the computer screen for remote meetings) + OCR + cheaper (the A4 version of DPT is $600)
My primary use is reading academic articles, and I use Endnote to organize my pdfs and citations. I ended up going with the ipad because it has an endnote app and automatically syncs with my desktop, so I just always have all of my papers handy. If I had to manually sync papers to the remarkable it would be very annoying.
So I ended up going with the ipad despite wanting the experience of the remarkable. Though the ipad was cheaper and has other uses (entertainment).
Very excited to see a polished device that is linux based that isn't hostile to developers trying to do cool stuff.
https://mailchi.mp/remarkable.com/first-remarkable-2-reviews...
I have no desire for any of the built in cloud features or even doing much writing through the tablet. I however have many use cases for the hacking and modding abilities of the software that can run on this device.
I'm pretty sure major news outlets won't be sshing into the device and installing custom daemon services and measuring the impact they have on battery life.
The advantage would be immensely faster switching speed.
Imagine one side of the mirror being totally reflective and the other side totally black. If you can turn the mirror far enough, you could replicate to some degree, what e-ink is doing.
Curious what others have tried!
I pre-ordered mine, but I want to know if this is even feasible.
It ended up being a scam/vaporware so I was stuck taking notes on paper, but I'm glad things like this are becoming somewhat more common.
(I think they may have come out with some actual hardware like 5 years later, but from what I remember it was too little too late)
2. Offer a place for getting books as well - or partner with Amazon for books - if not there, this may be coming I guess. Then people don't need Kindle.
3. They do not talk about security in their demo video. Don't know how they save what I write. Encryption / password / backup etc.,
I opened the link again today (28th of August) and saw batch 5 is now postponed of 2 months to Early November :(
The device is fantastic, I love the idea and the company but the refund process (unless they have fixed it) is truly awful so expect to use a couple of days on it if you want to get your money back.
I personally hate writing on paper and trying to decipher barely legible handwriting. Seems like this product is just trying to appease the people who refuse to adapt to change.
While going through pros and cons for considering a buy, I found no email client, messenger or a browser. For the targeted audience, at that price point, and with that hardware config, those features are unavoidable.
The presentation made me fairly intrigued.
The CTO is a KDE Developer and a long-time member of the Arch community.
The reMarkable is a device for production, where you can write, sketch, organize etc. The display is much quicker to update and the pen is really good. I also like that it's a bit bigger, so reading PDFs isn't as much hassle as on a smaller Kindle.
At least that's my take on it. Kindle for leisure, reMarkable for work.
https://nullsweep.com/kindle-collects-a-surprisingly-large-a...
Whilst I could see myself wanting to own one, I've so far managed to bust the screens on three e-Ink devices I've owned. And I'm not exactly treating them rough. They seem to break with the slightest of knocks. Bad enough when it's a sub £100 e-Reader. But, if I was paying 3 or 4 times that much, I'd expect something that was a bit less fragile.
2nd one: Another Kobo Mini. Broke inside the thigh pocket of my combat trousers. It was also in a case and had the screen facing inwards, towards my leg, specifically to avoid the risk of me bumping it against something.
3rd one: Kobo Aura. I had high hopes of this one as, unlike the previous two, where the screen seemingly had no form of overlaid protection, this one's outer screen was actually made of hard plastic. However, after a drop of a mere two or three feet onto carpet, the e-Ink screen in that somehow managed to break inside, leaving the hard plastic outer unmarked.
Maybe I've just had really bad luck [or maybe I should try a different brand than Kobo next time!] but e-Ink screens just seem ridiculously fragile to me. I was especially annoyed with the last one [the Kobo Aura] where the vibration of it hitting the carpetted floor was enough to break the screen, even behind a layer of hard plastic.
Even if I could afford it, there's no way I would risk £300 or £400 on an e-Ink device. Not until the technology toughens up a hell of a lot.
They detail some other advantages, like the texture of the surface, though we can’t evaluate that without getting one in hand.
It’s a much more focused device, which is a pro and a con.
Personally, I’ll stick with my iPad Pro, but I hope this is actually good and successful.
I haven't seen fast abrasion with this cover. Pencil tips seem to last a really long time.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00G4SA1FG/ref=ppx_yo_mob_b_i...
With the pen that has an eraser, and the flip cover, is £479. Normal price ~£600 (~$800) in UK.
iPad Pro 11" with pencil comes to £890. Surface Pro 7 £870.
But a Surface Go 2 with pen is £500 and chapter iPad options are around too.
If you want to watch videos and browse internet this isn't the tablet to get. If you want a notepad that can store and display every document you might want that is where "paper replacement" tablets come in.
And this is a single-use-case device, with pro's and cons based on that. Battery time, for instance. And like less than half the price of the cheapest iPad pro configuration without even getting a pen for your iPad at that price.
against that? no thats about $1100, pencil, folio and ipad. The remarkable is a bargain compared to that. Granted the iPad can do a lot more.
Where it struggles is against an ipad air/mini and apple pencil. Its roughly the same price point, but the ipad does a lot more. Goodnotes is a very capable journalling tool. On the plus side you get the full iOS universe of apps and media.
On the downside the battery life is nowhere near as good, and the screen isn't optimised for text like the remarkable is.
I have no idea about the galaxy tab. I'm weary of android tablets as they are a mixed bag. Some are awesome, some are brilliant for the price, and some are just trash.
Bonus points if someone could answer this for languages other than English (I'm thinking of diacritics)...
Seriously, genuinely excited to use something like this as a consumer once the kinks have been sorted
One isn't really a substitute for the other unless all you do is write notes and read.
They were just way, way too early (and on the wrong side of a recession).
Does anyone know how the reading features of the R2 stack up in this regard?
Who has received the earlier batches?
PS. I just checked and I did pay for RM2 in March.. Let's hope their support responds.
I recall they said it would be shipping in August?
My slot says delivery in November.
The R2 is 10.3”. Do peeps think smaller is better?
Sadly they don’t ship to Japan so getting my hands on one is gonna be hard :(
If combined with kindle I would definitely want one.
I guess the advantage is you can save many documents--but this is actually a disadvantage to me as I like having a physical copy I can splay out on my desk. Or even an entire wall covered with my designs.
Although $12 ($17 inc shipping to US) for 8 tips doesn't seem too expensive to me.
How intuitive is the wireless content transfer on the 1st gen model? At lot times on my iPad, I'm sourcing notes from web content.
So other than supposedly reducing eyestrain( is this a proven claim?). What is the benefit?
In United States you make so much more money as a software developer comparing to Europe and then you pay much less than in Europe for all electronic devices. This is probably because Europe decided to go the communism way, charging everyone with INSANELY HUGE TAXES. Europe will soon become the next Africa with that kind of mindset.
I've been burned too many times by DRM'd content that stops working after a service/app update, is useless when the company goes out of business, or when it works on one of my devices but not another.
I don't want to buy ebooks.. I want to check it out via my local library
http://www.geoffstratton.com/remove-drm-amazon-kindle-books
Start by downloading the owned book from Amazon, targeting one of the compatible devices. I have a bunch of old kindles still registered under my account that I use for this, for which I have the serial #. Then just follow instructions.
All the steps described as using the UI can be done with some digging from the command line.
Shipping a PDF up to the remarkable cloud also takes little digging and wiring, but it works totally reliably.
Are you sure about that? [1]
Glossy glass is 21st century sexy, though. It looks premium compared to clear plastic.
I really hate the glossy screen thing. I have this strange idea where I want to see what is actually on the screen, instead of a detailed reflection of stuff behind me. Crazy, right?
People are very much attracted (I would say addicted) to bright shiny colors. Device manufacturers know this and thus glossy screens are the norm.
Oh how I wish I could leave my light on and still use my multi-thousand dollar machine without strain!
Maybe it's touch related? Every screen I own is also a touch screen (so's that old ThinkPad though), and with my physical needs I can't really consider non-touch.
I got a Thinkpad T490 this year, which has a matte touch screen (I really wish it wasn't a touchscreen, my only gripe with it. I never want to interact with the laptop via touch. Never.)
Blue light causes cataracts if nothing else. It also affects sleep cycles which can cause fatigue and all sorts of strain on the eye and body.
But “ Does this blue-light pose any hazard to our eyes?
Nope, not to my knowledge”
Animations are not perfectly smooth causing strain on scrolling (I can see the unevenness even on my 11 pro with every scroll). Colors are constructed - ever look at a phone on acid? This also can cause subconscious strain.
The article also fails to recognize that most eink displayed are in fact illuminated.
The bottom line is reading on eink is relaxing in ways a tablet is not.
Nothing can feel like Pen and Paper without Pen and Paper. I stopped all this and bought $2 5 subject notebook and it relieved my anxiety and give me outlet to express.
Just buy Pen and Paper and stopped looking nostaliga and looking things in other things.
I agree it's a poor replacement for writing notes on paper and I paired it with traditional notebooks for notes in class.
I like the feel of paper and pen and I just think it can't be replaced.
But years ago, on a Windows 8 Tablet, I copy/pasted my first handwritten note. That's when I knew that there's a huge future in the UI design of "paper-like" digital written notes.
Copy/paste. "Insert". Zoom. The digital landscape can make superior paper for thinking. It's still not as good as paper, but every year new devices come out and push the limits of UI / paper-like feel.
Eventually, someone will figure it out. Until then, tech-nerds will play with the toy and try to figure out how to make it better.
Artists have largely moved to digital ink / digital drawing styles. Its a bit odd that "thinkers" haven't found a computerized tool for "writing & thinking" yet.
Clearly, Remarkable (I never used this tablet before) is aiming at this niche. I'd probably give it a try, with a cautious degree of pessimism. I still haven't found anything as good as a $20 paper-notebook (Leuchtturm1917) and a $10 pencil (Pentel Kerry). But I await the day when some technology can replicate the experience.
I explain it all in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21041543
This received some attention in the re--it community last month--the company still does not care [0]. I preordered a remarkable 2. As said by other people: after being abused by all of these conpanies who intentionally lock down the devices that /we purchase/ from them, spying on us and making the devices intentionallu obselescent, remarkable, purism, pine64 have infinite goodwill from me for making devices that you have actual control over.
I know some folks will jump to suggest less eyestrain but neither paper books nor e-ink help with that. Since eyestrain stems from overworked eyes and a tired brain [1], it doesn't help to claim that the nature of surface revealing the text has anything to do with it.
Have you ever compared the screen of an iPad and Kindle outside? The Kindle is far easier to read in bright light. Even inside I prefer an eink screen because it isn't flashing 60 or 120 times per second.
Until then: No Thanks and No deal.
EDIT: Not only that, Remarkable 2.0 and 1.0 are not even 64 bit and still use 32 bit processors in 2020. Completely pointless to use beyond 2038.
Like I said, wait for e-ink colour and 64 bit or don't bother.
Oh really? Lets have a look at the market shall we?
What is this then? [0]
Or this? [1]
Maybe this? [2]
Finally, an actual colour e-ink e-reader product. [3]
64 Bit e-reader bonus review: [4]
I have high hopes for reMarkable to do better than what is on the market right now which is why I would rather wait for a color e-ink version with a 64 bit CPU, which the technologies DO exist today. But unfortunately, what they are offering for a competitive e-reader tablet tells me that they are not even trying, even when they are selling a product with outdated technology. That isn't really a good deal is it?
[0] https://www.eink.com/color-technology.html
[1] https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2020/07/this-could-finally-be-the-...
[2] https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2019/12/18/e-ink-releasing...
[3] https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/pocketbook-color-e-read...
[4] https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/remarkable-1-vs-fujitsu...
If not, why would you apply it to this device?
32-bit isn't an issue. You reference Y2038, but this is only an issue when you care about binary compatibility, which you do not. Wikipedia says:
"Linux originally used a 64-bit time_t for 64-bit architectures only; the pure 32-bit ABI was not changed due to backward compatibility.[15] Starting with version 5.6, 64-bit time_t is supported on 32-bit architectures, too. This was done primarily for the sake of embedded Linux systems."
There is absolutely no need for a 64-bit processor in a device with less than 4GB RAM.