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Comment by pantulis | Hacker News Reader

The reMarkable dilemma is that they got the hardware right --modulo backlighting, but that will come--. It's the services around such a powerful device that people will find lacking. Open source enthusiasts will state that they want freedom, while people who care less about that freedom will get suspicious as to what happens if the company ceases to exist. The latter will probably consider an iPad a better value proposition, but then the reMarkable offers a less distractive environment.

I find the reMarkable a truly interesting device but I feel that I do not have time to tinker with it as it currently is, so for the moment I am on an iPad (use it for sheet music and PDF annotation)

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I'm not sure how the hardware can be "right" when it cannot do its most important, touted feature on-device (handwriting recognition), it is basically a one-trick pony according to Wired (who said it only does note-taking well) and almost everything about the device is outclassed by a used iPad new enough to run iOS 14 or better and which supports the Apple Pencil.

For about the same $400 (the device after a year is going to cost you $400 either way; if owned for 3 years it'll have a TCO of nearly $600) you can get a used iPad Air 3 and Pencil and do everything the reMarkable can do, with your choice of screen size...a screen that is color, backlit, higher resolution, full motion. Excellent pressure and angle sensitivity from the stylus. Cellular connectivity, if you want it. Full multimedia capabilities, video conferencing/calling, web browsing, the entire suite of iOS apps. If you have a Mac, all the desktop integration features. Your choice of private or cloud based backup and sync, no device modification needed. And top-notch on-device biometric security.

Oh, and an iPad can do on-device dictation and handwriting recognition/cleanup. The reMarkable cannot do on-device writing recognition - only via their cloud, which costs $8/month. And requires storing your documents with a company that is based in Hong Kong, which means "freely available to CCP intelligence services."

I've used eInk readers for probably close to a decade and a half - I started with the original Sony reader - and sorry, but eInk still has significant limitations for any sort of interactivity. It's better than it was ten years ago, but I think "physical pixels being flipped end-to-end in a viscous media" has an inherent maximum refresh rate that they'll never get past and the technology will never get past static low power displays and e-reader devices. I don't even see it surviving much longer given how far OLED displays are coming; they offer all the same low-power advantages, better contrast ratios, and full color / high refresh rates. Not as good full-sunlight readability, though.

The most important feature is not handwriting recognition, but the fact that it is a large e-ink screen, where you can comfortably read and write. You don't get that with an iPad. If you read a lot of documents there is really no comparison, because it is a different category of device.

> The most important feature is not handwriting recognition, but the fact that it is a large e-ink screen, where you can comfortably read and write. You don't get that with an iPad.

This

If these are the killer features you're looking for, the RM is delightful. I've been using mine for over a year, almost every single day. I would love to see the software services flesh out a bit more, but honestly, that's icing on the cake.

A rock-solid paper note-taking replacement that doubles as a highlightable PDF reader and has no "apps" - I'm sold!

Adding on more praise. I think of it like paper enhanced. I loved takes notes on paper, but I needed to be able to rearrange my thoughts quickly without erasing and rewriting. Remarkable does that really well, and that's all I need it for. Worth every penny

The lack of backlighting is the one and only reason I went with Onxy Boox Note Air 2 over Remarkable2.

Is it really on the way? Is there an ETA?

Dont know, just i'm supposing it has to be on the roadmap for the next product revision. Otherwise I would be having one.

rM seems to omit backlight as a philosophical idea; if you're mainly interested in similar form-factor of hardware with backlights, https://www.pine64.org/pinenote/ is upcoming. (Firmware/software support's not going to be up to "whatever-Android" or rM quality in a hurry, of course, but it's starting out as a hacking platform anyway.)

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