reMarkable 2
remarkable.com
remarkable.com
I bought one during the kickstarter, mostly for note taking; but also as a ereader & perhaps drawing tool. - For note taking: I prefer a simple paper notebook, as my notes are more procedural. I don't really look back often. It's fine. Just not better then paper for note taking imo. - As a e-reader, it is absolute dog shit. period. - If you are not artistic, this will not change that - The subscription model is terrible, I've cancelled my 'grandfathered' account and tried to sell my rm2 over it. - Currently using it as exceedingly expensive notepad, no cloud crap etc. - Battery life is kinda meh, either you have it go to standby and have to wait a few second to use it. Or it is constantly empty when you want to use it. Not the eInk experience I had expected.
You can install custom software, as it is not locked down, that might solve some of these issues. I haven't tried. For me, this is just a notepad. And not a great one at that. I use it mainly because I paid for it tbh.
I have several friend that have one too and enjoy it much more, but this how I experienced it, ymmv obviously.
As an e-reader for general reading it may not shine but when I'm reading a PDF for research and need to underline/mark it up as a part of my study it's fantastic. I find the battery life to be excellent and I don't mind occasionally starting it back up.
It sounds like the remarkable doesn't really fit your way of working but it absolutely fits mine.
Have you tried other devices? The remarkable is about bottom of the barrel, with its only good point being a low latency.
For everything else, you'd be better served by a Sony Digital Paper or a Fujitsu Quaderno, and their latency is low enough to not bother me
> I don't mind occasionally starting it back up
Something that's not stable/trustworthy can't be my notetaking device
I strongly agree with this, if your application is academic paper review or document review.
The boox and the previous gen of Sony are easy to root: there're even guides available. I may write such a guide for the new gen eventually.
Also, they are cheaper, with better customer support, there's no need for special software or subscription.
So I insist: the remarkable has only one small feature where it's ahead. I got one and promptly returned it, as it would have been a downgrade for just everything else.
I've got a collection of eink devices (Moaan/Xiomi inkpalm and inkpalm plus, Sony, Fujitsu, Boox...), and I have very low standards: anything that I can somehow use makes the cut.
The remarkable didn't, which is telling.
It's just bad, sorry. It's marketed to the linux/free software community so it's good if you want some geek cred, but personally I don't care: I root as needed, and write my own tools if required.
Maybe that's why I didn't like the remarkable: I don't need their inferior offering as I can just take something better and make it dance the way I want lol
I don't dislike the overall reading experience of the RM2; it's the file workflow and the highlighting workflow of the RM2 that in my experience let it down for document review.
My ideal device would be something with the industrial design of the RM2 and most of the software of the Quaderno Gen 2, except the file/folder interface (which I prefer from the RM2) and the tagging workflow from recent RM2 software versions.
Since you have experience rooting these devices, would you happen to know if there's a hack to turn off font hinting on the DPT-RP1/CP1 and Quadernos?
Have you tried to do just that? If you can't, if you can at least give me fonts, I can try to take a screenshot for you after I've replaced the default fonts by your fonts.
So, you flip through page by page to find your notes?
I’d rather buy an iPad for GoodNotes which lets you search your hand written notes
I use it daily.
In addition, I often download articles from https://www.instapaper.com/u; the reMarkable 2 often malforms them, in ways other e-readers, including Kindles and iPads, don't.
I infer that reMarkable's scheme and hope is to sell monthly sync software, but this plan works poorly with my e-reader workflow and, I'd guess, others'.
Probably there are ways to get around these limitations (and, reading the thread, I see some people listing rsync and such), but they're so annoying out of the box that I wish I'd not bought mine.
1. It's big enough for PDFs. 2. It's a relatively open system (compared to other e-ink readers), so it's pretty fun in terms of hackability.
I did get the forever free subscription which helps, but I also totally understand why they would want to charge for that, and I think the new $3/month is a pretty reasonable price for it.
Regarding instapaper use case and also hackability, shameless plug: I wrote https://github.com/fishy/url2epub for my own use case, so instead of relying on a third party service and manually sync stuff to reMarkable 2, I just send the link to the telegram bot (I picked telegram bot so that I can easily send links from my phone, not only desktops), and the epub will be auto synced to my reMarkable cloud account (they did made some changes to the cloud api causing I have to manually open their official mobile or desktop app to sync once before the reMarkable 2 itself would accept the new epub I uploaded through url2epub, haven't figured out how to avoid that yet, but it's still mostly automated).
Works pretty well.
You can install koreader or plato on it, which turns it into more of a traditional ereader, with good ePub support. But occasionally you'll have to reinstall the launcher you use, because there is no officially supported launcher and the option to disable updates doesn't always work.
I wouldn't personally recommend an RM2 as an ereader; there are better options.
I love mine! It's a fantastic device and I am glad I got on the bleeding edge of this tech.
I do wish it would sync with Calibre, I don't like having to maintain two ebook libraries
I also wish it had a touchscreen calibrator, as the pen is slightly off around some of the corners
The page turning feels snappier, the ui is better (subjective), and for me the killer feature is better dictionaries in different languages (which are present on the Kobo but not all languages). Not sure how it compares to the reMarkable2 ereader, but judging by the thread reMarkable's might not be even as good as Kobo's
The web interface fails to upload for me about 80% of the time.
The hardware works brilliantly. Aesthetically, it is an objectively beautifully designed device.
Connect subscription is useless to me, and I’ve never used it.
I’m still torn on the purchase, about a year later. It’s… ok, and I like having it around as it scratches the “want to write but I don’t like having 40 notebooks” itch. It would be nice to have a backlight as well, but most of the time I’m alright without.
This is what basically removed my need for paper in note-taking. And since in 2022 that was the last thing that I still used paper for, this changed my life and that's an understatement.
Paper went for me from a routine need to something like snail mail (contracts, the few things I really care about and want a hard copy of and very few other uses). I haven't bought a notebook since and I used to do that almost monthly before I had this device.
I feel it's just designed to be a notebook replacer and nothing more. I agree that as an e-reader it's horrible but we have Kindles and tablets for that. Not everything has to be in the same device.
What I am really missing from paper, however, is some color. Even having a way to draw in, say, red and black only, would be amazing. No need for the whole RGB spectrum, just that the feeling of drawing with different pens is something I had unfortunately to give up on.
Agreed on the other points though. Personally I think we're a good two generations of color display tech away from general availability of really good e-ink hybrid devices that have color displays, high PPI and low enough display latency to feel responsive during markup. If you're okay with slower refresh the kaleido 3 stuff hitting the market this year might satisfy your desire for highlighting and color markup. Personally I'm waiting a bit, 150PPI just doesn't do it for me.
I wanted a nice notetaking device which would also be a decent e-reader.
Remarkable is a decent notetaking device but that's about it.
The way books/documents are uploaded is such a fail, why do you need a web interface?
It is a well built hardware device with a horrible e-reader. I did install Koreader. That helps but with KoReader you lose the notetaking integration.
As a company, it seems Remarkable is caught between Linux hardware graybeards(thank you for SSH!) and marketing cloud upsells.
Meanwhile I use my old waterproof Kobo H20 nightly, while using similarly old Sony DPT-S1 for larger PDFs.
The remarkable unit is still a thing of beauty. It excels at what it does, and I bring it with me everywhere. I use the cloud features to pick up documents and use it to hold my PDFs and eBooks and it is an important device for my note taking. I have modded the unit a little bit by replacing the original back-ground pictures. To be able to access this device as root appeals very much to me, I very much feel in control of my device.
From a security point of view, they still have some work to do. It is embarrassing when the unit goes into sleep mode and private notes are kept visible to everyone. I created a ticket in they support system, but they don't seem to take it seriously. There is also the issue with only having a 4-code pin to unlock the device. This means that you must be very careful with what you write and store on the unit. Sensitive notes should not be stored on the unit.
There is also no way to deprecate the unit and the content if it is lost or it hasn't check in against the cloud.
The software that is installed on your PC/Mac has very basic functionality.
Overall, would still strongly recommend, 8/10.
A notebook doesn't make the note disappear.
They just dont seem to care. Other wise we would have hundreds in the business.
We want to be able to restrict what gets synced to where. (eg, not dropbox or box or google etc)
We want to enforce passwords and screen time outs. We'd prefer to use intune to do this but are open to other possibilities etc etc
None of this is possible and remarkable don't seem interested in this.
It’d make them tons of money but it would drain their soul.
Can't that kind of "strong security measure that is absolutely critical to our business" be circumvented with one single bash command that takes data from the "totally OK with our super strong MDM rules service" and copies it to the "absolutely forbidden by our MDM so surely no one is using it service" ?
Saying this as a former ReMarkable owner (and kickstarter backer) who ended up only using the device as a notepad, after learning that I read in a non-linear fashion which doesn't work well on the relatively slow screen. And for notes, I ended up deciding that paper is simpler that dragging yet another device around.
Still, I highly recommend the ReMarkable and my device happily lives on as a school notebook for my son.
A lot more than a thousand years[0].
I have an iPad Mini with a PaperLike screen protector, and Pencil 2. Works wonderfully. I have a number of apps to convert input, and they work quite well. Apple did very well, with Pencil 2 (don’t get me started on Pencil 1).
I still prefer a paper notepad, most times, though.
Does paper have any advantage over vellum ("sheep skin") other than being cheaper?
Most of the media you mention are superior to paper in various ways, but either logistically difficult (clay) or expensive (vellum). Paper is the "my car's turn signal stopped working, so I bought a new car" of recording media. It is cheap to manufacture, it rots quickly, it is easily destroyed, and it's cheap to replace.
Ink takes far less time to dry on paper as opposed to vellum from my understanding. It's also thinner and easier to use in printing presses. Paper also can be produced in various thicknesses/with various textures to allow for different kind of work. (Think newspaper paper vs. watercolor paper). Paper is also recyclable - you can break down paper and use it to create new paper.
You say this like it wasn't completely routine to do it with vellum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest
> Paper also can be produced in various thicknesses/with various textures to allow for different kind of work. (Think newspaper paper vs. watercolor paper
Again, this sounds like it's purely driven by cost concerns. Newspapers aren't printed on paper that's better suited to being a newspaper than the normal stuff. They're printed on awful, kleenex-like paper that will tear in a light breeze and that smudges ink all over you if you touch it at all. But I assume newspaper paper is even cheaper than other paper.
(And indeed, newspapers with a high opinion of themselves produce separate "archival quality" editions on non-awful paper!)
Clay and vellum can also easily be produced in "various thicknesses" (see: palimpsests!), though admittedly it's tough to get clay to be as thin as you'd like.
> Again, this sounds like it's purely driven by cost concerns.
It's not - I was thinking of fine art applications. You can't make tracing clay or vellum, for example. Or textured paper to work with different types of paints/inks.
> You can't make tracing clay or vellum, for example.
That is fair.
No that doesn't sound like an obvious comparison at all. It has a feature that it feels like a notepad when writing, but that's where the similarities end. Imagine if you compared a phone security to a flashlight because phones have a torch feature.
It's still a device with digital and connected capabilities, a completely different security context.
A smartphone requires different security concepts than a flashlight because access to a smartphone can open up all sorts of risks- identity theft, bank account access, etc. But that's not true for the reMarkable. It offers roughly the same capabilities as a notebook. If someone got into my reMarkable they would have access to exactly the same stuff as if they got into my old notebooks.
> The software that is installed on your PC/Mac has very basic functionality.
Physical security is a non-issue in this class of device IMHO. It's the same security I expect on a physical notebook. If that gets stolen, it's stolen. If we can get something better (like full encryption with pin unlock - so that the other non visible pages are safe) than I would be more happy, but the current status is still perfectly fine.
What's NOT ok is the reliance on the cloud features. There's no encryption. No control on sharing. It's either all or nothing. You can turn this off, but then you cannot send the notes elsewhere (it's fine if I'm intentionally sending one page to somebody I know he can receive it). Screenshare also stops working, despite being a dumb vnc connection wrapped in ssl, just because the central randevouz point becomes inaccessible.
This is also why this makes this device unfit for company use IMHO: your users cannot be compliant with any sort of security policy unless they disable everything and just use it as a dumb notebook. Getting it stolen is a non issue: you can get a notebook stolen, it's your fault. But if I cannot control the cloud features in a fine-grained mode, then it's outside of your control and that's what makes the device really unfit for corporate use.
I hope remarkable is listening. I opened several tickets for this: just allow me to disable sync for a folder or everything (without killing send by email) would already be a start.
It's otherwise an amazing device, but a device you cannot trust with the cloud features, which is a major shame.
Now I use an android tablet that I locked down + synching and i couldn't be happier. The only thing I'm missing now is a good note taking app that writes my notes to a directory that can be synced with synching. Recent versions of android broke this for all apps except Google's Files app unfortunately.
But it does mean that they deliberately exclude bells and whistles that you would expect from a general-purpose software device. Though IMHO with every added feature, they are scope-creeping away from the spartan value prop.
FWIW the USB exposes it over a virtual network which lets you do fun stuff like SSH. But that's for fun, not serious.
Why would anyone spend $300+$80 for a Remarkable 2 when a Kobo Elipsa or Kindle Scribe is less and they are better at book reading, have features like a screen light and don't need a subscription to do things like cloud sync? Marginally better note taking feel?
(warning- jump scare!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcdxW2XF0v8
I just don't understand paying $40 more than a Kindle Scribe to cut out maybe 1 or 2 minor distractions.
But I think a product category has grown up around them and eaten some of the lunch that they decided not to eat. Even if they continue to differentiate themselves from other e-ink tablets, they are still in the same market category. So, competetively, if they differentiate on fewer features, they should probably do so at reduced cost.
Which puts them in a bind, because the hardware isn't simpler so the raw materials don't come cheaper. And even more irony, their software is custom, so it's not even cheaper to build or maintain than the Android based ones.
I have one, and the physical device is excellent, and the experience on it is great if you stay WAY in your lane (note taking on top of PDFs is probably the single strongest use case), but the software just always feels behind.
It's a replacement for my notebook - it's at least as secure as a physical notebook, and several times lighter (I'd need about 5 notebooks for everything I've got on it).
I now have a year's worth on notes in the remarkable, with no need to archive it. I look forward to being able to astound people with my instant recall of meeting notes from years ago ;)
I have actually used mine for sketching, too. It works - and the ability to zoom in for details is cool :)
I ended up getting an iPad Air with the pencil, and one of those matte screen protectors. The OS may be locked down, but I can still choose from a wide variety of note apps/clouds (currently use GoodNotes), and security is obviously top notch.
Except when you want to zoom, pan, not zoom/pan while writing or want an infinite canvas (I do). Or if you don't want your page's content to completely shift away from its background (irreversibly) when rotating the device. Those are just the most prominent bugs I remember, there were more.
I love the writing feel of E-Ink; the software makes it unusable.
You may be thinking "just use another app and hack up the SD to enable scribble mode when using it": Well - With Squid, anyway, pen strokes get lost due to suboptimal palm rejection (what the SDK reports seems to be different from what Android reports). Besides, the SDK only sends the stroke after it has been finished, which would be sub-optimal for potentially collaborative applications like Excalidraw.
Such a letdown. Software updates are great, you can even root it, Syncthing works well. But I mainly use my Nova 2 as a slightly fancier alternative to my Kindle that I'm much more worried about breaking.
I'm still excited about the potential. If anyone reading this is also interested in hacking around on Boox devices, let's talk, maybe: https://gitter.im/boox-users/community
There are still some bugs, but they greatly improved the pen experience.
Agreed. It needs specially designed software.
> If anyone reading this is also interested in hacking around on Boox devices, let's talk, maybe: https://gitter.im/boox-users/community
I am.
I recently got a Nova Air C and I'd like to do a few things with it. I'm mostly interested in getting an optimized terminal to use with the rooting feature, to replace the termux frontend by something that'd be better optimized for eink while reusing termux packaged tools.
There seems to be private APIs to do great software, at least on the Sony DPT, Mooink and Fujitsu Quaderno devices from the Sony spinoff Linfiny.
For example, check how this gets faster rewrites on a more limited zone: https://github.com/DPT-RP1/dpt-canvas
A terminal often writes to a small portion of the screen, so everything else could remain static and without ghosting, while this portion of the screen getting new characters would get fast text rewrites, a bit like how you when you write on the notetaking app, it shows immediately yet a bit fuzzy, then it's redrawn later in high quality.
In would require talking to these APIs (so maybe with different modes for different brands like Linfiny/Boox/Remarkable/Kindle) + maintaining a simple map of the terminal screen to do invalidation/refresh as needed.
Feel free to join - I find there to be no good community for this so far (there was one on Discord, but the owner nuked it).
> There seems to be private APIs to do great software
Boox has an SDK that is a little bit documented here: https://github.com/onyx-intl/OnyxAndroidDemo
It's a bit hard to understand what component to use for what, if my motivation allows and you're interested I can look for my notes about it. I've personally used the third-party PNGNote as a nice reference: https://github.com/karino2/PngNote
> A terminal often writes to a small portion of the screen, so everything else could remain static and without ghosting
The tablet already handles partial updates pretty well for me, including for Termux.
> while this portion of the screen getting new characters would get fast text rewrites, a bit like how you when you write on the notetaking app, it shows immediately yet a bit fuzzy, then it's redrawn later in high quality.
On a technical level you may be looking for something to automatically switch between one of the fast modes and normal mode/manually refresh the screen. However: Even in X mode the response is definitely not instant. I think the SDK allows directly painting pixels which should be a lot faster and very powerful, but I haven't seen anyone doing so in the wild so far. Let's definitely stay in contact if you're interested in that!
I think security is important, but unless you're going up against a state actor with physical access, I think this isn't a credible threat at this time.
re2 has been on my radar for at least a year at this point, but given the lack of features, price point, and the not so ideal size for PDF reading I'm still on the lookout. It's a nice looking device, but not quite there yet.
There is no reason. It's dumb. Sync over wifi to your computer and phone and use MDNS to discover them.
If sftp isn't standard enough, I'm not sure what is.
Some things I’ve used it for, so far:
- To write handwritten.blog.
- As a notebook. Nothing much to mention here. Being able to pick a page template (plain/dotted/lined/squared) is nice.
- Reading PDFs. Kindle won’t quite cut it, even with k2pdfopt – the screen size makes a difference. Plus, you can annotate them!
- Reading code. `npx repo-to-pdf some-repo` and then proceed as above. Great for getting oneself into a full-focus mode.
- Live-sketching at conference calls. I just share the reMarkable screen to my Mac and then share the companion app’s window on Zoom. Tried it out twice during internal brown-bags, worked very nice.
- As an actual toy. Getting grandma’s picture onto an e-ink screen and being able to draw a moustache lights up a big smile on my 8yo niece’s face.
This is so cool!
I'm working on a project that pulls from RSS/Twitter/Reddit, formats all your subscriptions into a single pdf, and syncs to Google Drive (which the rM can sync with). It's working great for me so far but is the closest to "automatic" I think you can achieve with the device right now.
That move of theirs was insane, this change must be a direct reflections of clients correctly voting with their wallets.
First we (those before-subscription buyers) lost possibility to resell the device with same functionality. Before that they eagerly let switch an email and RM account to new users.
Secondly there was no clear information if free subscription will last. If it was permanent, then why not stating it clearly or replying to tickets about that issue.
Lastly warranty was suddenly limited to one year and users with subscription. If you resigned from subscription but later changed your mind, the warranty was lost anyway. How that even got through their legal team is a mystery to me.
This sentence irks me on so many levels...
"Voting with a wallet" doesn't work, doesn't exist and is never taken into account anywhere, except in the mind of the American Consumer. Not buying a Remarkable when the subscription was added means your opinion on the matter just never showed up during product decisions, planning or analysis.
Instead, it got changed because Remarkable listen to what its users say and EXISTING users actively disliked that subscription. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with potential buyers avoiding it.
Returns, on that matter, are active users expressing their opinions. Not imaginary buyers "voting with their wallet".
Never meant new people buying RM. Meant those who suddenly had to decide if they should go with subscription. I'm following several forums/subreddits and to be honest it looks like most people buy on impulse without checking what this device is at all. They think it's eink iPad and can do same things.
Also I hope you don't suggest that RM decided to lower subscription price by 60% and basically bring most functions to people without subscription anyway, because it was a massive commercial success?
- Drag and drop PDFs from the browser to upload
- Read a ton of books I wouldn't normally read (yes can do this on a kindle but it has a much bigger display)
- Journaling with my own templates
- Kids can scribble and play hangman etc on planes
- Gets rid of the stacks of notebooks in my house
- Has that wow factor when people/clients see it
- Natural writing feel
- Pretty robust (knocks around in my backpack)
For example, just the reading software on BOOX is leaps and bounds ahead of Remarkable. Similarly, on BOOX, you've got Android, which opens up a number of possibilities, while remarkable uses Linux (which sounds awesome until you realize that nobody's going to custom-develop apps for a very niche device in a very niche ecosystem). Technically speaking though, this means that once abandoned, Remarkable will not be completely dead.
A comment in a comparison video I'd recommend you watch [1] summed it up pretty nicely: " The Remarkable is remarkable for the amount of stuff it doesn't have." The only thing that Remarkable wins at is the actual writing experience (which you can top with a $30 fountain pen).
I was seriously considering buying Remarkable. I've bought a BOOX Lumi instead, and it has been a great experience.
The parent is correct that people who are looking for those things should not be considering the Remarkable, but that is not a demerit of the device.
In other words, the RM2 marketing can dress this up as whatever it wants. In the current market, the only person who's better served by RM2 than by its competitors is a person that loves the feeling of writing on a paper and is willing to trade it for a number of features.
You can have a BOOX full-on digital notebook as well.
While of course Remarkable positioned itself as a notebook. But in practise it is not. You really want to use these 300-500$ devices for something other than just expensive notebooks. Some people want to write on whitepaper pdfs, others want their comic books and then there's notetaking. And you can draw, yes, if you really, REALLY want it.
But it just doesn't feel like real drawing, even Remarkable is... okay at best. And not okay, given the price and the limited feature set.
So I went with a 10.3 inch Boox Note instead of Remarkable a couple of years ago. Never regreted it! I read my whitepapers, write on these, easily navigate multicolumn docs. My daughter loves reading her comic books, writing on them, etc. I also do some notetaking.
But that's just a perspective who dives into sci-oriented writing a lot. For other people Remarkable's slightly better writing is totally worth it - and that's ok.
Boox is a next gen version. And it is incredible. Just don't compare it to remarkable. Remarkable was always hobbyist turned company product. And it was great.
But this onyx Boox is several iterations better.
Something new announced?
I played with the RM1 at work and quite liked it, but the locked down experience is a deal breaker. I want to be able to work with Obsidian (Onyx Boox might do this).
I'm not saying there is a foolproof way to do it, but this is what marketing and PR firms do every day.
I have one and like it, but actually don't use it much since I don't need to write many notes nowadays. However, reading manga is nice with it (but a little cumbersome as the device does not accept zip files with jpgs/png so one probably has to convert files).
Here's a demo of the software if anyone's interested to confirm the same: https://webdemo.myscript.com/views/text/index.html
1: https://myscript.com (TIL)
I use it as an "endless pile of paper" and don't think much about organizing my notes. It's very effective at emulating paper, and because it can do so little it's also very nice to keeping focus and not getting distracted
It's my go-to tool for jotting down ideas, or taking notes during meetings and it's always on my table
I am always imagining how cool computer supported drawing or something like that might be, but so far there is no software for that which I like. When there is, I might finally use the paperlike!
1. Battery life. Not bad, but I expected more from a eink device. I had to charge it every 1 or 2 weeks. I expected a battery life more similar to my Kindle Oasis which I charge once in a month.
2. The OCR was useless, at least in my case. (I have to admit I have a pretty messi handwritting)
3. The navegation across menus was frustrating sometimes. I had to tap hard several times for opening a folder.
4. The ebook/pdf reading capability was not a first class citizen.
5. The export of notes to files must be done one by one. (Not sure if still the case)
Overall, a decent device. However, I have to admit I ended up selling it on eBay and buying a Samsung Tab S8+. I needed a more versatile device.
I can't overstate how disappointing this is. It's an e-ink device that enables users to annotate PDFs. The fact that this is not a killer feature of RM2 is just missed potential.
Their return process was the most PAINFUL return experience I've ever had to go through. You have to specify exactly what you're returning from their online menus and they use a delivery service that takes weeks to make deliveries. If you selected the wrong options (maybe you picked "tablet + pen" instead of "tablet + pen + extra pen nibs") they will send it all the way back to you and instruct you to attempt another return. They finally accepted it after 4 attempts, including one attempt where I did everything correctly and they still sent it back.
All this is to say, if you're looking to try the device with the expectation that you can use the return policy then be ready for a painful experience if you don't like it.
But it is a nice eBook reader, yes.
1) People that love the feel of fountain pen writing.
2) People that love having all of their notes electronically.
I love what writing feels like, so I have a pen and paper and study offline (I typically throw out my notes). Generally, if you belong to just one of the two categories, you don't need to pay the RM premium.
This is a kindle for you, so why would this be different?
I believe Sony and Fujitsu sell a 13.3" epaper device and of course the iPad is available in that size. There's a whole lot of space between the very limited $700 Quaderno and the super powerful $2000 iPad Pro.
Anyone got any thoughts on this? Does Amazon have some big strategy that I’m missing here? How do they plan to persuade large numbers of people to buy into digital handwriting?
They don't need to convince anyone to start taking notes on their Kindles, they just need to get people who want larger screens for reading to get them. Pen is a nice extra. And sure, there's 10% (pulled out of my behind, citation missing) of Scribe buyers who'd get it for note taking.
reMarkable is probably rightfully concerned since Amazon can easily outprice them, which they are already doing.
Have you use office 365 or onenote? An iPad with the Apple pen recently? Any digital notes are organized by default, the latency and poor refresh rate makes eink impossible for replacing notebooks to me, but an LCD works great. Handwriting is already mainstream, as is using it on computer.
If you’re asking about Amazon most buyers of kindle fall between either upgrading every cycle and never using it, never upgrading their kindle keyboard, or more commonly never used it more than 3hr in total. Kindle sales are going to be good either way since type 1 buyers love tech for tech.
However, it needs a better contrast. I can't tell if Scribe beats it on that, because in Scribe product videos their screen seems similarly dull, but other product shots have contrast so high it looks photoshopped.
So I tried it. Twice, for a couple weeks each. Had a couple of other people borrow in between and try it.
We all reached the same conclusion:
Solid implementation of a great idea!
... but ...
An additional object to carry? Nope. Get an iPad or a Surface Pro, if you need to both write/sketch and do other computing work. Carrying both a digital writing tablet and a separate general purpose device is very unappealing.
Also I think part of the appeal for this is you're not staring at a backlit screen like you would be with those devices.
I suspect eye strain was a consideration he had in making his purchase, though. He did all-digital illustration before this point (and I'm sure he still does, this is just a tool in his toolchain. He can't add color to his drawings on the reMarkable, for example). This guy had at least one game sold in Wal-mart and quite a few successful Kickstarters with his artwork (looks like he's done art for about 40 games in the past three years, he's been busy), so it can be used professionally.
This game in particular I know he did all the black-and-white versions using reMarkable, as he posted his in-progress pictures of it, on his device, on Facebook. You can see those versions in the video even, near the end of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4LOX55h-8Y
This would've been a GODSEND if it had been available when I was a student... back then it was only the Kindle DX that came close, and that was hecka expensive and still smaller.
Currently prefer Onyx Box Nova Air C for the backlight, color e-ink, and split screen capabilities. Since Onyx runs an Android variant, I can use Libby/Overdrive to check out audio/ebooks from my local library. Remarkable's software was painful to depend on daily.
I adore e-ink tablets as a class of devices, largely due to a positive first experience with Remarkable. Hoping Remarkable figures out a sane business model.
Call me old fashioned, but I just cannot take a product with a name like this seriously.
Is it a knockoff sold by OODREEFT on Amazon? Does it come pre-installed with Chinese spyware?
That’s the signal a name like that gives me. Same for the fact that it runs an android variant.
Even if the remarkable software is sometimes suboptimal at least they took the time to build their own.
It literally does, yes.
Edited: I should also note that my threat model is someone who cares about my personal privacy, but my life doesn't depend on it.
Someone else would need to inspect for the kind of rootkits nation-state actors would be worried about. I just use mine to read library books, doodle, and mark up white papers.
Or maybe those Apple iPhone XS Max phones? Or iPhone 14 Plus or iPhone 13 Pro Max? Are these knock-offs sold by a reseller on Amazon?
What I am saying is that there are (universally accepted as) good products that have silly names. Naming is done by marketing departments trying to be clever, products are designed by design/engineering departments trying to be clever.
Call me old fashioned, but I know which I care about more.
I’m not even sure what the brand name (if any) is in the OP.
But just like with product names, I prefer to judge products not on the brand, but on their qualities. Non-sponsored reviews and a fit for my needs is what I care about.
Anyway, even recognized brand names were once only starting in fields they ended up dominating. Onyx Boox is a recognizable name in the e-reader space for anyone looking for a non-Kindle e-reader (and probably quite comparable to reMarkable in how "famous" they are).
Ford is the brand. Bronco is a model of SUV. Sport is a trim. Big Bend is a sub trim.
And Jeep has them both beat with the Jeep Grand Wagoneer Series III, which is actually smaller than the Jeep Wagoneer Series III.
Advantages of pen and paper:
- more size options,
- a more natural feeling of writing,
- cheaper for a long time,
- easier to buy pens when they run out rather than replacement tips,
- easy to archive,
- no need to charge,
- no writing latency,
- no service subscriptions,
- defects/bugs have been worked out centuries ago,
- much better privacy: unless the e-ink tablet is forever air-gapped, but sometimes you need to connect it for one reason or another,
- system updates do not break your workflow: like custom templates in rm2,
- easily recyclable, at worst case - biodegradable,
- probably more green to produce: although paper production causes a lot of emissions, the amount paper a person might use over the lifetime of an e-ink tablet seems to be not that much,
- no kill switches: intentional or by way of a company ceasing support,
- good ecosystem: easy to share, easy to write in different colours, with different pens, easy to print custom forms.
On the other hand, there are some clear advantages of e-ink tablets:
- compact to store notes: although paper can be too, if one does not take a very large amount of notes,
- for heavy users, in the very long-run, digital storage costs less than paper and the storage space needed for it,
- carrying a very large number of books and notes around is much easier.
Overall, after using rm2 for about 6 months, I think it makes sense in niche scenarios when compared to plain old paper and a pen. But otherwise an e-ink note taking tablet could be more of a lifestyle choice than a practical one.
- you can put many pages side by side
- it works great with rulers
- it can be thrown at the cat to play with
The advantage of the RM2 is that I love using it and so I keep using it.
Except I don't use it for note taking, I use it to think about what I'm doing tool: doodling essentially.
Boxes, arrows, circles, words... Then the code virtually writes itself. It's like a code extractor or glasses for my mind.
I'd say that honestly, a pen a paper would do the same. I just got into the marketing and bought one. It's nice to have erasing that leaves no traces, and undo/redo.
As for the cons, I'd say the contrast isn't as good as I'd like it to be in low light. I don't work in a very bright environment, and the ceiling splashing reflection of light makes it sometimes hard to read PDFs/ePubs.
Perhaps it's a fine device, but no thanks. Good luck with subscription for connection.
Settled with Huawei MatePad Paper and couldn't be happier.
I was sort of considering getting one and using emacs through tmux. To do light programming and writing
I feel the latency should be tolerable. Though I worry about how much the screen flickers/refreshes
I'm using a Moaan Mix 7 and the constant screen refresh makes anything that's not entirely static a bit or a pain to look at. (Even a small "loading" spinner on screen forces a screen refresh every 10 seconds)
They seem to use dynamic screen updates which adjusts to content, not sure how it will work in your case.
I case youtube quite alright on it, however I may not call it pleasurable, if that helps.
https://blog.afandian.com/2020/10/pipes-and-paper-remarkable...
https://gitlab.com/afandian/pipes-and-paper/
There's some quite good forks of that code too.
It's great for taking notes without wasting paper, then for ones he wants to digitize, he takes a photo with his iPhone and lets iOS do the magic with OCR.
For £10 it's actually not a bad alternative and quite nice to have on the desk, plus the battery lasts for months.
I think it's 100% analog, and all chemical apart for a small current to erase it.
Am I missing something, or is this a PSA to remind people that the RM2 exists?
For a few years I used OneNote + Surface Pro to take handwritten notes, equations and drawings. It was a great writing experience. Then I wanted to share them with others. Or migrate them from One Note into something else. Or just export to PDF. I'll summarize that nothing worked well. I tried other apps too. An app that constraints your drawing to paper (A4) works better since it can export to PDF nicely. But the text is not searchable and so most people won't find it. That's why we don't see many hand written notes shared online?
Im curious, what domain or job would you find this useful?
But, I just disagree with the first premise and that's why I find mine useful, though still not as useful as actual paper which is easier to flip through, etc.
The old one you could (after some trickery I suppose) ssh tp the device and sync via rsync etc. For me that fits way better into my workflow even if their cloud solution was perfect and free for life.
I will not consider an eink device of this type that I cannot ssh into.
They've done removed the higher tier subscription, and all of the additional features are available as standard with the device itself, no subscription required. The infinite storage, however, still requires a subscription, but only the basic tier (3€/month, I think).
Tbh, it makes me lose a certain amount of trust in a company for trying that sort of "pay for extra features" thing out, but they've withdrawn most of it and I think the current approach is significantly more reasonable. And as you say, it's still a Linux device in the end, so you've got a lot more flexibility than you might on other devices.
The opening page says:
"Try reMarkable and Connect risk free. If you decide to return it, we offer a full refund within 100 days. After your 1-year free subscription ends, Connect costs $2.99/mo. Cancel anytime."
This may be intentional, but this does not automatically alleviate my concerns.
<< I will not consider an eink device of this type that I cannot ssh into.
Other posts suggest I can, but there is nothing indicating this on their landing page. I think it is safe to say, techies are not considered an important target demographic.
> Second generation reMarkable 2 was announced on March 17, 2020 (…) and sold in batches since mid-2020 for 458 €/US$ including the pen.
In this thread, I'm seeming some mentions of Kindle Scribe alongside critiques of the optional reMarkable subscription system. Do you really think that thing will not funnel people to Amazon Prime... ?
I have a feeling this might be a big part of it. As in the users might want a distraction-free note taking solution.
Beyond that my friends have told me its templates, ease of use and writing experience (the on screen feel) are great.
Retrospectively though, I think a laser printer might’ve been as cheap and efficient (given how buggy and slow everything related to synchronization is with the reMarkable).
To say that the lack of features is intentional is a bit disingenuous. It doesn't force you to focus, it just forces you to pick up your phone to get distracted.
By the way in that situation I’ll often send the article to the reMarkable then realize I don’t care to read it once I see it on the eink screen, and go back to work.
Obviously if you want a tablet the rm won't do. It's honestly silly for notebooks too, but serious enough I can deal.
My use case with the Rm2 is pretty much as a scratch/drawing pad. I don't have it connected to WiFi and just have it stashed on the side, I use it once a day or two days usually to sketch something out before making it (context of software or 3d printing).
When my Kindle (or RM) dies, I'll almost certainly replace it with the new writable Kindle, especially as I assume it's backlit which I feel is something really missing from the RM.
I can't find any numbers for the Kindle Scribe so I guess no one has tested yet. But I also bet if Amazon was proud of the number they'd be shouting about it - especially if it was better than the others.
So Remarkable and Supernote are probably fine for another generation at least.
This is all pure speculation though.
I do have Supernote and the writing is as good as it gets for me paper-wise, my brain is fooled into thinking I am proofreading text printed on paper, which was all i wanted from that device.
As far as reading is concerned there is no comparison, the kindle wins on nearly every metric.
I just wish they would offer a kindle with a 10" display.
I will probably get the kindle scribe once it has been out for a bit, has good reviews and a software update.
The device is good for drawing and taking notes, IMHO is bulky. From the software perspective it lacks shape drawing tools and other ideas that came easy with a device like this.
Battery duration is great because of the eink screen. This is an important feature but the device is expensive. I would say that battery duration is what is making a few devices different (M1/M2).
If I remember that I've got one of these sitting in a drawer, it's nearly always dead. And if I remembered to charge it and I can actually draw something, the drawing is hard to use. Like, I can't just pick up the rm2, do a sketch and have it quickly embedded in a document. It's clunky as fuck, even if you root the thing, get ssh and all sorts of other sync stuff set up. The rm2 let's you make pointless sketches and hand drawn notes that can't be used easily outside the device. It's good for nothing else. And I'm willing to bet that that's not enough for most people. If you want pencil and paper, save yourself a shitload of money and just buy a pencil and some paper.
Edit: one thing I was kinda interested in was using it as a terminal - there's an app for this but it's too much hassle to set up for the novelty of a paper-like terminal (with no colours!)
On the other hand, I love my Kindle, not for the closed ecosystem, but for the rather slick (compared with eg. the German Tolino) UX.
I am afraid that the new Kindle with pen will be a killer for the ReMarkable 2, as much as I would have preferred a small company making the race.
There was noticeable latency when writing. This means it won't replace paper for me.
I carry a $10 "lcd writing tablet" in my backpack, it's like a small whiteboard with an erase button and really nice typography, and it there are no electronics involved in the painting process (only in erasing). I love it, though it only replaces a whiteboard, not a notebook.
I would love to hear from any left-handed RM2 owners about their experiences and whether they experienced similar issues.
If I had to choose between giving up my RM2 or giving up my work laptop and working on an iPad Pro, I’d figure out how to get my job done on the iPad. It’s that good for me. But my job is leadership/management, not coding so that obviously makes a difference.
It took me about a day of frustration to figure out I could close the on-screen menu by tapping the dot in the upper-right hand corner. Then there was no more accidentally closing the file I was working on.
My workflow now is 30 minutes at the start of each day planning on my RM2. I have a planning template I made and duplicate daily. Then I reference that day’s doc throughout the day and add new incoming info into it. I can move stuff from yesterday’s doc to today’s easily during my planning session if I need to.
For hiring, I put PDF resumes and cover letters into a folder and mark those up as I prep for interviews. I do the same with articles I want to read. I sync everything w/ their desktop app.
It doesn’t distract me like an iPad would and I get around 2 weeks on a charge if I keep the Wi-Fi turned off most of the time.
I would highly recommend avoiding them based on that experience alone.
It took forever to get my return processed and they dropped the ball repeatedly and refused to help actually make things right after waiting a month for delivery of the return to them. I actually had to file a dispute to get my money back.
Talk about nickle and diming you.
Will that thing needs a subscription too? I guess so...
But advertising the price without the pen is so dishonest. It’s not nickel and dime, it’s deceptive marketing. It destroys trust.
It means that as a happy customer, I will never recommend the product.
I was a Remarkable 1 early adopter and am grandfathered in on their cloud plan but I actually ended up not using it so much (their software sucked for most of the device lifetime). A couple years ago I ended up switching to a Boox Note 3 instead of a RM2 and it's responsive enough for me (the competition mostly caught up on latency) and as a full Android system, it's much more functional for me. It's been easier for me to keep my PDFs/papers in sync, I can read all my Kobo and Kindle books, and it's fine for notetaking. There's a small niche of YouTubers that do in depth reviews of various eink tablets (My Deep Guide is probably the most in depth) which I'd recommend for anyone in the market.
EDIT not incompatible: https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Markers-and-Marker-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgj5Y7NHY74
https://www.joshualowcock.com/guide/remarkable-2-compatible-...
> The new Marker and Marker Plus have been designed specifically to work in conjunction with reMarkable 2’s second-generation CANVAS display. We can therefore not guarantee an optimal experience if used with the reMarkable 1.
https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Markers-and-Marker-...
Are you basing that just off the sentiment of their subreddit or some other data?
If I read this correctly they offer an optional service called "Connect" where notes and sketches are stored in their cloud:
> Here’s what’s included with your reMarkable if you don't have a subscription: > > Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive integration > > Access the most popular cloud storage services from your digital notebook with Integrations. Browse stored files, copy them to your reMarkable, and upload notes and documents directly to your Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive accounts from your paper tablet.
The even have a guide showing you how to setup these other services.
Sure it is still not optimal, it should be more hackable and people should be able to add their own cloud/syncing solutions if tou ask me, but this is not "subscription based hardware" by my standards.
Without Connect (~$4/month), only files used and synced online in the last 50 days will continue to be stored in the reMarkable cloud or updated in our mobile and desktop apps. It’s also possible to turn off the sync functionality if you don’t wish to use the cloud service.
Also, it was always advertised as “experimental”. They don’t officially support non-cloud use.
Edit: To clarify that last comment, I mean non-cloud use for the advertised primary benefits. I.e. getting your notes off (and onto) the device.
But as a user, my impression is that they don’t consider this feature to be existential enough to have a smoke test for. And I do.
And for a long time (I'm an early v1 user) what they did deliver was miniscule, ignoring a lot of the feedback from core users about basic issues. Some of the "new" features being released recently even existed in early v1 releases, e.g. the screen sharing which used to work fine locally, but now doesn't anymore because it "needs" to go via their cloud.
The break stuff unintentionally too though, so you're right there. For a few releases they even broke the core writing feature - lines and drawings would be drawn all jaggy - and the fix took forever.
The marketing worked and tricked me into buying one, but it's clear to me now that reMarkable is first and foremost a marketing company, tech and users come second. I won't be spending any more money with them.
https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Using-reMarkable-wi...
Stop spreading FUD, they literally have a page that lists what you can do without cloud.
https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Using-reMarkable-wi...
These are cloud services.
> Handwriting conversion
> You need to be connected to Wi-Fi and logged in to your reMarkable account.
> Read on reMarkable
> Once you’ve logged into your account and sent content to your reMarkable paper tablet, you can review, annotate, and focus on the task you’re working on without any distractions.
Almost every use-case requires some sort of connectivity to a cloud. No mention of USB.
That notwithstanding, looking at the page you link, let's look at each heading and what it says.
Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive integration
https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Integrating-with-Go...
"Step 1: Log in to my.remarkable.com and click the menu in the top right-hand corner."
Handwriting conversion
https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Convert-handwritten...
"You need to be connected to a Wi-Fi network and logged into a reMarkable account (my.remarkable.com) in order to use handwriting conversion."
Read on reMarkable
Chrome:
https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Read-on-reMarkable-...
"You’ll also need a reMarkable account to use this feature."
Microsoft Office:
https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Read-on-reMarkable-...
"8. Log in with your reMarkable account."
Screen Share
https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Screen-Share
"Your reMarkable needs to be paired with the cloud"
Send by email
https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Send-by-email
"Note: You must be connected to Wi-Fi to share files from your reMarkable. You won’t see an option to send a file if you’re not connected to Wi-Fi and signed into an account."
Tags
https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Tags
You can tag pages without a cloud account. It's useful but at best an anciliary feature.
Limited cloud sync
https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Connect
You need an account.
> Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user [0]
i.e. "someone else's computer". I want the core advertised reMarkable features to be on my computer(s). Not half mine, half theirs.
I got a couple of Rocketbook notebooks for when I want something that really feels like paper, plus an iPad for the large-screen computing bits. Pity, because I love the idea of the Remarkable and would strongly consider it were it not for the subscription.
Instead it appears to be just another stylus/display system, with all the downsides that imposes. I could do much better getting a "pen" for my old HP convertable laptop if I wanted that.
It can even be in dark mode and variably backlight only the foreground content with no change in the illumination of the dark background.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012...
Eink due to its USP and fundamental characteristics only reflects light and does not transmit (i.e., is not transparent. Transparency is needed for back lighting).
After reading multiple real user comments, I do not think I still want to buy it. Does anyone know any other good alternatives for paper notes?
I see multiple people recommending cheap LCD panels, is there any cheaper or simpler e-paper note takers but with multiple notes features?
First, the subscription is not mandatory, and in fact you can use the cloud provider of your choice for free. And second, if you do want to make use of the online functions (kids nowadays love their cloud sync) it does make sense that they would charge for them. Space may be cheap nowadays, but it's not free.
I personally would have preferred them to go the other way, presenting it "offline first" and then add "plus all of this extra features" afterwards, as it would save me having to cancel a service I don't want. But at least they do offer a working product without it, which is a rare feature nowadays.
I have a Onyx Boox Note 2. The company is kind of a bunch of dicks (GPL violations ahoy!) but it works very nicely.
There are other alternatives out at this point.
If it still requires going through their servers in any way I'm sticking to an iPad...
I’m so very tired of this model.
I've got to keep an old Intel MacBook for these "legacy" apps, it's not ideal.
It works in Rosetta, but I can't install Rosetta on my main machine. I use it for dev work and the only way I've found to ensure that I don't have x64 code sneaking in is to have Rosetta not installed.
Strongly recommend anyone who’s in the market for this also take a look at the Super Note.
The Dasung Paperlike 3 HD or Onyx Boox Mira are 13.3" monitor solutions as well, something to consider if you want to hook them up just as output to run w/ arbitrary software (both companies have 25" versions as well).
I own an Boox Note Pro myself and there are some known issues with this device, e.g. http://bbs.onyx-international.com/t/boox-note-pro-capacitive... .
The interaction with support was … very frustrating to say the least.
Not sure if I'd use this device but it seems nice, and for 250 it's worth thinking about. For 350 it's not even a question.
Remarkable just has a much larger marketing budget.
Only downside is the screen can be inaccurate at time, but that is a small thing which doesn't detract from its usefulness.
If you just take the device on its own functions it is less powerful than it's competitors the supernote and the onyx tablets. It's had pretty bad customer relations due to paywalling a bunch of their features and then walking that back but the build quality is great.
One thing that they did right by pure accident though is give users a root shell into a mostly standard Linux and the community has built tooling that turns this into the most functional of the tablets...but keep in mind this is at the lament of the remarkable team who would rather you use the device as intended.
Supernote is the clear winner among the eink tablets if you use them as intended but many attempts to beg the supernote team to put shell access in have resulted in responses that are at best cautious and at worse condisending.
Until supernote releases the a5x2 (and even then it remains to be seen) this is the best eink tablet
...once hacked that is
If i find something on amazon.com and check the price on amazon.ca and find that after using the FX rates there is a $50 or more difference? Some sort of "being in canada" tax?
We are paid less and stuff costs more here?
Very faint, greyish text. In not so nicely lit rooms an absolute horrific reading sensation. Nothing like paper.
The desktop app has the ability to export to SVG: https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Exporting-files
if not, any other device that support this ^?
EDIT: nevermind, I now see that the "$279" price tag is not at all what you're actually going to be paying for this product. going to have to think about it a bit more.
For book reading look at literally anyone else in the space. Kobo, Amazon, Boox, Boyue all make 10" note takers now and they'll do a better job at displaying books.
(Edit, to clarify - not because of what it offers, but because the very existence of a subscription tends to create wrong incentives for the company so to try and push people onto them. Maybe not now, but this will happen. Guaranteed.)
Also, I don't see a properly supported way to actually get docs to/from the device without a cloud service, theirs or someone else's.
For example, [1] says
Transferring files using a USB cable
NB: This functionality is currently experimental,
as we haven't fully implemented it yet.
1. Connect the reMarkable with a USB cable to your computer.
2. ...
3. ...
4. Open a browser window on your computer and enter the address 10.11.99.1.
If they will go bankrupt, the app will stop launching and you'll end up with a pretty precise-engineered dud. Worse yet, they'll get acquired and you'll be forced into a subsciption. No bueno.
This thing needs proper support for being accessible as a mass storage device. The rest is secondary.
[1] https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Transferring-files-...
Also, you can ssh into the device and even get root access. I have not tried it yet but I guess scp would work as well.
Last but not least: They recently changed their subscription service in a big way, opening up a lot of features that were subscription-only before to all device owners: https://remarkable.com/blog/big-changes-are-coming-to-the-re...
I've ssh'd into mine and it looks just like you'd expect. I didn't mess with anything (because I know that I don't know what I'm doing with it).
I've also used the "email me a PDF of this page" function a couple of times and it works perfectly.
I bought mine before the subscription kicked in, and got grandfathered in, so I can't comment on that.
How to get the password?
https://remarkablewiki.com/tech/ssh#:~:text=to%20transfer%20....
You can run koreader or others, and then scp would be usable.
https://github.com/adaerr/reMarkableScripts/blob/master/pdf2...
> or put it in writing that they will not change their service offerings
Also I put zero faith in what a company puts in writing unless it's in a legally binding contract. Anything else is trivial to change or ignore.
IIRC there was a U.S. bankruptcy ruling where supposedly never-sharable info was sold off.
Maybe having the relevant technical data (keys, source code, etc.) held in escrow by a trustworthy party would work?
this is exactly what you are doing. I've owned every kindle model since it was first released.
I no longer shop on amazon's marketplace and cancelled my prime membership. If i want to buy "made in china" products i can cut out the middleman and go to aliexpress.
The Kindle on the other hand is a solid product.
Their services are all hosted in Hong Kong, which means that they're subject to China's domestic spying apparatus and rules on encryption.
You'd have to be a moron to trust a device which uses Chinese-territory-hosted servers to store and OCR your documents.
The remarkable2 is a more expensive (if you count subscription fees for 2-3 years), far less capable, far less private device than an iPad with Apple Pencil. You can get the screen texture for a few dollars off Amazon.
Almost any iPad can do text recognition and handwriting recognition completely offline; this thing can't do any of that without an internet connection.
They keep having to pimp it on HN because it's not a competitive-in-the-marketplace device.
This is the true difficulty with clawing back features in order to charge for them: you break trust.
Businesses income in aggregate is not immediately affected by choices that break trust (in fact, the short-term balance sheet might even show increased profits) but it’s very hard to un-sour people once you’ve broken trust.
Do you know one of the things people really want from the tablet?
The ability to draw shapes. They don't add it on the basis of idealism "it must be like paper".
This is one of the first things you do when you jailbreak your kindle, it allows you to ssh/sftp onto the device. I do think having a option to toggle between Block Device and Network would be nice
I really love mine. Bought it for notes and for reading academic papers. Absolutely excels at both these things.
My biggest complaints:
* not in color (not their fault)
* i wish i could search my handwritten notes
Otherwise, having an infinitely expandable library of notebooks is amazing.
I will go with the Amazon version. Sure Amazon has its problems but it is more likely to be around in the next few years and less likely to make changes to a subscription service in order to "monetize the customer" or some business nonsense.
It is about as non locked down as you can get for a "normal" tablet, which you can't say about the amazon devices...
Will delay my purchase for a bit and do another review of the BOOX offering vs Scribe.
Amazon's devices are locked down (their tablets are terrible for this) but the kindle is a simple device and easy to side-load books bought elsewhere so it works well for me.
Fwiw you can connect it to Wifi and transfer files using an open source GUI program called ReMy. It uses ssh. No cloud storage account needed.
You can not ask for cloud-enabled conveniences, as well as bug fixes, security updates, and product improvements for years to come for a one time fee.
Increasingly, devices are a delivery mechanism for software, and one way or another you have to pay for the software.
But they still need to keep the company running for all the things that we’d want out of a long-term product (driver updates, bugfixes, security fixes, feature simplification).
Personally I don’t want to foot the bill for “cloud services” as I’d rather self-host, but for Good Tools I’m comfortable with more of a Patreon model where my subscription helps everyone.
Of all the products I own, this one has delighted me like no other - specifically because they are constantly updating the SW for free. I have bought every HW release from them for over a decade now:
https://www.fractalaudio.com/iii/
From the site: "Fractal Audio set a new precedent for the industry with the philosophy of free updates. Historically most companies have been content with one or two firmware updates over the life of a product (usually to fix bugs), or even charging a fee for updates. At Fractal Audio we believe a digital audio processor is a platform that grows as our knowledge and expertise grows. Just as personal computers receive frequent updates to improve performance and add features, we steadily release firmware updates to improve the capabilities of our products.
The Axe-Fx II series received no fewer than 29 major (and dozens of minor) firmware upgrades over its life cycle. The Axe-Fx III is designed with the same anti-obsolescence in mind."
From the video it looked like the Boox had a bad delay. Could appear worse because of the backlight which increases distance from pen to screen.
The Supernote and Remarkable also had visible delay that would annoy me, but the larger delay of the Boox looked like a deal breaker to me.
Boox devices relentlessly phone home to IP addresses in China. This is in addition to syncing to alibaba cloud servers in Calofornia.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ereader/comments/mpyi5q/is_it_safe_...
Please refrain from ever mentioning anything positive about this company. Whataboutism in a tech support, GPL violations, constant pinging some server in China.
It should be vilified.
On top of all of the above, security firmware updates for android are horribly non-existent, or very lagged.
https://blog.tho.ms/hacks/2021/03/27/hacking-onyx-boox-note-...
I think there’s also a way to setup private cloud.
That and on top of the sneaky price increases as you purchase the product tells you that it is a great scam. The the full price of a new reMarkable 2 is $450 - $550+.
The features doesn't justify the price at all, making it an overpriced scam. You might as well get an iPad Mini at this point and it does much more for that price range.
I guess if you needed to work with a large number of media rich pdf, it could become a problem. But there are solutions. Either officially supported - dropbox et al. integration, or you can just ssh into the device and set up a syncing scheme of your liking.
So I really cannot image what are you talking about.