Thoughts on the Remarkable 2 | Hacker News Reader

Thoughts on the Remarkable 2

variousbits.net

50 pointstsak59 comments

The remarkable2 is a highly opinionated device. Like most strongly opinionated people, if your needs / incentives / perspectives align, you'll get on perfectly. If not, you'll have a strong repulsion to the device.

They have an intentionally slow development cycle, which stays very true to Remarklable's interpretation on how to use the device.

I find that I align perfectly with the workflow imposed by the device (note-taking, PDF Markup, casual reading, specifically of magazines / PDFs).

I've tried other "kitchen-sink" android eInk devices (full-colour, etc) - and hated them for their confused approach.

However, the biggest reason to avoid remarkable are their anti-customer / flagrant disrespect for customer rights.

The lower-half of my device's screen began to malfunction, and eventually stopped working altogether. The EU has very clear laws on this situation: within the first year of purchase, the device must be replaced.

Remarkable initially refused to replace the device, eventually capitulated but sent a pen instead of the device, and then refused, once again, to replace the device. Bear in mind that I had sent my device to them.

Contact via the European Consumer Centres Network was ignored. I reached out politely to the CEO via email to ask for his attention to the situation. No reply.

Finally, when I initiated legal action against them, they proposed to replace the device with a "refurbished" device, and only when my lawyers insisted did I receive a new replacement device.

The craziest part is that I had purchased 6 devices for our team.

Thank you for sharing your story. Very worrying and a turn off from those products

Sounds like they are on an American mindset while selling products in Europe.

Hey thanks for sharing your experience with their customer service. This alone is dissuading me from purchasing the tablet.

I wonder if there's a chance of compensating for this terrible service by getting good contents insurance with the product?

I got the Remarkable 2 and really liked the feel of writing and the build quality. But it has since landed on a shelf. The main reason for me is that it feels write-only, the notes I take disappear into it and I find it harder to search them than in notebooks. That's a pity because I think this is something where a digital device can excel. My wishlist would include:

- On-device OCR. I don't feel comfortable using it for anything sensitive as long as everything gets sent to the cloud. Come on, mobile processors get more powerful each year and AI has improved in leaps and bounds since the release of the Remarkable 2.

- Allow OCR without converting the document. You can either have a page as an image, or convert it to text. Why can't you OCR your text, keep it as an image, and have the letters stored behind the handwriting? PDF supports that without problems.

- Use handwriting in the UI. This is also big. Why do I have to use a crappy on-screen keyboard? I want to write a search term with the pen and then find the pages with the original highlighting selected.

Some nice to haves would be:

- Higher resolution. The e-Ink makes it look very crisp, but the resolution is actually quite low, and I cannot write as small as I write on paper.

- A more innovative UI. It feels a lot like Windows CE clicking on things with the pen. You could be scribbling circles to select pages, drawing crosses to activate checkboxes, and arrows to move things.

I deliberated for a long time to choose between Remarkable 2 and the conventional iPad - and in the end just stuck to the iPad (after trying a borrowed Re-2 for a few days)

* The reading quality & feel to the hands is far superior in Remarkable 2 and it looks much more affordable to entry level iPad, but at the end of the day it is constrained to be just a reading/annotating device.

* For people like me who prefer Android as day to day driver, but occasionally require use of FaceTime or iMessage to connect with others (friends abroad or in group), iPad is very convenient.

* Apple Pencil objectively feels more polished and versatile as a stylus for variety of tasks - note taking, sketching, minor photo touch-up, evaluating paper & reviews etc. The nibs are replaceable as well.

* The software ecosystem around Remarkable 2 still has enough rough edges. It is not that smooth to sync, transfer or update the device. iCloud+GoodNotes integration wins by large margin.

* iPad (and the Pro more so) has a camera which comes handy at scanning and annotating documents quickly (loaded directly to Goodnotes) versus going through scanning and transferring that to Remarkable 2

Remarkable used to be such a good option, but they instantly became unrecommendable when they added the shitty cloud subscription. The device isn’t worth it without it, and isn’t worth it with it.

You can sync with Dropbox, Google drive, onedrive, or just use a cable.

I'm pretty sure all those options require a subscription, no?

EDIT: I'm not sure now -- I might experiment a bit with this to see if it'll save my notebooks from the device to other clouds. It looks like you can use it as a quick way to get PDFs to your device, but if you use it as a journal you are SOL.

I don't think you need a subscription, however you need to upload the files to their cloud and from there it is uploaded to other providers. You cannot sync directly to your services. IIUC.

Their subscription is just required if you want to store files for a longer period of time.

It should be noted that syncing with Dropbox, G Drive and OneDrive does not not work the same as when you sync to their cloud.

E.g., if I add a new page to a notebook and want that reflected in whatever cloud I’m using - as a user, I have to delete the previously uploaded file then manually upload the notebook.

If you have multiple notebooks or items to sync, you have to do it one by one.

Yeah. I bought one where a lifetime subscription was included, but for any new customer, I would advice against the remarkable 2. Because of my disappointment I have to rant a little.

Still their cloud stuff (even without subscription) is pretty much forced on you. I would have rather used syncthing or a nextcloud/webdav integration, where you can host the server yourself, because I don't trust their servers with secrets, potentially company or customer secrets.

For the price a RM2 cost, I would have expected to just pay for the hardware, not having their cloud stuff forced onto me, if I want to use all features, like sharing screen the desktop app or syncing files.

I am also a bit disappointed that they don't really cooperate and provide interfaces for third party developers and the community to integrate their applications. This is something for instance Pocketbook does better. In RM2 this has to be hacked into by reverse engineering RM2 libraries in order to access the display.

And now they released a $200 keyboard for the RM2, that is not even using expensive hardware switches, and it missing keys compared to a normal keyboard (the '\ |' is missing). So I would say this is not worth the money. I sort of understand exploitable business mechanisms when you use free stuff (free-to-play with micro transactions) but with a expensive full-priced hardware forcing you to upload all your files to their servers and monopolizing the storage and sync features is just bad, IMO.

Either they provide cheap hardware, that is bound to the vendors cloud and I have to pay for extra services or they provide expensive hardware where I am free to use it however I like, even with a self-hosted server. I just cannot justify products that are expensive and where the vendor has monopoly over the back-end, for which they also want more money, then I would pay to host it on a comparable VPS.

Have had a Remarkable 2 for a couple years now. My general impressions have been consistently favorable but the use case is limited. I’m in academia, so it excels specifically because:

* it is basically an infinite shelf of notebooks that I can keep organized however I want

* it is great for reading journal articles at full size

There is a lot I wish it did, but it does work well for these!

How do you manage the fairly limited storage space? I’m constantly running out.

Once I’ve read and highlighted a paper I offload it to Zotero. Only thing I keep on permanently are notes.

Also in academia, subject to constant FOIA requests.

The ability to tag was added relatively recently, and has been a lifesaver. I can just hammer the email button and send legal counsel my raw notes instead of re-typing handwritten notes. It has saved me literally hundreds of hours in the last few years.

I bought and returned a Remarkable 2. I primarily wanted it for note taking but I found it actually felt worse to write on than the iPad with Apple Pencil and a matte screen protector. The iPad is also much more responsive and versatile when taking notes, e.g. better shape recognition, pressure sensitivity and palm rejection. As others have mentioned the Remarkable software is very limiting too in terms of reading, annotating and sharing documents.

EDIT: one more complaint - the remarkable pencil nibs wear away very fast. They give you spares but they didn't last long.

I will ask the one thing that is relevant to me:

Can I plug in the device into my PC/Notebook and up/download documents via the cable?

If the answer is no, or contains the word "Cloud" at any point other than in the context that there is no need to use any "Cloud" to up/download documents, then I don't care how well made the product is, I don't care how good the writing experience is; If a notetaking device doesn't work without relying on some "cloud", I won't buy it, end of story.

You can. It has USB-C and works as a file storage unit.

Ps, it runs Linux and is hackable

> Can I plug in the device into my PC/Notebook and up/download documents via the cable?

Yes. I never do it, but when you plug it in, it acts as a network device and you access the web interface with a browser and drag and drop files.

Despite all the negative fuss about it - I love the Kindle Scribe. It feels and sounds like paper and works great for work note taking and journaling. Oh, and I can read books on it too.

I’ve got both the Scribe and the Remarkable 2.

The Scribe is the best ebook reader I’ve ever owned. Battery life is incredible. Great screen. Easy access to Amazon Kindle store (duh). It’s (at best) blah and frustrating for handwritten notes.

The Remarkable 2 is amazing at handwritten notes and an atrocious ebook reader. To be fair it is advertised as a digital notebook and I find most people who hate it are like, “It’s bad at managing my collection of a billion ebooks and giant PDFs.”

The differences on the handwriting front to me are that on the Remarkable 2:

• The writing experience feels better and more paperlike to me

• The OS and design are built around notetaking

• More intuitive features and deeper options for writing (pen options, copy/paste, lasso, etc.)

• Slower which doesn’t bother me for notes but is horrendous for reading books

• Single use, which I prefer for lack of distraction

Overall, I’m very glad to have both. The Remarkable 2 fits my work needs for hours of daily notes (and the occasional PDF markup) very very well and I just love reading books on the Scribe.

Would putting koreader on the remarkable 2 resolve most of your concerns?

They’re not concerns lol. I have a shitload of Amazon ebooks and I have a Scribe. I don’t want to futz with trying to force ebooks onto the Remarkable 2.

That's great and all, but with the latest firmware the notetaking experience is great on the Scribe, and, at least in Europe, it's a fraction of the price of the Remarkable. And I don't have to pay a subscription

I mean I’ve got both and have used both. I know which one has a great notetaking experience for me and which is at best mediocre.

Also, I got grandfathered in to the Connect subscription but I think it’s mostly pointless for my use case.

I've had a remarkable 2 for awhile, and it works great for what it was designed to be (writing). I would really love to be able to read on it as well, that experience has not been great. So maybe I'll check out the Boox.

I took for granted that such expensive device would render at least epubs and PDFs flawlessly.

Yeah, that part feels reallly lazy. They wouldn't even have to build something better, there is open source ereader software already that is 100x better.

Remarkable screams designed by marketing to me tbh. Features exists to sell, existing customers can suck it.

I really want to like the RM, but it just misses the mark on software quality and performance. UI is clunky and latency _just_ high enough to be anoying to me. I'll probably pre-order the RM3 if that ever comes though :)

> Yeah, that part feels reallly lazy. They wouldn't even have to build something better, there is open source ereader software already that is 100x better.

Yeah, that is annoying to me. To their credit though, they did make it easy to just install it yourself.

It does render epubs and PDFs flawlessly indeed and the reading experience is great. I don't know what OP is talking about.

Bonus: reading black and white comics on a remarkable feels even better than on paper.

pdf is fine but the epub engine is limited and inferior to what I expected. The pdf reader has a serious issue with zooming. It takes too long to crop a pdf, especially after the update that made things worse (pinch and zoom).

Which books do you read that you're not bothered by the slow page turning, or not quite fitting a4ish size?

Perhaps the epub experience has improved - but I've mostly used it with White Wolf rpg pdfs (granted, they are terrible - almost unreadable even in print) as well as other rpg books - typically large format, two columns - and its awful on the rm2.

Yeah rpg sourcebooks (mine are also WW) are not a good fit for the remarkable.

In general, only short PDFs are bearable, epubs feel like they should work but they take an incredibly long time to render, which frustrates me every time.

That being said, it's absolutely incredible for writing, but I don't need that as much as I used to (take less notes now as I'm more of an IC than my former team lead/PM/IC hybrid).

I've long wondered if the rm2 might be a good fit for the djvu-format.

It's a shame there's no official way to augment the software with apps or patches - there's community software, but it feels like a really fragile system.

ePubs yes. PDFs...they render fine but making them readable means zooming and panning around, plus the zoom resets when you change pages. Although once again, it was not designed as a reader but as a writer.

I installed koreader on my remarkable2, and it's now easily the best reading experience for manga and textbooks that I know of. I just swipe on the side of the screen once to switch back and forth, it's _so_ great.

There's no problem with that setup for standard books too, I just usually prefer a smaller/crappier ereader (ideally also with koreader) for that type of reading.

Hm, I'll check that out, although it looks like the installation process is a bit involved (my software is too new for Toltec apparently).

I love my Onyx Boox Nova Air. Only thing is that it’s too small to read pdfs comfortably but you can make do by rotating it 90 degrees and reading half a page at a time. Let me know if you have any questions about it. I seriously use it every day for work, and pleasure.

I have Supernote. It has some pretty nifty organization features that the Remarkable doesn’t have- you can create a table of contents as well as tag and star pages. It makes it easier to find the notes you need.

Second the Supernote. After having looked at the Scribe and Remarkable 2, I went with it. Actually feels like a proper notepad, the pens look and feel like expensive fountain pens and the whole experience is uncluttered and clean. The A6X is small enough to fit in any of my bags, and in a jacket pocket, which isn't something you can say about all the other 10 inches devices. It never leaves me.

Yes yes and yes!

I have been using a small Supernote (A6X) for a long time now and it has become indispensable.

The hardware is good, the writing experience is excellent, a good calendar application, the battery lasts a long time, etc...

But all those are not the coolest thing. The coolest thing is that the guys who write the software actually listen to their customers and implement features and optimisations regularly.

I do embedded device software for a living and I know that the most expensive, recurring part of development for a gadget is the software updates and support long-term, where "long-term" means more than a few years.

Not many companies will support the same hardware device with fresh updates (and new features) regularly over a long(ish) period of time, and that is what Supernote does, and that is why I like their product.

Apple is rather good at this; companies with Android devices, not so much.

Reading myself I realize I sound like a Supernote fanboy... actually I am a big fan of maintained software, and that is a rarity nowadays.

Of course, when your device is _liberated_ and runs open-source software, you can finally hope for actual good software support for more than a couple of years ... but that is a topic for another time.

I own Remarkable 2, bought it on release day and received it from the second batch. The fill and design is awesome. I use it lightly for daily work notes. But the hardware and software is aging and becoming outdated - no light, slow ereader.

Remarkable needs to release updated device, not sure if they have money for that. I’m so sorry to see them wasting their money on ads - promoting outdated device.

I have a Supernote, so while I cannot really speak for Remarkable, but it's mind boggling to see others compare them to the iPad.

With Supernote I can read without the eye strain, and I can write as if I was using pen on paper. These devices do not try to do everything a tablet does, but reading on an eInk screen is much more pleasant to my eyes -- and so is the writing experience.

I am very happy with my Remarkable 2 but I think that can depend on individual needs and expectations. My desk was perpetually covered with stacks of paper with notes from meetings. As I handled each note, I had to keep each piece of paper until the last note on it was handled. When I tried a paper notebook, I found that there would always be unhandled notes several pages back from my current page.

For me the RM 2 is an infinite persistent (editable) notepad. I can organize my notes by project/task and can easily cleanup things that have been taken care of. Most importantly, like OP, I didn't want yet another device that does it all. I don't need to add to desktop PC, laptop PC, IPad, IPhone and then forget where everything is.

the main downside of the Remarkable 2 for me is I need to use my glasses to read on it. Resizing PDFS etc. always end up being too large and not fit in screen, the screen is too dark to give sufficient contrast.

This was not a problem for my Kobo, Kindle or Pocketbook readers. I got it really for reading and thought it was a nice size for what I wanted, but amazingly enough the bigger Remarkable is worse for reading than smaller ebook readers. It is very annoying.

Wait, reading PDFs on a Kindle is better than reading them on a remarkable??

Does Kindle have some fancy PDF reflow stuff going on?

the main benefit of Kindle I've used is that the screen is not as dark.

I have to zoom in several times to have a chance to read the pdf on remarkable, sometimes even have to zoom to read with glasses, because screen is darker than other ereaders I've used and as such has less contrast. For someone who's vision is going that makes it much worse.

> "I got it really for reading..."

Why are so many people saying that it is a downside that the Remarkable does not do well at something it was not intended for and was never intended for?

When I read on remarkable.com the following

"An eye-friendly reading experience

Comfortably read PDFs or ebooks for hours on end without backlight, glare, or eye strain."

I naively assumed it handles reading without eyestrain and thought this admittedly secondary functionality of the product, combined with its larger form factor is actually of primary interest to me and the note taking might turn out to be a nice to have (which it hasn't because I would be taking notes on stuff I read for later articles but no, I can't really use it for reading)

Also if lots of people, customers even, are complaining about a secondary aspect of a product not being good enough that would indicate a possible area of improvement.

I enjoy my Remarkable 1 even though it can be a bit sluggish from time to time (fixed in Remarkable 2).

It's great to read some A4 pdfs even though one need to zoom when reading academic papers due to the small font used.

The e-ink screen is great to read under the sun but it really lacks some backlight to use it during evenings. I can read some paper books but not use the Remarkable unless I can have a direct light on it, but then there's a bit of shining.

I love my rm2, but I absolutely hate the cloud subscription they force on you. I'm able to make use of the limited sync, but it's ridiculous that it requires a monthly subscription.

I got mine before you needed to buy a subscription. I recommended it to everyone, and a few friends got one. Since you need the subscription, I still show it to people and tell them that I'm really happy with it, but that I'm not sure if I would recommend like this. I don't think anyone I showed it to got one after that.

I intentionally gave up the chase to marry “real” feeling writing/reading with modern tech to avoid the inevitable uncanny valley these tools tend to get stuck in, and it seems like I was right to do so.

I fear, immensely, the idea that I might get stuck in how I operate to such a degree that I’m no longer open to new experiences, and to me that’s who remarkable2 is for; people stuck in the “paper is best” mindset but who realize technology is important to try to keep up with.

Getting comfortable with a tablet for these tasks is the real solution. Remarkable2 is a crutch.

It's just a tablet that feels nice to write on. It doesn't have to be anything more profound than that.

Profound is the wrong word; limiting is a better one. By getting stuck in one particular pattern, you’re lashing yourself to a specific point in time, and while this may save the cost of learning how to adapt to new tech, you lose out on more recent innovation that could ultimately make you more efficient.

I use all kinds of new tech, having a device I actually like to write on isn't holding that back at all. You're making far too much out of minor differences in priorities of vaguely competing devices.

When you need a many hundreds of dollars device to account for a slight difference in writing feel, you’re failing to adapt to the advance of technology.

If your preferences can’t evolve with the times, you’re succumbing to the calcification of your mind to what you’re familiar with now. It’s a sign of aging, and a sign of your growing inability to adapt.

I was at one point very interested in the Remarkable. Since then it seems like they've shifted in a much more locked down proprietary direction with their cloud services. My (not thoroughly researched) instinct is that I'm not sure I could just buy the device and use it offline, at least not without serious downgrades to the functionality that I'm not willing to take.

But I haven't looked into it deeply enough to know if that's actually the case or if I just had a knee-jerk reaction to their changes. It's just tricky to add another locked-down device to the ecosystem, despite what people say about circumventing those locks. It makes me nervous that the APIs aren't more supported and that the locks need to be circumvented. It makes me nervous because I've used devices that start getting more and more aggressive about pushing me into a cloud service over time -- and it's usually an unpleasant experience.

I highly agree with the author that "less is more" but I'm finding that I still want radically open ecosystems where I can do a lot. The problem with having a full-featured OS with apps like Android/iOS is that it's annoying and difficult to pair that stuff down to being so basic that the device only does one thing and does it well. I want a device that can do a lot of things that I can then pair down into a device that does one thing well.

I'm lightly following the Librem Note but even though the hardware seems good I'm worried that there's not going to be the same software focus on getting as physically low latency as possible out of the pen? My understanding is that there's a lot of custom logic happening on the Remarkable to make that happen, and I'm worried that the Linux side of things is just going to eventually get drivers pen input and call it a day.

Latency is one of those things where... you can get it to an acceptable level where it feels OK to write on. But even the Remarkable itself is boasting 21 milliseconds of latency and that is noticeable latency -- it's still in the area where I would be tempted to just keep using paper. Especially if you've ever gotten used to writing with a fountain pen or good ink pen where writing just feels good, latency on a screen really, really matters and every millisecond you can shave off is worthwhile.

And I still need to look into the writing feel and what textures they use for the surface. It's really important for a casual notetaking device that it actually feel like I'm writing on paper. But if I could snap my fingers and make software and firmware magically appear out of thin air I'd love a Librem Note with similar latency that had an extremely paired down Linux OS that was less focused on porting Gnome and more focused on being just a notepad/E-reader. It's still just very early days for the device and a lot of its potential seems very theoretical right now.

Keeps being a very expensive toy. I think I'll choose a nice paper notebook and whenever needed take some photos with my phone.

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