Review: ReMarkable Paper Pro

I dislike the subscription too, I also purchased my RM2 before that came into effect. I purchased an RMPP and my “feature license” for lack of a better term did carry through.

This is the debate I'm having internally. I like the RM2, but the appeal of a full Android tablet is hard to get past.

How hacker-friendly is the Note Air? Is it heavily locked-down or is it more on the open side?

What's behind your move away from dead tree paper?

Before I got my rM2, I carried two paper notebooks with me everywhere - one for work and one for everything else. I also carried a nice fountain pen in a sleeve for note-taking.

After getting the rM2, I carried it. All of my notes are there, they're sharable from "the cloud", and I screen-share with it on Zoom calls for work when there's a need to diagram.

> What is so good about ReMarkable?

All of their products are, first and foremost, an "electronic paper notebook". They're designed to replace physical pen/pencil-and-paper. If that's what you want to use it for, you'll be happy with it.

> I would never use it for writing only reading white and black text with no images

I'd steer you toward an rM2 then, unless you absolutely need the backlight. They seem to be going for about $300 in like-new condition on the used market, so now is a good time to buy.

As for using it as an eReader, they work well in some cases and adequately in others.

PDF support is excellent - >90% of my eBook collection is uploaded to my reMarkable account in PDF format. It looks exactly the same on the device as it does printed, navigation works, and documents are easy to "mark up" using the pen.

EPUB support is... well, adequate. I think it's running a script in the backend the first time you open an EPUB file that converts it to PDF. Changing the font size does the same. For the rM2, this process could take a second or so for most documents and up to about 15 seconds for 500-ish page books. I've not empirically tested this, but the RPP seems to be much faster in this regard.

Note that DRM is not supported. That means you'll have to do the import/strip/export dance with Calibre if you have a collection of Kindle books to transfer.

There are also no integrated "stores", so you'll have to acquire your files elsewhere. I use Kobo for a lot of things. If Kobo doesn't have it - or if they don't have it DRM-free - I try to buy directly from the author. Failing that, I'll buy it on Kobo or Amazon then go download a PDF from libgen or similar.

My understanding is that it is excellent for handwriting notes, which feels like writing on paper (and not like on glass). I read books on my Kindle because RM is too expensive for me and I don't like the idea of having to pay their subscription fees.

IMHO the best thing about the ReMarkable is that it's an "open" device rather than a locked-down uber proprietary system like Kindle. They give you the root password to the device and you can use or write third-party tools if you don't want to pay for their cloud subscription. They have a browser extension that makes it super easy to send articles/web pages to the Remarkable for later reading, and it has built-in integration with Google Drive (which doesn't require the subscription!) so it's pretty easy to get content off and on to the device. I also use rcu[1].

I love using my Remarkable as an e-reader. I've never been one to "write in the margins" because I like to keep my books clean, but this has been a surprising great feature of the Remarkable to me. I can write all over the PDF or epub and it saves as a copy (instead of overwriting the original).

If you're only going to read on it, and only white and black text, I'd recommend a Remarkable 2 instead as it's much cheaper.

An important caveat: I refuse to buy DRMed media, so all my e-books work on any device. They are almost entirely epubs or PDFs. If you buy stuff from the Kindle store then you won't be able to read them on the ReMarkable unless you strip the DRM.

[1]: https://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/

The main advantage is just focus. ReMarkable is an eInk tablet that's only really good at writing and passable at reading so you're not going to wander off to the web or something. This model has some uniqueness from the kind of color eInk display it has but if you don't care about that you're probably better off with a Kobo Elispa, some model of Boox or the Kindle Scribe.

But for READING I would not go for a ReMarkable. They can't do Adobe DRM'd ePubs, they can't do library books and ePub support in general seems really subpar. Makes way more sense to get an Elispa or Boox model.

I think you've been misinformed - ReMarkable pens have replaceable nibs (tips), because they get worn away as you use them, but they are not powered at all (unless there's a new aspect to the Pro's market that I'm not aware of?)

For what it's worth: the reason it needs those tips is they are what helps it feel like writing on paper, but the tips can be put into third-party stylos - if you search Reddit or elsewhere you'll find plenty of people discussing alternatives.

I agree with your sentiments. Makes me think that they are going for vendor lock in. I don’t know if that’s true, but it does feel like it.

It may be marketed as bespoke, but it does seem to take USI stylus (styli?), at least for basic inking purposes, https://youtu.be/4peCXY7duxI?t=486

and USI seems to be about interoperability https://universalstylus.org/ , at least within that ecosystem.

One of the author's primary complaints about their prior ReMarkable was the poor pressure sensitivity while sketching. So there's an argument to be made that switching tech to make it better for sketching is worthwhile. The argument would land better if they actually succeeded at the goal -- the reviewer found an improvement, but not a great improvement.

My understanding is that the company is saying they went with the new stylus technology because the old tech was wacom and if they had stuck with that, as well as adding in front light, the pen-to-screen distance would have increased past where it is on the rm2. With the current tech they have made it essentially the same (maybe slightly smaller I believe), and since they heavily lean on the writing experience for these tablets I am guessing that distance was a deal-breaker with regard to sticking with wacom. Now is that the whole truth? I can't say as I don't have a full understanding of the engineering involved in these touch layers, but it at least sounds plausible to me.

Microsoft did a similar switch with their surface tablets, which were initially wacom based, and switched to a different tech that also required batteries in their pens, so this isn't without precedence.

My understanding is that the dialysis that are used for Windows tablets work with this, there was one reviewer who was talking about that. On YouTube.

I don't own a remarkable so I can't relay any personal experience, but there is this project: https://github.com/stelzch/rm2anki

It sounds like it's more for authoring cards on the tablet than it is for reviewing.

I've had a ReMarkable 1 for a few years (including doing a bit of hacking [0]). My advice is don't rely on doing anything it wasn't designed for. It's fun to make it do novel things, but software updates can introduce breaking changes. There are plenty of Android tablets with e-ink that do support running arbitrary code.

[0] https://blog.afandian.com/2020/10/pipes-and-paper-remarkable...

Try this!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyctography

I've been using mine in bed in total darkness - mostly to read - and it works just fine :)

The backlight isn't "bright" - it's "just bright enough to be usable". I wasn't expecting eye-searing anyhow given the overall character of the reMarkable product line. They're defined by what they do not include more than what they do.

yeah, for a fraction of the price and as good of an experience (both reading and writing), I'm using the kindle scribe and have no fomo

This is the exact submission.