ReMarkable Paper Pro Move
remarkable.com
remarkable.com
One of the promises that lead me to buy one was the hackability - "It's Linux!" "You can SSH into it!", which, on paper (heh) is still true, but in practice very much isn't.
I think something like a Boox, which runs Android, might be more open to customization, but for now I am back to pencil and paper. That doesn't run Linux, but it also won't change its terms of service anytime soon.
> the very restrictive underlying software
This is by design, based on publicly espoused principles, and everything about the product branding makes it very explicit and obvious. No one should buy a Remarkable device and be surprised about how restrictive it is.
> the user-hostile changes to the subscription
The "user-hostile" changes to the subscription is that they are charging for it.
It is worth emphasizing that nothing is restricted with device usage if you do not have a subscription. They expect you to pay if you want to use anything which runs through their cloud services, which is undeniably reasonable.
You can sync to other cloud providers without an active subscription.[2]
[1] https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable [2] https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Using-reMarkable-wi...
These things aren’t syncing videos. They’re moving some text and PDFs around. Even Apple gives you permanently free iCloud services when you own any Apple device, with the complaint being that they should give you more storage, not that you can’t use it at all.
> Your notes will always be stored locally on your paper tablet, but only files used and synced online in the last 50 days will continue to be stored in the cloud and updated in our apps.
I don't use the screen sharing feature, and have no desire to use it, so it is quite irritating that they require the subscription to automatically sync my under a megabyte documents on the occasion that I need that.
Fortunately, it does still have Google drive integration which does not require a subscription. It does require a bit of manual work, but it's not bad
Literally the company of all time with most money
Remarkable has not "stolen" anything back which they sold.
On the contrary, they grandfathered in users which bought a device prior to their charging for a subscription so that they all have free access.
What features require usage of their cloud services?
That's an interesting way of describing that. Don't mind if I steal this quote for when I might need it. Messaging matters!
Android is great for this use case because it lets me syncthing notes and use sheet music apps and use both kindle and kobo and calibre library and offline wikipedia and my own tools. As far as I'm concerned if you try to use it as a generic android tablet you're doing it wrong, but android is a massive step above what everyone else is offering (i.e. none of that)
I know this probably doesn’t exactly fit your use case, but I’ve actually been able to do this with a Kindle Touch (yes, from 2011)! It was a super serene experience to have your books synced over into KOReader.
> if you try to use it as a generic android tablet you're doing it wrong
I agree, but I felt that’s what the system invited me to do (may just be my tinkerer genes though). Update notifications, etc, web browsing, hoops to jump through to share files ...
How‘s your note sync workflow? Can you reasonably easily and quickly access your handwritten notes from a laptop? Last I checked there was some manual export step to jump through.
Nice to know that it’s available now that I don’t really need it anymore.
While some models have a disappointing battery life, it's most definitely because of BSR[0] not because of them running Android. I had a Note Air 3 and that thing got easily 2 weeks of battery life with heavy use while the BSR version (Note Air 3C) barely survived 2 days.
0: https://shop.boox.com/blogs/news/boox-super-refresh-bsr-tech...
I do have a Boox Note Air4, which I bought with the intention of replacing the ReMarkable. On the plus side, it runs Android apps, but on the minus side, the UI is much less polished than the ReMarkable. Having said that, if I had the choice between the two, and weren't grandfathered into the no-subscription option, I would pick the Boox.
You can also connect more than one device to the account nowadays.
These days I do quite a bit of field work outdoors (taking measurements, ssh'ing into mobile equipment) and a laptop is a chore to use in broad daylight. With the boox I can connect a bluetooth keyboard and install termux. It's not a perfect setup, but sure beats squinting at a dim screen.
Can you expand on this a bit? Can't you still run third party software on the newer iterations?
I never had a subscription and locking features which could be run locally on the device behind a service is rather annoying.
And yes, those issues were worse after the a firmware update.
I wanted to love my RM2 so much. The write path is great. Writing notes on it during a meeting is a genuinely good experience. The read path: not so much. EInk UXs are so clunky especially when you’re used to how fluid phones are. Forget scrolling through your notes - It’s maddening.
Pretty good ereader though.
I do wish they’d improve the PDF usability or embrace open sourcing the UI. There’s a lot of features that should be easy to implement, like split screen or floating sticky notes, but they seem almost wholly focused on the hardware. I thought it’d be the ultimate tool for studying math and saving money on books, thus paying for itself, but it’s just not there yet and I’m not sure they plan to get it there.
My reasons: much better software for sketching, not bound to a single ereader app, multiple ways to send stuff around, perfect size.
Many years later, I would still choose the same. I use it to annotate webpages, sketch, read books and read queued articles in instapaper. It's distraction-free but still connected. I can Airdrop drawings or load my handwritten notes on the Macbook app. Tap to define is so good I've absent-mindedly tried it on a paper book.
The LED screen is great for some things and bad for others. You have to turn it on and unlock it. You can't SSH into it or sync your drawings as simple files. Otherwise, it's really good.
It will run most Android apps (modulo Eink screen support). The built-in note taking app is terrific.
That's exactly the use case though. It's a replacement for pen and paper, and the lack of functionality is seen as a feature.
Format support wasn't great either, only PDF and EPUB. Which does cover most bases, to be fair. AZW3 and MOBI aren't dealbreakers, but... really, no TXT?
I don't understand why this is such a necessary feature. Most people don't read paper books with a dictionary handy.
I wound up down the https://toltec-dev.org/ rabbit hole which was fun and gets me additional features but has its own issues (suspend/resume is dodgy sometimes now)
Again to be fair the rM2 is not sold as an _e-reader_ per se. But regardless I do find the e-reading experience weak.
I mostly have a very aged Kindle that needs replaced and I would like a small digital notepad. Boox fits the bill generally. I have a larger boox, it's a little quirky and a bit too heavy to hold comfortably but works fine after some configuration.
There's also a company called Viwoods making "AI" enabled e-ink tablets. I have heard significantly less about them so far, but they have a mini version which is roughly e-reader sized.
I have been looking at the Boox Go 7... I have a Boox Note Air and generally like it a lot after the major software upgrade it got when Air 2 was released and also particularly running Android has been quite handy (for syncing journal articles with Zotero). But I am also very curious about Supernote Nomad and may go that way if I decide backlight doesn't matter. I do like backlight for reading in be without bothering my wife...
And so I keep spinning in indecision...
I just invested in a printer that works and print out a lot of stuff I want to deeply annotate. Otherwise I have the ipad for some other stuff.
I really enjoy eink for reading but it's really a super specific market. Competing against the ipad is tough! The generalist devices tend to get so good that the specialized devices stop being worth it.
I’ve settled on markdown in vscode and a todo list app.
The beauty of physical interfaces like for paper is that you really can just flip through a stack while talking to someone and find what you need.
The big thing that I think works well in paper world is simply having things organized chronologically. I often remember around when I collected a piece of info.
I was literally about to order one until I read the comments
It doesn't surprise me at all that they think there's a market for the device at this size (though the price is debatable), assuming it worked quite well. Sounds like that's a bit much to hope for, given OP's experience.
Edit: your => OP's
-No Canadian expects that. Our standard is taxes calculated in the final calculation.
-Tax rates differ by province. In Alberta it's 5%, while in Ontario it's 13%, for instance. Which is a big reason taxes are calculated in the final calculation.
So maybe they think they're simplifying prices, but it's not an advised way to do it it. And the "duties paid" for an electronics vendor is a super weird claim in 2025.
It was my last ditch effort to make me use my RM2 but I found it didn’t fit how I wanted to take notes and was still pretty clunky.
Just curious if there were any problems specifically with the planner, or if it was just the fact that the rM really didn't work for you at all? Always looking to improve it and fill in any gaps in the product.
Also when did you try it? Because I will admit the first version was definitely clunky
and I loved that until amazon killed "download" for kindle books.
I say this as someone who bought a Daylight tablet for $700 and is now looking to sell it, since I didn’t fit anywhere and it just sits.
But I felt bad sending it back over that, especially for a new company, so I figured I’d give it a fair shot.
I spent some time trying to use the default launcher and figure out its quirks. Eventually I got annoyed with it and installed a more traditional launcher. At this point it just turned into a generic Android tablet with a worse screen. Since I’m in the Apple ecosystem, it was a bit of an island, and generic tablets have never fit well into my workflow, I gave up on the iPad after those sat around too.
I did like the pen, mostly because it didn’t require any batteries or charging. The Apple Pencil needing to be changed makes it a non-starter for me, I find that experience to be awful. So props to Daylight for going the battery free route, like a normal pencil or pen would be.
The pen alone wasn’t enough for me. I don’t write that many hand written notes. And while I kind of liked that aspect, since it didn’t integrate with my other stuff, it wasn’t something I could really invest in, and wasn’t good enough to find a bunch of new cross platform tools to make it fit.
The novelty of the black and white screen wore off quickly. Outside of note taking, a lot of app and websites really lean on color to provide meaningful information that was all lost. The amber backlight I found hard to see, so adjusted it more white. There were some random buttons on the side of the tablet that didn’t seem to do anything. Maybe if I spent more time outdoors my perspective on the screen may have shifted, but I don’t. Overall it was very “meh”, for me.
If you want a general purpose tablet, an iPad Air is cheaper and better in almost every way. If you want it black and white, the iPad has a color filter for that. If you want a screen that works in bright sunlight and a pen that doesn’t need a battery, those are the two areas where the Daylight can one-up the iPad, but that person may be more of a Remarkable customer.
The product seemed to be mostly aimed at tech bros with more money than they know what to do with.
I am not sure I will invest this much, but it's pleasantly surprising to see meaningful advancements in form factor and technology enabled over the longhaul in the products remarkable has made.
If anyone else had this experienced and figured out how to make it work, let me know.
Perhaps this Hacker News discussion will lead to some user experience improvements.
I would much rather have a A6 or A5 sized display or any other standard size for paper notebooks.
The trick to something narrower is to get comfortable with doodling in landscape mode, e. g. for classroom notes, and scroll (and orientation-switch) accordingly when neccessary. Ideally you'd have physical complementary buttons present, but a good touchscreen with palm rejection works as well. To-do lists and the like can be done vertical mode. In other words, a digital notepad.
Now you only have to built a corresponding smartphone-sized, pen-focused, modular and connectable open-standards general-purpose computer. :) ... :(
The reMarkable looks too underpowered and maybe too enshittified (subscriptions, lock-ins) to be used for anything else but a digital notepad.
I will say that my supernote really is just a digital notepad. I keep all my work to do lists organized on it. But since it's Android and supports side loading apps, I have the Kobo app and read a ton on it even without a backlight.
Remarkable has the roughly A6-sized Paper Pro, Kobo has three e-ink devices with styli and good screen ratios, and Supernote has models named A5 (and A5 x2) and A6 after the paper sizes. I think the options are quite good.
I was using regular notebooks but I was collecting too many and I was worried about storage and loss.
I wrote about the experience a few months into it.
https://notes.joeldare.com/handwritten-notes-on-the-kindle-s...
I do not read on mine, it’s exclusively for writing. Possibly because switching is too slow.
Also, I tend to only write things down as a note-taking and memorization exercise, or to think out a certain idea. I usually don't have to read the notes again. So the archiving functionality of having digital paper-like notes is not nessisarially more useful, and it is often more difficult to search through than physical notebooks. Anything I really need to read later, I can write succinctly in a text file or something.
I also don't like getting locked into a certain ecosystem. Xournal++ is the only open-source cross-platform app I can find, and it's not that good.
Even for reading physical books, you can find a lot of used paperbacks for less than $10, which is very little when you consider the value of the time you spend reading them, the ease of flipping through pages and being able to dog-ear them, and the collectible aspect of the book covers covers. An eink tablet be nice for reading textbooks and papers that are more expensive and require pirating, however. But for now I just use a regular screen in portrait.
Yeah.
For several kinds of notes, the value from writing is in doing the writing to assist thinking. Once I write it down, it doesn't need to hang around in my head.
Funnily though, professional life is a lot simpler. I just need a single paper notebook with my running todo list. Everything else is stored in google docs or obsidian. Having an eink or tablet for taking notes would feel like friction without much benefit.
[1] https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Using-reMarkable-wi...
The community has built amazing tools for remarkable device, but their work is constantly being broken by software updates. This isn't a sustainable situation. For a company that charges for a cloud service, providing a stable, official API should be a priority. It would not only support the community's innovation but also provide a reliable foundation that developers and users can trust for the long term.
As long as a stable, official API isn't provided, I won't be buying a new device from them.
I realized there was already a device that was perfect for note taking on an infinite canvas.
I use an iPad and Apple Pencil (bought refurb on backmarket.com) with paper like surface [1] I install nothing in it except Apple Freeform. (No distractions)
High refresh rate, Retina display, excellent pen pressure, and fast chip. Cheaper than RM2 if bought refurb.
How do you uninstall Safari? That's the most distracting app of all.
Open Shortcuts.
Go to Automations.
Create one, for App, when Safari is opened, run immediately.
Create a new blank shortcut.
Add one action: go to Home Screen.
Now when you open Safari, it instantly closes again. You can disable that by turning off the automation. It’s more of a slap on the wrist than a handcuff, but a reminder that you don’t want to use the app on that device.
I'm a mathematician and my "creations" are small notes, comments, and very simple figures.
I've never (besides flipping pages) experienced any noticable lag or delay.
I find the page concept limiting (for me). I scrawl something but I need an infinite canvas to relate multiple ideas (my mind doesn’t work so linearly). That’s when refresh rate matters a lot.
Also matters when skimming. Eink displays are not conducive to skimming over many pages. That problem is solved on LED displays and paper, but not epaper.
I had to switch to a Boox though, as I grew bored of having to maintain a Windows VM with a downgraded Calibre to convert my Amazon purchases to ebooks for reading on the Remarkable. I now have my Boox with the Amazon Kindle app and can natively read my books, and the writing feeling is almost as good as on the Remarkable.
Personally, I like the bigger form factor better, both for reading and writing, could even be a bit bigger for reading PDFs.
After a short period of writing on ePaper, I'm now back to real paper. It's just a much better writing experience, lighter in the pocket, cheaper, more flexible (rearrange, give away, lay out on a table), more practical (write while you read, use big sheets when you need it), etc., etc.
A folded sheet and a small pen is all it takes. ePaper for writing might have a use case in professional workflows, but for personal use, it's a nice idea in theory, but not in practice, in my opinion.
I use my DC-1 all the time, but I have so much more impulse control over my usage. The lack of color and the lack of notifications means it is very much not overstimulating, and I only use it if I make a conscious decision to.
Quick edit: it might be worth mentioning that I wrote this on my DC-1.
Honestly, a large percentage of my time on my tablet is using bluesky and youtube, but as I said, it feels much more intentional than on my phone. I don't get sucked into rabbit holes. I check on my friends, check out my subscriptions, and then move on (to be fair on the youtube side, I also use newpipe to block all recommendations, comments, etc so it's much easier for me to avoid the rabbit holes because of that too).
Another very large portion of my usage is in handwriting notes, and medium to long form reading. I don't find myself annotating PDFs, but that is not really a workflow I have sought after.
If you are really worried about using youtube and other vices, the DC-1 may not be for you. Other e-paper devices (particularly E-Ink TM devices) are going to struggle a lot more with youtube than the DC-1 does. Youtube in here is not as overstimulating and addictive, but it is still very much available and usable.
I got a PineNote and it had a $100 import duty
This device for me is odd/too small it's like you'd have 2 phones. Though I've seen those e-ink phones.
The writing feel is great on the RM2 and the battery life wow. Charge it once a month deal.
Haven't tried OCR on it, but I've heard other e-Readers have them beat on that end too.
There used to be people selling theirs on the supernote reddit, did that stop? I haven't been active for a few years.
- Paper-like feel? Actual paper still wins.
- Undo, folders, search, tags? Flipping through a notebook and adding sticky notes gets you there faster.
- Templates? A $10 pad of graph or dotted paper gives infinite variety.
Handwriting-to-text and cloud sync is perhaps the strongest case, but even there it's probably faster to draft on paper and digitize with keyboard or speech.
I see the benefits over paper as:
- Search. Still in beta, but you can now search handwritten notes. Seems to work well even with my scrawl.
- Integrations. Just "send to Slack" for now but rumours from YouTuber Kit Betts that more are coming.
- Working at night. The backlight, whilst lacking in temperature control, is handy at night or when ambient lighting is poor.
- Backups. Annoying it's a paid subscription, but I consider it more like insurance against data loss at $3 per month.
I am not thinking security against state actor, rather people within same household/office who might have too much curiosity.
In the airport or on the plane, I download papers I want to read or have to review.
On touchdown, my reviews are synced and I can send the annotated paper by email.
It does a bit more than a literal notepad.
They have some great features. Chief among them IMO is the ability to stream the tablet's screen to a desktop app, which you can then in turn share into a Zoom call and the like.
The issue for me is that as I began to spend more and more time in VR/AR - first with the Meta Quest 2/3 and Pimax Crystal, and then with the Apple Vision Pro - I simply stopped taking written notes while working. Now I mostly use it as a very fancy (and expensive!) eReader.
Couple that with the fact that most of what I was writing down as notes is now context that I shove in prompts and/or agent context files... I simply don't use it enough to justify keeping it.
They've fallen behind IMO with the rise of AI. This device would be amazing if they would automatically transcribe documents on the backend, feed them into a RAG, and allow access via a chatbot. They don't, though, and their API is undocumented and difficult to use. That kills it for me.
I should probably list it on eBay or Facebook Marketplace at this point, and put those funds toward something that gets more use.
Which part? The VR part, or the AI stuff?
For VR, the tech honestly isn't there yet. I fell down that rabbit hole when I started playing combat flight sims regularly, and then managed to get my employer to buy me an AVP. I never really had "VR sickness", but what little discomfort I did have faded within a couple of week. I probably spend ~40-60h / week on average in VR now, but honestly don't keep close track of it.
> First, now that you spend so much time in VR, why does that kill your need to take notes?
Not at all, it's just effectively impossible to do so by writing while wearing a VR headset. The AVP comes closest to allowing it, but the passthrough resolution isn't quite good enough to make it work well.
> Are you somehow taking notes in VR?
Yep. For most things I use Markdown in Neovim. I have an mkdocs site configured to run locally whenever I have a terminal open, and push changes to a remote git repo regularly. I've considered moving to Obsidian, but am still not sold on the proprietary stuff.
Increasingly, I've been using STT and AI tools to speak my thoughts and record them that way. I've not settled on a "final" tech stack for that, but Limitless (and their Pendant) has been working well enough so far.
> Do you find that these notes are as effective and personal as real writing?
No.
Despite the VR and AI stuff, I'm an analog person at heart. I'm in my early 40s. I wear a fully analog watch (I don't find smartwatches worth it). I collect and restore fountain pens, and have one with me pretty much at all times.
Handwriting it by far the most effective way to keep notes. I believe that's because it's slow enough that you have to synthesize your thoughts at the same time you're writing, which in turn leads to better initial understanding and likely commitment to long-term memory.
> Do you put everything you write into an LLM now and trust that it’ll be searchable forever and the AI won’t lose its context?
Sort of.
I don't put everything in there, of course. Limitless is for non-work stuff, as I work in healthtech and don't want our IP stored there without a BAA in place. It works well enough for personal stuff, though.
For work, I have a transcript file that I keep for each day that I use my STT stuff that contains the raw text that I said. That's accurate enough that I trust it. From those files, I have AI create a summary of topics. Those are then fed into a simple RAG that can reference the summaries and the original files as needed.
I figure this approach means that I can always create new summaries or move to another workflow in the future if I want. For now, it's been at least as effective in terms of lookup as manually typing notes. Transcription errors are very rare and easy enough to figure out if I ever need to correct them. They're far more comprehensive, though. I can dump an entire meeting into a transcript, then go back and figure out exactly what was said and by whom.
Feeding Zoom's transcripts into the RAG has saved my ass a couple of times. I've privately asked a chatbot what I'd said about a given topic in the past while on a call, then used that context to make sure I'm using the same arguments in support of a position that I did six months ago - or found that position has changed and called that out to the others on the call.
The one feature I miss is the ability to split the screen and have two items open at the same time. Like a PDF journal in one and taking notes on it in the other.
Can you do that on the RPP? I've not really kept up with features other than to check for AI integrations (which they still don't have to my knowledge)
I’ve ordered refurbed Paper Pro and Move.
Things that excited me about the device:
- with significant AI use I feel I need this more than ever. Drafting, thinking, note taking, annotating etc. - it looks wonderful for todos, shopping lists etc. - width designed to work with Paper Pro (and the landscape mode experience seems solid from reviews), so I will try the dual device setup - I didn’t always have RM2 with me, and I’m hoping this will now change to genuinely always. - I learned to love the constraints and for example I’ve discovered a love of Brandon Sanderson, Liu Cixin, Cory Doctorow, and countless other authors precisely because I went all in on DRM free ebooks, I want to expand that to graphic novels also hence the paper pro. - I do get random inspiration and obsidian has been my powerhouse for oh the go notes but I’m hoping scrybble.ink will now let me bring remarkable documents into obsidian. - very un-invasive to take notes in conversations etc.
Sure it’s a complete indulgence, but it helps me to enjoy note taking, being my library with me etc. and I find constraints foster my creativity and exploration and I lean into them.
But their note-taking software is just crap. They have very weak language support, no Chinese, no Russian, or any other languages with non-Latin scripts. They don't even have software keyboards for them!
But then I did exactly what they're probably scared of and thought about that impulse some more.
Most people bring either full-on laptops or huge padded notebooks with them into meetings. Me bringing my full-sized reMarkable was never an issue, and writing on it has been glorious. Bringing a smaller device wouldn't net the benefit I initially thought it would.
What I would LOVE to do with a Paper Pro is replace my BOOX Page 7 with it. I use my Page to read books and stuff on Reddit and posts on Hacker News. It works perfectly for this. However, Onyx has a very shady history with Android. They refuse to contribute to Android upstream, their ABIs are closed-source and, IIRC, their devices are stuck on older Android versions due to GMS certification issues. I trust reMarkable much more than I trust Onyx.
Nonetheless, they are dead-set on making their devices purely for note taking, so I have no reason to buy this, as cool as it looks.
Regardless, expected better support response for a product in this price range.
The solution i was told (and which worked for me) was to plug it into a computer for a while - I assume that some time syncing must happen in the background when it’s connected via usb.
However my need is personal rather than professional usage, so I didn't get one in the end.
What I have found that is (to me) better is an ipad mini "pencil", with goodnotes. The pen is ok, not as good as a wacom, but it'll do.
Goodnotes does have a subscription, but it also works on mac as well, so it allows me to get access to it when my ipad is else where. It exports to PDF well.
I only really use it to make notes/designs. The handwriting transcription isn't going to work well for my handwriting, but it does a reasonable job, given how hard my scrawls are to read. For that it works well, is about the same price as a remarkable, and does other things apart from note taking.
But, that is also its downside. You can do other things, which means distractions. Obviously you can make your notes richer by copy/pasta from the internets, but also you can be distracted by the internets too.
They use the Linux kernel and some GPL software. They've made a change with Remarkable Paper Pro to only allow SSH access once the user has put the device in "developer mode". The device is marked as compromised until it is restored to factory or something else is done to it. It's not clear to me how the device is restored to factory or restored at all.
They provide tarball dumps via https://github.com/reMarkable/linux-imx-rm instead of a proper git repository for the kernel. Why is it so hard to find people able to push a git repository to Github? These dumps are also rather useless if they still lack the source code for the frame buffer and the display. https://github.com/reMarkable/linux is the Linux kernel for the older remarkable 2 and the remarkable 1. The kernel code from the Github repository for my remarkable 2 wasn't the one they shipped in the latest version running on my device a few months ago. There was a newer minor patch version running on my device.
The devices are very tied to the cloud account and their application. You must have an account and you must use their application if you want to use this device fully, even offline. The network over USB feature makes it possible to back up/download/restore documents. EPUB document handling is abysmal without their application installed on the PC. They really want their customers to use their software, to have an account and to use their cloud services. It's a non-starter if you really don't want to be locked in. EPUB documents still have issues on my Remarkable 2 due to the bugs their USB based document transfer tool has. Many documents simply fail to transfer without any feedback. They probably only update the account-based software they force people to use to get as much money from subscriptions as possible.
Hardware repairs for these devices are also not looking good. You're most like out of luck if the warranty has expired for your device. They couldn't care less. They’ll gladly sell you yet another device which has to be recycled when the battery isn’t able to hold a charge for more than a few minutes.
I wouldn't recommend any product from this company. This company's good old days are over. They've taken money from investors. They want to charge their customers as much as possible. The en*****ification is almost complete.
So if devices like these try to beat paper, even if the hardware is perfect, it comes down to software and how open it is. As a serious note-taker one would think this was the perfect device for me, but I checked out the software side of things and it did not convince me. Paper is still superior.
My biggest gripe with it originally was that the next and previous page gestures worked perhaps one in three attempts, which has been fixed in the most recent software that reduced the perceived latency of everything dramatically. Beyond that it’s a weird experience, it’s sort of usable with open source tools but requires a lot of hacks to not have it sync with their cloud offering if you want privacy. Even if you use their cloud services it often feels a bit clunky and half considered where buttons and controls end up being.
I love the hardware, it’s an amazing looking screen, it feels ultra premium, the folio cases people have made for it fit perfectly in my bag.
If I could easily just use it as a text terminal -- with emacs and ssh support -- I would use it every day. But when I looked up the hacking side of things it looked like a lot of work and kind of sketchy.
That killed my interest in their previous devices.
Scribe lets you read your kindle books, draw on them, and write notes. Hard to get the notes off the device.
RM lets you sync automatically. The rest of their software is total junk (see App Store ratings). It was more glitchy. Marginally better writing. Monthly fee.
Both make exporting notes more difficult than it should be.
My current go to - paper and pen with chatgpt app on phone - snap a photo to extract my writing.
I kept the scribe for reading books - rarely use it over the kindle app on my phone.
Hope it works for you though- love the idea.
- I don't need to take pictures manually, all lectures are automatically stored, and much easier to flip through instead of a library of photos (which I'd have to later organize).
- I use the screenshare feature which turns my Remarkable into a whiteboard. I could get an actual whiteboard but then we're back to taking manual pictures in the middle of lessons, which will definitely be an impedance.
I‘m not sure what you‘re writing but sending it all to a US cloud - do you not care about privacy at all?
I haven't looked much since shortly after a launch of the original scribe but I was infuriated to find out that they didn't have a straightforward or simple API for extracting notes and that wasn't something they had on the road map for immediately after release either.
To the best of my knowledge, there is still no convenient way to extract handwritten scribbles and store them as an SVG alongside OCR inside of an obsidian vault. I would love to be proven wrong on this though.
If you don't plan to do a ton of handwriting, the scribe is a gorgeous and large screen. Reading long form documents on it would be a treat if it wasn't such a pain in the ass to side load and synchronize PDFs.
Now I just do everything through my iPad with a pencil and it's almost as good...
I got a boox air note 4c with the original intention of using it for comic books with some basic coloring, but have found it significantly more useful for notetaking over anything else. UX is still abysmal in some ways that make starting notes a chore, but it's increased my note taking and journaling significantly.
Plus, remote teams would really benefit from a shared whiteboard device. A device with infinite scroll in both directions and shared editing. I mean, really adding infinite scroll and collaborative editing to existing remarkable devices would cover that use case.
That said, special paper isn’t a huge ask, and it increases accuracy immensely. I worked for a company that used this tech years ago, and it was impressive not only for text, but marking up maps, collecting data from forms, etc.
I like the analog ability to toss paper all over my desk without worrying about damaging whatever I balance it on.
And I do like physical paper because you can split a stack and make “more screens”
I guess this is getting a bit niche. But it seems like these companies are already trying to play in a niche market segment…
Maybe I just need a camera to scan my notes or something, haha.
I was considering reMarkable when upgrading my ebook reader with note taking capabilities, but it's mostly a notepad with an option for ebooks (and not the other way around) and the subscription model on top of $500 hardware was ridiculous.
Running Android or iOS apps is an anti-feature. Having cellular data is an anti-feature. Our world is full of trillion dollar corporations fighting as hard as they can to distract us, drive engagement, and get us staring at their wall for as long as possible.
My reMarkable 2 is the best focus device I have. It's the best writing device by far, the best "draw some woodworking plans" device, the best "work on a crossword puzzle" device, and a very good reading device (page navigation is slower than Kindle, but being able to read PDFs designed for 8.5x11 which are unreadable on Kindle makes it a wash).
On an iPad, at any moment there could be a toast from Signal, or Discord, or Messenger, or whatever. There's a web browser full of infinite content on Reddit and YouTube. I can go on a plane and have a physical book in front of me but it's no match for the allure of the internet if there's Wi-Fi. The reMarkable is one of the only devices out there that fixes the distraction aspect, and THAT is the single biggest thing between me and achieving things.
Don't install any of these apps, and use a Shortcut (described somewhere else on this page). It's really not that hard -- I've done it. Then stick a paper-like sheet on it.
And voila, your iPad is now a better ReMarkable. The Apple Pencil is more amazing than most pens, the resolution and refresh rate on a Retina Display is unmatched.
The key to not getting tired on a tablet is responsiveness -- something no eInk device achieves. I regularly do math derivations on Freeform for hours without being distracted.
I realized after trying a bunch of expensive distraction-free devices over the years that for me, none of them were worth it.
Apple provides a fairly sophisticated set of focus modes and distraction prevention features.
Wouldn't a paper notebook be better for that? (I feel the appeal of the device, but I don't know if it's just tech lust)
Oddly, no one gets offended if you scribble with your Apple Pencil. It looks like you're taking notes.
If you want a really nice A5 notebook it can run you an entire twenty five bucks. https://www.dickblick.com/products/leuchtturm1917-sketchbook... Wanna share what's on it? Your phone has a camera, right?
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the similarity in size to the Apple Newton MessagePad from the 90s:
Original MessagePad: 184 x 114 mm (7.25 x 4.5 in)
reMarkable Paper Pro Move: 195.6 x 107.8 mm (7.7 x 4.24 in)
No comparison in thickness though, with the Newton being about 3x the thickness of the reMarkable (19 mm vs 6.5 mm).
I take a lot of notes, schematics, etc in paper notes a5 and I was thinking about moving to digital world, but definietely not for the price of any remarkable device…
Got kindle for reading - and I just love it, got back at reading everyday, and that was problematic with standard, paper books.
Two separate reasons.
One: they design hardware very poorly, and when advised and shown, do not fix it. I am convinced this is on purpose, and this saddens me. I can share my email exchange where i advised them on this. Did not go anywhere. This has been the cause of a lot of broken USB C ports on remarkable2. I have documented this extensively with photos on multiple devices. No sane person places a USB-C port that will interact with the a real user in the real world, handling insertion/removal forces on the very very edge (less than 1mm from edge) of a very very thin (0.4m thick IIRC) PCB, without affixing it to something else as well -- to take the load. They did. Predictably, it breaks.
Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/eu4P8fnaNtV9vhMo7 . The video in there, via microscope, you can see how the contacts peeled off. Larger photos show the PCB and how the connector is "affixed". Final photo is after it was fixed, but before the epoxy was added by me
Two: they took features that were part of the original very expensive product, bought under the understanding that "I pay you much $$, you do not nickel and dime me ever again", and locked them behind paywalls of monthly service years after original purchase. They did sort-of grandfather-in all existing users, but not if you reset the device or gift/transfer it. Devaluing/crippling products post facto is something that should never be rewarded. Companies that do that should fail.
Please help reMerkable fail for the above anti-user behaviour. They deserve it.
They replaced mine the first time this happened. Now my replacement broke and they aren't replacing it :(.
With that being said, I'm still very happy with my RM2. I purchased a "V-Pen" as a replacement and it's working okay. I'm lucky enough to have a free connect subscription for life because I purchased it early enough.
This feature is only available in the beta version built from current master, not in the current 9.0.0 release.
There's also the Fujitsu Quaderno gen 3 as well - half the weight but can't do epub or mobi.
Like the Sony DPT readers, the Quaderno is would be great product ... however,
1. there is no customer service in the EU/US markets. Something broke? Bin it. 2. the devices are quite fragile, with poor longevity. 3. the closed source software does not support modern systems such as Apple's M4 Macbook series.
Disclaimer:
If you're reading and annotating a lot of full-sized PDFs, then bigger is better. But for just taking notes, drawing diagrams, etc, I found a smaller device was a lot more portable and convenient.
Are there no tablets that support proper digital formats that would support the basics of paragraph selection and text reflow? (assuming you convert all your handwriting into digital text)
I regret buying the Kobo Libra Colour, solely because of the display. You pretty much need the backlight on any time it isn't in direct sunlight, and even then the contrast is worse than a first-generation monochrome E Ink display, and the saturation is pretty low. Monochrome text is also a bit fuzzy.
The Bigme Galy display works in the same lighting as monochrome displays, with nearly as good of contrast. Saturation with primary colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow) is excellent, and with secondary colors it's not as good but still better than the Kaleido display. Magenta is the most vibrant, so green struggles the most.
The Gallery display does take several times longer to refresh in full color mode, but it has a monochrome mode that refreshes at a similar rate to monochrome eink displays on ebook readers, so you get dynamically chose between color or speed.
Both ereaders have laughably bad software, so that didn't have a net affect on my preferences.
My fav feature so far has been screensharing from the ReMarkable 2 while on online meetings.
So while their whole thing is about replacing paper, it actually does a lot more than just that.
* Phone-sized instead of tablet-sized
* Has color
* Has reading light
* Sensors detect when a folio is open or closed
Everything else is the same. Am I missing anything?
The difference being the reMarkable Paper Pro not only has color + reading light on top of reMarkable 2, the writing experience as well as the stylus are different from the reMarkable 2.
Now the "Pro"...
Inexplicable price point
They sold me a tablet they touted as having hundreds of pressure levels and most of the simulated writing implements only recognize about 4.
My biggest complaint is that I hoped to be able to use it to make sketches and diagrams I could use on websites or art projects, or do live drawings like it was a digital version of an overhead projector. It works like garbage for both use cases because the software ecosystem has no support at all for anything but the ultra-low-quality stroking algorithms that are used on-device. Put those pen strokes that looked so beautiful on e-ink up on a 4k monitor and they just look like the cheapest of cheap garbage because there's no pressure interpolation at all...!!!
But for the life of me, this thing screams to have a calendar app. My life involves plenty of meetings now. If I could take this to one meeting and look at it to see what my next meeting will be, I think I’d never want anything else.
Not anything fancy. Not even a way to add or edit appointments. Just show me a list of where I’m supposed to to be today.
(And to anyone who’s about to point out that I could lot that info down at my desk before I get up to walk to the meeting room, lemme stop you right there. That’s not happening.)
all the information is pretty public: https://developer.remarkable.com/documentation/software-stac...
Ironically the $2 aliexpress lcd pad I bought gets more use than my remarkable these days (same as https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BBPV4491 )
We have C levels's clambering for these things but we cant secure them and manage them. FIX IT! we'll buy them and use them but you guys need to grow up and mature your product first!
If your enterprise does not have the expertise to handle that, you need chromebooks I guess.
https://lengrand.fr/impressions-on-the-remarkable-2-one-mont...
Paper has edges. Remarkable is marketed as digital paper. Give me some fricken edge FFS.
If you're reading comics, then maybe, because this device is expensive precisely for the colored-e-ink screen. But even then better alternatives for that usecase probably exist, as the e-ink space is filled with Android based devices with better format compatibility.
I really just want to turn my Remarkable 2 as an extended monitor with note taking... I'm on an article, send it there in one click or so and done.
I haven't used it in a while so that might be something that exists now and I'd be oblivious to it...