Remarkable Pro Colors
thregr.org
thregr.org
Since receiving the RMPP Move for Christmas, it has become my go-to daily device and other than the obtuse name, I am almost entirely pleased with it.
The writing experience is fantastic. I was skeptical of the pen change from the RM2 but it's been pleasant overall.
Its form-factor seems odd when you read the specs, but it works rather well in practice. It's easy to toss in a bag and go, and does fit in most of my pockets if I need to. It's much more convenient for traveling as an addition to the laptop.
It syncs with my RM2 with minimal issue with scale. Sometimes you have to zoom in but this is easy and natural.
The colors are a nice addition but hardly the main attraction.
The backlight makes it excellent for writing at morning or night in bed without disturbing the S.O..
The minimalism is a feature.
It does okay for PDFs, but that is far from its purpose.
I use it daily for notes, task management, and little printable logic games.
My only minor nits are: changing pens (for logic games mostly) takes more taps than on the RM2. The palm detection is somewhat lacking compared to the RM2 - it tends to change pages or change the zoom level unintentionally when writing on certain parts of the screen. This could be more about my usage of it. I really wish I could add links and/or a table of contents to notes on the device. I wish the zoom level would stick between pages or could be locked in for a document.
I frankly _cannot_ recommend the Paper Pro if you already have the 2. It is way too expensive for something that is almost a sidestep instead of an upgrade.
Is it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_electronic_signature ?
(This is not to say I fully agree with these, but these are the criticisms I see a lot online)
Often when I say this on HN I get told reading is not the purpose of the device, which is really strange since it is one of the mentioned purposes of the device on their site, and also because I just generally find people who don't read what they're writing, or read the text they are making notes in, to be strange people.
on edit: Of course mine is from a few years ago, and have not purchased another for the reasons given above, but have looked at it in the store and it didn't seem to be improved, and obviously it is not the Pro Move under discussion here.
It’s perfectly adequate for writing on, but so far I’ve almost never used the fact that it has (a rudimentary set of) colours, though.
If you are generally happy with the RM2 then the form factor is probably the only reason to upgrade or swap that ends up being worth it. Most Best Buys carry Remarkables and offer an opportunity to feel it before deciding.
It's encouraging to hear you have had a good experience with it. Maybe I'll grab one if they ever go on sale!
Is there anything beyond your minor nits that you would caution someone like me about before buying?
What swayed me in the end was the software and repairability. Supernote actually released their syncing backend as a Docker image, so I can just roll my own and never have to touch any third-party cloud. All of my notes just live as normal files on my home server. The repairability is similarly open - Supernote sells all the replacement parts on their website. I guess this is the reason the build is not as nice as any Remarkable. But, for me, this sacrifice is worth it, given I plan to use the tablet as long as it can take me.
Supernote has full-fledged Linux support in the official pipeline. It has gotten postponed quite recently, so the devices still run on their customized Android distribution only. But even in the current state, I feel more ownership over my HW and SW than I would with Remarkable.
If they do though then I won't update and won't buy the next model. I can imagine them doing it for a new model for already sold one that'd be a first.
FWIW if you really want ownership and don't care much for weight the PineNote is probably the best our there, able to run Android (with root) but also Linux proper.
Really quite disappointing, the device could have been a lot more useful with even a tiny bit of energy spent releasing source code for things they already developed.
That aside, the Remarkable Paper Pro is one of the biggest deltas I have ever seen between hardware and software quality. The hardware feels and looks great. I was pretty excited when I unboxed it by it. That all disappeared rapidly as I started using it. Their entire user experience is terrible, and just shockingly unuseful. I don't understand who it's designed for, because it doesn't seem to do anything well.
Yeah, this bothers me a lot with mine too (an RM2). I can't believe how heavily I have to press to get full line width on many tools, it's harder than I press when I use an eraser on a stubborn mark in real life.
Responsiveness wise... the latency on common actions has increased incredibly in the past couple of years. Not pen drawing, that's still excellent, but general UI navigation and recognizing taps and long presses and whatnot have really gotten bad. At this point I've got it rolled back to 2.x almost all the time, which is also a whole lot more moddable than 3.x. I like many of the UI changes and additions in 3 (except infinitely vertically scrollable stuff, that keeps screwing up and interpreting taps and swipes as vertical scrolls when there's absolutely no additional content to show, so it just stops responding for a second while it scrolls three pixels down, and I would be thrilled if I could disable it completely), but not at the cost of responsiveness.
Dual boot (disable updates and install any two you like): https://remarkable.guide/tech/dualboot.html
Some lower level details here: https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable-hacks/issues/304
And installing a specific release is largely automated: https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable-update
Last time I did it, I just did it manually - back up the OS version you want over ssh, then restore it whenever you want (on the non-active partition). And screwed it up the first time, and had to do a recovery: https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-recovery (requires using the contact pads on the spine for USB access - not too hard to solder up a pogo pin thing, but might take some time to get the parts).
So I'd recommend the automated way, though I haven't tried it yet :)
There's a (single) relatively active discord server if you want specific Q&As with other people too, or to double check whatever the current recommendations are (probably do that, as I'm somewhat out of date): https://discord.com/invite/nQ6nHwfDfc
And do definitely back up your data partition before making any major version movements tho, in case something doesn't work right and you need to roll back. I forget if/when that's necessary, but it's a good safety net just in case. And <8GB isn't much to store just in case.
I currently use RCU (Remarkable Connection Utility) to extract my highlights: https://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/
Would let you soft proof how any spot color you've used in a PDF will come through for folks using the color device, and fix ability to distinguish before shipping (much as spot colored PDF creators should be checking for color-blindness variants).
If you care about colors, do NOT buy that or any other e-ink devices IMHO. The colors are washed out.
If you NEED colors in some situations (e.g. reading research papers with important graphics, charts) or enjoy some hints of colors (e.g. manga covers) then why not. It's way WAY better than black&white for colored contents.
Finally, and that's THE #1 use case, if you take notes or sketch diagrams, and would like a dash of color here and there, then it's literally another dimension.
I was hoping that it would be a way to read through the comics I bought on Humble Bundle, but the colors are so washed out that I still just read them on a computer screen.
I have no idea what the engineering challenges are with making color e-ink, but they must be enormous because I (and many others) would pay considerable money for good color on e-ink.
I'm not a fan of Kaleido, as you say the colours are underwhelming, and the RGB filter attenuates light so the contrast is noticeably worse than classic mono e-ink. Gallery is way more expensive and slower to refresh though, so pick your poison.
This is the level of improvement in eInk over 20 years.
Somewhat related, I feel like I'm waiting for a proper color e ink digital frame for decades now. If anyone knows such a device that they personally use and can recommend, please share.
The little tiny pocket (Go) was pretty neat but yeah.
Even with the limited amount of usability, the community has already made some amazing additions, for example KOReader. Imagine how far we'd get if we can just write any app we want for reMarkable. I would completely get a typefolio and ditch my laptop if I have the ability to *easily* write my own app on the reMarkable without going through the loops of binary patching and other quirks.
The rest has been released a few times, though last I checked it was quite out of date. Far from ideal, but still significantly better than most companies: https://developer.remarkable.com/
The change was when amazon stopped allowing access to kindle book files, which I could convert to epub or pdf for viewing on remarkable.
We have a little desk in the living room and I want to hang a monitor on the wall, that shows pictures when not using it.
I wonder if the similarity of a faded photo (like a faded polaroid) might have helped with this, especially if already has memories and some similar photos.
I have not used a e-ink tablet in a long time (since the Kobo Glo), but since I've stopped reading fiction, I do not really see the allure of devices for myself. They're far too expensive to use as an alternative to a notebook, screens as usually too small to read technical non-fiction textbooks (Think, PDFs instead of EPUBs), and if I wanted to look at media with colors, I do not think most current color e-ink displays are good enough for a pleasing experience. I think, like the author said, it is nice to use a digital photo frame that does not need to be recharged often and can easily swap out the photos.
If so, I found it very laborious. But I understand those who complain; the colors really have a LOT of room for improvement.
It's just remarkable how they keep shooting themselves in the foot. Their hardware is great, but their software just sucks. And for no real reason, as far as I can understand. They technically do have a cloud subscription that needs to lock out users, I guess?
For example, they don't have handwriting recognition for non-Latin languages. They don't even have on-screen _keyboards_ for non-Latin languages. Their note-taker sucks. Their "remote whiteboard" feature doesn't work reliably. Etc.
Just open source it all, and allow people to fix it. It's clear that your in-house developers can't do that.
Was the subscription income worth it?
I have two devices with lifetime (RM 1 + 2)
RM was very generous giving it to all devices bought before the service came out.
It's only $5/mo iirc w/ no hard limits, not a bad deal to sync your docs, pdfs, and books tbh.
Are you affiliated with the company?
I just like the product and thought the free lifetime was nice.
Would be nice to work there for a year or so to implement a wishlist of features for the OS though.
Joplin has a paid subscription sync service and is free and open source software.
It's a different business model, but it's possible.
Based on this, I don't think their hardware is great, either.