This is the biggest minus point for me. I want devices that I own, that I can use like I want to. I don't want to be caught in another cloud and pay monthly for something I don't want to use.
Currently I'm looking into getting a device from Onyx, because those support the Android App Stores, so I could set it up with Notion or my Nextcloud probably.
Remarkable seems to have better hardware (as in screen and writing), though.
edit: lots of people mentioning that you have SSH on the Remarkable. Good thing, but fiddling with shell scripts (yeah, no big deal for others, new for me) to sync with a cloud service of your choice... not sure I want that.
Yeah, it is annoying that there is so little competition. I was made aware of this after being a very happy Boox (A4 size; I use it literally for everything I used paper for before when reading, writing, sketching, flow charts, mockups etc) user for 6 months. I am not going to toss it away and so far, after trying the reMarkable from a friend, I would buy the Boox again instead... ...if not this gpl issue.
Edit: also, I believe one of the people in that reddit thread might have the correct answer; the eInk drivers (and probably more notably the waveform) will be proprietary and they do probably worry about losing their license if they publish anything they are not allowed to. Which would end their business immediately.
The GPL issue doesnt matter for your buying decision. In fact, becoming a client expand your voice: you can now say you're even paying support already to listen to you whine about why they didnt publish the 5 patches they made to some broadcom drivers.
In good faith, I’ll assume this entire thing isn’t sarcastic.
Buying stuff from entities violating whatever will only solidify what they are doing. Support isn’t spending time any way with gpl stuff. They aren’t going to read a paying customers complaints any more than any one else.
I have another similar device, the Boyue Likebook Mars, and it's so close to being great.
In addition to the license compliance issues, I assume these cheap Chinese devices are siphoning off all my data to parts unknown. The last I checked, you couldn't even root the thing.
I trust reMarkable more, so I might eventually buy one to replace the Mars. But a device like the Onyx/Boyue e-ink tablets that was more open (ideally: running LineageOS) would be close to ideal.
Edit: I forgot about the PineNote, which is probably the best option on the horizon for those who don't trust these Chinese Android distros: https://www.pine64.org/pinenote/ - I should probably go pre-order one :)
You need to show that you are serious about developing for eInk note-taking devices to get in the first developer-only PineNote batch: at least serious enough to fill in a form describing your note-taking development credentials :). Or maybe they'd really let anyone have it who writes convincing enough prose about what they plan to develop on it. :)
I'd love to develop apps for PineNote (or reMarkable even), but I am being realistic when I say that I won't get around to it.
I have a remarkable v2, and I don't use their online services. I just wanted to replace a pen-and-paper notebook, and read occasional PDFs on it. It works fine as an ereader and brilliantly as an e-notebook. If better hardware is the key criterion for you, I'd go for the remarkable and just ignore the services.
The cool thing about it is you can SSH into it/do whatever you want from what I've read. There are some cool repos out there (check the sub). Eventually... I would like to mess around with it. It is a cool device though, the drawing feeling because the screen is textured and it "feels good" writing on it. It's thin and lasts a long time. Has it changed my life or anything, no not really it mostly sits with my SG2 that I will use at some point.
As an aside, I also use this drawing (Krita) graphics tablet Kamvas Pro 12 GT-116 as an external monitor, just for anyone looking for a "drawing workflow extension" of some sort. I have used Sketch on the SG2 that's pretty nice too.
Both comments are super helpful. It's hard to have a third device that acts as a zoom white board that actually works. Used to use the giant surface hub studio that's on a swivel but it's way overkill
Well, from the review it does state that their hardware is Linux based, and you have root access. The device is not locked down in the way a Kindle is.
So it sounds like you do, in fact, own this particular device when you buy it. You could write applications for syncing files to your OwnCloud instance or whatever you’d like.
The hardware isn't better on the Remarkable. It's a slower weaker chipset than what's used on any of the Oynx devices and the screen in the RM2 is literally the same part as what is in the Oynx Note Air. Both use Wacom EMR for writing so you can use the same pens and nibs on both.
Remarkable has a plastic layer to improve writing feel and optimized software to get pen latency down. The Oynx Note Air 2 supposedly also has improved writing feel but I'm not sure how it compares.
So I have the note air 2, and the reMarkable because reasons.
The reMarkable feels like writing on paper. The Note Air 2 feels like writing on a piece of plastic. The reMarkable wins there.
The latency on both is about the same, in my opinion. The reMarkable might hesitate when you erase something big, but then it's completely gone. Switching pages takes just enough time to be annoying. On the Note Air 2, erasing is just as laggy. But, page switches are almost instantaneous. BUT, you will see a shadow of the previous page literally every time you switch pages.
For my money, the RM2 is worth it compared to the note air series.
I only have the Note Air 1 and I don't see any ghosting on page switches in the notes app. But they are running different firmware so who knows. Other apps it's settings dependent but you can set it to refresh every page turn if you want.
I'm sure RM feel is better but I bring up it's a plastic layer/nib feel and not something specifically built into the device. It's possible to get a better writing feel with a screen protector and a different nib on the Note Air. For me, writing is secondary to reading and the RM is just too limited in that regard.
The subscription mode is for syncing your content on their cloud storage.
One of the nice features of the remarkable device is that they allow you to ssh on the device and run your software on it. There is a community who builds various tools that run on the device. I didn't check recently but I'm pretty sure you have one or more open options to sync your content to your remote storage of choice.
This is about the features they enable through their easy to use UI.
You're free to not like it, but that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the fact that this is one of the few platforms where I can ssh onto the underlying Linux host and run my damn software and extend it in various ways, which includes syncing docs with whatever storage system I want. Surely, this is for "hackers" use only. This is what I like about this and I'm happy to accept the tradeoff.
That's not entirely true, you DO get syncing with no plan, just not unlimited syncing. But yes, I agree it is expensive for just connecting to somebody else's service.
"Just connecting to someone elses service" is a pretty thankless job in my opinion.
I write software that can connect to 3rd party services. It takes a lot of effort to make sure it all works. There's always stuff that breaks randomly, and it's really hard to debug because you typically get only vague error messages when something fails, and you can't debug from the server side.
So you end up spending way too much time making sure your product is compatible with some service, just so your customers can spend money on 3rd party services that you don't earn money from.
The subscription mode is likely primarily there for syncing their bank account with bank accounts of VCs who price everything in multiples of monthly recurring revenue. Probably not gonna end well.
Without a subscription they have no incentive to update the software of already sold or older model ( which they already do). Considering the price and the niche market, they probably can't rely on future sales only to improve the software.
As a relatively fragile portable device with a limited-life sealed battery, which is essential to people who adopt it, there is a nice replacement market. Being nice to your users by providing relative low-cost maintenance software updates should more than pay for itself.
No need to include new features, they can be sold for a one-off optional fee to old device users. Subscription is worse here: it provides weaker feedback from users to the developers, who have a harder time knowing if the new features are useless or damaging to the user experience. Products don't always benefit from constant gratuitous updates.
A subscription doesn't give someone an incentive to update software.
If anything, it does the opposite: if I'll get paid whether I add a feature or not, why spend the money to add the feature when I could just pocket the money?
That's why companies love the subscription model so much: Instead of having to find compelling new features and updates to sell new versions or attract new customers, they can just sit back, put their feet up and the money keeps flowing in.
You’re making a lot of faulty assumptions about how customers engage with subscription models. When I pay for software every month, I’m evaluating the value of it every month. That includes things like the update frequency, how often I use it, etc.
I know subscription pricing isn’t popular around here, but these wild speculations about how things work are getting a little silly. Especially coming from people who, I’m guessing, don’t use that many subscription apps.
Maybe it's just me, but evaluating my subscriptions every month sounds like discussing OS upgrades with friends - normal people just don't do that. I sign up, and then leave it on autopay until they do something I find abhorrent enough to cancel my subscription (I'm looking at you, NYtimes). Which is why subscriptions are so lucrative - people don't regularly check their subscriptions on a monthly basis.
(Not saying this is the most fiscally responsible position to take, just a far more 'normal' one.)
No, companies love the subscription model because it makes for a predictable cashflow they can plan around, and which they can use to support software long-term.
I think your parents meant subscription gives recurring revenue to sustain a ongoing cost which is software development.
It is not an incentive, but a criteria. I often wished Remarkable would be brought up by big companies with more resources to work on it. But most companies these days aren't interested in making better products. Not to mention the possibilities of ruining it.
> The subscription mode is likely primarily there for syncing their bank account with bank accounts of VCs who price everything in multiples of monthly recurring revenue. Probably not gonna end well.
Since subscription has been Wall Street's fetish for a few years now, it's safe to say they have aspirations of going public sometime in US exchanges.
You can go into settings and enable ssh, and put pretty much whatever you want on it. Configure your own synchting or nextcloud sync, and not pay a penny.
Worth noting that if you bought the device before October this year, then you get a free subscription - which is what I am using currently, but good to know that I can just swap it out if I want to
I think sshd has been on the device since the initial launch in 2017, the company is publishing all source code they modify on their GitHub, the team seems very much pro open source and there is a relatively big hacking community around the devices already. It would take a lot for them to suddenly do a 180 on this when they are so deep into it already.
But it wouldn't be unheard of, but as a owner of one, I'm not really scared of it happening. Although if it would, the device would lose one of it's main buying point (for me at least) and I certainly wouldn't buy any more devices from them.
I would be genuinely curious to know how many people do ssh based tricks instead of paying for a subscription. Is it really worth pushing away your initial tech-savvy crowd for those couple of people that are not annoyed enough to leave?
Often these decisions are much less evil. Some update in the future is likely to require work on the SSH functionality to keep it working and if not enough people use it, they might decide to kill that feature. Happened often enough that a "simplification" of the tech stack or refactoring ended up killing features that were valued by many, but didn't rank high enough in usage stats.
Yeah, that's for sure. I was once very happy with a Fintech app (a bank), very techy, an API, modern and cool features, tight community. Then they pivoted and started targetting another more mainstream crowd. They incorporated their insta-feed into the app, and all kinds of social and greenwashing features. Reviews are still poor. I keep wondering if they could not somehow have kept the techy, early adopters happy and started targeting a more mainstream crowd. Is that very difficult? Two versions of the app would have done it. But maybe the tech group is so small it's worth pissing off this small group- that jumps on new stuff eagerly and helps you debug and grow in an early stage. Quite depressing.
Considering how much trouble it is to lock down devices that were intended from the start to be locked down in the firmware (Nintendo Switch, etc.), I think it's pretty unlikely that this device could be effectively locked down with a software update.
Or you could do like me, who never felt the urge to "sync to the cloud" any notebook, be it paper or e-ink based.
RM2 works great offline and does not need any network connection to do its main job. I think you will find you won't really need updates if you use it the same way as me.
And yes, as they mentioned it is enough FOSS friendly that there is quite a community of tinkerers around it
Let's work out a deal. You pay me $7.98/month, and I'll "fiddle with shell scripts" for you! Of course if you don't trust me, you can always pay Remarkable $7.99/month, no fiddling necessary. And they'll even bundle it in their desktop app UI!
If you can accept that you don't want to fiddle with shell scripts, then why is paying someone else for the privilege so far beyond the pale?
I'll pay you quite a bit to make my ReMarkable do what I want and then go away forever. But once it's working, I'm pathologically opposed to paying for the continued privilege.
It's because they are doing it their way, and I want it my way. I don't want the data in their cloud, with Google or with Dropbox, but in my "Cloud".
And why is there a recurring fee for this? Do they need to do this integration every month again? Ok, there might be some ongoing effort to keep the API working, but is that 8 Euro/month from thousands/millions of users?
The problem is that hardware companies don't want to be hardware companies anymore, but they want to be _everything_ else, too.
> edit: lots of people mentioning that you have SSH on the Remarkable. Good thing, but fiddling with shell scripts (yeah, no big deal for others, new for me) to sync with a cloud service of your choice... not sure I want that.
I mean, yeah, as much as it sounds fun, I pay for things like this to have more time/ease doing other stuff (drawing, taking notes, etc), so this seems to defeat the point.
iPad Pro + paperwhite + concepts and procreate does the job for me for that specific reason. I know that otherwise I’d get derailed and just start hacking things together instead of doodling
Onyx make great devices. Running android means it has access to all kindle features via the Kindle app, plus anything else the android store or internet have to offer (I play sudoku on mine often).
And Android gives a lot of other compatibilities in that app store content. I didn't need to wonder if my HN reader, manga reader, Papers, etc work on it because any Android app does.
If you want to roll your own you can get an arduino attached to a recycled kindle display with wifi - i love this idea (but touch support is just emerging) https://inkplate.io/
If it's clear and consensual, and not a means of endlessly extracting money for no value. SaaS is almost always rent seeking and brings no value to a consumer. Almost.
Usually you don't need a support contract for continued use of the software you bought.
I have old versions of a few applications and am happy with their current functionality. I can choose to not have a support contract and still use them. If I encounter problems later, I can choose to pay more for the latest.
I've bought Microsoft Office CDs and DVDs for a fixed, one-time price. No support contract needed. I mean what's changed in Excel or Word that affects the home user?
Same for Adobe Suite. Used to be available for a one-time fee.
That they have both shifted to subscription models suggests it's a move designed to please equity analysts rather than any kind of added value for the customer.
The larger point is that this is kind of like how a gym wants paying customers that don't show up too often or a flight operator over sells seats betting some flyers don't make it.
It's a business that is subsidised by the ever increasing busyness of life and rising rates of executive dysfunction (there's a population that struggles to keep up with admin tasks on a neurological level and it's biologically determined)
They have an incentive to get as many paying customers as possible but not necessarily turn them into engaged users. It can come too close to a racket depending on how discerning of a consumer you are
Don't install updates then! I don't understand this line of logic - you don't want ongoing service but you're using the ongoing service to get updates?
Do you suggest to also avoid security updates? Does not sound like a good advice.
For this reason, I prefer devices running exclusively free software. I can be sure that I will always own them and that security updates will never end, if the device is still used by the community.
Debian clearly separates security and non-security-related updates. I wish more projects did that.
> You want them to keep working on updates for your device but you don't want to keep paying them?
No, I want to able to have updates independently on the vendor who may want to stop updating the device. This is exactly why free software was created. Experience shows that just this ability is enough to have lifetime updates from the community for any device. Or, alternatively, one can pay to anyone for the updates, if necessary. My 12+-year-old laptop runs latest version of Debian and I do not expect to stop receiving security updates any time soon.
> Don't install updates then! I don't understand this line of logic - you don't want ongoing service but you're using the ongoing service to get updates?
For example, one might want to get security updates.
Yes, but even with their subscription you are kind of limited to Dropbox/GoogleDrive (for 8 €/month) or have to tinker around with SSH and shell scripts. Still reading how smooth you can get it going.
Good luck ever getting a warranty or return done on these. Look around at their support. It’s awful. I had to file a dispute after they wouldn’t provide a refund for my return after nearly 30 days of non-movement of the return (their label, their shipping carrier).
I would strongly caution you run away. Worst customer support I’ve ever experienced.
Edit: I will never understand people that downvote a warning like this. But HN, you do you, I have karma to burn and if this warning helps one other person I’ll consider it worth it.
Anecdotal:
I right away, broke my screen
** from my perspective **
dropped something on the screen,
the next time I used it there were all sorts
of horizontal and vertical lines on it.
My wife got me a replacement because that is how she is.
I contacted the company to see if there was anything I could to try and fix the old one ...
I am not opposed to opening it up an poking around.
They suggested I send them pictures of the damage
then replied that it should not have happened
and exchanged with a replacement.
Noting that at no point did I ask them for anything
and took full responsibility (in writing) for the
impact I assume caused the failure.
I have nothing but high praise for their "support".
I can agree. I had a WiFi issue with mine and the customer support had me reconfigure my router a few different ways to alleviate the issue until an update released. Then they stopped responding after the issue wasn’t fixed. From other anecdotes, I’ve determined that their policy is to string the customer along until an update is released or they’ve run out of options to diagnose the problem, then you’re trash. Even opening new tickets returned no response.
I advise people review other eink tablet options before considering Remarkable.
Addendum:
At some point, months later the issue was resolved via a software update. This issue was originally discovered a few days after unboxing and using the device. I did not expect the return process to be non-existent or refusal.
Wow, that's a really crappy experience. Personally, I had a pretty good experience with their customer service. My stylus broke after a few weeks (just stopped working for writing entirely). They sent me a new one right away and didn't require me to mail mine back.
I think the way they do returns is pretty unfriendly compared to other electronic companies I've gone through this with. I was going to exchange my tablet after I bricked it, and they wouldn't send a replacement until they received and processed the return. Based on the label, the return center is in Hong Kong (IIRC), so it probably takes a while to get the replacement even if everything goes according to plan. I ended up recovering the device myself (that ordeal's another story, but that's entirely my fault) so fortunately I just had a week without use of it, not a month+.
I would expect it to be beneficial to them to send the replacement first along with a return box, then charge for a whole new device if the return isn't received on time. Maybe that only works if you have the scale and resources to build such a system that companies like Amazon have.
That reminded me, they had two different return sites. First one they sent me to didn't even recognize my order, and because it takes them at least 24 hours to respond to an email (sometimes 2+ days) that was 24 hours of me continuing to twiddle my thumbs while they sent the second return site to me, both of which they included incorrect instructions for.
But yes, part of the hassle was the return to Hong Kong I suspect. That said though, it shouldn't be on me to foot the bill for a product until their shipping company can deliver it to them. If I chose the shipping company, then sure, I guess I can see that. But it was their label, their return site, their rules, and I'm just stuck footing the bill until the product gets returned. What would they have done if it never actually arrived? Would I still be footing the bill? I had to file the dispute because the time period was running out on being able to do so AND I was then outside their 30 day return period because of the lengthy delay in their shipping provider moving the product. I sent it back less than a week after I got it, but it took another month for the stupid thing to end up in their hands.
Anyway, yea. It was entirely self inflicted by Remarkable. My assumption is they've been burned by people returning incorrect products or something, but if they handle it this way they're just upsetting legitimate returns.
I wasn't entirely dissatisfied with the product, it just wasn't in a state I could use it right now. Had the return gone better I may have purchased a newer version down the road. Now however, I will avoid them at all costs, and I am being vocal about it ... all they had to do was treat the customer appropriately and this all could've been very different for them. It just goes to show how important good customer support is.
I wonder how much this has to do with their being a Norwegian company. I have no idea what the expectations of customer service are over there. I'm just going on my experience working at a Scandinavian company and the incredulity I've heard Europeans express about the US's "the customer is always right" attitude, so I apologize if this is extremely ignorant. Regardless, they have a lot of room for improvement.
Have you tried giving feedback directly to the company? They feel like a small enough operation that they may actually listen.
I did offer feedback whenever it came up, but it was just to whomever I was talking to via support. They acknowledged the feedback but they kept repeating the same problems over and over so it was clear it wasn't going to improve in the immediate term. Some of it was simple, like, "please just use the right snippet, or if you need separate snippets for this, make separate snippets" and some was obviously more complex, like "if you are going to say something, like that you'll refund me, you should stick to what you said, rather than back out of it and not stick to your word."
Can you provide more details? It's a bit unclear what happened. You bought it, asked for a return, and then what? I don't know what non-movement means.
They provided the label and picked the carrier (DHL). DHL picked the package up and promptly lost it or forgot about it or whatever happens with shipping companies that are trash.
I waited about 2 weeks before I complained because COVID and all that. After 3 weeks of absolutely zero package movement (stuck in the same location) they refused to give a refund. I filed a dispute and finally got my refund after it sat around in a shipping facility for over a month.
The entire time Remarkable provided incorrect and misleading instructions for my return. Often calling it a replacement. At one point their service manager actually said they were refunding me and then about 30 minutes later retracted it and said they’d only refund me when they had the return in their hands.
I provided a full timeline of their horrible support to my credit company, I can dig that up if you want the full rundown on their awful handling of a simple return.
I was going to say that such things happen, but your chat with the service manager sealed my feelings on the matter. They could see just as well as you that DHL had the notebook, not you, and they should've eaten the loss.
The other comments here are reMarkably negative too. I was briefly tempted to get one, but I'll wait for whoever the Vive of this space turns out to be.
I think it’s a cool idea but it’s very half baked at the moment.
A feature I love about GoodNotes on an iPad is it can search hand written notes. If I’m going to write a ton in something that isn’t as easily skimmed as a real notebook search needs to be a thing.
The other thing I find annoying is buying the pencil tips. Apparently the Remarkable ones need replacement often. Sort of mind blowing.
All in all the writing experience was nice. But the device and the features were not there. If these things survive another 3-4 generations of devices then I think we may get to a place they’re maybe ready for more mass usage. I hope in that time the company that also provides reasonable support rises to the top lol.
> Apparently the Remarkable ones need replacement often.
Not really. It comes with 8 or 10 tips. I go through a tip in a month with very active use. New tips are pretty cheap and come in a batch. Sorry don’t remember the cost.
I'm always suspicious though of heavy affiliate links and when every review on a product (1000+) are all 4-5 stars. I know it's not but it screams to me of the dropshipping popup sites.
What I've heard, and no idea if this is true, but I think my experience backs it up somewhat I just have no hard proof of it.
If you see a company advertising heavily on social media sites, and Remarkable is everywhere for me on social media sites, they're basically throwing all their money at advertising and all other areas of their business are getting the short end and suffering.
With the recent news they're moving subscription for their various services I think it's clear Remarkable is likely to die in a couple years.
Affiliate sites have ruined product search in the same way that Pinterest has ruined image search.
Video reviews/tutorials are often the way to go because they tend to be more up to date (you can't fiddle with the Youtube publish date the way you can with a blog site). Additionally, the tutorials can help demonstrate niche features and whether they function as expected.
To balance your report with something positive, I also had a warranty issue, as there was a bad batch of R2's around August, and they provided me with a replacement with minimum fuss.
Every single one of the guidelines is there for a reason. In this case, like the guidelines say, complaining about voting makes for boring reading, adds no value, and actively makes HN worse - as do comments like your reply.
Interesting and useful reading: the first two paragraphs of your original comment.
Boring reading that detracts from the HN experience:
> Edit: I will never understand people that downvote a warning like this. But HN, you do you, I have karma to burn and if this warning helps one other person I’ll consider it worth it.
> ah yes, there's always that stickler for the "rules." What would we ever do without that person chiming in.
I bought one, then returned it. For the price they're selling it at, the following points were a deal breaker for me:
1. Custom file system: this means I can ssh into it, but I can't rsync my bibliography into it, since it won't display regular pdf files whose name is not hashed and registered in some sort of index. Moreover, the lack of a Linux client meant it was very hard to put my pdfs on it, or extract my notes from it.
2. Left hand support is ridiculous. They just flip the screen left-to-right; which means you lose the nice bevel and it becomes very uncomfortable to use in "handheld" mode. Finally, the "close" button gets placed on the top-left corner of the screen, which is the first place a left-handed writer touches.
3. The lack of some sort of backlight and slightly gray background means I can't read under suboptimal light. Sure, I get it, its e-ink; but for the price they charge, it would be a very nice-to-have feature.
I ended up returning mine and went for the Samsung Galaxy Tab s7 and that thing is amazing! Plus, I get to follow through bibliography immediately without needing to go back to my computer and get another article then do the whole sync'ing dance again.
> 1. Custom file system: this means I can ssh into it, but I can't rsync my bibliography into it, since it won't display regular pdf files whose name is not hashed and registered in some sort of index. Moreover, the lack of a Linux client meant it was very hard to put my pdfs on it, or extract my notes from it.
FWIW, rmfuse [0] allows you to mount the reMarkable cloud and you have easy access to sync with real filenames.
> RMfuse provides access to your reMarkable Cloud files in the form of a FUSE filesystem. These files are exposed either in their original format, or as PDF files that contain your annotations. This lets you manage files in the reMarkable Cloud using the same tools you use on your local system.
I did find a few similar projects back when I had the reMarkable, but none quite worked well for me. I'm sure this will help some other people out there though! :)
1. I'm with you here. I'd like to be able to just copy files directly on/off
2. Also left handed. I just turn off the menu when I'm drawing/writing, so the close button and everything else is fine until I need it. However, what annoys me is that the pen's mark on the screen is about 0.2mm off from the tip of the contract point, to account for the angle of the pen and the thickness of the screen glass. While it's a subtle problem, it is noticeable.
3. I don't think this is a cost issue, it's battery life. I'm happy with their choice, and you certainly can't please everybody
> 2. Also left handed. I just turn off the menu when I'm drawing/writing [...]
I know, but I often forgot to turn off the menu when annotating a pdf, and would close the pdf as soon as I touched the screen. After a few dozen repetitions it got quite annoying!
> [...] However, what annoys me is that the pen's mark on the screen is about 0.2mm off from the tip of the contract point, to account for the angle of the pen and the thickness of the screen glass. While it's a subtle problem, it is noticeable.
Interesting! I don't think I noticed that
> 3. I don't think this is a cost issue, it's battery life. I'm happy with their choice, and you certainly can't please everybody
You can always turn the light on or off, preserving the battery life.
I found that reading something on a rainy day could be challenging depending on where I sat on the house. For a 500 euro device, I thought it was a bit of a shame.
For me it's the size. I used to say that if they came out with a full page (A4 or letter) display I would buy one, but since then I've become very fond of the iPad + Pencil + iOS focus mode combination. I'm not sure the Remarkable offers much for me anymore.
The reMarkable dilemma is that they got the hardware right --modulo backlighting, but that will come--. It's the services around such a powerful device that people will find lacking. Open source enthusiasts will state that they want freedom, while people who care less about that freedom will get suspicious as to what happens if the company ceases to exist. The latter will probably consider an iPad a better value proposition, but then the reMarkable offers a less distractive environment.
I find the reMarkable a truly interesting device but I feel that I do not have time to tinker with it as it currently is, so for the moment I am on an iPad (use it for sheet music and PDF annotation)
I'm not sure how the hardware can be "right" when it cannot do its most important, touted feature on-device (handwriting recognition), it is basically a one-trick pony according to Wired (who said it only does note-taking well) and almost everything about the device is outclassed by a used iPad new enough to run iOS 14 or better and which supports the Apple Pencil.
For about the same $400 (the device after a year is going to cost you $400 either way; if owned for 3 years it'll have a TCO of nearly $600) you can get a used iPad Air 3 and Pencil and do everything the reMarkable can do, with your choice of screen size...a screen that is color, backlit, higher resolution, full motion. Excellent pressure and angle sensitivity from the stylus. Cellular connectivity, if you want it. Full multimedia capabilities, video conferencing/calling, web browsing, the entire suite of iOS apps. If you have a Mac, all the desktop integration features. Your choice of private or cloud based backup and sync, no device modification needed. And top-notch on-device biometric security.
Oh, and an iPad can do on-device dictation and handwriting recognition/cleanup. The reMarkable cannot do on-device writing recognition - only via their cloud, which costs $8/month. And requires storing your documents with a company that is based in Hong Kong, which means "freely available to CCP intelligence services."
I've used eInk readers for probably close to a decade and a half - I started with the original Sony reader - and sorry, but eInk still has significant limitations for any sort of interactivity. It's better than it was ten years ago, but I think "physical pixels being flipped end-to-end in a viscous media" has an inherent maximum refresh rate that they'll never get past and the technology will never get past static low power displays and e-reader devices. I don't even see it surviving much longer given how far OLED displays are coming; they offer all the same low-power advantages, better contrast ratios, and full color / high refresh rates. Not as good full-sunlight readability, though.
The most important feature is not handwriting recognition, but the fact that it is a large e-ink screen, where you can comfortably read and write. You don't get that with an iPad. If you read a lot of documents there is really no comparison, because it is a different category of device.
> The most important feature is not handwriting recognition, but the fact that it is a large e-ink screen, where you can comfortably read and write. You don't get that with an iPad.
This
If these are the killer features you're looking for, the RM is delightful. I've been using mine for over a year, almost every single day. I would love to see the software services flesh out a bit more, but honestly, that's icing on the cake.
A rock-solid paper note-taking replacement that doubles as a highlightable PDF reader and has no "apps" - I'm sold!
Adding on more praise. I think of it like paper enhanced. I loved takes notes on paper, but I needed to be able to rearrange my thoughts quickly without erasing and rewriting. Remarkable does that really well, and that's all I need it for. Worth every penny
rM seems to omit backlight as a philosophical idea; if you're mainly interested in similar form-factor of hardware with backlights, https://www.pine64.org/pinenote/ is upcoming. (Firmware/software support's not going to be up to "whatever-Android" or rM quality in a hurry, of course, but it's starting out as a hacking platform anyway.)
I have one, and I find the writing part nearly perfect. But there are a couple of downsides mentioned in the article that mean I barely use it:
- Searching and organisation is really difficult. I wish everything would be OCRed transparently and you could instantly search for it (while keeping the original graphics)
- It's unfortunate that the OCR runs on their cloud. It would be really perfect if it was a web app that you could install on your own servers, if you have hightened security requirements for example
- In the UI, there is an on screen keyboard and you have to press keys. Why can't you just write in the text fields?
I think most of these problems come down to the fact that the OCR is some "secret sauce" provided by a third party. I wonder if there is any viable free handwriting OCR one could use instead to build a better experience (open source, source available, or even just some research papers)?
I have the same issue with the OCR. I've been using it for taking notes for my masters courses, and ironically as part of the course just finished making a machine learning model for OCR on armv7 devices that works as well if not better then the proprietary OCR service they use, and could easily run on the device without needing the network at all.
My biggest issue with the rm2 is not any specific feature, but the total and complete lack of support for 3rd party software. The people behind the device make great hardware, and nice device drivers, but kind of suck at user facing software. They should stop trying to do the front end stuff, and just give us the ability to let the community do it ourselves.
If you made this into an open source project (even just some hacked together scripts) I would definitely take a crack at helping tweak it! Especially if you're able to do on device -- that'd be incredible. Otherwise, I'm happy to just pull out the files and do it via SSH.
Seriously though, the value of some scripts that set a baseline would be enough for many people to finish the rest of the work!
Wanting your documents and writings to not be fully accessible to CCP intelligence services....is not exactly "heightened security requirements" to me.
This device is basically completely un-trustable.
Leaking information related to financial stuff, research, invention, product design, or legal/government work. For a publicly traded company any manner of documents / notes on a device like this could spell trouble.
Plus, if they're able to identify something you don't want others to know, they have leverage on you.
Having tried a number of notebook type devices I'll just add that the Remarkable (v2) is excellent. It is not a computer, not an iPad, just an excellent digital notepad and eReader. Price, yeah its high but you get what you pay for and this is something I do find genuinely useful for reading and taking notes.
Is it perfect? Far from it. There are lots of silly UI decisions that make no sense (e.g. limited pen size) and clunky modal menu system. So there is room for improvement. Why they don't incorporate the ddvk remarkable hacks into an update in onequickupdate I do not know - the ddvk hacks change the remarkable from a good device to a great one. See here:
But otherwise, I would recommend strongly for these specific use-cases. I still have to have a laptop with me occasionally, and sometimes an iPad. But if I am reading a PDF it is always with the Remarkable.
The battery life is pretty amazing, the lack of eye-strain fantastic, carrying a ton of books that I can catch up with wonderful. Digital note taking is the best in class due to the screen and pen/nib combination. (Yes lack of search and OCR is a bit annoying but I don't really use it, even on the iPad in Notability).
Anyway, I wanted to offer these thoughts from someone who reads a lot on the remarkable and takes notes daily.
Wish it had: More pen sizes, different highlight shades, easier syncing, iCloud support, better tools for cropping pdfs before sending them, etc.
ps. I also own a Boox Note Air, and the remarkable quite simply blows it away. When I bought the Boox I loved it, but after getting the Remarkable there really is no competition. I do like the Boox for its novelty value, running weird things on an e-ink display, but I don't use it for notes or reading anymore.
I thought I wanted a frontlight too, but after trying a number of these types of devices and purchasing three of them (Remarkable 2, Kobo Elipsa, and Fujitsu Quaderno Gen 2), I'm convinced that the compromises aren't worth it for a notetaking-focused device. (For an e-reader, it's a different story.)
With a frontlight layer, there's a greater gap between the pen and the e-ink layer, and it makes more of a difference than you'd think in terms of pen feel. (Even the Remarkable 2 isn't that great here because the non-frontlit protective layer feels thicker than it needs to be; Fujitsu did a super job with the Quaderno Gen 2; the pen feels like it's actually in contact with the e-ink surface.) There's also a subtle loss of contrast with the additional frontlight layer.
As much as a clip-on reading light feels hokey, I think it's a better compromise for when you need to read in the dark.
Perhaps the convenience of having one device function as both a notebook and all-round e-reader is not worth the trade-offs you mention.
My 2013 Kobo Aura HD (still in perfect condition!) is a standard item in my bag, and still sees daily use as a bedtime reader. Having Calibre automatically sync reading positions between devices would allow me to leave it at home. Problem solved :)
Can you elaborate why? I'm stuck between the two as a purchasing decision. I value the android apps but if the writing and reading experience is way low I may skip out on boox
I have a Boox Note Air and frankly every review puts Remarkable above it ONLY on the writing experience.
For my use, I have had zero issues with the Boox pen or screen latency. Boox is superior on multiple fronts when it comes to overall usefulness, as it's running Android, so I can use exactly the file explorer I want (Solid Explorer). The PDF formatting options, such as increasing ink darkness and contrast levels make things like color magazines a lot easier to see and read.
The frontlit screen is such an obvious feature that I'm shocked that RM2 still does not have it. Boox does.
If reading anything other than PDFs is important the Boox is a better choice. Remarkable lags super far behind in ePub support, AFAIK it converts an ePub to PDF and then displays that. A large book will take a very long time to adjust the font size or other formatting because of that. General rendering support seems poor and it doesn't support any DRM scheme or library system so you're stuck stripping DRM off books and monkeying around with their app to get it onto the device. Boox of course can just run the Kindle or Libby Android apps.
Main thing people like about the Remarkable is writing feel which mainly comes down to the surface and the pen nib. You can literally use the RM pen and nibs on the Boox Air and a matte screen protector. MyDeepGuide on YouTube has recommendations on how to get a better feel on the Boox Note Air.
I've been using mine almost every day for a year now. A week ago I left it at Home Depot (it had all of my sketches and measurements for the thing I was building) and I despaired of finding it again. I was already planning to drop $500 on a second one without a second thought when it turned up at the customer service counter. Tangible feeling of relief when I got it back in my hands.
Do I hope some of the software support improves? Heck yes, but the writing and reading experience is exceptional and the software is good enough.
If you are not sure which gadget could be the one for you, take also a look at the Supernote[0]. I have been using one (A5X) for the past month with a Lamy EMR and I really really enjoy it. It improves my note taking.
I still have 7 Moleskins on my desk right now, but I haven't written in them for the past two weeks.
The philosophy of the Supernote is not to replace the notebook, but more to improve it. You can create titles which automatically go to a table of content, you have tags, all packaged in a very nice hardware.
The other very nice thing for me, it works totally "offline" if you want. No need to sync with a cloud or whatever. Connect it with USB to your computer, sync your folders like normal folders, done.
I came here to post a similar comment. I picked up a supernote a few months ago and I really love it. The writing experience is better than a notebook in my opinion and it also does a pretty decent job with PDF reading. In my experience their support is really good as well.
You do not have the same level of access as a reMarkable. This is for sure.
But they are also very proactive with the end-users, listening a lot to the feedback (they have a dedicated subreddit). So you do not have an open device but a device where your needs are well cared of.
I hope that in the future we will get an SDK to create App which integrate nicely into the device to extend it. As it is for me a single task device, a bit like a cordless phone or my HiFi setup, I do not need it as open as my laptop which has been running Linux for the past 20 years.
Some people say that it has a higher latency but that the coming update (in beta now[0]) is very very close to the reMarkable to the point of being hard to see a difference.
For me personally, on the stable kernel and as a first time user of such e-Ink writing device, I am very satisfied. I also mostly use the Lamy EMR pen because of the button to activate the eraser.
I bought the first generation and returned it sometime 2.5 years ago.
My takeaways:
- my colleagues who loved it back then still love it and have been joined by a few more
- personally I'm still happy that I returned mine and got an iPad instead although ideally I had gotten the iPad in addition instead of as a replacement.
- the writing experience was fantastic! It feels like writing on paper and the results are of similar quality. When someone I know who can draw she made a beautiful drawing quickly and was impressed.
- the return process (at that time) was a case study in bad ux. Not dark patterns as far as I could see (once I contacted them they were very helpful and did not try to upsell me or anything, but I actually gave up trying to register the return myself)
- what turned me away in the end was that 1.) I didn't have budget for both the Remarkable and and iPad and 2.) the Remarkable was then too limited on its own (I use my iPad for notetaking, udemy, virtual meetings over Zoom and what not that I don't want to install on my work machine and probably a few more things) 3. at the time there was no Linux sync and it was bot clear for me how good ssh support was going to be (I still don't know but hear good things). 4. Locking was limited to 4 digit pin.
- an unintended benefit of going for the iPad was that I realized iOS was sufficiently different from Mac that I could actually like it, so I now have a cheap iPhone as well.
I have a feeling that reMarkable hired some remarkable hardware wizards with GPL in their blood and then let some beancounters ruin the frontend.
reMarkable is great looking hardware with subpar software.
I should not need to SSH into a device to install Koreader to get an acceptable ereading esperience.
I rarely use my reMarkable 2 much preferring an old Kobo HD for bedtime reading and the original 13 inch Sony dpt-rp1 for larger A4 texts.
As the article says:
"If you are familiar with dedicated ebook readers, you will miss a dictionary, bookmarks and annotations. You can highlight parts of the text, but there is no index of annotations anywhere. This makes it unsuitable for some types of editing and annotated reading."
Surely those are not remarkable features to ask for?
I was not able to use this thing comfortably. I think my handwriting style might not be optimal for it, as too small details and tight loops seemed to disappear on me. My handwriting is pretty small to begin with, and only gets tinier with subscripts and tiny details in mathematical writing.
There was also a slight input delay that I found annoying. I love writing on paper, and so if the experience is significantly inferior I won't be sold. I totally disagree with the author's claim that this thing provides a superior writing experience, unless they've improved on their designs and it now actually does feel like paper.
I would instead highly recommend a much cheaper, though dumber, yet far superior LCD-slate (like one of these: https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-howshow-lcd-writing-t...). The writing is instant, and even the tightest loops and smallest details will show up as if on paper (though green-on-black). When I was in university, I would use this for sketches in discussions, rough calculations and drafts, and saved a ton of paper that I would otherwise just have thrown away.
The fact that it wouldn't let me save stuff or share my drawings didn't bother me at all. Worst case scenario, I'd just take a picture of it.
I have a remarkable 2 which I use daily for 6+ months now.
It does get really tiny details right. Since lines are pixelated I can see maybe up to 2px precision.
You have to use a smaller "brush" for this though.
The reMarkable is one of those devices for which I consistently feel like "I'll wait for the next one".
Few reasons why:
- backlight
- ocr
- better pen and eraser
In my mind I'd like to make it a "programming sketchbook", where every time I save, text get OCRd, compiled and I get some compile information out of it.
Obviously I would be just sending the buffer to an external computer and get the output, or something like that.
But the current reMarkable and its ecosystem made me think what I was looking for was way too experimental.
What’s so weird is that it already has OCR, but only through a weird feature where you’re emailing someone a copy and paste, or some such. It’s like they’re sitting on the killer feature and can’t figure it out. Feels like a potentially great product in need of a great product manager.
I bought a physical notebook recently and oh man it's so much better than an iPad. Especially when I'm trying to sketch out architecture or play around with ideas, a pen and paper is unbeatable. Maybe it's all the years of school making me hand write code, but I've started to like hand writing an algorithm or hand writing potential syntax for a language.
The only thing that annoys me is not having buttons to turn pages. Swiping over a touchscreen is counterproductive and Remarkable sometimes fails to recognize the gesture.
I have one but it's been sitting in a drawer for a long time now. I went back to iPad Pro with Apple Pen as it's much easier to navigate around and I enjoy the color screen much more. It also allows me to use Miro or similar whiteboard tool. I personally regret buying it. The lag is more noticeable on an iPad, but that doesn't bother me.
Same experience. Very very disappointed by the software, and now they are making it even worse by locking more and more of it behind a paywall. The device was nearly 650$ for christ sake.
I have the recent version but I have to say I'm not happy with it. While the writing / drawing itself is great, the responsiveness of the UI and some actions (like erasing content) makes the whole experience super frustrating for someone with ADD. It also lacks some features that would make it a worthy Kindle alternative, like structured text higlighting. You can highlight fragments using Highlighter, but it's not smart about indexing and browsing those higlights afterwards, it's just a dumb overlay over the document.
Seems like mostly people that are not satisfied with their remarkable are trying to do the extra features (ssh, book reading, etc.). for me i 99% use it to keep notes, sketching, read articles and its perfect. for the first time in my life i do actually read my notes
I have an rM2, and I loved it at first. But honestly, I've just gone back to carrying a notepad and a pen. One of the biggest issues I have is that for /most/ things when I want to take notes, it's because I've found myself in a spur of the moment situation and I need something that will fit in my pocket. For planned note-taking, I'd rather type than write. I write because I can fit a pen in my pocket. I guess it's somewhat of a tautology, but in the end my rM2 has sat very prettily on my desk, completely unused, for months.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the device itself, I think it just didn't fit the way that I take notes. The only thing I found as an actual annoyance was that they forced you into using their cloud services which I didn't think were very good. I would have much rather had it OCR my notes into Standard Notes or figured out a way to sync. Syncing to Standard Notes never happened, so I just type long-form notes directly into Standard Notes and keep a Rite in the Rain pad in my pocket and a pen for spur of the moment stuff.
I bought a remarkable because I was thinking of buying a whiteboard. I hoped that the remarkable could be a replacement for that, but I was very wrong.
On the surface, remarkable seems pretty great and even feels pretty great. But for all it could be doing, it's almost not doing anything. The note-taking and drawing tools are extremely barebones. There are no line or shape drawing tools of any kind. There's no real way of using it as an infinite canvas kind of thing, because the canvas isn't infinite, and you can't scroll like that. You have to zoom in and out or resize your drawings and move them around.
The hardware is extremely hackable, which is the coolest part, but also makes it even more weird that the remarkable's software is so lackluster, because there are actually tools out there already you can use to make up for some of these.
I ended up not using mine very much because it's just not a very good experience for anything past simple note-taking, and then eventually sold it and bought a whiteboard instead. No regrets.
Color e-ink probably isn't going to be at quality-parity with e.g. LCD displays anytime especially soon. Kaleido is still really cool, especially when it's used properly, but it's probably going to be a bit too weird for something really like reMarkable for a little while yet.
Sometimes there's Indiegogo hype for "ooh, a large color e-ink tablet!" and I'd encourage cautious pessimism about those listings. Might be a good idea to wait for them to ship, and to wait for some reviews.
I’ve got the boox note 3 color for my partner.
It’s 7”, a bit small for me but it’s pretty good.
She loves it but after couple of months she used only the black ’color’ and doesn’t bother to switch to other colors.
I am a Remarkable user for almost a year and I have to say there is no way back for me. The user interface navigation is built in a way that allowed me to build a workflow around it that just works.
Is an excellent device and I am super happy with it.
The reMarkable 2 comes close but is disappointedly limited and expensive for the features it provides and some of the basic features now are under a subscription, when I compared it [0] with the recently introduced PineBook.
Thus, the reMarkable 2 as it stands makes it a no deal due to all of this: [1]
I’ve been using a Sony Epaper notebook for almost 2 years now and considering buying a Boox Note 5 or Air 2 (the remarkable didn’t make my short list)
They are running almost stock android and the quality seems better than remarkable.
I’ve watched My Deep Guide (https://youtube.com/c/MyDeepGuide) where they test every single feature of all note taking devices.
This article says that you have root access on the remarkable, but doing so will void the warranty.
rM support's statements in the past have been to the effect of "we aren't going to remove the root access; you need it for GPL compliance, and we need it for troubleshooting. And merely using it doesn't void the warranty, but we don't support third-party modifications." So if there's e.g. a flaw in the hardware that you didn't obviously cause by doing something absurd with modifications (e.g. overriding the temperature lockouts, deliberately wearing out the eMMC with writes, ...) they say that it shouldn't really effect your claim.
Now individual experiences with rM support have varied rather wildly between "they're great!" and "they're the worst!" so feel free to temper your expectations.
If you've been using a Sony DPT-RP1 or DPT-CP1, you should also consider the Fujitsu Quaderno Gen 2, which is the most prominent successor of the RP1/CP1. I strongly prefer my Quaderno to my Remarkable 2. Unfortunately My Deep Guide hasn't been able to get a review unit yet.
Damn! I checked the reviews of the Quaderno Gen 2: I am strongly considering this one!
The build quality of the RP1/CP1 is so good (the texture of both the screen and the back is a delight), i hope it feels the same on the Fujitsu.
The chassis is virtually the same, apart from the addition of USB-C and a relocating of the wrist strap holes to the top. I actually use the official Sony CP1 case on my A5 Quaderno Gen 2 just because I happened to find that case on clearance. The main improvements are speed-related, screen related (noticeably better contrast) and most of all, a dramatic improvement in pen feel, speed and accuracy. Also some nice functionality improvements, especially around the highlighting function. There's also now a freehand highlighter.
Have a look at the reinkstone, that looks quite interesting. I have a remarkable and a sony. I haven't used the sony since buying the remarkable. Despite the larger size, it is a much worse device. The writing experience really doesn't compare.
An alternative if you want more functionality is to root your sony, there was some progress on hacking the sony for putting regular android packages on it. I can dig out some links if you can't find it.
You will need to root it. It’s running a very custom android. There is a good documentation about it. Look for DPTTools.
But if you want a epaper tablet with the play store (and certified) look at the BOOX ones (note, air or Lumi). You can install the play store and download the official kindle app.
Some says that BOOX has questionable GPL practices and does some api call in China (might be just telemetry), check in this forum for opinions:).
Slightly off topic, but what happened to "smart pens"? 15ish years ago,I had a pen that could draw on special paper, and do interesting things. I really thought that paradigm would have progressed by now. Sort of like the original optical mice needed a special pad but now can work on any surface. I like drawing on a paper notebook (I use one with a grid of dots). I'd be fine with all of the "intelligence" coming from my smartphone. Is there any progress/products on this paradigm?
15ish years ago,I had a pen that could draw on special paper, and do interesting things.
Anoto (https://www.anoto.com) holds the IP on the proprietary pattern of dots used on the paper. Sure, you can make your own pattern, but Anoto's technology allows the pen to not only know where it is at on the paper (allowing it to capture pen strokes), but it also knows which piece of paper it is writing on...out of the gazillion unique sheets of paper the technology allows. So, cool stuff, but all depending on the good graces of one company. I used to work for one of their partners (now out of business), and a large part of our secret sauce was allowing one to print any document, but with the dot pattern printed under your Word doc/map/PDF. IOW, print anything and now you can write on it. Imagine printing your city map from MapGIS/ESRI, mark it up with (for example) fire hydrants, dock the pen. Now your GIS database is updated with fire hydrant locations, and you didn't have to carry a pricey PC or tablet into the field.
You can still buy the technology via LiveScribe, but I don't know how it is used in enterprise scenarios, if at all anymore.
This thing is different from all other devices on the market. You can write on the device itself, or you can put a piece of paper on top of it and write on that which will simultaneously be digital iirc.
* A smart clipboard, I'm sure there are non-kickstarter variations of this out there somewhere as well
I'm going to answer with what is cool with a Remarkable against a paper notebook when it comes to writing : you can easily erase shapes, strokes, undo, resize, copy, paste, add pages between... To me that's a lot of advantages only for the comparison of the actual "writing tools" even not taking into account the "extras".
Disclaimer : I sold my remarkable because I had a tiny but noticeable "gap" between the stylus and the "ink" and I wasnt able to tolerate it. But I'm missing the edition features.
Another lefty here - same issue. Did the pre-order long ago. I’m back to pen and paper as I could not tolerate it. It would be great if it was possible to calibrate it somehow, by hack or not. I’ve kept it in case such a solution surfaces.
I definitely think they should be petitioned for a left-handed mode.
Edit: it has left handed mode?! Perhaps I've already set that, but it isn't thorough enough? Gonna go check now. Btw, it's under settings, accessibility.
No. But I acknowledge I may have an "uncommon" way of handling a pen, with a really closed angle between the pen and the paper. Of course my writing is totally garbage.
No password, hard to make copies, takes up more space in my bag, can't easily move things around or rework once you've put something on the page, end up with a stack of notesbooks that need disposing of, harder to file and easily look up things from a certain date or category.
Exactly. No subscription fees and OCR not working just as well.
I understand that botching your perfect brainstorming doodle with permanent pen gives a certain degree of anxiety. But one can treat those as drafts; you'll use up a lot of Moleskine pages before the cost breaks even with this.
I have a Rocketbook. It is an erasable plastic paper notebook. You write with some special pen, and then erase with a damp cloth. The application lets you easily scan all pages.
For the price, I find it better than both the reMarkable and a paper notebook.
For math, being able to quickly erase false starts and reorganize lemmas on the fly is surprisingly useful. Compared to paper notebooks, it's easily doubled my productivity.
> The option to connect an external keyboard would be killer. Of course, the main use case is to write with a pen. However, given that this is a distraction-free device, the option to behave essentially like the screen of a typewriter would be much appreciated by writers and minimalists.
I've been banging this drum for a while. Yes, please.
It depends on the mindset I guess. I’ve bought myself a reMarkable 2 with the approach that „I’m just getting an expensive toy” (ie not an everyday work tool, just a nice gizmo). And it’s been great, if a bit pricey.
Some things I’ve used it for, so far:
- 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.
I bought one and returned it. It did what it said, it’s not a bad product. However after spending just shy of the cost of a new iPad I couldn’t justify not having just buying an iPad and having 100x the functionality.
The remarkable also has very mediocre note management software, on the device, online, and on the desktop.
I use a similar technology. It works by depositing pigments via capillary effect from a reservoir conveniently held in the body of the input device.
The pigments remain on an indexable surface, which is collected together with many other such surfaces. Searches, if the correct keyword is known, can take a couple of seconds.
The time between recharges is amazing, and to make a write requires a recharge every month or so. To actually retrieve information, it requires no charge at all!
Unfortunately, once the memory is full, you need to replace the storage device at a cost of about $10. I have to do this once every three months, but you can afford several and keep them aside. It's also really easy to tell when you're approaching your memory limit.
I'd say another drawback is a lack of backlight, but the ReMarkable doesn't have one either.
It's a shame they've moved to a subscription model - I'm personally angling to get a development PineNote and invest time into developing for that. It's priced about the same as a reMarkable, but does include a stylus and case, so that's nice.
My biggest want is an open device - I was originally drawn to the reMarkable _because_ it seemed quite open, but this subscription model really makes me rethink things (with what I would consider "core" functionality, e.g syncing, locked behind a paywall).
I have a reMarkable 2 and I really enjoy it. Before the weekend, I can load it up with pdfs of all the articles and books I hope to catch up on. Then I can spend all weekend reading them with natural light, marking them up, drawing notes, etc. Productivity with battery life measured in days, without any eye strain, and no internet distractions.
But it's not an IPad! It's always funny to hear it compared to tablets since the main value proposition (to me) is the e-ink and the distinct lack of tablet-like features. It's a replacement for physical bound books and paper notebooks. That's it. Do your paperbacks and composition notebooks have good OCR, search indexing and a mountable file system? Nope, and neither does the remarkable :-)
It's really the "pen computing" from the early 90s in some round 2. There were some pretty amazing things that the hardware wasn't ready for the first time (I'm thinking GO corp stuff) but when I asked the guys at CES 2020 if they had ever heard of it, it was a no. (For instance, if I worked there I'd get my hands on one of Jeff Hawkins GRiDpads (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRiDPad) here's a nice overview
History of tech needs to be more widely studied. I think we'd get really great products if people knew their history better.
In a lot of cases the hardware could just barely keep up at the top-end of the market and for devices that were in the 'affordable' zone the hardware was just not powerful enough.
An Apple Newton MessagePad 2000 was a sweet device; the ultimate note taking tool that was not equalled by any tablet for more than 20 years. My handwriting style happened to work well for the Newton and as a consequence it was an amazing tool that exceeded my expectations, but I knew several people whose handwriting was not picked up well by the recognition engine and so they struggled with the device. The earlier Newtons were also underpowered and the handwriting engine was over-hyped so they failed to live up to expectations.
Round 2 has much better hardware, improved connectivity and wireless tools, and a larger ecosystem they can try to fit into. I think it remains to be seen if round 2 of these notebook tools will succeed. I think that the eInk devices like the reMarkable are _not_ succeeding in the market but regular tablet devices are making progress in this area and are more likely to end up the winners in any revival of electronic notebook tools.
The two things are certainly a different use case and essentially every book on business ever written would dictate it'd have different devices but I don't know.
Certainly taking holiday photos, trading stocks, and hailing a cab aren't the same things, but the smartphone does all those things.
So yeah, Christensen, Moore, Collins, Ries and Trout say "different devices, different market" but recent lived reality says "nope, same device".
I was seriously considering one but ended up buying the latest iPad Mini. It was the right decision. It was the Moleskine replacement I was looking for. The software is simply excellent. I use Notability and Procreate. The software on the remarkable doesn't compare.
There are a few features that I didn't know I needed: using a photo as a reference, using the camera to pick colors, browsing notes like they're pages in a notebook, annotating websites, sending drawings with telegram, etc.
I never leave the house without my iPad. I never use it for browsing or watching videos. It doesn't show any notifications. It's strictly a notebook replacement, and It's brilliant.
I really wanted one ever since they announced the first model, but something has been stopping me. Now that I'm a little older and mature I realize that my instincts not to buy this thing were completely right.
How can a device like this not have an ability to make annotations?... What's worse, the highlights you make on the book are not indexed. To me, it's insane.
I think one can hack this together with Kobo, I believe. But should you really buy a device for $500+ to hack it together?
Once this device supports proper E-Reader features, it will be a great iPad alternative, IMHO. And I'll be a big purchase candidate.
I have the Onyx Boox Max 3, it is great. Just a normal android device with an e-reader screen.
You can install apps, listen to audio (it has a speaker).
I'm wondering why there are not more like those devices..
My complaint with the Boox series (I had one of those as well) versus the reMarkable is that writing on a boox feels like trying to write on plastic. The reMarkable has a texture that makes it more akin to writing on paper. It really does interrupt my thought process and note-taking ability.
Same, I have an Onyx Boox Note Air which is working great. I love it at night especially because I don't have to stare at a backlight and that I can read technical pdfs more comfortably.
I also wondered why E-Ink devices are not more popular. I think it has the potential to rival the iPad but at the moment it is just a fraction of the tablet market.
I think one reason that E-Ink is not more popular is probably because of the Price and that it is really best as a secondary device. Most people would rather purchase a primary device that can do a lot of things well rather than a secondary device that can do a few things exceptionally.
My reMarkable 2 is sitting in a drawer waiting for me to get motivated to sell it. It completely lived up to all the promises, but in the end I couldn’t make the migration from a notebook, partly because I have terrible handwriting and finding things I’ve written down requires me to use the physical cues of paper to go back later. The only other knock was that I couldn’t seem to get it to import my bullet journal format in PDF in a way that made it easy to use as a daily note template.
> Not having searchable notes was almost a deal-breaker for me, and I still have hope that this behavior will be implemented in the future as an update.
The handwriting equivalent of Notepad that came with Windows Tablet edition (2002?), A software called Journal, allowed searching in handwritten notes. It worked pretty well, since searching does not require an exact OCR (it sometimes has some false positives, but it's actually better at finding then the most recent typed version of OneNote).
That you can’t see the price of the subscription up front is damning. I can’t stand that about enterprise software, but that being opaque in b2c pricing is unforgivable.
It may be a silly reason to deduct points, but the fact that this company are name parasitizing on a real word, and especially one in widespread and important use, is already putting them behind for me.
Having said that Supernote's ambitions for more ruggedness/robustness and Pinenote's openness and overall stronger specs would probably have made them higher priority anyway once I get around to ordering.
I really really wanted one of these for note taking. I settled on an iPad Pro + Apple pen + Notes App which have been remarkably (no pun intended) good. The fact that I can then consume the notes I wrote on my computer or phone and use search as well with no extra effort required has been invaluable.
Same here, I settled for Ipad and Apple pen, also because I see no need to add another device after caring a phone, tablet and notebook.
May I ask if you found a good note app? I am still looking, especially one that gives me cloud sync and distraction free reading.
I've had one for about a year now and co-sign the author's review. Especially the "broken" OCR that doesn't allow search. Nor is there any way to create links to hyperlink between notebooks. Doing so would be a total game-changer.
Can anyone recommend for or against buying a used reMarkable2 on ebay? I'm interested in this for daily work, happy to spend some time in SSH, and have a reasonably high risk tolerance for no-warranty. But I don't want to throw my money away.
I bought mine new. As someone who keeps there todo lists hand written, I use it every day several times a day. It’s also my e-reader for PDFs of research papers.
Like pen size, you can also adjust the eraser size!
I'm very content with my reMarkable 1, and while I absolutely love it, I'm not sure if I would put down €480 for it (I got it from my old boss as he wasn't using it).
I have one. Paired with their more advanced stylus (with the eraser) and with the new integration with Dropbox and GDrive it replaces my paper notebooks and most of my physical books. I quite enjoy using it.
often people want more feature, thinking more is better. iPad has color it is better right?
Personally I would pay more to have e-ink. Looking at it is like looking at paper! It is easier on the eyes, less drain on the battery. And most stuff software development wise, b&w is good enough.
I just want to point out that there are good e-ink color display now! It is just that none of the integrators made a product/device using it yet really.
There is a whole array of "notebook like" e-ink devices being created and released, but they mostly exist in, and target, the chinese and japanese market. Not the Western one. Remarkable is one of the exception and Kobo recently released one. Hopefully we will see more of it.
I personally think that the reason for this lack of device targeting the Western market is that the Kindle basically flooded the board and killed most of the use case. Sadly :(
It has more colours, better resolution and better contrast... but it's refresh and update speeds are much slower than E-Ink... which hopefully will improve as time progresses
I'm not a fan of onyx devices due to many reports about questionable home-calling.
However, they do have some nice devices like this color notebook with a pen and I guess that is what you were looking for: https://onyxboox.com/boox_nova3color
iPad has silky smooth scrolling and instant reaction to the input (milliseconds).
Once e-ink technology advances enough to allow for these, it might compete with iPad, but until then the lag is severely limiting what the device can do. Reading books (one screen refresh a minute) is fine, but not much else.
I personally find an iPad and a apple pencil either with Notability or the default Notes application the nirvana for me. Looking at paper is overrated, IMHO, a modern retina display with at least 69hz refresh rate shouldn't objectively cause any discomfort, unless you're using it under really adverse situations, like under direct sunlight.
Note that the author receives $40 when you buy a reMarkable using the provided link.
I've been using a reMarkable for some weeks on the job, and I'm generally satisfied. However, the reMarkable is not a proud linux computer. When changing to the subscription model, they introduced new Terms of Services. Among others, these prohibit reverse engineering the cloud API. Upon request, a customer service employee who had clearly never heard of the GPL clarified that as a customer I would certainly not be allowed to modify the operating system. Their legal team stepped in later to clarify that they accept the GPL, but still I should not dare to touch their API.
reMarkable gave every customer from before the 12th of October a lifetime subscription that is not transferable, should I eventually sell the tablet. So, I paid a ton of money for a tablet that says "OCR your writing" and "Sync all your documents" on the box, but I can not sell it without losing functionality that is advertised with on the box. The pricing for the subscription is way above reasonable.
As a note to the author, since you mentioned you recommended it to a psychologist: Please don't, or at least strongly suggest to keep away from connecting it to the internet. A random startup's cloud storage is not a place for sensitive medical and personal data. There is no option to sync the reMarkable with a self-operated WebDAV share or similar.
I just discovered earlier today that my reMarkable 2 screen is broken after sitting on a shelf unused for a month or two. Suffice it say it was the worst part of my day and I even had flashes of conspiracy theory (now, really? right after a 1 year warranty expires?) especially since I don't remember touching it or placing anything on it in a long while even though I know I must have tossed something heavy on it for this kind of break.
Learning about this debacle kind of softens that blow, in a weird way. I was really enthused about their openness and it would have hurt even more if I had gotten back into using it only to find out that it's the same shit, different company.
They repeatedly state that the terms and conditions of their services are Hong Kong jurisdiction.
They have no "terms" for sales like refunds, unless you buy Connect. They literally say "local laws and regulations MAY apply" and tell you to "check your local laws" to figure out what return policy applies. What...
You can still use the sync feature without a subscription, you just can't keep old files forever in the cloud.
"Without a subscription, you can still use the cloud to store and sync your notes. However, files will stop syncing to the mobile and desktop apps if they haven’t been opened in the last 50 days. They’ll still be automatically stored on your paper tablet"[1]
It's possible but I doubt it. It runs linux, is an e-ink device, can be sshed into and customized heavily, and it has a large following of nerds that write custom tools and reverse engineer the software and hardware. And on top of that it's a great device out of the box. To me that makes it likely to be of great interest to the HN crowd.
This is the biggest minus point for me. I want devices that I own, that I can use like I want to. I don't want to be caught in another cloud and pay monthly for something I don't want to use.
Currently I'm looking into getting a device from Onyx, because those support the Android App Stores, so I could set it up with Notion or my Nextcloud probably.
Remarkable seems to have better hardware (as in screen and writing), though.
edit: lots of people mentioning that you have SSH on the Remarkable. Good thing, but fiddling with shell scripts (yeah, no big deal for others, new for me) to sync with a cloud service of your choice... not sure I want that.