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I’m currently doing a Masters in Computer Engineering, struggling through a lot of calculus and linear algebra.

I have a Remarkable 2 for notes and working on math problem set homework to hand in as PDFs.

It’s fine. It doesn’t do anything other than record your handwriting. You can try and have it convert it to text, this works for language but fails utterly at math. I got the better pen that you can turn around to use as an eraser as using the UI to change the tool from pen to eraser and back is incredibly annoying.

I recently got an iPad to use instead mostly because I wanted one anyway, and because my handwriting is atrocious and iOS 18 pretties it up. I haven’t quite made up my mind on which one I’ll continue using. The iPad and its pen are more responsive, the fact that it improves my handwriting is a boon for the TAs, and solving some of the simpler math automatically is neat. The built in Notes app is garbage for handing in multi-page PDFs, bafflingly this is impossible, but the Goodnotes app is cheap and rather good. There’s other apps to convert handwritten math into Latex.

The Remarkable produces much smaller file sizes (I’m not sure why I care, the web app I upload homework to sure doesn’t) and the battery lasts much longer. I find replacing the pen tips very annoying and have no idea why that is needed.

I’ll probably end up using the iPad more, but I’ll guess I’ll see.




Hi bc569a80a344f9c,

I also use a table for university, instead of a laptop I've got the bigass Samsung s9 ultra (or whatever it's called) because it's near A4 size for reading PDF papers, etc..

This tablet has a special accessory that is a screen overly that is textured glass, so the "Writing feel" seems more like a pencile or whatever paper-like... It's marketed towards artists or whatever creative types. I think the Remarkable has that feature built into the screen without any accessory. You might see if you can find something like that for Apple tablets.

As far as a writing or note taking table goes, for people in the University, we really do need integration with things like Google or Microsoft. The whole idea that a minimal table requires the user to be subject to gatekeeping things like a computer/mobile app to do basic input/output of documents is quite frankly absurd. There is nothing distracting about saving a document into OneDrive or Google Drive.

I really do suspect the whole "focus" of Remarkable, and similar, is a cope. I totally get people with ADHD exist, and those people appreciate the kind of devices that actively prevent them from straying off their path.... but this is ridiculous.




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