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The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

• Tho85 5y ago
  I bought the Onyx Boox Note Air some months ago, and I must say that I'm really happy with it. Screen refresh is good, there's almost no ghosting in default mode, and refresh rates are acceptable. There are only two downsides about it: The vendor does not respect FOSS and does not publish the sources for their modified Linux kernel, and the device constantly phones home to China. However, the device can be rooted easily [1], and you can install a firewall to stop the preloaded apps from phoning home (verified it with Wireshark). [1]: https://blog.tho.ms/hacks/2021/03/27/hacking-onyx-boox-note-air.html https://blog.tho.ms/hacks/2021/03/27/hacking-onyx-boox-note-...
  • hcurtiss 5y ago
    Man, I don't know. I have the Onyx Poke 3 and I find the software pretty janky. For instance, in order to install a dictionary, I have to jump through a whole series of hoops to download one to a PC and then upload/install it on the tablet. I could install the Kindle app (after I enable the Google Play Store), but then I might as well buy a Kindle. In order to upload epub or pdf documents to the Poke3, I have to interface through a browser on a page with a very limited interface. They do not have upload by email, bluetooth, or any other convenient interface with my phone. All in all, it's just felt like a half-baked product to me.
    • Tho85 5y ago
      I use Syncthing [1] to do all the syncing, works like a charm. I have a folder synchronized between my reader, my PC and my phone, and whenever I need to send a document to the reader or from the reader to my PC, I just put it into that folder. [1] https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/
      • rchaud 5y ago
        I discovered Syncthing last week, and it's exactly what I was looking for: a local server that syncs between Device A and Device B on the same network. No need for a middleman like Dropbox. This is why I'm leaning towards the Note Air. The Kobo Elipsa is coming out soon but it syncs with Dropbox only.
      • westpfelia 5y ago
        Syncthing is maybe my favorite software discovery this year. It does exactly what I want it to no fuss. I'll shill for Syncthing all day.
    • salamandersauce 5y ago
      You can install a dictionary on the device, they are just stardict dictionary files...it's literally putting a file in a folder. They also have some available to download although mainly focused on Chinese/Russian. It runs Android. You can just sync things through the cloud provider of your choice. Put the Dropbox, OneDrive, NextCloud etc. app on and just download it from there. Most eReaders don't have upload by email just Kindles and that doesn't let you send a more recent better formats like KFX or AZW3, just ancient mobi. Ditto Bluetooth. And guess what? At least with Android phones "Nearby Share" works too (although that may require setting up Google Play Store.
      • powerapple 5y ago
        I thinks he is looking for a "kindle" and really should get a Kindle. I actually own a Kindle and a BOOX Nova 3, they are two different products, not interchangeable if you are picky about which is better at doing what. I would have a E-ink tablet, a Kindle and a iPad depending on the tasks.
        • salamandersauce 5y ago
          Yeah maybe. I use my Nova 2 as an everything eReader. Run the Kindle app for Kindle books, Kobo for kobo stuff, etc. Plus it will do things like Marvel Unlimited, Tachiyomi that readers from Amazon and Kobo won't.
        • hcurtiss 5y ago
          I want a Kindle for DRM free epubs
        • andrei_says_ 5y ago
          Anything you’ve installed on the nova3 that you use? Apart from Kindle, Firefox and safari books online reader? I’ve found that 3rd party drawing apps don’t work well with the screen.
    • tluyben2 5y ago
      I don't use most of their stuff on it; anything Android works and that's what I use. However I do like their reader. Never tried a dictionary installation but the rest is all resolvable with Android apps I would think; for synching anything you would use on an android phone works here too; dropbox, google drive etc. The fact it runs Android is vastly better than some custom software (like Kindle and others) because of this reason.
  • bjornjajayaja 5y ago
    If it phones home to China count me out. I’ll go for the reMarkable tyvm I can just see me working on a brilliant invention (one can dream , right?) and putting my notes into the note boox, only to realize it gets patented before me by a Chinese company.
    • asdwerwasdf 5y ago
      please get over yourself
    • est 5y ago
      > If it phones home to China count me out. About 1 billion Chinese customers think the same like you, except they refuse products that phone home to USA.
      • PaulRobinson 5y ago
        US (and EU, and indeed everywhere else), companies do not have as long and detailed a recent track record of IP theft.
        • est 5y ago
          And that's relevant with customer choice because?
          • selectodude 5y ago
            Because people create IP on their tablets.
          • eloisant 5y ago
            Because you might be taking work-related notes on your device that you don't want to be stolen as industrial spying.
        • msie 5y ago
          Don't forget that Facebook and Google steal all sorts of information about you too.
  • vinni2 5y ago
    I don’t like the software on my Onyx boox. It’s over engineered with too many options often not intuitive. Unless you opt in for their cloud service syncing sucks. I still can’t figure out how to access documents from Dropbox and edit them and sync it back.
    • dominotw 5y ago
      I use google drive from the play store. There is an extra step to enable play store.
    • zmk_ 5y ago
      Try Dropsync [1], you can sync particular folders to your Drobpox. The sync is bidirectional. There is a similar app for Google Drive as well. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.dropsync https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.dr...
  • dominotw 5y ago
    I bought this last year during pandemic. My reading time has grown exponentially, i couldn't update sure . I like that i can use play store apps so i use kindle, libby, pocket and oreilly.
  • stewbrew 5y ago
    Is there any information on what data it sends home? Is the problem the server is in China? My Android phone always phones home to some US servers. P.S. I own a rm2 but I'd be interested in an e-ink android tablet.
    • Tho85 5y ago
      It's been a while since I looked at it, but here's what I remember: In the UI, you can choose if the device should communicate to Chinese or US servers. Both of them are available under the boox.com domain, so I assume they are both controlled by the Chinese manufacturer. The device uses this to check for firmware upgrades, to sync notes, for their own book store and IIRC to send some basic usage statistics. As per firmware version 3.0 (v3.1 is current), this traffic was only partly encrypted. Besides this, the software seems to include some kind of Tencent SDK, which tries to contact Chinese servers quite aggressively, regardless of which setting you choose in the UI. The traffic is encrypted, so I couldn't figure out what it does. The servers seem to belong to Tencent's QQ service [1], so they supposedly use it for their on-device support feature. However, because the device tries to contact the servers immediately after startup, I assume it does some kind of analytics tracking as well. Blocking the service's domains on the DNS level doesn't work though, as the SDK will start to contact fixed IP addresses if DNS resolution fails. Luckily, all of this traffic can be blocked after rooting and installing a firewall (see my post above), since all of this is implemented under Android user ID 1000, which makes it easy to block in AFWall+. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ
  • nzmsv 5y ago
    It doesn't just phone home to China. The company actually refuses to comply with the GPL because of "anti-China sentiment" and closed down their support forum when people got angry (https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/hsyigm/onyx_using_recent_antichina_movement_as_excuse_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/hsyigm/on...)
    • dspillett 5y ago
      > because of "anti-China sentiment" Because yet another Chinese company flagrantly flouting a licence is really going to help with that situation… I was considering one of their devices. I am now not.
    • echelon 5y ago
      > The company actually refuses to comply with the GPL because of "anti-China sentiment" Seems like just cause for a multinational import ban. This is flagrant law breaking and theft.
  • andrei_says_ 5y ago
    Any chance to block this via my router for example? Is there an IP list anywhere? And, do you know what data they send?
  • ChristopherDrum 5y ago
    I have also really enjoyed my BOOX Note Air. I read like crazy on it and use it for note taking constantly. I like that I can have Firefox on it, for a little light web browsing. Maybe it's because it's my first e-ink device and I got enamored with the "new and shiny" of it all; I dunno. Personally, I don't need it to translate my handwriting, I just like the act of writing and like being able to design my own paper types on demand, with infinite paper. For me, it meets my needs. I put hands on a variety of devices at Yodobashi Camera and this was the only one that felt natural to write on. Everything else had a perceptible lag, or the pen was weird, that I couldn't handle for long. Of course, leave it to HN to make me feel like a total shithead for not looking into FOSS and other things (it didn't cross my mind even once). Guess I'll be rooting it this weekend; I really hate sinking the time/effort/risk into doing stuff like that.
• noja 5y ago
  Why the ReMarkable doesn't have a backlight I do not understand.
  • sarreph 5y ago
    Pure speculation, but could be a combination of keeping the thickness down (it's only 4.7mm thick), and the purism of recreating the pen-on-paper feel. That being said I wouldn't be bothered at all about a thickness increase, or breaking out of the pen-on-paper "immersion"... Perhaps there's a more technical reason.
  • martin_a 5y ago
    The whole purpose of E-Ink is to use "passive" displays which are more comfortable to the eye. Adding a backlight would remove that.
    • schwartzworld 5y ago
      Most e ink doesn't use a true backlight, but an array of lights along the inside of the bezel that light up the screen reflectively. It's still very good for battery life. Both the kindle Paperwhite and the onyx tablets have this feature. Onyx even let's you tune the warmth of the light.
      • emodendroket 5y ago
        The Kindle Oasis also does this
    • fsloth 5y ago
      IMO lighting on an E-Ink display does not increase the strain any more than illuminating a paper with reading lamp does.
    • 0-_-0 5y ago
      You can turn off the backlight
    • furgooswft13 5y ago
• oblio 5y ago
  I wonder which will happen faster: A) classic displays (LCD/OLED/Mini-LED/Micro-LEDs) reaching a point where the quality and power consumption are so low as to be indistinguishable from paper B) Color e-ink displays get good enough for interactive use, movie watching, etc. Maybe someone who's an expert in display tech can chime in? My money's on A) since so much is invested in it.
  • bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    >A) classic displays (LCD/OLED/Mini-LED/Micro-LEDs) reaching a point where the quality and power consumption as so low as to be indistinguishable from paper I thought in relation to eye strain and ability to read in sunlight the quality would be theoretically impossible to ever be indistinguishable?
  • nicoburns 5y ago
    I think A is fundamentally impossible. A backlit display is always going to look different to a reflective surface. My money's on C: a new display tech which works similarly to color E-ink, but isn't actually E-ink. Qualcomm's Mirasol technology looked amazing for this, but sadly it never made it into any mainstream products and they've basically shut it down at this point.
    • 0-_-0 5y ago
      In principle it's possible to measure the ambient light and set the emitted light to simulate reflected light from paper so that an OLED looks indistinguishable from paper. Next gen QLED displays might have the brightness to pull this off even in bright sunlight.
      • simias 5y ago
        If you really want to simulate reflected light you also have to be able to control the angle of the light that you emit, and you want to absorb incoming light almost completely otherwise there'll be a conflict (glare, in particular). I suspect that it might be easier to improve reflective displays, but I have no expertise in this field so maybe I'm completely wrong about that.
• codethief 5y ago
  > Later this month I'll take a look at Supernote which already has a enthusiastic community and promises to have a rich API for 3rd parties to explore and expand. I tried the Remarkable 2 for a month but ended up returning it and ordering the Supernote A5X instead – I couldn't be happier! Its main advantages (IMO): - The Supernote acts as a regular USB mass storage device, so syncing files (w/o resorting to the cloud) is not as hard as with the RM2 (which serves a really buggy web interface over USB, pretending to be an ethernet device). Sure, the RM2 gives you SSH access but that doesn't help much because it's using a shitty proprietary file system, so you can't just scp your documents but need to convert them first. - The Supernote comes with much better PDF reading and annotation capabilities. (The RM2 has pretty much none.) - The Supernote's soft non-glass surface is more comfortable for long writing sessions – writing on it feels like writing with a gel pen. Plus you'll never need to replace your pen tips as they're made from ceramic. - The Supernote A5X is running Android instead of a barebones Linux system, meaning that it comes with more features out of the box and it'll be much easier to extend it in the future when Ratta opens up their platform. (Sure, you can "hack" your RM2 but the chances that the next official update will then completely brick your device are rather high – /r/RemarkableTablet/ is full of these stories.) - The company behind the Supernote actually values the community's input, see https://www.reddit.com/r/Supernote https://www.reddit.com/r/Supernote
  • teruakohatu 5y ago
    How is it better than the remarkable?
    • codethief 5y ago
      I updated my post! :)
  • michaelmior 5y ago
    Thanks for sharing. I got the reMarkable 1 pretty early and I've been debating ordering the reMarkable 2. I've heard almost exclusively good things about it, but right now I'm happy enough with the original device. I hadn't heard of Supernote until seeing this comment, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on when I think about upgrading. I'm not sure what you mean when you say the RM2 has "pretty much none" when it comes to PDF reading and annotation capabilities. That's pretty much exclusively what I use my RM1 device for and it works great. EDIT: Wow. Looked at the A5X and for the price compared to the RM2, it's very enticing. (Once you throw in the folio and the pen for the RM2, the A5X is comparable if not cheaper.) Since my old Kindle Keyboard died a while back, I haven't replaced it. Looks like the A5X can also read Kindle books which is a huge draw for me. Do you know if there's any API that allows me to write my own utilities to sync with the A5X? Specifically, I want to be able to send PDFs to the device programmatically that will be eventually synced the next time I use it.
• Deukhoofd 5y ago
  I bought a Remarkable 2 myself, and I have to say I'm really happy with it. The built in e-reader was a bit mediocre, but a quick SSH session and a couple community scripts later and with just a long swipe across the screen I could access Koreader whenever I wanted.
  • base698 5y ago
    Link?
  • d4rkp4ttern 5y ago
    I have an RM2 and use it a lot but the jagged lines bother me. I got the Onyx Boox and returned it, the software was just too clunky and did not have the paper feel, instead felt very plasticky
  • mstipetic 5y ago
    I don’t understand how they put so little effort into software compared to hardware. They raised money recently they should be able to hire a decent software team, but I’m afraid they’ll start pushing towards subscription only features now
    • Deukhoofd 5y ago
      The software is fine for note taking, and reading and annotating PDFs, which is what I mostly use it for at work. The reader does however not feel set up for reading books. With it being fairly trivial to install Koreader however this turned into a non-issue to me.
    • michaelmior 5y ago
      I only have the reMarkable 1, but I've actually been pretty happy with the software on the device on the constant upgrades. What has been really disappointing is the clunky desktop and mobile apps and the fact that there's no Web app. Personally I wish they would just abandon the desktop and mobile apps and build a great Web app that works OK everywhere.
    • gspr 5y ago
• sammorrowdrums 5y ago
  I recently did a review of the RM2 vs Onyx Boox Max Lumi. I still own them both. https://sammorrowdrums.com/e-writers-remarkable-2-v-s https://sammorrowdrums.com/e-writers-remarkable-2-v-s
• sdflhasjd 5y ago
  Has anyone here used a reMarkable 2 and had the chance to compare it to a Supernote or a Note Air? I've had the opportunity to use a reMarkable in person, and it's the first and only digital writing device that I could tolerate to write notes. The MS Surface, iPad Pro and Samsung tablets have never cut it for me. It's difficult to quantify why - a combination of pen-to-display distance, latency and screen texture perhaps. Reviewers seem to agree that the Supernote and Note Air have higher latency, and higher pen-to-display distance, so I wonder if I could work with them or not. The reMarkable seems to to be the go-to device as a digital notepad, but doesn't do anything beyond that, whereas the other devices offer a (near) full Android experience, which would be more useful to me as a dwevice that costs £400+.
  • sammorrowdrums 5y ago
    I mentioned below, but you.can see my thoughts on RM2 and Max Lumi here: https://sammorrowdrums.com/e-writers-remarkable-2-v-s https://sammorrowdrums.com/e-writers-remarkable-2-v-s Personally I don't get a lot out of the Android (as I really try to avoid DRM e-books), but they are both nice devices. Haven't tried Note Air.
    • sdflhasjd 5y ago
      I don't think I'd get a huge amount out of Android itself, but just being able to install a browser with a reader mode would be really nice. In my mind, I'd install Firefox and use that when reading articles.
      • lallysingh 5y ago
        I installed a script on my laptop to 'Print' to remarkable. I can send it articles to read on it later.
  • codethief 5y ago
    > Has anyone here used a reMarkable 2 and had the chance to compare it to a Supernote or a Note Air? I have! See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27513499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27513499 > Reviewers seem to agree that the Supernote and Note Air have higher latency, and higher pen-to-display distance, so I wonder if I could work with them or not. The Supernote does come with slightly higher input latency but not by much – I got used to it pretty quickly and honestly don't really notice it anymore.
• ABS 5y ago
  I have a Remarkable 2 and the device is great, software is improving as well and taking notes is a joy BUT finding those notes later on is next to impossible. OCR is very bad and basically makes indexing and full-text searching impossible (and off device)
  • lallysingh 5y ago
    I generally end up taking my Big Notebook on my RM2, putting it into page overview, and moving pages to different notebooks later. OCR could never work with my handwriting.
  • CubsFan1060 5y ago
    This is EXACTLY the reason why, after weeks of review, I ended up with an iPad pro. Clearly it's a very different look and feel. However, using GoodNotes, it immediately finds whatever I've written (even in my sloppy handwriting) on any page I wrote it. It's kind of amazing actually. I'd have preferred eInk, but notes that I can't find are not useful to me.
• jcfrei 5y ago
  I keep reading that reading stuff on a paper or e-ink display is easier on the eyes than a monitor. Certainly makes sense if the comparison is to a CRT but compared to a standard LCD? Are there any medical studies that confirm this? As far as I know modern life exposes us to far little brightness, causing myopia for a lot of people. If anything a very bright backlight display should probably be better for our eyes...
  • vbezhenar 5y ago
    I don't think that's true as long as you provide healthy lightning. Light is light, doesn't matter whether it came from the sun or from backlight lamp. E-ink obviously is preferable when you're reading in the direct sun light, because LCD could be barely visible in those conditions.
    • rlkf 5y ago
      Light from the sun contains a much greater number of wavelengths (and different depending on time of day) than that from the backlight; it's not the same.
    • tzs 5y ago
      One significant difference is that with e-ink you can provide healthy lighting. With an LCD display you are stuck with whatever backlighting is built in.
  • illwrks 5y ago
    I think it comes down to emitted light vs reflected light. If you're looking into an LCD panel and the light it's emitting is not adjusted to match the environment you're in, too bright or too dull, then you will strain your eyes. With an e-ink screen, anything printed, or even a cinema screen, it doesn't usually emit light and therefore relies on the light emitted from other things around you to reflect off of the surface, illuminating the surface of the thing you're looking at. This is more natural and provides less strain on your eyes. On a personal preference side of things, I can't look at bright sources in the evening. My wife is a terror for looking at her phone at 100% brightness, it's blinding if she hands it to me to look at. Where as my devices are setup to dim and be as low as possible in the evening, even the profile on the TV.
• AshamedCaptain 5y ago
  Wait until the Kaleido 3 color 10'' panels.
• rvz 5y ago
  I was interested in purchasing a ReMarkable tablet last year then realised the ReMarkable 2 just released months ago and was very surprised that to see that they still don't have a color e-ink version. Until then, I am skipping it since I don't think it is worth the price. Downvoters: So I disagreed with the HN hivemind with a point I made about saving money for a better version and now I get downvoted for wrongthink? So somehow, this device is worth $400 to spend on a 32 bit machine with 8 GB of space and 1 GB of RAM? That is more like spending $400 on an over powered Raspberry Pi 2 just to read ebooks. (In black and white). You also might as well buy the latest iPad then.
  • CandyFace 5y ago
    Why you would be surprised baffles me. There are only a few e-ink tablets with color and they're all small and expensive. Setting that aside, they're not focusing (that much) on e-book comic reading, their focus is note taking, drawing and pdf reading. I use mine to do all three things and it works excellent, couldn't be happier. The remarkable is expensive no doubt but it's a much better device at what it does than an ipad or any other tablet for that matter if you ask me. I can't comment on the other tablets mentioned her as I haven't used anything else but ipad previously and now the remarkable 1. gen.
• mrfusion 5y ago
  I want one but I don’t know what I’d use it for. Weird problem to have I guess.
  • growt 5y ago
    You're not alone. I really like ePaper and I like working outside, but my handwriting is terrible and I'm faster typing anyway.
    • wffurr 5y ago
      Handwriting gets better with practice. You didn’t start out typing fast either; you had to learn and practice.
    • jcelerier 5y ago
      my handwriting is also terrible yet this is so incredibly better than notetaking on computer as soon as you have graphs, e.g. here's my current page: https://imgur.com/a/D0m4okF https://imgur.com/a/D0m4okF
  • res0nat0r 5y ago
    I'm in the same boat. If I could get Kindle e-books for free alongside the physical purchase of a book on Amazon, and these devices could import them I'd be all ears for a new toy to play with. Alas, two things which will never happen. :(
• tluyben2 5y ago
  I am happy with the Boox; it's a great device (hardware + the reader too) I think and I use it every day. Besides the China nature (which means what user Tho85 already explained here), I am a huge fan of the idea more different eReader types. For a lot of tasks. I often work in bright sunlight and it works really well while my laptops, including the MacBook m1 will give me a headache in 15 minutes glaring against the sun; this is just perfect and powerful enough to be a big screen for another device. Because of this device I now have the weird hallucination of my perfect device; seems it would be a surface pro x lte (but later gen; it needs to at last get closer to usable software wise) but with a color eInk screen. I know they will never make this but yep, that would be basically my daily driver. The Boox people could come quite far but they focus on eReaders.
• imroot 5y ago
  My biggest complaint about the ReMarkable is the lack of any meaningful business management tools -- I love using it, but, I need to be able to limit sharing, specify a specific SMTP service to use for sharing pdf files, remotely wipe a device, enforce a password on the device before storing and sharing notes from a sensitive meeting amongst my team. Outside of that edge case, I love it and it's indispensable and I use it at least 3 times a day for meetings and other to-do lists for myself.
• Grumbledour 5y ago
  I always think of the remarkable as a really odd device. Hardware wise, it looks great, but I seldom hear good things about the software, only that it is "improving" for years now. Also, while I think the form factor would be great for a text and graphics based computing device, they seem to invest as much energy as possible in playing down the computing angle, so that instead of having something great to do technical sketching, email or even interactive notebooks like Jupiter on, you get a really over engineered piece of paper. Now, it's pretty open, which is great, but I am not that convinced it will necessary remain so, and at that price, buying it only in the hopes of some people making better software in their free time always seems like a bigger gamble I like to take. I accept that for me ~120€ ereader, but for 5 times the price? I really wish they would embrace mobile computing. Combining an e-ink tablet optimized for text with a moldable operating system like on the old xerox machines could be so incredibly good. By the way, does the hardware allow connecting an external keyboard?
  • jonahbenton 5y ago
    I'm a fan of the remarkable, use v2 every day. My high school daughter uses my old v1 every day. We both love it. But it is absolutely very opinionated- entirely oriented around hand-writing use cases, specifically those that involve being away from power and network. So its power budget is low and it has amazingly robust synchronization. You can read and do some other things on it, but that's not what it solves for.
  • salamandersauce 5y ago
    Boox Note Air does through Bluetooth or USB C. It just runs Android so you can pretty much do whatever. It's literally an Android Tablet with an eInk screen. Remarkable you can hack in keyboard support. They are just focused on making a good digital notepad. Even their reading software is sub-par.
  • throwuxiytayq 5y ago
    Remarkable is really a device for people who explicitly don't want those features. They're betting hard that the market exists, although it probably isn't as large as the market for an as-powerful-as-possible general-purpose computing device. I've seen it mentioned that someone got an USB keyboard working, and the device is pretty hackable overall (you can SSH to root over wifi out of the box!), but I think if you want to connect an external keyboard then it probably isn't for you anyway. You can't even type text in documents. Disclaimer: reMarkable 2 user, pretty happy with their focus, but I wish the device was more responsive in some scenarios (complicated drawings are very slow) and there's certainly many missing core drawing/writing/reading features.
• solarkraft 5y ago
  E-Ink devices are cool. Anything above 6” is just way too expensive.
• teorema 5y ago
  I love eink devices but got turned off by the first couple of generations because they always underdelivered with PDF display, which seemed like a central use case to me. I should be able to open a random graphics-heavy PDF and have it display perfectly (ignoring color) and in a reasonable amount of time for an eink device to be worth it to me. This has made me want to revisit them but I don't think I'd want to purchase one without being able to stress test in person.
  • efficax 5y ago
    The latest kindles are great with pdfs, that was my main use for them in grad school. I haven't tried the newer eink tablets though
  • tluyben2 5y ago
    I use the Boox with papers (so almost only PDFs) on the internal reader and on Android readers; it works really well. In the end I keep using the internal reader because it has split view for me to scribble notes next to every page. Disclaimer: I am older with glasses but not reading glasses; I read fine with incredibly small fonts; I prefer it that way. So YMMV but for me and for PDFs it is an ideal device for sure. If the built-in reader is not good enough, you just get one from the Play Store; there are enough very good ones there.
  • gspr 5y ago
    I understand that. I gotta say I was blown away with how well the RM2 handles complex PDFs. Edit: As a stress test, I just opened the most complex PDF I had on my computer – http://mirrors.ctan.org/graphics/pgf/base/doc/pgfmanual.pdf http://mirrors.ctan.org/graphics/pgf/base/doc/pgfmanual.pdf . I think it works really well on the RM2. The gradients in some of the fancier features look ugly, but other than that everything is quite readable, and flipping pages is quite spiffy (I know some ordinary computer PDF readers sometimes have noticable loading times for certain pages in this document).
• varispeed 5y ago
  I have reMarkable 2 and I think it is brilliant, however it has one deal breaker that is there is no encryption on the device. If you lose it, you risk your documents landing in a bad actor hands. One may say it's the same with actual paper - sure, but reMarkable 2 can store much more data than a suitcase of documents. Then I have no idea whether documents on their cloud are encrypted and who has access to it beside myself. So reMarkable has become an expensive paperweight. I saw some people tried to get encrypted fs working, don't how well that works though. I wrote an email to support about this and I never got any reply. Says all...
  • ACS_Solver 5y ago
    Their cloud is fully optional - you don't have to use the rM cloud, or even create an account. To me that is itself one of the killer features of the rM, it works as an offline device with local storage.
  • CandyFace 5y ago
    The latest update includes the ability to open password protected PDF's https://blog.remarkable.com/software-update-2-7-small-steps-can-lead-to-big-changes-to-your-workflow-842f5538ae41 https://blog.remarkable.com/software-update-2-7-small-steps-... Might be worth taking a look again
• zachruss92 5y ago
  I pre-ordered the Remarkable 1 and ended up returning it due to buggy software and the battery life not performing as advertised (had to recharge literally every day). I pre-ordered the Remarkable 2 when it came out because it was much more affordable. I've had it since November and have used it virtually every day. It's light and portable and I think I've charged it three times since November. They've definitely improved their software a lot and I love the OSS community around it. The only feature I wish it had was full text search on my notes. But I and willing toive without it as I want a lower tech solution for note taking that is still portable.
  • michaelmior 5y ago
    Interesting. That hasn't been my experience at all with the reMarkable 1. I do agree the software needed some work, but it has improved significantly since I first bought it. I have been debating purchasing the reMarkable 2 and although it looks great, I think I'm happy enough with the first device to keep it for now.
• chrisweekly 5y ago
  I'm really glad I bought my ReMarkable2 (and Marker "Plus"), as it suits my use case extremely well: replacing stacks of 8.5x11" graph notepads, while adding digitization / sync, undo/redo, select/cut/paste/resize/move, (modest) pan/zoom, etc. Battery life and form factor are great. The writing UX is really something: low-latency, ~perfect hand detection, and the "feel" of writing. Yeah, the software's mediocre, but it's gotten noticeably better since I bought it ~6mo ago. And it's still early days. The OSS community did wonders for the RM1, and I expect RM2 to follow suit. It's not a do-anything kind of device (I absolutely love my Kindle Oasis for reading) but for me it was easily worth the $.
  • vinni2 5y ago
    I bought Remarkable 2 and returned it sadly. It does one thing very well which is writing. But not a great tool for reading PDFs. When I figured pinch to zoom was not possible that was it for me. It’s a really polished tool for wiring but they have a lot of room to improve for reading experience.
    • gspr 5y ago
      Pinch zoom is available in PDFs now. I'm on 2.7, but I believe it was added in 2.6. It works really well. Of course it's far slower than on a normal tablet due to the e-ink screen, but it's definitely fine for me.
      • szszrk 5y ago
        I think it's actually impressive speed-wise. Not a real tablet speed but in my case even large, graphics heavy documents work quite well. I'm surprised they pulled this one off.
        • gspr 5y ago
          Absolutely. I just added the comment because I've had some friends who are unfamiliar with e-ink screens expecting tablet behavior. I just refereed a research paper with complex (color!) graphics on the thing. It was an absolute breeze!
• mathewsanders 5y ago
  I was one of the supporters for the first remarkable and pre-ordered with a bundle with case for $350 (I think) which seemed pretty expensive but I really wanted to support businesses developing these larger scale e-paper tablets. The battery life was really bad in the first software versions but seems to be a lot better now. I use it for recipes (I like to write my own version out even when working from a cookbook so that I can modify), UX sketches, and most recently I’ve joined a bookclub and has been great to highlight passages and write notes in the margin for discussion. Overall it’s been useful, but the early bad experiences with battery life/power management really turned me away from more consistent use (after a couple meetings where it powered down and had to go back to my desk to grab a paper pad). Would be curious to hear from anyone who got RM2 after RM1 and what their battery life difference has been!
  • vendiddy 5y ago
    I bought the RM2 and used to have a RM1. The battery life is much better, though I don't have any hard stats. They also improved a lot of my complaints with RM1 such as difficulty erasing.
• jrimbault 5y ago
  Musicians, are there any tablet you use, recommend, for partitions (sheet music) ? Someone I know uses a iPad Pro, 13" seems like a good size to get the approximate good size. But it's also very expensive for just diplaying partitions.
  • occamschainsaw 5y ago
    There are "specialized" dual screen eink tablets for sheet music, but they are extremely expensive(~$2000)! https://www.padformusician.com/en/products/19-21-padmu-3-lumi.html#/2-version-double https://www.padformusician.com/en/products/19-21-padmu-3-lum... https://www.gvidomusic.com https://www.gvidomusic.com
• jbrun 5y ago
  I have had my remarkable 2 for a month and really love it. It replaces paper and annotating paper PDFs. It is simple and easy to use. If you currently take notes or write paper PDFs, it is for you (this is enough for many people).
• hyperpallium2 5y ago
  TFA mentions word processing - has anyone tried eink text editing (say, vim, via termux on Boox android), for developing? Long dreamt of this.
  • danidiaz 5y ago
    This is one such setup: https://twitter.com/fresheyeball/status/1403192219092144130 https://twitter.com/fresheyeball/status/1403192219092144130
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    I've got an Onxy BOOX with the optional (and cheap!) Bluetooth keyboard. As this is an Android device, Termux (a Linux userland for Android) is available (through F-Droid). So yes, both vim and emacs (as well as a slew of other editors). I've done some light editing on the device, and the display is generally suitable. My main gripe is that there's no way to position the device and keyboard in my lap in a stable format (a kickout selfsupporting folio case, as I have for an earlier Android tablet, would be better). And: as with all Android devices, the OS chooses to kill what the OS chooses to kill, when it wants, for memory GC purposes. So that shell session may suddenly cease to be at any point (usually when backgrounded and you're tending to other affairs). This is ultimately a dealbreaker. Android is simply not suitable to Real Work. (You could use Termux + keyboard + ssh + screen/tmux to work on another remote system, of course, but that's not nearly as portable, unless you're carrying that remote system with you at all times as well.)
• qwerty456127 5y ago
  A little bit too expensive but so cool (because not just eInk but also hackable!) I'm definitely going to buy it. At the same time I would never buy function-limited proprietary thing like Kindle even if it was extremely cheap (I actually bought a PocketBook instead).
• mattowen_uk 5y ago
  I want to switch fully to digital magazines (as PDFs or via the publishers apps), but I can't find the right hardware to do this. I've worked out that for almost 100% scaling of a magazine PDF, I need about a 13" screen, in 4:3 ratio (or thereabouts). 16:9 ratio is just too tall and thin. e-ink devices seem too expensive for this single use-case, as does the iPad Pro, which although ideal is massive overkill. I've even started going down the crazy route of trying to design something with a Raspberry Pi zero, and a HDMI LCD panel, but the power draw seems too prohibitive to make it viable. Does anyone have any other suggestions here?
  • squarefoot 5y ago
    The RPi boards aren't the best choice for low current consumption, even other competing but similar ARM boards are better suited for that use. However, the main processor is just one of the power hungry devices: a LED screen needs its backlight on to be read, while an e-paper screens don't, and their power consumption falls to zero when the user is reading a still image, which also allows the processors to enter in extremely low power sleep modes. Making a reader with LCD/LED displays in my opinion is doable, but tuning the power consumption to save as much power as possible will require a lot of effort, and would never compare to e-readers anyway. However, if one accepts a heavier and more thick device, then yes, it's definitely doable, and could also become a better platform for other uses too.
  • abawany 5y ago
    How about a Chromebook with a detachable screen (e.g. Lenovo Duet, Acer, or the HP X2)? These can run Android apps and thus support most digital magazine apps such as Zinio plus they often cost much less than a comparable ipad.
    • mattowen_uk 5y ago
      I didn't realise you could get Chromebooks with detachable screens - I'll look into this - thanks!
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    For any current publications, you can probably get by with slightly reduced page-size, so a 10" device should still present most current and well-typeset content at full-page width. Most e-book readers have an option to specify in-page navigation of a document, generally into four quadrants, read either in "ᴎ" or "Z" flow (first is "article", second is "comic book" navigation"). This effectively quadruples screen resolution, at the cost of a slight decrease in fidelity to the original experience. Given the cost trade-offs in devices (~$340 for 7.8", $800 for 13.3") this may be acceptable. That said, I splurged on the 13.3" Max Lumi. The first time I was faced with a less-than-perfect scan of a three-column article first published in the 1970s that I could comfortably read at full size (with just a smidge of margin trim), it was worthwhile. If your budget constraint is stronger, you still have options. Most book texts read fine at 8", so the compromise is not something you'll be seeing all the time.
• squarefoot 5y ago
  Ah, e-readers. I'm looking for a good one since forever, but they are either too small, too slow or too costly. Hopefully technology developments will bring soon a good 10" before my eyes will need a 15" one:) Reading old books and magazines is also a problem: they're often 100% graphics with no OCRed text, therefore they're really slow, also zooming a page with diagrams on a technical book can be painful on low end hardware. Does anyone have a model to suggest with 10" screen size? I don't have many other requirements, other than: Decent speed, storage space and battery life. Support for beefy pdfs and other e-book formats. (this is important, one of my old readers took like forever to load a big book, then 15 seconds to turn each page). I would connect it only to my network, so it must not rely on cloud services et al. Color not needed, grayscale will do if well implemented. Taking notes not needed, although being able to fill pdf forms might be handy, but it's not a requirement.
  • dont__panic 5y ago
    No offense, but the article discusses 10" ereaders heavily (that's the screen size of both the reMarkable 2 and the Note Air). There's also the Kobo Elipsa if you'd like something that's totally focused on reading. I've been using a 7.8" Nova 3 myself for a few months now, and it's a dramatic improvement over the 6" Kindle I was using before. I love having a screen that's closer to the size of your average hardcover page, and it's just large enough to make PDFs readable at 100% zoom. It's also very fast, though there's always a bit of perceivable e-ink related lag unless you put an app on the fastest refresh rate. The warm frontlight is also the best I've experienced on an ereader, even better than what I've seen on Kindles. IMO, 10" might be a smidge too large for comfortably reading in bed -- the Note Air might feel a bit too large physically and heavy to hold up if you're reading for long periods of time with one arm holding it up. If that's a common use case for you, you should really consider the Onyx Boox Nova 3, like I have, or maybe the Kobo Forma, which is a bit cheaper and reading-focused. I'm using my Nova 3 completely disconnected from the internet most of the time, though I do occasionally find it useful to fire up Firefox for random browsing (and to sometimes transfer files with https://snapdrop.net/ https://snapdrop.net/, which is like Apple's Airdrop on your local network). I don't think using the Nova 3, Forma, Elipsa, reMarkable 2, or Note Air offline most or all of the time would be a problem, though from what I can tell reMarkable has invested a lot in sync functionality that you might not necessarily want to turn off. Though the reMarkable probably wouldn't be for you, since it's focused on note-taking, rather than reading.
• lordgrenville 5y ago
  I've been thinking of buying a ReMarkable, but all I really want is a reader without a backlight that can handle PDFs smoothly. (Ability to mark up is a plus but not necessary.) Based on this thread it seems like the RM/Boox are not really what I'm looking for.
  • jessmartin 5y ago
    I read PDFs (and highlight and annotate) on my RM2 daily. It's a _fantastic_ PDF reader, IMO. It's the ability to annotate that's killer for me. I mark things up extensively, writing notes in the margins, starring items, underlining, and writing on the RM2 screen is a paper-like writing experience. It's e-reader software is a bit meh, so I still read books (fiction, mostly) on my Kindle Paperwhite.
    • noobly 5y ago
      So you don't have issues with the lack of PDF reflow? I just want something that works for reading and doing math/cs while laying in bed.
      • jessmartin 5y ago
        Oh, I absolutely _don't_ want PDF reflow! The PDFs I read are formatted a specific way for a reason. 2-column, latex-generated academic papers, etc. Reflow is one of the worst things to happen to digital publishing, IMO. I get it that it makes ebooks readable, but typesetting is an art, and one we haven't even come close to nailing in the digital realm.
        • noobly 5y ago
          I think by reflow I really meant "maintain zoom between page turns". On my Kobo's default software, I had to re-zoom each page (so I installed KoReader).
• rbanffy 5y ago
  the ghosting of e-paper displays is somewhat reminiscent of paper magazines, when you see the ink from the other side of the page.
• gspr 5y ago
  I'm a very happy ReMarkable 2 owner. I only wish it had been available many years ago: maaaan this thing would have saved me lugging around (and losing!) a gazillion duplicates of papers with different sets of notes on them during my PhD. I'm an incredibly disorganized person, and the RM2 has been an absolute godsend for me. Positives: * Build quality feels great. * Screen is super responsive when writing. And responsive enough when flipping pages (although I am not familiar with the state of the art ebook readers). * Pen feels really good against the surface. After one day of getting used to it, it started feeling as natural as paper for me. * Hacker friendly: Tick a box under "settings" and it gives you the root password, and you just plug in a USB cable and SSH in as you please. Inside is a pretty standard Busybox-based Linux. All the cloud gizmos are optional. See also https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable * Eternal battery life and perfect viewing angles and everything else you'd expect from this kind of screen. Negatives: * I would have like the screen to be just a liiiittle bit bigger. Some papers on A4 paper with smaller fonts cause me to squint a little unless I zoom in to crop out the margins (and if the margins aren't the same on each page, that's annoying). * The upselling price of the nice carrying cases and the "fancy" pen are a bit ridiculous. Thankfully, the fancy pen isn't really that useful to me, because I prefer the fill-erase mode anyway. * I often accidentally hit the power on button when carrying the thing. * I know they're trying to minimize physical buttons, but I would personally have loved a physical button (preferably on the pen!) to flip into (fill-)erase mode.
• deleted 5y ago
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• wastholm 5y ago
  I bought a Remarkable 2 a month or two ago because I wanted a cool hackable e-ink Linux computer. But instead I immediately started using it as an e-book and document reader and note-taking pad, and nothing else. And, so far at least, that's perfect. The screen is beautiful (a bit gray, but the black is really black so the contrast is still good), the device is thin and reasonably light, I only have to charge it once a week or so, and there are absolutely no distractions. I have even rediscovered the visceral pleasantness of writing by hand. I especially like that it's *not* running Android (which I dislike more with each release). The biggest drawbacks, to me, are the fragile pen nibs and the inability to just SCP a PDF or EPUB to the device and have it work (their sync software works but isn't great).
  • aerique 5y ago
    I use rMAPI to push and pull stuff from the machine. Not sure if it works for the rm2 as well. Also, it requires storing your stuff on reMarkable's servers ('cloud'). https://github.com/juruen/rmapi https://github.com/juruen/rmapi
    • abawany 5y ago
      I love rmapi and use it often with my rM2.
      • sabauma 5y ago
        I find rmapi + fzf to be the easiest way to send ebooks in my Calibre library to my rM2. Its probably possible to create a Calibre addon to do this, but its already makes syncing pretty easy.
  • freeqaz 5y ago
    You can actually SCP into the device without any modification. It's under the Copyright section of the device. It'll show you the default SSH password for your device and then you can drop files in there. :)
    • 5y ago
• jhvkjhk 5y ago
  I'd like to have an E-Ink tablet, but the black flash when you zoom in/out is really annoying(8:00 in the video). Is this flash inevitable with E-Ink?
• markroseman 5y ago
  Has anything improved recently for RM2 around secure sync to a LAN? Would like to experiment with one for my psychiatrist wife to replace her paper chart notes, but anything hitting an external cloud service is out of the question for patient information. Sync via cable would be too obtrusive. And I gather handwriting recognition etc. is done via cloud.
  • gpm 5y ago
    There's no official solution, but, It's just linux. It has ssh installed (it tells you the password in the "copyright and licenses" menu, and you can private keys on the device like normal). It connects to wifi. You can write a script that runs on the device and periodically syncs notes somewhere (I have this setup with restic for backups). Handwriting recognition is done by cloud, and, I mean, unless you want to set up your own software for handwriting recognition (doesn't sound easy) you would need to give up that feature (I have)...
    • pomatic 5y ago
      DIY handwriting recognition is actually really easy using Microsofts SaaS offerings. The results are astonishingly good too - it makes mincemeat of my awful handwriting.
      • gpm 5y ago
        That's really interesting actually, thanks for letting me know! Not sure trading out remarkables cloud for microsoft's cloud is exactly what OP wants though ;)
  • rchaud 5y ago
    You might be better off with an e-reader running full Android. I use Syncthing Fork, and it lets me do two-way sync between my tablet and a Macbook, which acts as a local server. No middleman cloud service required.
    • swiley 5y ago
• Teknoman117 5y ago
  With how hackable the remarkables have been (u/rmhacks on Reddit even booted straight Debian on them), I'm somewhat surprised there hasn't been an effort to completely replace the stock firmware with a tailored replacement. Maybe that should be my side project...
• JeremyNT 5y ago
  I have a similar but older device, the Likebook Mars. These no-name Chinese Android e-ink tablets are actually really great devices, when it comes to hardware. Where they fail of course is the questionable software. I find the Likebook actually works well enough, but I'm sure it's got untold security issues that prevent it from being useful for anything serious. I don't really understand why there really aren't any reputable companies in the Android e-ink tablet space, and I also don't understand why Google themselves seem to have absolutely no interest in Android for this use case. An e-ink Pixel tablet seems like it would be a real win.
  • cainxinth 5y ago
    > I don't really understand why there really aren't any reputable companies in the Android e-ink tablet space, and I also don't understand why Google themselves seem to have absolutely no interest in Android for this use case. Just guessing, but maybe they did the market research and the audience isn’t big enough. After all, e-ink devices are primarily for consuming large amounts of text, and most peoples’ reading these days is short form, multimedia content (articles, blogs, lists, slideshows, social media posts, explainer videos, etc.) which is better suited to existing phones and tablets. I’m still among those who read book-length content, but far less than I did in years past. I’d say the actual number of words I read every year has gone up, but the number of 300+ page books I read has gone down. The upside is, I’m much more selective about the books I do read and mostly only read excellent ones.
• rchaud 5y ago
  Boox Note Air seems like the best fit for me, because it runs full Android, instead of a restricted device-only OS. So for example, if you want to use it as a glare-free word processor, connect a BT keyboard, fire up Word and you're good to go. The refresh rate is fine for normal typing. The problem is that Boox is a Chinese/HK brand with no customer support depot overseas. So if you get a lemon, you might be able to return it, but it'll be expensive, and your refund might be subject to a restock fee depending on the vendor. The Kobo Elipsa is coming in a few weeks, and looks similar to the Note Air, and is cheaper as well. It would be well-supported in Canada, but it's running a custom Linux OS that's pretty locked down and only integrates with Dropbox, Pocket and Kobo's e-store. You can't sideload apps.
• DevX101 5y ago
  Check out the Youtube channel My Deep Guide for an in-depth comparison of e-ink writing devices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH1pWqY0lPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH1pWqY0lPs
• FlyingSnake 5y ago
  I bought the Onyx Boox Note air after much deliberation. Apart from the GPL violations, I don't see any major problems in the Note air, and it's a perfect device for my needs. I can recommend it to someone who wants a all-round eInk tablet. * Taking notes is really great, the notes app is highly customisable to personal needs. Handwriting to text is quite powerful as well. * Searching for text in your handwritten notes is a quite cool and useful. * You can use the Kindle Android app and it's just perfect. * The browser is quite powerful and offers a great reading experience. * Keyboard is surprisingly good, I like the write-to-text feature very much.
• pjerem 5y ago
  I loved my Remarkable but I returned it. I was pretty ok with the "it's just note taking" paradigm. But the problem for me is that it should be "just a note taking" device but with advanced note taking features, not just "nothing more than a sheet of paper". The number one issue for me was the poor navigation experience. Going from one page to another was a pain if they were not contiguous. This could have been solved by allowing to create "links" between pages for example. But I the end, I found myself writing everything on the current page because getting to a new page in the right place was too long. Let apart my issue, which maybe is really personal, Remarkable is a remarkably (!) engineered experience. Particularly , the writing experience is impressive.
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    Could you not set multiple bookmarks and navigate between those?
  • jgon 5y ago
    The new software update lets you hit a button to take you to a "notebook overview" type page, where you can see all the pages in the notebook laid out in a quasi-grid. You can then tap whichever page you want to navigate to. Of course there's always complications with determining which page to use, having to scroll if your notebook has 1000 pages, etc, etc, but I think it might hit the 90% case you're looking for with trying to quickly switch between non-contiguous pages without having to scroll through the whole notebook.
• Jedd 5y ago
  I bought a Pocketbook 912 [0] soon after it came out, around 2012. It wasn't cheap - I think around £400. It had a 9.7" screen with a resolution of 1200×825. But the CPU & memory were what you'd expect a decade ago, so the experience was quite laggy. OTOH the display was superb for reading most text books - almost native size, PDF rendering & page turning was fast enough, and zero eye-strain. It came with a pen for doing highlights and basic drawing. I still use it occasionally for distraction-free textbook reading. In 2014 I picked up a Galaxy Note Pro 12.2" - an android(ish) device, good pen support. Slightly laggy, but the ability to sync my notes and colour drawings (in SVGs, typically) back to my computer was valuable. Samsung notoriously ceased supporting this flagship product soon after release. (They're now on my list.) The Remarkable2 looks great, but I'm wary now. I'd want to be extremely confident about inter-op of content between my computers (Debian, mostly) and the device - in both directions - before wanting to make a long-term commitment to yet another platform. [0] http://www.pocketbook-int.com/au/products/pocketbook-pro-912 http://www.pocketbook-int.com/au/products/pocketbook-pro-912
  • abawany 5y ago
    I used to have a 912 as well but its bugs were tiresome so I stopped using it. I can say that the rM2 is a very different beast from that. I didn't expect to like the rM2 and was anticipating returning it when I preordered it but now it pretty much accompanies me everywhere.
    • Jedd 5y ago
      Can I ask two questions please? First, what don't you like about it now that you've used it for a while? Second, are you sharing data to and fro with a GNU/Linux desktop/laptop (if to is the workflow comfortable) or is it primarily a reader and note taker that generates notes that are sent one-way back to your computer?
      • abawany 5y ago
        My biggest dislike is the storage: my ebook collection is closer to 20GB and I'd love to be able to put it all in the device but it's not to be. The sync story is itunes like (transfer+metadata), which I somewhat dislike, but the use of rmapi plus other mechanisms to transfer data to it (e.g. plug in via usb and then post/curl a file vs. using their somewhat silly front end directly) has made it work for me. I use their app as an easy way to look at my notes on my work+personal laptop plus also use the send-as-email functionality to share notes. I also transfer content from my chromebook to it via the chrome plugin. All in all, the storage limitation is my biggest criticism but in general the other improvements it's brought to my life have been much appreciated. PS: I use the Staedtler Noris Digital Jumbo stylus instead of the stock due to the built in eraser. The writing experience is less realistic with this though but the eraser is handier; I wish I had bought the marker plus when I preordered. Edit: I didn't really answer your 2nd question: I don't know of good approaches to share data with a Linux desktop in this case though I think rmapi would do well for it. It would be nice if they had a webapp vs platform dependent apps for sharing data. Some of the hacks people have developed for it might help in that case. I recommend joining their discord or checking out remarkablewiki.com
• figers 5y ago
  Onyx Boox Note Air Is extremely fragile. I had mine in a case in my backpack. Not a scratch on the screen, not a crack anywhere. The E-ink has crazy lines in it, not sure if it was pressure in the back pack but be careful. I loved the device, reading and writing on it was awesome but the company wanted $200 to fix it plus shipping both ways. Thankfully Amazon made an exception and I got all my money back.
• amval 5y ago
  I bought the ReMarkable 2 when it was released. The hardware is beautiful (as well as the packaging and presentation). The software was pretty underwhelming, but they seem to be speeding up and fixing glaring deficiencies. For my use case, it's lovely (reading and annotating technical books and papers, meetings, writing, even the drawing experience is better than expected). Right now there are things that I could imagine myself wanting but not really _needing_. Maybe plugging in a keyboard would be appreciated. I can really recommend it if you enjoy "thinking" with paper and writing by hand. I am barely use traditional notebooks anymore. Plus: it's a very open and hackable device.
• clvx 5y ago
  I would like remarkable 2 or any of these devices to be used as a pen tablet in an easy way with the different OS. It would make much easier drawing diagrams while working in a presentation. Even better if they at some point can be hooked to some kind of software for collaboration editing. How I see myself using it. Prepping diagrams early in the morning, pulling that on the computer, keep editing while presenting to my coworkers, let my coworkers add any other information(even better using their own devices).
• lovelyviking 5y ago
  I have rM1 and tried many things with it even wrote some software to run there. Yet the usage is rather limited so far. This page contains a list of free software for rM on github: https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable And this amazing guy even made a full alternative GNU/Linux OS running on rM: http://www.davisr.me/projects/parabola-rm/ http://www.davisr.me/projects/parabola-rm/ Still I have some unresolved issues. When I say 'unresolved issues' I mean I tried a few things but didn't found something comfortable 'enough' to use. I need something that 'just works' without me dealing with it constantly. * How would you sync notes between rM and Mac quickly? Of course syncing through their online service/apps is out of the question due to the privacy. * How would you sync quickly books with it? I know you can connect it directly to a computer and use Web Interface. It's too slow and not always works. I perhaps works for one or two books but not very practicle for everyday use. Besides my new Mac doesn't come with normal usb port (thanks apple) and dealing with adapter is too much of a headake each time. * How would you read HackerNews on rM1 comfortably? * How would you use it as second monitor for Mac to read some web articles and work? I know there is: https://github.com/matteodelabre/vnsee https://github.com/matteodelabre/vnsee I've managed to configure it as second screen for linux virtual machine running on Mac but this is not the same as running it as second screen to the Mac itself. Also since my last model of macbook pro (2016) had successfully died lately due to the quality of this garbage I had to buy a M1 model. The virutal machine configured for this purpose was based on Virtual Box which is if I understand correctly doesn't work very well on M1 and so far there are no plans to make it work there. So I am still looking for good alternative option to make it run at least this way. If you have some advice I would be happy to hear. * What is the 'safest' or 'correct' way to backup the whole rM and be sure that you can restore it without a danger to brick it completely. * How to connect BT Keyboard and configure it properly. * All these 'issues' basically about how to make it usable for programming. If you have any good solutions/ideas about those issues please share.
• dheerajrav 5y ago
  So, I've been using Remarkable-2 for over 6 months now. And it's amazing! Pros: 1. A single charge lasts a WEEK! 2. I used to write a lot of notes on white sheets, add addendum here and there. Now, its all on reMarkable. 3. My table clutter has reduced significantly. 4. I'm writing a lot more! 5. It syncs to cloud and I can immediately read the notes on my computer, mobile. 6. It's so thin and lightweight. Definitely doesn't feel cheap. It has a nice premium feel to it. 7. New updates like Pinch and Zoom functionality has made it easier to read PDFs. Cons: 1. Battery life sucks if you're connected to WiFi. 2. Expensive - Product + Sleeve + Marker with Eraser sets you back $500+. Strongly recommend to anyone who writes a lot.
  • frockington1 5y ago
    Addressing the pricing con: I have the Remarkable 1 and it addresses most of the pros but not quite as fancy as the 2. It still costs a lot but is 300 vs 500. Seems like prices have gone up since I bought it for ~200.
• KuhlMensch 5y ago
  I wonder what the average age of an E-Ink Tablet purchaser is vs a purchaser of a traditional tablet (traditional tablet being an iPad, not a wax-covered slate)
• danShumway 5y ago
  What's the situation with reMarkable 2's privacy? I'm interested in it as an extensible Linux device, but part of that would mean connecting it to a network to take advantage of SSH support. Is there a way completely turn off analytics so it never connects to a remote server at all without my permission? Can I disable updates without disconnecting it from the network? Or is there a replacement OS/hack that can disable any data collection? I get nervous around proprietary software, even if it is extensible. I like that I can SSH onto the device itself, I like a Linux base, but I want to know that I'm not going to be fighting with their UI layer for control in the future. I guess KoReader exists, but as far as I know from other e-readers KoReader doesn't actually replace anything, it just runs automatically after the normal OS has booted. I want the ability to completely disable any part of the OS that would be reaching out to a remote server without my permission.
  • afandian 5y ago
    It appears as a virtual network device via USB, so it's completely functional without WiFi.
    • danShumway 5y ago
      Sure, but part of the appeal to me is WiFi access. That's where things like Syncthing or using the device as a handheld tablet input during meetings would be very powerful. I can quarantine everything, but I don't want to quarantine the device, I want to be able to connect it to WiFi and take advantage of its networking features while trusting that it won't send a bunch of data somewhere.
  • gpm 5y ago
    > Is there a way completely turn off analytics so it never connects to a remote server at all without my permission? I could be wrong, but I don't think it sends any analytics. I'd be very surprised if it did for devices not connected to their cloud service. They're covered by the gdpr, and the privacy policy doesn't mention any... https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000416478-reMarkable-s-privacy-policy https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000041647... If it does you could certainly set up iptable rules to do so... but that would admittedly be a bit of a pain. > Can I disable updates without disconnecting it from the network? Yes, there's a toggle in the UI > Or is there a replacement OS/hack that can disable any data collection? Again, not sure if there is any data collection or even outgoing network traffic if you have the cloud services off. The hard part of a replacement OS would be controlling the screen, I don't think anyone has done that.
• xwowsersx 5y ago
  I have been looking at the Remarkable 2 and other devices in this category. My use case is taking notes on CS and maths, which both often require diagrams and other drawings. Can anyone speak to how well these devices work for this use case and how they compare to note-taking with a pen and paper? To date, I have used pen and paper because taking such notes in a text editor is too difficult and time consuming. To deal with the risk of losing my physical notes, I take photos of the pages and back them up to my Google Photos (text search through photos works decently well actually), but I would much prefer to have the notes in digital form to begin with.
• yepthatsreality 5y ago
  I love my Remarkable 2 but I will say their customer service experience was pathetic. When I received my Remarkable 2 I had an issue with the WiFi card as it would connect and then after syncing once it would disconnect and required a restart to get it working again. So I emailed support to discuss a replacement. The support had me adjust MY router to specific channels so that the WiFi card could work (the only device I've had to do this for, and I have my channels tuned to not interfere with the neighbors). The problem persisted for the first few months I had the device and after I made the adjustments. I even offered to use my software engineering skills to help diagnose this issue on the device. Worse still, the customer support agent stopped responding to my emails. I don't know if there was a software update that fixed this issue, but the way the customer support black balled me and gave up, I will probably not buy another device from them again, especially if there are similar devices on the market. Why? I tried to support this company by preordering and go through the proper channels and it lead me to a place where a customer support agent decided my questions and time were better shoved into the abyss rather than address my concerns. That doesn't happen from a customer support agent actions, but rather how management and C-suite trains customer support agents. I've actually been saving the emails from companies that do this to me. Anyone know somewhere I can report and share my poor experiences with companies (ex BBB)?
  • abawany 5y ago
    Their CS seems to have improved a lot in the last few months and there is now an accompanying survey at the end of each interaction (ime) so if you still have your device, I would ask you to retry. Also, consider joining the Discord/Matrix/Reddit forums for the device if you like - someone might be able to help you anyways.
    • yepthatsreality 5y ago
      The problem has been fixed by a software update or some change I did not perform. If a company wants me to use a chat service or forum to solve my problem, they should direct me there and/or maintain that service. I contacted them directly to their support service, which should be trained to deal with questions, not push them into the abyss. While I appreciate your feedback I think it's a band-aid to the problem. There's nothing wrong with saying: "We have found that your problem is common and are working on a solution. We will reach out in a few weeks once this has been resolved." Then the company can gather like problems and triage for later resolution. I mean really sometimes it seems like companies act like support is a mystery and they have the first buggy product ever on the market.
• agentultra 5y ago
  I have an RM1 and RM2 and love the device. My kid has been doing remote learning during the pandemic and using my RM1 for her school work. Wrote some scripts that sync the handouts her teacher posts online to the RM1 and she can work on them as if she was drawing on paper handouts like she would in school. This is much better than what the teachers were trying to teach her to do: using Adobe's PDF reader and marking up the PDFs using all those menus and buttons and typing things in. I enjoy writing long-form especially when I need to think. I find that I get a lot of subtle anxiety and distraction using a modern computer these days that I can't just sit and think deeply about a problem anymore while using one. Instead I can take the RM2 to a quiet place, take my notes, and I can use the transcribe features to email myself plain text later or send a copy of individual pages where I've scribbled diagrams, etc. I then refine and edit my thoughts down later on a computer. I want to be able to do more of my computing this way to be honest. Document-oriented, using long-form writing, being able to step away into different physical spaces without missing anything. Overall though I am really happy with my RM2. It doesn't replace my paper journals... I still prefer those for longevity/archiving -- but it does great for ephemeral notes, books, marking up papers, etc. It's great for capturing the seed of ideas and letting me work without distractions.
• LeanderK 5y ago
  My girlfriend got a remarkable 2 and is really, really happy with it. We are both computer-science master students and beside the remarkable she uses an older laptop. Of course it's expensive, but if you are doing a lot of handwriting or annotating pdfs it's might be worth it. She spends most of her day using the remarkable, not her laptop. She also started using it to organise her day, it just works as good as any physical planner. There's something pleasant about writing per hand and they really nailed writing. It probably is important that we both don't really code that much, it's only a smaller part of our studies.
• paultopia 5y ago
  I have a remarkable 1, and, honestly, I'm deeply disappointed in it. It'd pretty slow just in terms of hardware responsiveness, which maybe the RM2 corrects, but it also just... gets most of the little things wrong in a way that makes it feel so much worse on a day to day basis than most consumer-grade tech projects. For example: it comes with its own cloud sync. Which is extremely slow and unreliable: if you upload a pdf from a laptop, it might show up right away, or it might show up tomorrow, there's no way to tell and no reliable way to force synchronization. Or this: the software is super clunky. For example, there's no direct switching between documents. If you're reading a PDF and trying to take notes in a separate file (a good idea because it is also really hard to just get annotations out of a PDF), it takes a looong time to close the pdf, open the other notebook, take the note, close the notebook, and reopen the PDF again. Honestly, the remarkable experience has soured me on the entire class of products. I really want to get that color onyx book thing, but I'm too skeptical.
  • sydd 5y ago
    do not get a boox. First they do not publish their kernel source violating GPL, second the device constantly phones home to China and third the color display is really clunky: low contrast, washed out colors and very low DPI (around 160). Wait a few generations until color eink tech is fleshed out.
    • paultopia 5y ago
      Thank you. Really good to know those things.
  • fancy_pantser 5y ago
    > For example, there's no direct switching between documents. In case you haven't seen it already: https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable-hacks https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable-hacks The ddvk hacks are easy to apply and reversible. They add a bunch of gestures like instantly flipping between documents. One of my other favorites is a quick swipe gesture to switch to the last-used tool. I don't want to annotate PDFs and then only save the annotations, but it sounds like biff would help with that if you don't mind another tool in the chain: https://github.com/soulisalmed/biff https://github.com/soulisalmed/biff
• CosmicShadow 5y ago
  I'm always super intrigued by the reMarkable 2, but I think it's because it paints an image of the type of person I think it'd be cool to be, someone who can just write down notes and draw stuff with a really cool, slim device. Someone who carries around moleskines and uses them, instead of just buying so many of them in different shapes and leaving them in a drawer packed to the brim with notebooks. The problem keeps coming back to the fact that I'm absolutely not the type of person who wants to carry that thing around everywhere and who likes or is good at hand writing or drawing. I realize I won't base all my life and processes around this one device that is also supposedly hard to get info off of easily into things like OneNote. If I was somewhere without a computer, then I wouldn't be carrying this big tablet on me. I've bought enough tablets and laptops with writable screens and MS surfaces over the years to know that I still never drew or took notes with the pen, but I still keep buying them hoping I will. The thing is still so cool and I want it, but maybe I'll wait for version 3 or 4 and extra disposable income that will go to waste on it!
  • edmundsauto 5y ago
    This is pretty accurate, from someone who just got one as a gift. They are useful devices, however your criticism is spot on. That said, a couple big advantages I haven’t seen advertised: - I don’t have a dozen notebooks around, just one - easy to start a new notebook, plus the centralization, is sort of an “organized by default” mode - I can’t take notes on my computer, so it’s either this or paper - distraction free is good, and the physicality of the pen and screen is a much better experience than an iPad Your other criticisms are valid and a little too accurate. It’s still a useful device, there’s just a bit of a premium price because of the fancy factors you discussed.
    • sork_hn 5y ago
      One of the things I love about mine - I never realized that I get 'anxiety' about wasting paper or space on paper. Being able to write and keep a few lines per page has been great.
      • edmundsauto 5y ago
• xanaxagoras 5y ago
  I don't have any of these note taking e-ink devices but I plan to get one eventually. I've been aware of both the Book Note and reMarkable 2 but for whatever reason I've wanted to wait another few generations and see how products in this space evolve. For now I have an iPad Pro with paperlike. I followed a link at the bottom of this article to a product I'd never heard of before, Supernote [1], and something there caught my eye. Namely on the accessories tab, there's a link to a LAMY Series stylus [2]. For those who haven't heard of LAMY, they're a pretty big name in the fountain pen world. The page is pretty light on the details, but AFAIK this is the first ever collaboration between fountain pen giant & writing tablet. It even has their iconic pocket clip design... Definitely piqued my interest. Although interestingly, the tip of the Supernote pen that comes with the A5/A6 series looks more like something that would produce more of a pen-to-paper feeling with its 0.7mm tip. [1] https://www.supernote.com/ https://www.supernote.com/ [2] https://www.supernote.com/#/part?id=SP-05 https://www.supernote.com/#/part?id=SP-05
• deleted 5y ago
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• Bayart 5y ago
  I've been tempted to get one of those for my coding hours as I'm back in the office and can't use the whiteboard I have at home (on top of having a hefty amount of technical books and articles I want to get through in PDF), but I had doubts on the refresh rate and the cost. The feedback from the thread quite convinced me.
• dash2 5y ago
  Has anyone had any experience with e-ink monitors? I work long hours at a screen and have two problems: 1. I get eyestrain and find it hard to concentrate. 2. The bright screen seems to be very "addictive" and I find myself browsing hacker news, reddit etc. instead of working. I wonder if an e-ink or RLCD screen might solve these problems. There are some new 25" screens coming out this year.
  • tyler109 5y ago
    I am using 80% of my time working with Dasung eink monitor. The advantages are: -Zero eyestrain -Focussed work/Less Distraction -Less temptation to do anything else (e.g. videos) because its not inviting to do so -More energy after work day and improve of sleep quality -No Bluelight exposure Disadvantages: -Only BW so need to look at normal screen for graphics -Needed two eink screens otherwise two small to work (but ordered now the 25inch one) Here is a pic of my setup (actually Dasung featured it): https://twitter.com/DasungTech/status/1391693381726658561/photo/1 https://twitter.com/DasungTech/status/1391693381726658561/ph... The 25 inch screen is already out and ordered mine, can't wait for it to come: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-253-the-first-25-3-inch-e-ink-monitor#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-253-the-first-2...
• u678u 5y ago
  Hisense has some eink phablets that look awesome too. https://goodereader.com/blog/product/hisense-a7-5g-e-ink-smartphone https://goodereader.com/blog/product/hisense-a7-5g-e-ink-sma...
• beefman 5y ago
  I have a Remarkable2. The hardware is fantastic but the software is so unbelievably bad I want to throw it in a river every time I pick it up. I also have the original Remarkable, an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil, a Boogie Board (2011), an iRex iLiad (2007), and I used Windows 3.1 for Pen Computing back in the '90s. The use case I've long wanted to digitize -- quickly working out problems -- is one I still do on paper. The Remarkable2 hardware is finally there, but the software makes it useless to me.
• wuschel 5y ago
  Is there any solid PDF/epub reader that has a display size of A4 (8.3 inch x 11.7 inch) and OK scribbling capabilities?
• mikesabbagh 5y ago
  There is something about handwriting, that makes it more personalized. Show me a typed text, I cant tell you if I wrote it 10 days ago, but handwritten things have a bit of "me" built in. I got my reMarkable2 6 months ago to sketch some infrastructure stuff and keep a TODO list. It did help a bit in organizing! U lose the papers u take notes on, but this stays longer and can be helpful
• nicolimo86 5y ago
  I was the owner of an Onyx Boox Max 2. The device was large enough to allow the reading of A4 magizines. It's a pity that after a year and a half I had to trash it because the battery was about to explode. Very disappointed about it. Don't waste your money with it...
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    Onxy service battery replacements AFAIU.
• theodric 5y ago
  I had an Onyx Boox 1 and it was slower than my 5-year-old iPad, the touchscreen would only register touches from the stylus they didn't provide so much as a storage strap for, and the OS was Android 6 with a custom spin so you couldn't load a lot of normal apps on it, and was abandoned and never upgraded. Total dogshit waste of €400. I gave it to my dad after a week. I hope he used it as a rifle target, but I never asked.
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    For anyone reading this, finger-touch may be enabled or disabled on BOOX devices. My BOOX cover has a stylus loop.
    • theodric 5y ago
      Not if you bought an M96 before they released the M96C "The Onyx Boox M96 is an Android-powered ereader with a 9.7-inch E Ink screen. Up until recently it was only available with a touchscreen that requires using a stylus pen for input."
• stakkur 5y ago
  "E Ink is easier on the eyes than OLED and iPads and the like." This is a popular anecdotal claim, but as far as I know there is zero research to solidly back it. There is research showing there's little difference, however. One example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22762257/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22762257/
• thrower123 5y ago
  One segment that has disappeared entirely, but which was excellent for taking notes, was the 7-9" netbook. In college, I bought two of the Asus EeePCs as cheap little beat-around Linux laptops - far better to carry around campus than my real 17" laptop. Also it would fit comfortably with those horrible little rotating/folding desklets that you have in auditorium lecture halls. With a little practice, you could type along at a good clip in emacs with one hand.
• colordrops 5y ago
  There is some 3rd party software for remarkable, but mostly to enhance the standard operation of the tablet, i.e. reading, drawing and writing. I really wish a better open source launcher and more apps were written. I would prefer to check a checkbox and sync my todos off the tablet rather than write them out then erase or cross them out them when done. Or use an app for habit tracking, etc. There's a big underserved market here. I am going to give a go at building something if I can find the time.
• pomatic 5y ago
  I have an RM1 and it's pretty good, it's a one trick pony and does that trick (paper notebook replacement) well. The only issue I have is discovery/searching of old notes. If ReMarkable would add wiki or roam style linking, it could readily become a second brain. I really think they are missing a trick there...
  • Loughla 5y ago
    Honestly, if they would just allow any sort of tagging of pages and selection by tag, this thing would completely change my life. We get so many lawsuits and foia requests that being able to quickly find notes related to "person a" or "activity a" is vital. If the current RM2 had tagging, and an 8.5"x11" functional screen, I would be obscenely content with the product. It might be the perfect daily driver tool for my job at that point.
• noobly 5y ago
  Opportunities to ask about these devices don't come up very often, so please help me decide what I want here: I want something that allows me to do math problems while laying down horizontally, mostly before bed. With a book and paper, it's a mess trying to do this, and I require e-ink. So I need good support for reading PDFs _and_ writing on screen, which is a niche apparently. I need split screen functionality or something like it, so I can have half my screen be scratch paper, and in the other half I can flip through the text (and I need a reasonably sized screen to accommodate all this). If I cannot do this, the device is not usable enough to purchase imo. I have no desire to take notes, draw or convert my writing to text. It would be a big plus if it could also read epubs as then I wouldn't need my current ereader. I'm leaning toward the Remarkable 2, mostly due to it shaping up to be 'hacker friendly' (so I can lean on the community to write some features) and the writing supposedly feeling real, but I don't like how expensive the little pencil nubs are and having to replace them is kind of a drag. I tend to binge research my options a couple times per year but haven't pulled the trigger yet. I get frustrated because I feel like I want something so basic that it should already exist - just a book and scratch paper in one device, with a screen that doesn't keep me awake at night or distract me with a web browser. Anyway, last I checked the Remarkable 2 didn't quite have a splitscreen feature or anything close enough, so I opted to wait. Would appreciate any input, I'm probably going to break down and buy one this month.
  • maxrev17 5y ago
    I love my rm2 as a mental scratchpad, list maker, PDF reader, ebook reader etc. Etc. I have a trick, I bought the Lamy pen compatible with the rm2, and pushed the rm2 pen nib up it, makes for an awesome writing experience!!!!
    • maxrev17 5y ago
      Link: https://www.lamy.com/en/emr/?languageRedirect=1&cHash=37ce4a08cf86a6163be8e56a0ba5b1ba https://www.lamy.com/en/emr/?languageRedirect=1&cHash=37ce4a...
    • noobly 5y ago
      I am reading the rm2 doesn't reflow pdfs? Has this been a problem for you?
• hinkley 5y ago
  "I will trim this part out." I've often wondered if they always say that, or only in 100% of the cases where they forgot to trim 'this part' out?
• sireat 5y ago
  I have RM2 and use it less than I would like to. RM2 is fine as a note taking device but is suboptimal for reading. As many other have said the Remarkable 2 hardware is impressive but the default software is weak for basic reading tasks. With Koreader RM2 is quite decent. Latest RM2 update seems to have bricked Koreader though so I will have to reinstall it. Still, I prefer the original Sony DSP-1 13inch e-reader or even Kobo 6.8 inch e-reader for long reading sessions.
• TheRealPomax 5y ago
  There isn't really a "rise", there are basically two. That's it. They're still incredibly niche products.
  • salamandersauce 5y ago
    Kobo which is the 2nd biggest eReader manufacturer has a 10.3" eInk note taking device coming out June 24th.
• edmundsauto 5y ago
  Shameless self-promotion: I am launching a free service to consume emails on your RM2. I mostly wanted it so I can read email newsletters, but plan to add some organizational features. It works by signing up for email lists with your @emailnewslettertracker.com address. www.emailnewslettertracker.com if you're interested in being a beta tester.
• pklausler 5y ago
  I preordered a rM2 and got it last October, and by November it was in my dead tech drawer. It doesn't come close to the experience of writing on top-quality blank notebooks with a good pen, and without a backlight it kind of sucks as an e-reader.
  • echelon 5y ago
    > It doesn't come close to the experience of writing on top-quality blank notebooks with a good pen We're all different, and I disagree. It's replaced all of my notebooks and pens. I just wish it had a faster processor so that the UI was snappier.
• jxdxbx 5y ago
  I have a Boox Note Air--but no have no interest in using it for notes or "productivity." I just like e-ink for reading, and find screens smaller than 10" to be too small (too much page-turning, no good for PDFs). It's good as a reading device, and I like being able to use Google Play Books and Instapaper (and the way that Boox hides animations and increases contrast for Android apps is clever). It could use a dedicated "page turn" button.
• ducleonctor 5y ago
  Using a HLTE202N to type this, that phone has changed how I view the web on mobile. Textual information is perceived more clearly and less noisy/biased due to E Ink screen. Great for navigation under sunlight and lasts very long with backlight disabled. It's always a small shock to temporarily use a regular Android/iPhone, so noisy and glaring in my eyes. Wouldn't want to switch back to an OLED phone. Only reason would be color video/photo viewing.
• fnord77 5y ago
  the price on the reMarkable is a tough sell. I think I'd pay $150 for something like this (and still feel like I was kinda blowing money)
• modzu 5y ago
  adding a different perspective here: we're still comparing 2 technologies that, to me, are not yet mature enough for the mainstream. i have both but still use my pen and notebook. why? firstly, its not quite a joy. they are slow (janky, glitchy refreshes, latency, etc, depending on your specific device..) for example changing a page is still jarring. in some lighting the screens dont look good (grey, low contrast). and sometimes i reach for the boox, and woops, dead battery. what i thought i would benefit from the most was having a "single notepad to rule them all" (i have multiple notebooks for various purposes and thought it would be cool to just have one device, with the multiple notebooks inside, and searchable!) well, in some ways its more convenient, but in others its clearly lacking polish. its a pain to move a page from one book to another for instance, or to open up the section i want, so i end up with notes mixed up sometimes anyway. i cant be as precise as with a real pen, so a single page in my real book is about 2 on the tablet. etc. anyway, there werent many dissenting voices here so i thought id share a dose of reality for anyone with an itch. im very excited to see what comes in the next generation of both, maybe then ill finally be able to recommend them
• remisharrock 5y ago
  And the Notéa ! Looks like it's full android under the hood. And it's french https://bookeen.com/pages/notea-bloc-notes-numerique https://bookeen.com/pages/notea-bloc-notes-numerique
• gego 5y ago
  I did buy the little ( boox poke 3) and the big boox note air, mainly to do some reading and drawing on the go. What I also used it for during the lockdown was to switch it for the tablets my kids use to control their screen time (not so much fun in black and white) while allowing them to listen to music and audio books... I like this trend also because I observe myself using the device different than my mobile or tablet... I am just starting out but I think it definitely has a niche to fill.
• JanisErdmanis 5y ago
  I own both Remarkable and an the same size android eink tablet which I ordered on kickstarter. I use my remerkable tablet almost everywhere from reading and annotating PDFs to making excessively complex calculations for my PhD and sending them directly to my supervisour. The best part that I can just lay on the bed while I do so ;) I thought it would be great to read online articles as I read books on remarkable, check email and etc. so I ordered another Android eink tablet. It was a great purchasing mistake which I barely use today. The morale is that eink screen is very limited with it's refresh rate and lack of color making software as significant as hardware.
• filmgirlcw 5y ago
  I bought both of these last year and although the reMarkable 2 has a great story, the software significantly lets it down. The Boox Note Air isn’t quite as good (but it is negligible in my experience) of a “on-paper” writing experience but its software is significantly better if you want to do anything other than take hand-written notes.
• master_yoda_1 5y ago
  I am very price conscious and want an e-book just to read research paper pdf. I don't care if it does ssh or it has memory or i can write on it. I just want it to read pdfs. What do you guys suggest.
• dredmorbius 5y ago
  I picked up the Onyx BOOX Max Lumi, a 13.3" e-ink tablet and bookreader earlier this year. I'm mostly happy with it. I'm far happier with it than I have been with my earlier Android devices (10 years of phone and 6 of tablet use), though the BOOX is in fact an Android 10 device, though not fully Google-compliant. It also has 4x the onboard storage of the Remarkable2, at 64 GB rather than 16 GB (more below). That alone was the convincing factor for me. The display is gorgeous. 1650x2200 pixels at 207 dpi 16 shade greyscale. It reads wonderfully in direct sunlight, and well under any interior lighting conditions with the "Frontlight" to assist. Unlike emissive displays, frontlight + increased room light increases readability. The stock bookreader software ("Neoreader") is good at reading, less so at organising (more below). Well-processed books directly rendered from markup can generally be viewed landscape at 2-up, for a more booklike experience (ePubs of course as well). Even lower-quality scans of 3-column articles from before the age of computer typesetting are readable without having to zoom the page. (Most recently I've been going through the Whole Earth Catalog's back-editions --- the pasted-in layout, often with patterned or coloured overlays, is ... almost always ... readable. It's a good test of bad quality typography.) I'd written a bit recently on the fact that tablets are for the most part not a viable device cateogory, with far too many design compromises. The notable exceptions being ebook readers, baby pacifiers, and watching videos. For any other task, a laptop (even a small and cheap one) is far more capable. See the following, most of the meat is in my subsequent comments: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/880e5c403edb013918e1002590d8e506 https://joindiaspora.com/posts/880e5c403edb013918e1002590d8e... My principle uses are as a book/document reader, accessing my Pocket archive (more below), and some Android use (Web, podcasts, Termux). I hadn't expected to use the note-taking feature at all, but that is actually surprisingly good and habit-forming. The BOOX is, of course, a tablet, but it's one with a few interesting twists. - Display: Pixels are cheap, paints are expensive, persistence costs nothing, viewability increases rather than decreases as ambient lighting increases, and colours are nonexistent. (There are colour e-ink devices, performance is middlin', price is not ... too outrageous, sizes tend to the smaller.) Contrast is lower than paper, though it's good. Video is possible, if far from optimal. Issues with colour-discrimination can be an issue in apps and websites. Multiple modes trading increased quality for faster refresh. Video can be viewed, though it's not pretty. Line-art and halftone rendering is excellent. - Battery: Claim is a month of standbye, a week of normal use. I am not a normal user, my goal was to not have range-anxiety. I can go a day or two between charges, and charging is fast (1--2 hours to full), whilst using the device for much of the day. This is more than sufficient and exceeds expectations. - Storage: My goal is to have a portable and well-organised library (more on the 2nd bit below). I have well over 64 GB in texts alone, and also use devices for podcasts. I've already chewed through most of the capacity of the BOOX (system and apps also require some space), and would prefer a 128--256 or larger storage option. The fact that Remarkable2 is limited to 16 GB given the pitifully low costs of storage, for a device principally aimed at reading, is ... inexplicable. - WiFi: 2.4G & 5G (unsure what specs). Slightly less range than my earlier tablet, though still adequate and reliable. - Bluetooth. Mostly for the optional $35 keyboard, though also capable of sharing audio to speakers. - Touch: Works better than expected. Note-taking in particular is excellent. The display depth is slightly increased (due to various layers?), so drawing may be difficult, but for text notes and rough diagraming, it's actually pretty addictive. - Audio: Two speakers and (counter to my initial belief) an onboard mic. More than sufficient for listening to podcasts. - Camera: None. - Security: A mixed bag. Device password is only available with Onyx's Cloud service, which is inexcusable. No device encryption. I treat the device as largely untrusted. - Interface: Usable, with some kinks and personality. Occasional instances of Engrish / Chinglish. - Android: On basis, this was a strike against the device, though given it's reasonably Google-Free, the Google App store does not work, and F-Droid offers a useful selection of much-better-behaved applications, a feature. Access to some Android settings (e.g., device UUID reset) aren't provided. The device is actually a rather better tablet than I'd hoped (which increases distractions). - Stock apps: The bookreader, storage manager, a web browser (re-badged and e-ink optimised Chromium AFAICT), clock, calendar (with no alarms!), calculator, and a few other stock apps exist. Most are specifically designed for e-ink and benefit by this. Features are fairly spare. - Note-taking: Surprisingly good. This wasn't a key interest, but the ability to simply write what I want to capture, as well as diagram and annotate freely, makes up for much of the keyboard lack. - Apps: Supposedly the Google App Store can be enabled, though I've found this doesn't work. I consider this to be a feature. Instead I rely on F-Droid and APK Mirror to install Fennec Fox, EinkBro (a browser, more below), Pocket, Termux, a Feeder (RSS), VLC, Wikipedia, and a very small handful of other apps. - EinkBro Browser: (Additional install, not stock.) This is a web browser specifically engineered for e-ink devices. It features full-screen immersive mode (no app or device menus), paginated navigation (fewer paints), a Reader Mode, print-to-PDF, a verticle-text mode (for Japanese text). It is lacking an Incognito mode, and some of the features are rough (adblock, JS, and cookie whitelists can be added, but not edited or individually removed). For pages which are painful in Fennec Fox, it's a very handy fallback option. I still principally use Fennec as a browser. As an exemplar of eink-aware UI/UX, it's excellent. - Pocket: Installed via APK Mirror (the F-Droid version is woefully obsolete). All my standard frustrations exist, though at least it's available. See: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_it_gets_worse_the_more_you_use_it/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_... (HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19763106) But at least it's there. - Termux: The Linux-environment-on-Android utility lives up to its reputation of the one Android App That Does Not Completely And Specifically Suck. It also continues to be periodically garbage-collected by Android, though that's not Termux's fault. There's a black-on-white eink display style which suits the BOOX wonderfully, and "Speed Mode" display seems to work best on text. The Onyx hardware keyboard does NOT include an "esc" key, which is quite frustrating for this vim addict. I do have some complaints. Storage. I'd prefer 128 GB -- 512 GB available -- enough to store thousands of books and audio episodes, without any concern for running out of storage. It's less a factor of "what's sufficient" and more "why allow a few dollars in cost stand in the way of sufficient storage?" 512 GB microSD now costs about $50. I paid more than that for the cover for the device. Root. I'd prefer a rootable device. AFAICT the BOOX is not. The bookreader and storage utility don't facilitate organising and managing content. This seems to be a weak point of many ebook tools. In particular: - I'd like to be able to edit / add metadata to documents from within the document itself, based on the Dublin Core metadata + tags. I'm mostly be interested in title, author, publication, and date, though other fields also prove useful. Search should be metadata-aware. The storage utility should also provide for metadata managment. I'm interested in media / library management tools that integrate with tablets. Android management tools are generally lacking. Onyx's rebranding of Android removes most of the configuration tools. Instability. The device does crash and kill apps from time to time. That's probably on Android, but increases certain types of anxiety. Restarting every few days isn't a bad idea. No worse than any other Android device I've had. But I've rarely had printed books crash on me. Keyboard: Please include "esc" on tablet keyboards.
• mastazi 5y ago
  In music production, during the 80's and 90's there was a gradual switch from hardware studio equipment to DAW software, as computers became more powerful. But in recent years, many musicians decided come back to stand-alone hardware devices, there is even a term for this: it's a "dawless" setup. The most commonly mentioned reason for this is "I want a distraction free environment", or something along the lines of "I don't want to create music on the same device where I receive social media notifications". To me, devices like reMarkable are basically responding to the same need, but in a different field (note taking as opposed to music production). I wonder if this could become a more general trend, where people at least partially move away from general purpose devices.
• oggy 5y ago
  I bought a Remarkable 2 for note taking and annotating scientific papers. As far as it's promise of "better paper", I think it's only partly fulfilled. I haven't returned it, but I'm sadly also not using it regularly. It's obviously better than paper since you don't end up with stacks of printed articles. The feel of reading and writing is also exactly like paper, which is great. You get some basic select/cut/paste functionality, which improves on paper. But. I used it to take notes at work, create simple TODO lists etc. The issue with this is that the resulting notes are way harder to navigate than a simple paper notebook, as the software doesn't support even basic bookmarks. Whereas with paper I can add bookmarks as I please, a paper organizer notebook allows me to navigate my calendar easily etc. I'm still amazed that the RM software offers absolutely no functionality for such navigation. This is a huge drawback for me. When using it to annotate PDFs, the app offers you a few tools (pencil, pen, eraser, etc). Ideally you'd like to fit the article on the remaining portion of the screen, possibly cropping the margins if your the article is created for a different page size and your eyesight is as bad as mine. But the support for this sucks, as the toolbox always covers a piece of the document, so you end up having to hide/unhide it constantly. Next, while the pen feels quite good, and feels almost as precise as a real pencil, I find the eraser quite hard to control. It erases an area somewhere around the end of the pen, but unlike a physical eraser, you don't see its boundaries. There's no support for stroke-based erasing. Finally, stating the obvious, the device is black-and-white. But I find different colors helpful when annotating papers, or creating sketches of systems etc. So right now I can't really recommend the device, but I'm still holding onto mine hoping it will improve. I think the hardware can serve as a basis for better paper - but I think the software would need many of the features of http://www.styluslabs.com/ http://www.styluslabs.com/ to get there
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• shannifin 5y ago
  Would love to see color come to a future reMarkable! Would also love the ability to insert primitive shapes like circles and squares for diagrams.
• drums8787 5y ago
  > However, if you like Moleskine notebooks and have filled many a year and your shelves are filled with many years' worth, then take a good look That’s exactly what I like about my paper notebooks. 20 years worth, visible on a shelf. And they never run out of batteries. No backups though.
• demoklion 5y ago
  ...never understood these. Why not just use devices you already have with something like Keep?
• achenatx 5y ago
  we used livescribes which were very usable. However instead of constantly improving their physical device they wasted a few years trying to make a platform for apps. The pens were fat and they should have invested in making really nice form factors. 1) you wrote on their special dot paper. I filled many moleskin notebooks 2) You could record at the same time that you wrote 3) the writing was digitized 4) You could touch anywhere in the notebook and the audio that was recorded at the time you were taking notes would play. Livescribes are really amazing, but I think their marketing was crap. Every college student, business analyst etc should be using one by now.
• jason_slack 5y ago
  I have owned a reMarkable 2 since January of this year. While it isn't perfect, I am happy with my purchase. The software updates are stable, the build quality of the hardware is solid. I love the distraction free writing and this is the main reason I bought it along with school. I put on some Brain.fm and I tend to get lost in my focus and I don't realize hours have gone by. I have heard that their customer service isn't very good and that devices are hard to get repaired. I haven't had an issues yet and fingers crossed because this is my biggest worry. Something breaks and I am out $600. AMA...
• galambo 5y ago
  I am surprised no one has mentioned E Ink phones. My daily driver is an E Ink Hisense A5 phone that is modified to run Google Play. It can run all Android apps without any major issues. The E Ink display has two advantages over LCD: it consumes very little power and it looks great under bright sunshine. I also get less eyestrain reading eBooks and RSS on the matte E Ink display. I love E Ink so much I doubt I am ever going back to LCD, but the E Ink display is not perfect: it is black and white (there is a color version but it is very grainy), and the E Ink display is also less responsive than an LCD.
• rsanek 5y ago
  I find these devices cool but ever since getting hooked on Anki, I've basically stopped taking notes completely and instead capture information in flashcard form directly. I find that this approach enables me to get way more long-term value than written or digital notes.