13 ms·

Not trying to shill too hard, but it's rare I fall in love with a device the way I've fallen in love with my Remarkable 2. I can't say it was 100% worth the pr

by Andrex 5y ago

Not trying to shill too hard, but it's rare I fall in love with a device the way I've fallen in love with my Remarkable 2. I can't say it was 100% worth the price (half was paid as a gift), but everything about it is refreshingly elegant and simple. Great to know recovering from a brick is possible too.

CPLX 5y ago
I got one as well, almost mad at myself when I did because I was 90% sure I would use it for a week and then never again. But I said what the hell. And I'm so glad I did, it's a great device that definitely fills a niche in my workflow. I mostly use it for brainstorming sessions. I like it a lot. I wish it synced more seamlessly but perhaps that'll happen at some point.
- davidandgoliath 5y ago
  Me too! I thought it'd be a paperweight, but I immensely enjoy it. It's esp. nice if you throw a custom calendar on it (via reCalendar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys2fNQu0v0o&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys2fNQu0v0o&feature=youtu.be)
  - ryanianian 5y ago
    Killer app that I didn't know I needed: its built-in screen-share feature lets you easily and reliably share the tablet's screen with a desktop app over wifi. This has been super useful for whiteboarding/diagramming over Zoom. (Older versions of the software had a very buggy implementation that has since been fixed.)
    - fouc 5y ago
      You can screenshare the rm2's screen while diagramming on it? Interesting! Any useful links for that?
- bradstewart 5y ago
  I used to have nothing but trouble with the syncing features. But it all seems fixed as of the last update--both in terms of notebook/PDF syncing and the new ScreenShare, which replaced the incredibly buggy previous incarnation of live sharing.
chefandy 5y ago
Would you mind sharing a bit about you use case? Do you use it for any sketching or artwork or primarily notes/etc?
- Loughla 5y ago
  I'm not the OP, but I absolutely love my RM2. Use case: I work in a publicly funded institution where the contents of my notes are often required for lawsuits, settlements, and general FOIA inquiries on occasion. Being able to carry around 50 different notebooks for various uses, cordon them off from each other, and reproduce them in either original form, or converted to text is a remarkable time saver. The only thing it doesn't have that I desperately wish it did is to be able to tag pages and search via tag. That would make my life so much better. It's fun to draw on, but I'm a garbage artist. So it's pleasant to be able to doodle while I'm thinking in meetings and then immediately erase the doodle, but I don't use it for more than that. Marking up pdf or other files is pretty great, too.
  - spockz 5y ago
    How well does text conversion work for you? Including the search function? It works poorly for my colleagues. Does it have the option to straighten lines? Say that I draw a box, will it make it square or a circle round? Are annotations to pdf searchable as well?
    - Loughla 5y ago
      So it works better than any other item with written to printed text conversion that I've found. My handwriting is especially bad, and I would say it has an 80-90% correct rate, compared to my last system that I tried (neonotes smartpen) that is light years ahead. That was less than 10% correct. I have never used the search function. I do not convert to text unless I have a specific use. This is why I wish we could tag pages and search via tag - I had to create my own recordkeeping system via headers that you can see in the gridview to be able to quickly find what I need. >Does it have the option to straighten lines? Say that I draw a box, will it make it square or a circle round? When you are drawing, it follows your pen. From what I can tell, there is no 'snap to grid' or whatever option that might be. That might be nice. If you are talking about once you convert to text, it does not convert drawings. Overall, the search is pretty terrible. Just adding tags would alleviate that, and make this, for me, the perfect tool for work.
83457 5y ago
My main gripe is lack of direct bookmarking of pages in ebooks or even listing jump links to highlighted areas. I like writing on it but also want to use for reading large ebooks, highlighting important info, and keeping notes in context. Not realistic to do that if have to scroll through all pages.
- colecut 5y ago
  I haven't done it yet myself, but I've read it's fairly easy to install KOReader on the Remarkable 2 to provide a better ereader experience. Though when using this software, you wouldn't be able to mark up the text or add notes in the 'remarkable' way.
  - kadoban 5y ago
    It is indeed easy and very worth it. The rm2 is the _best_ way to read text books and comics I've ever seen (using koreader), and separately it's great for taking notes. Those two uses don't really overlap for me so it's fine that they're in separate OSes, especially because it's one gesture to switch between them. The one and only thing that really bothers me about the device is the storage is pretty small. It's fine for books, but not great for comics, you end up having to swap out old ones instead of just having your whole library available.
    - jonny_eh 5y ago
      > The rm2 is the _best_ way to read text books and comics I've ever seen Comics? I thought it was black and white only. I'd assume an iPad (or other tablet) was better for comics.
      - kadoban 5y ago
        The comics I read are grayscale anyway for 99% of pages. YMMV if that's not true for your collection I suppose.
  - pvg 5y ago
    I tried this and promptly bricked it, although in a more recoverable way than the OP. It’s not hard to do it right (I’d got some version of a dependency wrong) but there seem to be few guardrails. I just convert epubs to pdfs now for rm2 reading
namero999 5y ago
Joining the bandwagon of happy remarkable users. It's the only device I own that respect my attention and focus. I use it mainly to take notes of (paper) books I read and to send web articles to it via its awesome browser extension.
criddell 5y ago
I'm just waiting for them to release a bigger one. I want either US letter or A4 size.
- Andrex 5y ago
  It's decent enough for sheet music at least. :) As long as you have good eyes.
pklausler 5y ago
I'm glad that you enjoy yours. Mine has been sitting in my dead technology drawer since about two weeks after it arrived. The pen is too laggy, the contrast is too low for me to read PDFs comfortably, and the note-taking experience doesn't come close to what I get from a good pen and good paper. Nice try, but meh from me.
- jakeva 5y ago
  I spent the money only to find out I don't actually take notes in any form other than with a keyboard. I have used it to do some sketching though, but I don't really do that much either.
  - valzam 5y ago
    That was my experience after getting an ipad pro. I imagined all the great architecture drawings and design notes I will take on it but in reality typing in Notion is faster and more organised + tools like PlantUML are just plain better for creating diagrams because you don't have to worry about arranging your boxes and arrows in space.
- ngai_aku 5y ago
  I’ll take it off your hands if you’d like ;)
  - pklausler 5y ago
    I thought about selling or donating it, but I have no way to be confident that I've wiped it of all credentials and content.
- cstejerean 5y ago
  Could have returned it for a full refund within 30 days. Any reason you decided to keep it in the dead technology drawer instead?
matheusmoreira 5y ago
It's a really impressive product. The fact it runs Linux makes it exceptionally interesting. > Codex — A purposely designed Linux-based operating system for low-latency digital paper displays I wonder how it works. Are the drivers proprietary?
- Eeems 5y ago
  It's an eInk screen, so yes-ish. We get around this by just piggybacking on the build in application's screen display routines[0] https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-framebuffer https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-framebuffer
LegitShady 5y ago
My problem with it is that I'd rather have an iPad and a cheaper e-reader to get access to many more apps and functions. If it was 1/2 the price it would be at least interesting but I use the iPad to read ebooks, to browse the web, to paint in procreate, to sequence synths and record using an audio interface, to watch YouTube in the kitchen or Netflix in bed, and with a logitech keyboard work on documents in Microsoft office. As I find new useful apps it becomes more and more useful itself. The remarkable does cost less than the iPad but it has maybe an 1/8th or a 1/16th of the functionality, and my Kobo reader cost me less than $100 for most of the benefits of having an e-ink reader. It lacks an app ecosystem and seems aimed as a tinker device instead of an end user product. But I guess if you have to have a larger e-ink tablet the remarkable seems to be the thing.
- wedn3sday 5y ago
  I absolutely cannot read for any significant period of time on an ipad screen, it kills my eyes. I love my rM2, but agree that not having support for 3rd party apps seriously sucks, its (IMO) the one thing thats really missing from the device.
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    Turn down the brightness, use something with an inverted colour scheme, adjust the text size to something reasonable, and don't read in the dark if you're doing that But as I said I also have a Kobo reader for reading on its own, and it was very cheap compared to the remarkable.
- shados 5y ago
  The point of a remarkable is to be an e-ink notebook to write in. It has a few extra features, like, it CAN be used as an e-reader, but it's not really its primary focus. So with that in mind, an e-ink reader doesn't make for a good writing device, and an ipad is lacking the wacom style e-ink tablet. Is it overpriced for what it is? Yeah, probably, that's the curse of small batch hardware in the world of Google and Apple. But an ipad and an e-reader don't really replace it's niche. If you're cool with the writing experience on an ipad, then the Remarkable is essentially useless to you. Personally, I really, really love my Remarkable 2 (I also had the original, but the 2 is way better).
Matthias1 5y ago
I had one for a couple weeks right about a year ago. I was very impressed by its ability to mimic paper. Unfortunately, it didn't do much more than mimic paper, so I sold it and bought some nice notebooks. However, I think that was before the software projects mentioned in this post. I never tried to SSH into it, so maybe it's possible to use it for things that you can't replace with paper.
- valzam 5y ago
  I mean, this is like saying a Kindle isn't worth it because you can only read books on it. Sure, if you don't value the fact that it is digital (almost inifite capacity, delete without making a mess, backup to computer, send PDFs of the notes that you created, etc.) it's "not more than a notebook" but then you really missed the point of the device...
- 2fast4you 5y ago
  It goes a little farther than just mimicking paper. Being able to rearranged my notes notes just by dragging and dropping was the killer feature for me.
dimal 5y ago
I bought one and I don't understand the love. The device itself is wonderful. It's great that you _can_ ssh into it and do whatever. But by default, you can't even hook it up to DropBox/iCloud/GoogleDrive/whatever. The only supported way to get things off the device is by email, so in effect, in order for it to be useful, you _must_ set up rsync or some other custom process and risk bricking it and voiding your warranty. I'm pretty sure I could do that safely, but for almost $500, I shouldn't have to risk that. I returned mine.
- callahad 5y ago
  > you can't even hook it up to DropBox/iCloud/GoogleDrive/whatever. Dropbox and Google Drive integration arrived with the latest update earlier this month. > The only supported way to get things off the device is by email I think you're forgetting reMarkable's own built-in cloud storage which syncs the device with the desktop and mobile apps. Additionally, you can access a built-in web interface on the device whenever it's connected to your computer via USB.
  - dimal 5y ago
    Oh, that integration does changes things. I admit that I did forget about the built-in cloud storage, but that was more cumbersome than email for me. And plugging in a USB cable seemed particularly low-tech for 2021.
aeturnum 5y ago
I used a reMarkable 1 for my stint in grad school and it was invaluable. A PDF reader that wasn't hard on the eyes. I also really appreciated reMarkable's syncing software that let me see the notes I made on a laptop without the lag of eink. That said, it seems clear that the reMarkable team is not focused on the "taking notes on PDFs" use case. It works pretty well just because reMarkable is a good reading and handwriting platform, but it could be a lot better.
VonBlue 5y ago
Same here! I am generally not interested in shiny new tech. After I had the experience of a v1 TomTom runner watch, I decided I don’t want a v1 of anything anymore. Also new tech makes me too worried about breaking it or losing it or having it stolen. But the reMarkable 2…. I could not resist! I did the waiting list and was genuinely excited about it and use it every day. My partner also loves his, though he is very much a shiny tech person.

by Andrex 5y ago

CPLX 5y ago

I got one as well, almost mad at myself when I did because I was 90% sure I would use it for a week and then never again. But I said what the hell. And I'm so glad I did, it's a great device that definitely fills a niche in my workflow. I mostly use it for brainstorming sessions. I like it a lot. I wish it synced more seamlessly but perhaps that'll happen at some point.

davidandgoliath 5y ago
Me too! I thought it'd be a paperweight, but I immensely enjoy it. It's esp. nice if you throw a custom calendar on it (via reCalendar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys2fNQu0v0o&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys2fNQu0v0o&feature=youtu.be)
- ryanianian 5y ago
  Killer app that I didn't know I needed: its built-in screen-share feature lets you easily and reliably share the tablet's screen with a desktop app over wifi. This has been super useful for whiteboarding/diagramming over Zoom. (Older versions of the software had a very buggy implementation that has since been fixed.)
  - fouc 5y ago
    You can screenshare the rm2's screen while diagramming on it? Interesting! Any useful links for that?
bradstewart 5y ago
I used to have nothing but trouble with the syncing features. But it all seems fixed as of the last update--both in terms of notebook/PDF syncing and the new ScreenShare, which replaced the incredibly buggy previous incarnation of live sharing.

chefandy 5y ago

Would you mind sharing a bit about you use case? Do you use it for any sketching or artwork or primarily notes/etc?

Loughla 5y ago
I'm not the OP, but I absolutely love my RM2. Use case: I work in a publicly funded institution where the contents of my notes are often required for lawsuits, settlements, and general FOIA inquiries on occasion. Being able to carry around 50 different notebooks for various uses, cordon them off from each other, and reproduce them in either original form, or converted to text is a remarkable time saver. The only thing it doesn't have that I desperately wish it did is to be able to tag pages and search via tag. That would make my life so much better. It's fun to draw on, but I'm a garbage artist. So it's pleasant to be able to doodle while I'm thinking in meetings and then immediately erase the doodle, but I don't use it for more than that. Marking up pdf or other files is pretty great, too.
- spockz 5y ago
  How well does text conversion work for you? Including the search function? It works poorly for my colleagues. Does it have the option to straighten lines? Say that I draw a box, will it make it square or a circle round? Are annotations to pdf searchable as well?
  - Loughla 5y ago
    So it works better than any other item with written to printed text conversion that I've found. My handwriting is especially bad, and I would say it has an 80-90% correct rate, compared to my last system that I tried (neonotes smartpen) that is light years ahead. That was less than 10% correct. I have never used the search function. I do not convert to text unless I have a specific use. This is why I wish we could tag pages and search via tag - I had to create my own recordkeeping system via headers that you can see in the gridview to be able to quickly find what I need. >Does it have the option to straighten lines? Say that I draw a box, will it make it square or a circle round? When you are drawing, it follows your pen. From what I can tell, there is no 'snap to grid' or whatever option that might be. That might be nice. If you are talking about once you convert to text, it does not convert drawings. Overall, the search is pretty terrible. Just adding tags would alleviate that, and make this, for me, the perfect tool for work.

83457 5y ago

My main gripe is lack of direct bookmarking of pages in ebooks or even listing jump links to highlighted areas. I like writing on it but also want to use for reading large ebooks, highlighting important info, and keeping notes in context. Not realistic to do that if have to scroll through all pages.

colecut 5y ago
I haven't done it yet myself, but I've read it's fairly easy to install KOReader on the Remarkable 2 to provide a better ereader experience. Though when using this software, you wouldn't be able to mark up the text or add notes in the 'remarkable' way.
- kadoban 5y ago
  It is indeed easy and very worth it. The rm2 is the _best_ way to read text books and comics I've ever seen (using koreader), and separately it's great for taking notes. Those two uses don't really overlap for me so it's fine that they're in separate OSes, especially because it's one gesture to switch between them. The one and only thing that really bothers me about the device is the storage is pretty small. It's fine for books, but not great for comics, you end up having to swap out old ones instead of just having your whole library available.
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    > The rm2 is the _best_ way to read text books and comics I've ever seen Comics? I thought it was black and white only. I'd assume an iPad (or other tablet) was better for comics.
    - kadoban 5y ago
      The comics I read are grayscale anyway for 99% of pages. YMMV if that's not true for your collection I suppose.
- pvg 5y ago
  I tried this and promptly bricked it, although in a more recoverable way than the OP. It’s not hard to do it right (I’d got some version of a dependency wrong) but there seem to be few guardrails. I just convert epubs to pdfs now for rm2 reading

namero999 5y ago

Joining the bandwagon of happy remarkable users. It's the only device I own that respect my attention and focus. I use it mainly to take notes of (paper) books I read and to send web articles to it via its awesome browser extension.

criddell 5y ago

I'm just waiting for them to release a bigger one. I want either US letter or A4 size.

Andrex 5y ago
It's decent enough for sheet music at least. :) As long as you have good eyes.

pklausler 5y ago

I'm glad that you enjoy yours. Mine has been sitting in my dead technology drawer since about two weeks after it arrived. The pen is too laggy, the contrast is too low for me to read PDFs comfortably, and the note-taking experience doesn't come close to what I get from a good pen and good paper. Nice try, but meh from me.

jakeva 5y ago
I spent the money only to find out I don't actually take notes in any form other than with a keyboard. I have used it to do some sketching though, but I don't really do that much either.
- valzam 5y ago
  That was my experience after getting an ipad pro. I imagined all the great architecture drawings and design notes I will take on it but in reality typing in Notion is faster and more organised + tools like PlantUML are just plain better for creating diagrams because you don't have to worry about arranging your boxes and arrows in space.
ngai_aku 5y ago
I’ll take it off your hands if you’d like ;)
- pklausler 5y ago
  I thought about selling or donating it, but I have no way to be confident that I've wiped it of all credentials and content.
cstejerean 5y ago
Could have returned it for a full refund within 30 days. Any reason you decided to keep it in the dead technology drawer instead?

matheusmoreira 5y ago

It's a really impressive product. The fact it runs Linux makes it exceptionally interesting. > Codex — A purposely designed Linux-based operating system for low-latency digital paper displays I wonder how it works. Are the drivers proprietary?

Eeems 5y ago
It's an eInk screen, so yes-ish. We get around this by just piggybacking on the build in application's screen display routines[0] https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-framebuffer https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-framebuffer

LegitShady 5y ago

My problem with it is that I'd rather have an iPad and a cheaper e-reader to get access to many more apps and functions. If it was 1/2 the price it would be at least interesting but I use the iPad to read ebooks, to browse the web, to paint in procreate, to sequence synths and record using an audio interface, to watch YouTube in the kitchen or Netflix in bed, and with a logitech keyboard work on documents in Microsoft office. As I find new useful apps it becomes more and more useful itself. The remarkable does cost less than the iPad but it has maybe an 1/8th or a 1/16th of the functionality, and my Kobo reader cost me less than $100 for most of the benefits of having an e-ink reader. It lacks an app ecosystem and seems aimed as a tinker device instead of an end user product. But I guess if you have to have a larger e-ink tablet the remarkable seems to be the thing.

wedn3sday 5y ago
I absolutely cannot read for any significant period of time on an ipad screen, it kills my eyes. I love my rM2, but agree that not having support for 3rd party apps seriously sucks, its (IMO) the one thing thats really missing from the device.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  Turn down the brightness, use something with an inverted colour scheme, adjust the text size to something reasonable, and don't read in the dark if you're doing that But as I said I also have a Kobo reader for reading on its own, and it was very cheap compared to the remarkable.
shados 5y ago
The point of a remarkable is to be an e-ink notebook to write in. It has a few extra features, like, it CAN be used as an e-reader, but it's not really its primary focus. So with that in mind, an e-ink reader doesn't make for a good writing device, and an ipad is lacking the wacom style e-ink tablet. Is it overpriced for what it is? Yeah, probably, that's the curse of small batch hardware in the world of Google and Apple. But an ipad and an e-reader don't really replace it's niche. If you're cool with the writing experience on an ipad, then the Remarkable is essentially useless to you. Personally, I really, really love my Remarkable 2 (I also had the original, but the 2 is way better).

Matthias1 5y ago

I had one for a couple weeks right about a year ago. I was very impressed by its ability to mimic paper. Unfortunately, it didn't do much more than mimic paper, so I sold it and bought some nice notebooks. However, I think that was before the software projects mentioned in this post. I never tried to SSH into it, so maybe it's possible to use it for things that you can't replace with paper.

valzam 5y ago
I mean, this is like saying a Kindle isn't worth it because you can only read books on it. Sure, if you don't value the fact that it is digital (almost inifite capacity, delete without making a mess, backup to computer, send PDFs of the notes that you created, etc.) it's "not more than a notebook" but then you really missed the point of the device...
2fast4you 5y ago
It goes a little farther than just mimicking paper. Being able to rearranged my notes notes just by dragging and dropping was the killer feature for me.

dimal 5y ago

I bought one and I don't understand the love. The device itself is wonderful. It's great that you _can_ ssh into it and do whatever. But by default, you can't even hook it up to DropBox/iCloud/GoogleDrive/whatever. The only supported way to get things off the device is by email, so in effect, in order for it to be useful, you _must_ set up rsync or some other custom process and risk bricking it and voiding your warranty. I'm pretty sure I could do that safely, but for almost $500, I shouldn't have to risk that. I returned mine.

callahad 5y ago
> you can't even hook it up to DropBox/iCloud/GoogleDrive/whatever. Dropbox and Google Drive integration arrived with the latest update earlier this month. > The only supported way to get things off the device is by email I think you're forgetting reMarkable's own built-in cloud storage which syncs the device with the desktop and mobile apps. Additionally, you can access a built-in web interface on the device whenever it's connected to your computer via USB.
- dimal 5y ago
  Oh, that integration does changes things. I admit that I did forget about the built-in cloud storage, but that was more cumbersome than email for me. And plugging in a USB cable seemed particularly low-tech for 2021.

aeturnum 5y ago

I used a reMarkable 1 for my stint in grad school and it was invaluable. A PDF reader that wasn't hard on the eyes. I also really appreciated reMarkable's syncing software that let me see the notes I made on a laptop without the lag of eink. That said, it seems clear that the reMarkable team is not focused on the "taking notes on PDFs" use case. It works pretty well just because reMarkable is a good reading and handwriting platform, but it could be a lot better.

VonBlue 5y ago

Same here! I am generally not interested in shiny new tech. After I had the experience of a v1 TomTom runner watch, I decided I don’t want a v1 of anything anymore. Also new tech makes me too worried about breaking it or losing it or having it stolen. But the reMarkable 2…. I could not resist! I did the waiting list and was genuinely excited about it and use it every day. My partner also loves his, though he is very much a shiny tech person.