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I’ve been considering purchasing a ReMarkable device primarily for note taking. Has anyone tried both the Kindle Scribe and ReMarkable devices? It’s difficult f

by cebert 1y ago

I’ve been considering purchasing a ReMarkable device primarily for note taking. Has anyone tried both the Kindle Scribe and ReMarkable devices? It’s difficult for me to determine which one to go with and they’re quite expensive.

drum55 1y ago
I have a RPP and it’s an almost device, it’s so close to good in many ways and falls flat in others. My biggest gripe with it originally was that the next and previous page gestures worked perhaps one in three attempts, which has been fixed in the most recent software that reduced the perceived latency of everything dramatically. Beyond that it’s a weird experience, it’s sort of usable with open source tools but requires a lot of hacks to not have it sync with their cloud offering if you want privacy. Even if you use their cloud services it often feels a bit clunky and half considered where buttons and controls end up being. I love the hardware, it’s an amazing looking screen, it feels ultra premium, the folio cases people have made for it fit perfectly in my bag.
- sbrother 1y ago
  I have it too and feel the same way. If I could easily just use it as a text terminal -- with emacs and ssh support -- I would use it every day. But when I looked up the hacking side of things it looked like a lot of work and kind of sketchy.
- Figs 1y ago
  > requires a lot of hacks to not have it sync with their cloud offering if you want privacy That killed my interest in their previous devices.
- beoberha 1y ago
  “Almost device” is a perfect way of putting it. I only have an RM2, but I was never able to get into a flow where I’d easily and happily reference the notes I’d taken. The UX was so clunky it took forever to navigate the folder structure and the cloud sync was frustratingly proprietary.
  - whatevertrevor 1y ago
    I agree (as another RM2 user). It's great for writing stuff down, but for retrieval it's at best high-friction, sometimes just plain irritating. If a workflow for exporting my remarkable notes as SVG to obsidian but then also running OCR over them so I can search through them (without converting them to editable text because that's usually a formatting nightmare) existed, I'd be so happy as it would solve the retrieval problem.
    - SoMomentary 1y ago
      Their latest update just introduced indexing for handwriting + text, so now you're able to search through all of your notes! This has been a huge QoL upgrade for me.
baby_souffle 1y ago
Kindle scribe has been a disappointment. Unless you're going to go through all the work needed to jailbreak, your subject to whatever software changes Amazon wants to push on you with next to no notice. I haven't looked much since shortly after a launch of the original scribe but I was infuriated to find out that they didn't have a straightforward or simple API for extracting notes and that wasn't something they had on the road map for immediately after release either. To the best of my knowledge, there is still no convenient way to extract handwritten scribbles and store them as an SVG alongside OCR inside of an obsidian vault. I would love to be proven wrong on this though. If you don't plan to do a ton of handwriting, the scribe is a gorgeous and large screen. Reading long form documents on it would be a treat if it wasn't such a pain in the ass to side load and synchronize PDFs. Now I just do everything through my iPad with a pencil and it's almost as good...
- whoisburbansky 1y ago
  OTOH, koreader on the Scribe post jailbreak is easily the best large format PDF reading experience I've ever had.
- codazoda 1y ago
  These days you can email a searchable PDF of your notebooks. I would guess you can extract these with simple tools, though I keep mine as PDF.
OhioMan2943 1y ago
I have a boox go 10.3 it's alright- the android app functionality makes it more useful than others
ordinaryradical 1y ago
I have the Remarkable 2 and my only gripe is being unable to use a mechanical keyboard with it. In every other regard it is truly a delight, perhaps even a perfection of certain modes of thinking.
jonprobably 1y ago
Partner had remarkable. I bought a scribe. Tried both side by side for a month. Scribe lets you read your kindle books, draw on them, and write notes. Hard to get the notes off the device. RM lets you sync automatically. The rest of their software is total junk (see App Store ratings). It was more glitchy. Marginally better writing. Monthly fee. Both make exporting notes more difficult than it should be. My current go to - paper and pen with chatgpt app on phone - snap a photo to extract my writing. I kept the scribe for reading books - rarely use it over the kindle app on my phone. Hope it works for you though- love the idea.
- whatevertrevor 1y ago
  I'm trading classes with my partner on my remarkable (she's teaching me Social Choice Theory, me her Physics), I agree with almost everything you said but there are a few reasons why I'm going the Remarkable route here: - I don't need to take pictures manually, all lectures are automatically stored, and much easier to flip through instead of a library of photos (which I'd have to later organize). - I use the screenshare feature which turns my Remarkable into a whiteboard. I could get an actual whiteboard but then we're back to taking manual pictures in the middle of lessons, which will definitely be an impedance.
- Tepix 1y ago
  > My current go to - paper and pen with chatgpt app on phone - snap a photo to extract my writing. I‘m not sure what you‘re writing but sending it all to a US cloud - do you not care about privacy at all?
dmitrygr 1y ago
Please do not buy from reMarkable (see sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45121821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45121821)
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

by cebert 1y ago

drum55 1y ago

I have a RPP and it’s an almost device, it’s so close to good in many ways and falls flat in others. My biggest gripe with it originally was that the next and previous page gestures worked perhaps one in three attempts, which has been fixed in the most recent software that reduced the perceived latency of everything dramatically. Beyond that it’s a weird experience, it’s sort of usable with open source tools but requires a lot of hacks to not have it sync with their cloud offering if you want privacy. Even if you use their cloud services it often feels a bit clunky and half considered where buttons and controls end up being. I love the hardware, it’s an amazing looking screen, it feels ultra premium, the folio cases people have made for it fit perfectly in my bag.

sbrother 1y ago
I have it too and feel the same way. If I could easily just use it as a text terminal -- with emacs and ssh support -- I would use it every day. But when I looked up the hacking side of things it looked like a lot of work and kind of sketchy.
Figs 1y ago
> requires a lot of hacks to not have it sync with their cloud offering if you want privacy That killed my interest in their previous devices.
beoberha 1y ago
“Almost device” is a perfect way of putting it. I only have an RM2, but I was never able to get into a flow where I’d easily and happily reference the notes I’d taken. The UX was so clunky it took forever to navigate the folder structure and the cloud sync was frustratingly proprietary.
- whatevertrevor 1y ago
  I agree (as another RM2 user). It's great for writing stuff down, but for retrieval it's at best high-friction, sometimes just plain irritating. If a workflow for exporting my remarkable notes as SVG to obsidian but then also running OCR over them so I can search through them (without converting them to editable text because that's usually a formatting nightmare) existed, I'd be so happy as it would solve the retrieval problem.
  - SoMomentary 1y ago
    Their latest update just introduced indexing for handwriting + text, so now you're able to search through all of your notes! This has been a huge QoL upgrade for me.

baby_souffle 1y ago

Kindle scribe has been a disappointment. Unless you're going to go through all the work needed to jailbreak, your subject to whatever software changes Amazon wants to push on you with next to no notice. I haven't looked much since shortly after a launch of the original scribe but I was infuriated to find out that they didn't have a straightforward or simple API for extracting notes and that wasn't something they had on the road map for immediately after release either. To the best of my knowledge, there is still no convenient way to extract handwritten scribbles and store them as an SVG alongside OCR inside of an obsidian vault. I would love to be proven wrong on this though. If you don't plan to do a ton of handwriting, the scribe is a gorgeous and large screen. Reading long form documents on it would be a treat if it wasn't such a pain in the ass to side load and synchronize PDFs. Now I just do everything through my iPad with a pencil and it's almost as good...

whoisburbansky 1y ago
OTOH, koreader on the Scribe post jailbreak is easily the best large format PDF reading experience I've ever had.
codazoda 1y ago
These days you can email a searchable PDF of your notebooks. I would guess you can extract these with simple tools, though I keep mine as PDF.

OhioMan2943 1y ago

I have a boox go 10.3 it's alright- the android app functionality makes it more useful than others

ordinaryradical 1y ago

I have the Remarkable 2 and my only gripe is being unable to use a mechanical keyboard with it. In every other regard it is truly a delight, perhaps even a perfection of certain modes of thinking.

jonprobably 1y ago

Partner had remarkable. I bought a scribe. Tried both side by side for a month. Scribe lets you read your kindle books, draw on them, and write notes. Hard to get the notes off the device. RM lets you sync automatically. The rest of their software is total junk (see App Store ratings). It was more glitchy. Marginally better writing. Monthly fee. Both make exporting notes more difficult than it should be. My current go to - paper and pen with chatgpt app on phone - snap a photo to extract my writing. I kept the scribe for reading books - rarely use it over the kindle app on my phone. Hope it works for you though- love the idea.

whatevertrevor 1y ago
I'm trading classes with my partner on my remarkable (she's teaching me Social Choice Theory, me her Physics), I agree with almost everything you said but there are a few reasons why I'm going the Remarkable route here: - I don't need to take pictures manually, all lectures are automatically stored, and much easier to flip through instead of a library of photos (which I'd have to later organize). - I use the screenshare feature which turns my Remarkable into a whiteboard. I could get an actual whiteboard but then we're back to taking manual pictures in the middle of lessons, which will definitely be an impedance.
Tepix 1y ago
> My current go to - paper and pen with chatgpt app on phone - snap a photo to extract my writing. I‘m not sure what you‘re writing but sending it all to a US cloud - do you not care about privacy at all?

dmitrygr 1y ago

Please do not buy from reMarkable (see sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45121821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45121821)

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]