Terrible link, the actual reMarkable website is much better.
It's a very niche device but I've owned mine for nearly two years and am a big advocate. In some ways, the first model was proof of concept. Excellent hardware and writing experience, but the early versions of the software were horrible, and the device itself is very ugly. The software has improved dramatically in the time I've owned it, going from horrible to bad, then to almost acceptable, and now it's decent.
I'm happy to see the company is doing well enough to make a second generation reality. Looks like it will be an overall improved experience, with a magnetic marker, a slick-looking device and overall incremental improvements. I'd like to see some kind of trade up program though, it's expensive (and 50$ more for a marker with one extra sensor is ridiculous) and I can't justify paying that much for an incremental upgrade.
My only concern about the new specs would be the thickness, or rather the sturdiness. The first generation is thick by modern standards, but it's very sturdy. I've dropped the device, I've dropped the bag with it, I've bumped into things with it - not a scratch. Very refreshing in the age of fragile devices. Hopefully the rM2 doesn't sacrifice much sturdiness to be thinner.
Beetlejuice didn't so much show up and take advice as he showed up and tried stage a shotgun wedding with your underage daughter in order to exploit some sort of interdimensional green card loophole.
This is suddenly very reminiscent of John Mulaney describing Back to the Future...
The whole "say someone's name 3 times in a mirror" predates Beetlejuice by a long stretch. That said, I don't know of any of the those myths that ended in happy endings for those saying the name, so I think your main point still stands. ;)
Just send mail with any advice you have to the address at the bottom of the site. He may not agree with you, but he's more than reasonable about responding (everything in the inbox is read), and it will do more good (and probably get you more goodwill) than campaigning for policy changes in the middle of random threads.
It's also worth considering, when thinking about why it hasn't been banned, whether or not the main value from the threads (assuming the perfect source) would be from the link or the comments.
For some types of submission, it's the link: personal blog updates, academic papers, interesting technical achievements, detailed research, so on.
For others, it's the comments: company updates, interesting world news, most things happening in real-time, obituaries, so forth.
For others still, it's tied: blog posts on historical subjects, 'Show HN:' posts, submissions about different ways of doing things than mainstream methods.
Product launches, from my perspective, fall in the "Value in Comments" category. So then you have to decide whether it's worth the trade-off. By banning TechCrunch, would the site lose comment value?
Looking at this one, you'd really be missing some good comments by getting rid of TechCrunch links; there are all sorts of anecdotes about the product in this thread, and there are a bunch of interesting anecdotes about competing products as well.
What is the HN policy about posting redirecting URLs to other pages in general? If there isn't one I think there should be clear rules on that. To be clear, I'm not talking about moved pages and links that change after submission.
I've had my Remarkable for a little over two years also and it's easily my favorite tech gadget.
Occasionally I'd go from regular work (notes on a project file), to a business or client meeting (pull up notes from past meetings, update with new notes), to a volunteer meeting after work (pull up the previous week's training notes). At each point I had all the information I needed without having to juggle binders or loose-leaf papers.
And I love that I can rework my notes as I write them. So, during a meeting, first draft is just scribbling stuff down, then while people are busy listening to themselves talk, I can drag my scribbles around into priorities and tasks, add a diagram, clean a few things up. This is a completely different workflow from either plain paper or laptop/tablet, and it really works for me.
What's the time interval from "closed" to "I can write a note" (carefully avoiding the word "off" because that might mean something different on an e-ink device).
I've tried a few things in the last couple of years to take my note taking electronic, and it turns out that delay is important - if there's too much delay I end up not jotting down the couple of quick notes I need to write. Wunderlist opens very quickly on my Android phone and I ended up unconsciously using it to write down quick things. OneNote (an otherwise great tool) take an age to open and get to the right page, so I end up not using it except at my desk.
The Remarkable (the older one that I have; not sure on the newer one) has two "off" modes: an "inactive" kind of mode, where it has just deactivated the screen from lack of use, and a "sleep/power-off" mode, where it's actually either gone to sleep or been powered off by the user or a low battery.
In the first mode, it comes back in about 1 second. It's enough that there's a bit of a lag and I don't like it if it happens right in the middle of something, but I haven't run into this very much.
In the second, it takes a few seconds to spin up, so I got into the habit of doing that before a meeting or whatever started. It takes about as much time to get it started up and navigate to the appropriate file as it would to fish a binder out of my bag and open it up to a blank page.
> The company is claiming a 3x boost to battery life, using the same 3,000 mAh battery, based on performance improvements throughout and a more efficient (but more powerful) dual-core ARM processor. That means two weeks of use and 90 days of standby. This is welcome news, because frankly the battery life and power management on the last one were not great.
The only thing that holds me from considering buying the remarkable is its size. If they would offer a 13 inch version, then I would consider doing that. Right now I am super happy with my sunny DPT-RP1.
What file format do the Sony's use? Is it cloud-based like the ReMarkable or can I manage the files myself locally and copy them over USB to my computer?
I'd love to have an e-ink tablet for hand writing and sketching ideas, but I'm not crash hot on it all being locked in to some closed ecosystem.
FWIW, reMarkable device is accessible by ssh, so you can manage the files yourself. I don't think the format is well documented. I saw some articles about reverse engineering it, but it didn't feel well supported by any means. But if I wanted to use say a private GIT repo instead of rM cloud, I think that would not be very hard to set up.
Have you seen/tried DPT-S1/DPT-RP1 and if you have, what are your thoughts including compared to reMarkable, because I've been looking at these tablets for many many years now (There's even DPT-CP1 now). But because they are all very costly, it's really hard to decide, I did buy DPT-RP1 for ~800€ but because of the high price, I returned it.
Also, how often do you need to buy new tips, or do they not wear out? I'm asking because the ones for DPT family are designed in such a way that they wear out. I guess I've always been more on the DPT side, because it's made by Sony, which gives me a feeling of confort, you know, a company with long history.
If price wasn't an issue, which would you prefer.
rM2 does look much more refined and it is half the price of DPT-RP1 (the Sony website does list the price at ~600$ but sadly the reality is that if you want to buy that in the EU the price is approximately:
EU_price = base_price + (base_price*0.22))
And of course the shipping...
I really hope rM2 turns out to be an amazing product, because the digital paper market feels very stagnant at the moment.
I would love to hear more of your experiences with the device.
Thank you,
I was a fairly early pre-order for RM1, early enough that I had forgotten about it in the 6 months or so it took after pre-order for me to get it.
But as soon as I get the email for RM2 I pre-ordered again. To your point, it is the product the digital paper market has been waiting for.
I am an avid hand-writer. I have been a Levenger Circa user for more than 20 years, and basically had a subscription to the Circa paper for the last several years, as I went through so much of it. It took me a while to adjust my workflow and so forth, but I am now a full convert to the RM and think the device and the ecosystem have enormous potential, especially for developers.
The RM folks are very dev friendly, though their docs and so forth are poor at present. I take this to be a function of focus/resources rather than intent. The architecture of the software on the device is very good and dev oriented, and the code (what they've released) is well written. The device can run a webserver! The APIs- community documented- for the server-side of the RM platform are minimal but well structured. I was fairly quickly able to dig into them and write some utilities, which work reliably. So I am very optimistic about the ecosystem around these devices.
To your questions- I write on the order of 20-30 "pages"/day on the RM, and go through 1 tip maybe every 2 weeks. The writing experience is very comfortable. Adding an "eraser" to the premium RM2 pen addresses the main ergonomic inconvenience. I also use the device for reading PDFs. There are some ergonomic nits there but on the whole it works well.
Yes, RM is a new, small biz, but to my eyes they have a great product, a great approach, solid operations, and are developer friendly. I have not used the Sony device, and can't compare it, but I see nothing but good things ahead for RM.
Your comment on the device being dev friendly and the fact that you wrote your own utilities is really making me consider to preorder RM2. I saw all these comments and wish I can somehow integrate my own workflow into it.
Yeah, regarding workflow, I commented elsewhere but despite being a preorder of the RM1, I failed to establish a good "rapport" with the device when I first got it (late in 2018), and basically set it aside for a year until suddenly late last year, struggling with my paper workflow, a switch was flipped and I saw how I could adopt it, and I did, and now I love it.
The software had improved dramatically- they seem to be doing a good to exceptional job at getting incremental features out on a regular tempo without breakage, no simple task- but I think a certain amount of "hammock-time" plus increased awareness of non-digital pain points was necessary for a new perspective to flip into place. (This is re: seemingly small things like using distinct per day notebooks and per week folders, rather than a single monolithic notebook with paper-like day headings etc)
And my workflow is still limited- I am not using the writing recognition at all as yet- and there are plenty of use cases I come up constantly that it doesn't address- smart task lists, various kinds of copy paste, maps (!!!). If one has any kind of paper-based or digital habits adopting the device will be a challenge and involve frustration until it clicks, and probably even after.
But I have confidence both in the device's trajectory and moreover in the ergonomics of a community developer's engagement with the org. There is a lot of open space for patient, flexible developers to build cool stuff in. Cheers.
To be fair, Sony are a company with a long history of absolutely amazing hardware crippled by comically bad software. The DPT series doesn't even show you the PDF table of contents, last I looked.
I've never seen any of Sony's e-ink devices live. I understand that the first ones were pretty disappointing, but I'd like to try the CP1. I have tried the Boox Note 2, which is actually a decent Android tablet, and the tactile feeling of writing is much better than on iPads, but still far below the rM.
One marker nib lasts me about 10 weeks, but it seems to be very individual. Some people can write hundreds of pages on a single nib, others need a new one weekly. In any case, I wouldn't say nibs wearing out is a major concern. It would be nice if they didn't wear out, of course, but the design of the nibs seem to be crucial for giving that excellent writing feeling.
And yes, these devices are expensive. I'm in the EU myself, and some 400€ is rather steep for upgrading the rM to rM2.
I had both, and returned the remarkable as it was rather unremarkable. By itself it wasn't so bad, but next to a Sony I could feel the difference.
Everything just felt better on the Sony- not just the hardware or the software, but the whole product. With some minor fixes (ex: moving the icon from the dropdown menu to the empty space on top of the screen) it could move from outstanding to just perfect.
I've owned mine for nearly two years and barely used it, although your comments about the improved software are making me reconsider. I do also like the sturdiness of the first generation device, especially compared with my experiences with Kindles
I still hate the idea of not being allowed to buy/sell used books, and the potential to spy on you, which everyone from kindle to Wacom has decided to do. Paper and paper books are just the way to go for now
Yup, this is what I do. Battery lasts forever. Since I get most of the books off Project Gutenberg, there wouldn't be any slick wifi transfers for me anyway.
Not only that, but this actually adds the book to one's personal library (as "document"). For .mobi, this also synchronizes the last read position, just like it does for books from the Kindle store.
People often compare it to an iPad initially, which completely misses the point in my view. The rM has nothing in common with an iPad, and the word "tablet" in the name makes people think of the completely wrong thing.
The rM is best thought of as a pen and paper notebook, except of effectively infinite size. There are no apps. The UI (the only user-facing program) has minimal features, most of which are there just to mimic what you can do with an actual paper notebook. There are only a few exceptions, like being able to drag your notes/scribbles on the page. The device won't integrate with any 3rd party services, it doesn't have search, etc. If a physical notebook doesn't have it, then the rM probably also doesn't.
That definitely makes the rM a very niche device, but I'm getting great use out of mine, while I never managed to get much good use of an iPad.
Does the "convert to text" feature work as nicely and smoothly as advertised in the Remarkable 2 launch video[0]? If yes, then that alone is worth the price for me. I've tried a number of solutions that have claimed to do this over the years and none of them really work.
The conversion relies on some kind of cloud service (possibly Google's Cloud Vision API). So you need to be connected and there are privacy/security implications. And, it's very dependent on your handwriting. I cannot get coherent results with that feature, but my handwriting is as readable as base64-encoded Perl. I've seen it produce impressively good results when other people try it.
The process itself is indeed smooth, select an item in the menu and a few seconds later you have the text, which can then be emailed.
Just to make this bit clear: with effectively infinite number of pages. One would imagine that panning around infinitely large pages would be a possibility with a product like this, but the feature is not there.
I struggled with this thought before buying my rM1, and I can honestly say it's worth the price tag.
Both physically and mentally this device has changed how I use tablets/devices. It feels like real paper to me, and without all of the glorified app icons and notifications screaming at me I feel more focused on the task at hand. Purpose-driven devices reduces distractions and has helped me grow professionally and I'll even go as far as saying reduced some stress and anxiety.
I am seriously considering buying a dumb phone (minimalist interface) thanks to the impact the rM1 has had on my productivity.
That's up to you, but the drawing experience feels wayyyy better on the remarkable than on the smooth glass of the iPad, from my own experience. It's also far lighter and really does feel paper-y.
I just added the Paperlike 2 protector to my iPad Pro a few month ago. It's amazing to write on now. You can notice a bit of distortion in the display, but it's really nothing that bothers me at all. I've been very happy with this combination. Because of this setup, I've switched almost all of my note taking over to my iPad. Before, I only took notes in a paper notebook (large Moleskine soft cover). And so far, I haven't had any excess wear and tear on the Pencil nib...
The only issue I had was waiting on shipping from Germany.
Thanks for the feedback and it's great to see you're enjoying it! We're currently working on better worldwide distribution - in the USA we're working with the new Shopify Fulfillment Network to drastically reduce shipping times!
Paperlike is nice, but I've heard it actually wears down the tip of the Pencil. That's another thing you may need to buy, but relatively inexpensive ($20 for a pack of 4).
It depends what you want to use it for. It's a distraction free device, which has no notifications, web browser, social media, etc. If you get easily distracted by that, then it's worth it as a note taking device IMO.
pretty sure iTablets have a do-not-disturb mode too, which should take care of most immediate distractions, but this thingy could help in the way that yeah, you CAN'T check social media etc...(for which there are apps too, at least on android, which can lock up certain apps with a timer)
The fact that there are no distractions is actually pretty nice. Just like having a home office puts one in "working mode" when sitting at it, using it puts one in "thinking/reading mode."
It's also pretty good IMO for taking meeting notes, because the only things one can do is listen to the meeting, take notes, and doodle (which has been shown to improve attention and detail recall [0]).
Of course, that also applies to a paper notebook and a nice pen.
It's an e-reader so yes. The new Kindle oasis starts from $250 and it has a smaller screen and you can't write on it. If it were a regular tablet then yeah it would be pricey.
Mediocre, though reasonable for small PDFs. Reading something like scientific papers (5-10 pages) is pretty great, with long PDFs (manuals or ebooks) the navigation is a pain and you notice the slowdowns. I wouldn't get the rM as a reader, but reading and annotating PDFs is a decent secondary function.
Short papers are just fine. Long documents, as long as you read them mostly sequentially, are IMHO just fine as well. But trying to read something where you need to flip around a lot is painful.
One of the use cases I had in mind when buying rM was reading stuff like IEEE 802 standards, programming language standards, hardware references, etc. But with these documents, the table of contents itself can have 10s of pages. The tools for searching and moving around are there, but the high latency of the e-ink makes them frustrating to use. And hyperlinks in PDFs are not active. And you can't bookmark something to create your personal collection of pages that you often need, which would somewhat alleviate the abovementioned frustration.
I use rM daily, but just not for reading manuals. It's just not a good use case for the device.
How easy is it to get Kindle books onto your Remarkable? Is there a solution to automatically fetch a DRM-free version of each Kindle book you buy and automatically push it to the Remarkable?
This, centum percentum! If 'papery' was my need of the hour I'd go back to physical paper straight. This is lame marketing of an expensive lifeless product that aims to copy the dead tree. That's not what our new mediums are about.
Whatever pushes progress in the low-power, reflective technology of epaper displays should be celebrated, I think.
One could imagine hacking something like this tablet to have a true interactive Squeak like environment on it. Or, better yet, a Squeak-like environment designed from the ground up specifically for epaper displays...
Reflective or iridescent, the nature of light that falls into your eyes doesn't change. Low-power is definitely an attribute that I can get behind but modern batteries are good enough to not go underpowered when it comes to books.
Reflective displays have the advantage of perfectly adapting their brightness to their surroundings. This is especially useful for portable devices. Emissive displays can have light-sensor-controlled brightness, but they don't adapt pixel by pixel like reflective displays.
However, if you are using an emissive display in an environment with constant and even lighting, you can set the brightness correctly and it will be just as good. Many people in such lightning conditions configure their displays wrong and mistake the misconfiguration for an inherent disadvantage of emissive displays.
> have the advantage of perfectly adapting their brightness to their surroundings.
The surroundings might not be lit enough for the health of eyes. This is the usual case and one of the prime issues why dead tree books and e-paper tablets lead to weak eyes.
There's evidence that lack of exposure to sunlight increases risk of myopia. But emissive displays are typically dimmer than sunlit objects, even at full brightness. If insufficient brightness is a concern, you're better off using reflective displays outdoors.
People often read at night before going to sleep. If reading in the Sun was a requirement, one could do that with physical books too. However, most reading happens indoors and for that an iridescent panel screen such as that on an iPad with full gamut of colors is suited better.
Paper is just better than glowing screens for lots of perceptual tasks. No-flicker is better than flicker, too. Keep in mind that lots of our new mediums can be thought of as chaff in the way of reading the right good book.
There are a lot of LCDs that don't flicker, or ones that flicker at 40khz or other high frequencies which is imperceptibile to a human. There are databases on the internet if you want to get a flicker-free LCD screen or laptop.
Are there any tablets that you've felt good writing on? I have a Galaxy Tab A (glassy surface) and I can tolerate drawing the occasional diagram on it. I haven't used its stylus at all after getting the first remarkable.
One thing that's rarely mentioned about this device, but is the reason I sprung for it, is that the developers left an SSH interface into the device over USB, so you can program custom apps!
This is what I was looking for and their website fails to mention it on the landing page, at least. Would you know of any Emacs/org-mode extensions for this device? Thank you for sharing!
Same setup almost! I am a student, just starting to use Anki, been using Polar since it same out, will get Readwise subscription soon.
Just want to integrate RM2 pdf highlights with Polar.
Will buy RM2 when pocket permits. It's going to be a tough decision be an iPad and RM2, recently came across Liquidtext iPad app, it's so good.
Would love to hear more in general if you have time to go into more detail, but my main question is at what point do you convert highlights into question and answer or clozed deletion Anki cards and how do you reference the source on those Anki cards for when you want to go back and read more details from the original source? I guess that's two questions
Ah. I try to do the card creation while I'm taking the notes in the first place. I'm not sophisticated with clozed yet, just Front/Back for Anki right now. That works well both for org-anki and for polar bookshelf.
Readwise lets me make an annotation clozed while reviewing it, which is nice. It auto-converts highlights into questions.
I'm experimenting with different card types in org-anki, using yasnippets. That's a nice workflow. I need to look into auto-collapsing them after I'm done editing them.
since it has SSH support, it is a linux with command line tools and you can write not just your own applications but use as well an external keyboard... (build your own fantasy from here because no one has solved your exact problem for you yet)
Experience. A great deal of computing has trended towards locking out user control. Hopefully this is an exception, but I understand why people are pessimistic.
The trouble is that you can always assume that systems will become closed. If that's true, there's nothing to be hopeful about ever. It may be true in the majority of cases, but you have to give someone a chance at some point.
My kobo device got stuck in a boot loop and when I opened it up I saw the internal storage was a micro sd card. Put it in my computer and found a full linux system. Deleted the user database and the device booted again. I also saw there was a recovery partition so I probably could have fixed it from a button combo but still, cool stuff.
There are e-ink tablets that are basically just Android, supporting Android apps. Does remarkable have any advantage over those? I mean having a custom OS (even though with SSH) compared to the vast ecosystem of android apps and dev resources surely sounnds like a huge drawback.
I don't think they want to as android demands more resources for areas they might not use at all because of their claims of distraction free environment. Android also includes more technical debt for the development team, probably even to dedicate a few people to keep with the changes and upgrades in the communities and ecosystems.
Could you point me to one of those? I have a hard time believing there are low-latency drawing e-ink tablets that run full Android and render ordinary android apps.
Onyx Boox series. I am sure there are usage videos on youtube. In my experience it is very responsive, although maybe remarkable is more responsive still?
They do render ordinary apps even. e-ink aware apps work best, but all apps work one way or another. They have even implemented some functions to make any app work well like custom contrast settings or ability to refresh screen at any point, or automatic low-latency mode for when app animates a lot, etc. Some versions even have an ability to work as an external screen (they have an HDMI port). So you buy a reader, but you in fact also get an external e-ink screen that works with any computer, in the same device. I guess it will be a long while before remarkable adds something similar? Or does it have it?
I bought the original version but found that some PDF files absolutely destroyed it. Not massive files where each page is a scanned picture, just regular PDFs from academic journals. I'd open one, it would spend 20+ seconds displaying the "working" spinner, then often as not it would reboot. Had to return it.
I was also pretty shocked that there was no way to get a list of all annotations you've added to a given PDF; I really wanted a way to read through a book making notes as I went, then get an overview of where I'd made notes. Even a way to bookmark a given page would have been useful.
Fix those two issues and it would have been a great device for me; the page size was juuuust big enough to display pretty much any book at a readable size.
I'm very glad it's working well for you, but the software as of January 2020 was unable to properly read PDFs from a particular journal... it may have been Science.
There might be something to do here to clean those up and make them more ergonomic for the device. I have de-DRMed most of my kindle books and turned them into PDFs, even some thousand page monsters with graphs and images, etc, and so far all work well on the device. There are a bunch of open source PDF utilities that may be able to help if desired. Cheers.
I looked in to the remarkable a few months ago and I couldn't find any way the price justified the benefit over pen and paper. Unless you are reading lots of pdfs, it seems like a waste. At the new price point it might be decent though.
I do pointed pen calligraphy and various penamanship styles and I can tell you that the remarkable tablet requires VERY, VERY little pressure to register a stroke. It takes almost no modification for me to get the fine delicate linework required for Spencerian for example.
I love all the comments like this. It sounds great. But they all reference such tactile experiences that I’m left thinking, “huh, I might buy this, IF I could try it out.”
I have used the original, you can choose pen modes with varying degrees of pressure sensitivity. This allows you to take notes easily with whatever level of pressure you want, but also switch to a different pen if you want to draw a textured picture.
The lightest of touches are registered by device. I suppose if you choose the wrong pen mode for the immediate task you might have to push hard?
I'd just written Remarkable voicing my concerns with the gen 1 tablet.
One concern, the ability to access material off the Web, has been addressed.
Another has not: the Gen 2 tablet still has only 8 GB storage.
On my current, much-despised, Android tablet, I have a 128GB microSD card with over 32 GB of documents, in a range of formats -- the overwhelming majority are PDF and ePub, but also djvu, docx, txt, htmk, chm, ppt, pptx, and other formats.
With the paltry cost of storage, cripling the Remarkable with anything less than 128-256 GB staggers the mind.
I'd also very much like to have an eccessible, full-featured Linux userland, even if only console mode, as this is invaluable to me (the file extension-based counts and storage utilisation come via Termux utilities on the Android tablet). A keyboard (external, Bluetooth), and terminal driver, would be sufficient for this.
While I'd love full linux, personally I'd happily settle for just a bluetooth (or even usb) keyboard and a decent "write plain text" app.
My handwriting is terrible, and while I'd love to unplug for reading/writing, I haven't found an acceptable solution for doing so beyond a Chromebook with wifi turned off and/or a "self control" web extension.
EDIT: from elsewhere in this thread, I see https://github.com/dps/remarkable-keywriter which looks interesting. Curious to hear how it plays with the remarkable 2, esp around lag
These are sometimes sold under the "Boogie Board" brand name. They don't have any storage whatsoever, just a stateful LCD display. When you erase the page it's gone for good. There are probably apps you could use to take pictures before erasing, but ultimately these are just "infinite scratchpaper" devices. Still fun, though - I use mine for doodling.
I also use one of these as my quick-grab sketch/note pad.
The huge downside is being unable to erase any part of the screen without erasing the entire screen - so by the end of a long brainstorming session I have lots of scribbled out parts and lines directing the eye to follow my flow.
I desperately want something like the remarkable2, but I just can't bring myself to spending $800CDN (for the package) as a replacement for paper or the "Boogie Board"!
I don't own any of them, but it seems like from my Amazon search there are some with partial erase. Press a button, put pressure over the areas you want to erase..and it erases.
I presume you can save your notes somewhere externally, but it's not apparent from the product description. Is it doable, easy and, most importantly, reliable?
When I need more permanent notes, I use this other $13 ereasable notebook: "2019 Elfinbook Smart Reusable Erasable Spiral A5 Notebook Paper Notepad Pocketbook Diary Journal Office School Drawing Gift
4.8". https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32859074901.html?spm=a2g0s.9...
As for the previous one (single page scribble) then I found in the past that I usually have a new single page each day on my desk for tasks minor notes of that page and it's now replacing it - this is its main usage.
I seriously thought that was a joke listing at first, especially with the erase-by-microwaving picture. I could feel my gears turning as I realized it was legit.
the "black" frixion pen we use on elfinbook is a bit grey, not full black, but no problem seeing at all - like a regular pencil. a blue one actually looks even better, seems to have thinner strokes.
We only did 1 clearing cycle so far, and paper is back to practically white. but microwave was not enough, wet cloth worked better.
Well, you can take a photo of them. This is not a digital device, it's based on pressure sensitive liquid crystals. Electricity is only used to clear the display.
Looks like they really upped their production quality with this release! Excite to see their team is still at it.
Also pumped to see them officially releasing a Chrome extension to send to reMarkable. Long overdue. It doesn't look like it's out yet, so here's a link to the unofficial version I made last year (used by over 700 other reMarkable owners):
I have not tried software on the device itself, but I have written against the (community documented) APIs they use for sync'ing, etc. They work well. From the visible quality of the software engineering, I would have high confidence in deploying something on the device.
This is really interesting. Does it run nethack? I wonder if anyone has gotten something like frotz running, so we can have some good old interactive fiction.
Can any remarkable owners comment on the reliability/robustness of the document storage? Does it store versions and/or backups?
I made the mistake of buying an equilpen2 at an apple store years ago. I say mistake not because I didn't like the product (I used it for hundreds of pages of notes over the year or two after I bought it and loved that it let me write on regular paper) but because the company gave up on the product and eventually released destructive app updates that deleted all my notes from my local machines.
I was only able to recover my content because I had it synced to dropbox and now I'm paranoid about content creation devices like this potentially losing my content in the future if the company goes belly-up.
They have their own file syncing but it runs Linux and is very hackable. There are 3rd party tools to sync elsewhere. You can even use rsync. See https://remarkablewiki.com/
The cloud sync/storage is pretty rudimentary, no versions or anything like that. But they have an app for desktop/phone so you can download and backup. There are unofficial client libraries for the cloud API as well, so it can be automated.
I don't recall if it shows up as a USB storage device, but it will expose a webserver to you over USB to which you can put documents. I also wrote a utility to send documents up to their server side APIs, which them gets them automatically sync'd down to the device. Takes about a minute, works very well.
Does the reMarkable adapt to left-handed people? If you're left-handed, don't worry. A few of our colleagues are also left-handed. They want to make sure all lefties have an excellent experience with their reMarkable device.
You'll be able to set up your reMarkable to left-handed mode when you first set up your device. We've also made it easy to switch between right-handed and left-handed modes in the main settings.
I think that's talking about the first reMarkable. reMarkable 2 looks very optimized for right handed use.
But I'll be honest--I don't purchase "left-handed" notebooks or use them backwards or left-handed books or anything so maybe it doesn't actually matter as much as right-handed people think it does when righties writing articles imagine what lefties think.
The original was designed for both hands in the software. I think it's likely the new one will be as well, and any insinuation by the author otherwise is probably wrong.
I think that was just misleading fluff. I'm left-handed and I have a current gen reMarkable. It has a good left-handed mode. It looks to me like the metal strip on the left side is meant more as a mount point for the cover. I don't think they neglected lefties in the design of this device. IMHO, the extra space on the left side from the metal strip makes it easier for a left-handed person to rest their palm while writing.
It does look like they support some kind of left-hand mode in the settings, but it's practically impossible to find this on their website or what it actually means in practice. Very disappointing given about 10% of people are left-handed (including me).
I own the 1st gen and it has a left hand mode. Basically the UI gets mirrored. The 1st gen device itself is left-right symmetric, so it works well. The 2nd gen has the metal bar on the left, so not sure how well it works on it.
[On the original, you could not] rotate the device 180 and use it normally, but you could click a toggle in the settings which would reflect the UI laterally, for left-handed people.
> "The new tablet is just 4.7 mm (0.19 in) thick, thinner than the iPad Pro and Sony’s competing Digital Paper tablets, both of which are 5.9 mm."
At that thickness, I'd be worried about sturdiness and, in particular, bending, à la the problems with the iPhone 6.
I can stick an iPad Mini or similar tablet into a jacket pocket or backpack and jog a couple of miles to a bus stop daily without concern. Will we be able to do the same with this, I wonder?
I imagine most people will buy a case for this, as this tablet does not come cheap.
When I take my tablet (in a case) out and about, it goes into a laptop sleeve before it goes into a bag. For me, it's not bending I'm worried about, but scratches.
While you joke, I actually used that method on a modified clipboard to hold mine in a zip up folio. I'm super happy with the way it is positioned now because I have it held in place with a clipboard.
https://imgur.com/a/thrkIww
The problems with the phone is that it's often carried in pants pockets. I don't think something of this size will have the same kind of forces applied to it.
Actually, I think that things which get thrown into bags on a regular basis face more stresses than a phone in your pocket.
It could be jostling around with corners of large books, laptops, cables, random containers, etc. It can also have more space to accelerate when you swing your bag around, whereas a phone is held firmly your leg when you run/jump/etc.
Durability in a bag is what separates great electronics manufacturers from decent ones. If I buy something and it doesn't survive bag life for several months, which is quite common, then I write off the manufacturer as a creator of fragile throw-away devices. But I've never had a phone have any sort of problem from pocket stresses.
This is much larger than a phone which increases the effects of small bends. I managed to break one of the early large-format ebook readers with a glass display in a jacket pocket, for example.
I happen to have Sony's competing 13" e-paper tablet already and I'd be nervous about putting it into a backpack without something non-bendable next to it to prevent flexing.
Judging by the technical specifications on https://remarkable.com/ it seems not to have a microsd card or much in the way of onboard storage. I wonder if the device can recognize a storage device attached to the usb-c port.
The writing experience, battery life and hackability are very appealing to me, but it also looks like it's not as good a reading device as high end readers, where really good lighting and water resistance are common. It's also slightly big for me. The size would be great for academic pdfs, or reference works but for normal books, or even for normal note taking (rather than sketching) it's a little on the large side. Maybe if it had less bezel, the size could be closer to best of both.
I don't mind it having a high price point, but I hoped that it would compete with high-price point e-readers (kobo forma / kindle oasis) too.
You won't find a high end reader (other than Sony?) that is in this size which is quite useful for those reading scientific papers, a bit blind, or who want to use it for sketch/art. It is only slightly larger than a typical hard cover.
This looks very cool, but at the price I'm still kinda stuck using my $0.73 spiral notebooks. I fill them up with my scribblings, then run them through the scanner and archive them. I use colored pens on them, too. It's very, very hard to beat this.
Note to ereader makers: Please, PLEASE make the screen saver show the last page read! I'd throw away my Kindle and buy a new one just to get that. I'd pay extra for it. I will stop complaining about my ereader if you do this.
Yes. Handwriter for 30 years. Hundreds of pages a month of paper, whole workflow around it. No use of color, though.
It took my brain about 13 months after first trying the RM1, failing to transition my workflow to it, setting it aside- then all of a sudden, the crystallization moment, a flash of how it would work. I switched over and haven't looked back.
Re: screen saver- the RM has 4 different power modes- active, then 2 levels of sleep, then off. The last page is visible both in active mode and also in the first level of sleep. The screen goes blank on the second level of sleep, then dark when off. Given the openness of the software I suspect the duration of first level of sleep could be tweaked.
>Note to ereader makers: Please, PLEASE make the screen saver show the last page read! I'd throw away my Kindle and buy a new one just to get that. I'd pay extra for it. I will stop complaining about my ereader if you do this.
Would this be... not having a screensaver? Or are you thinking of something more specific?
Having typed it out, it's sorta odd that there's a screensaver at all, rather than just always acting like it's up and running. I'd probably love it if ereaders would just show a "booting..." indicator when necessary, and otherwise never have an "off" screen except when serving some critical need (e.g. low battery warning).
EInk displays only use power when they're changing what's on the screen, right? They work by giving a static charge to a bubble full of ink, and that charge should remain for a while, even if the screen loses power. So I don't see why screensavers are necessary.
You may be able to argue burn-in issues (I'm not sure if any are permanent, but they can definitely last quite a few black/white cycles), but that's about it AFAICT...
Any details on whether they've fixed search? Zoom? Or made it a mountable USB drive so it doesn't require their app or similar janky solutions? The first one really looked nice, but all the reviews were full of practical usability issues and this promo doesn't touch on the topic.
It still sounds as if it has the original's killer negative: everything you write is sync'ed to their servers, which is a huge no-no for work use without IT approval, at least at my workplace, or anything regulated by privacy laws like HIPPA. I'd love one of these things if it was able to function purely offline even if I had to sacrifice cloud features.
It's a failure of their marketing that they didn't make this clear. The device is capable of working 100% offline. Notes are stored on the device, with cloud sync being optional. File transfer is possible with SSH, or the (poor) app or the equally poor web interface when connecting via USB. You don't have to create an account for the rM cloud, you can use the thing without ever connecting it to the Internet.
The marketing sounds like they've stepped up the app/cloud bits with a browser plugin, etc. Do you know for certain the second version still supports the non-cloud snycing? The support site is incompletely updated for the new device; it's not clear at all if they still permit private operation.
Found an article in the "remarkable 2" section of the support site. No mention of support for offline/private syncing, which is a real shame. (The "read more" links go to v1 pages and seem to be autogenerated.)
No idea about the new model. I'd hope it can still work offline, given the team's background in free software, but who knows. The tech lead sometimes posts here on HN when the rM is discussed, so Martin, if you're reading this, a comment would be great :)
I really love the ReMarkable and this was an easy preorder. The only thing I personally disliked was 1. No eraser on the pen and 2. No USB-C support. Both are resolved here
I was looking for a device to serve as my paper replacement in 2018 and came across the ReMarkable 1 tablet. Shortly after, Apple had announced a new iPad 9.7", now with Pencil support. This put both devices in the same price bracket.
After reading an in-depth review from GoodEReader [1], I concluded that an iPad, although not with an ePaper display, could also function as a regular tablet with access to a ton of apps. This was something that the ReMarkable was not able to do. The ReMarkable tablet does allow you to have SSH access though, as noted by other comments here.
Just my 2c, if you are also looking at this for a paper replacement.
It hurts my heart how conflicted I am about this device. The hardware _is_ there. I love using the original reMarkable tablet _when it works_. But damn there are some stupid software decisions, alongside some absolutely genius ones. (Disclaimer: I've had the original reMarkable tablet for 3 months now) Here's a summary of my experience with it:
- It's sometimes unstable, and crashes while I draw. Not super often but maybe 4 or 5 times a week. I don't lose any data other than the last ~5-10 strokes.
- There is a notebook called Quick Sheets that is permanently there, even if I try to remove it's metadata over SSH. It gets generated on boot. No idea why this is here.
- You can SSH in, and there's a good hacker community around the tablet. A lot of cool open source software is written for it.
- Putting a file on the device for the first time, after doing the same on a kindle for years, is an adventure to say the least. There is no calibre plugin for it that I've found.
- I have never been able to use EPUBs properly on this tablet, a lot of my books just crash it. I have to convert them to PDF first on calibre. So highlighting is just markup on the PDF and not really selecting any text, but you can write directly on the book with notes.
- The first time I opened an EPUB, it took a while (10s) to load. When I tried to change the font of the EPUB on the reMarkable, it just stayed on the loading icon for hours, and I gave up on EPUBs then, and resorted to PDFs.
- There is no dictionary on the EPUB reader. I miss this feature a lot. And even if there were, I wouldn't be able to use it because I have to convert my EPUBs to PDF.
- Metadata for EPUBs or PDFs isn't visible, only the raw filenames. So no sorting by author, genre, etc.
- drawing and marking up is phenomenal, as is reading on such a huge screen. I absolutely love reading and journaling on this tablet.
- I have never succeeded in exporting my notebooks or marked up PDFs using the built in software after marking up or writing in 100+ pages, I have to use some community written software instead.
- It's $500 total after pen and cover.
- There is no backlight.
- OCR is done in the cloud, and not on the device.
- The iOS companion app is goofy, a lot of the navigation within the app seems to be done in a hacky way, instead of using the usual iOS SDK components. (They segment screen portions for scrolling on pages and for navigating the app, and it leads to just the most bizarre behavior).
I want to love this tablet. And all we need is a software update. The hardware was almost perfect, and now with USB-C, a magnet on the pen, and an eraser, the hardware is even closer to being perfect (I think the only thing left is a backlight).
For what it's worth, I don't think my device has ever crashed. I wonder if there is a memory overflow bug such that different types of usage could lead to different crash frequencies?
>No idea why this is here
I agree it would be nice to turn off quick sheets for those who don't use it. For me, I love quicksheets. I often want to just grab the device, jot something down immediately, and put it away. Sure I could create a 'notes' file and put it somewhere obvious, but quicksheets reduces the time and effort for these quick notes.
The companion app is written in Qt, it's the same app whether you use it on Windows, Linux, Android or iOS. Because of that the interface can be a bit whacky, but it works fine.
Heck, even the interface on the remarkable itself is written using Qt!
That's pretty cool and that it was really locked down was my only concern about it. Happy to see it seems relatively open, so just placed a pre-order. Thanks!
While at that price point, many other, more feature complete devices become available, the ePaper devices do have their own niche.
I tried to use iPad Pro as a full-time note-taking device and found that after writing on it for up 3-4 hours during the day, my eyes get very tired by the evening. I tried various things to mitigate it, such as using dark background, changing brightness etc, and nothing seems to help enough to make iPad a notebook replacement.
I absolutely love the functionality offered by iPad-like device such as reading Kindle, browse web, notes taking, PDF annotation, scanner apps etc. I absolutely want to be able to use it as single device to hold all my hand-notes and downloaded or scanned documents. But can't avoid the eye strain.
Devices like reMarkable etc can be used at length if your ask is just to carry around all your notes. I have misplaced all my notes from grad school days. I would love an easy way to be able to write and archive for posterity all my notes.
I personally settled for Onyx Boox Max 3. It is at way higher price point, but is more functional - has Kindle, OReilly apps etc and quite functional note taking app.
I tried the earlier version of reMarkable ran into a limitation that limited its usability for me. It did not allow copying a section of text and pasting it into a new document. I might be mis-remembering, but I think it did not even allow pasting a copied section of a note into a new page in the same notebook. All this severely limited what I could use it for. It was just a paper replacement, and not much more.
Boox Max 3 did not have these limitations. Whats great about iPad-like devices is that you don't even expect that you will run into these corner cases.
I hope this update to reMarkable add such small features that increase the usability. I absolutely hope that these kind of devices succeed. They are a solution to the problem of keeping and carrying with you a separate set of notes on varied topics where no single paper notebook would do justice, and they are usable for very long stretches of time with no more eye strain than with using paper.
Can you tell me if the Onyx Boox Max 3 works with USB-C to USB-C cables? I had a Onyx Boox Nova and it was noncompliant somehow, I had to only use the USB-C to A cable that came with it. I ended up selling it for that reason -- I didn't want to carry around a single cable just for this device when all my other devices are USB-C.
This looks interesting, but it's the software that will make or break the experience.
Software aside, this is expensive ($479 when you select the pen with the eraser and the book cover), and the screen is not back-lit, so this won't be usable without other source of light.
Why is it so hard to find an e-ink device that's good for reading books, PDFs, and web content (e.g. Pocket)? So far, everything I've tried has fallen short.
I got Mobiscribe from Amazon for around 250.
Smaller screen, but has warm backlit eink screen. Decent ereader for ePubs, very good responsive notetaking. It comes with a note-folio & pen for $250
I find it cheap. For $400 even if I could use it for reading and writing and assuming that those are the only functionality provided, I am fine with it. If I didn't had an ipad pro with apple pencil($800 + $100) I would have bought it, as those are the only thing I bought the ipad for, not for having some fancy apps.
Years ago I tried an early adopter's unit. While I was impressed by the "feel", ultimately the lack of color was the deal-breaker for me, as I love using colors in note-taking + PDF annotation. Ended up sticking to my Surface Pro 4 (2015) with the latest Surface Slim Pen. I pretty much only use my Surface the same way as I would use a hypothetical ReMarkable with even only RGBK colors, and considering the Surface is a $1k+ device fully loaded, such a "colored ReMarkable" would be a steal for me. Kinda disappointed it does not exist...
I don't understand the fascination with super-thin devices. Can you hold it for any extended period of time without much strain? Will it slip and shatter when the palms get slightly moist?
It weights about 400g, so about what a paper pad does I guess? In any case, it has a textured surface, and assuming it's similar to the reMarkable 1 it is not slippery.
A US Letter sized pad made of 20lb paper is 1lb per 100 sheets[1] so an 88 page pad would weigh 400g, neglecting the cardboard backing. If it were made of 16lb paper then you would get a bit over 100 pages in 400g.
1: 20lbs means 500 sheets of the basis size weighs 20 lbs. The basis size for US Letter sized paper is 4 sheets (22x17), so 2000 sheets weighs 20lbs.
Oh god, I love my reMarkable 1 so much that I'm having a hard time not impulse-buying this one. It's like having a superweapon on you if your work is to sling ideas and concepts.
I'd love to give this another go, however, my experience with the first remarkable are reMarkably poor, and the new revision supposedly has the same display hardware
- the display is not very sharp, has poor contrast, and no active illumination
- also, despite there being no display illumination, reading in the sun was not possible, as it immediately resulted in the display bulging notably from the absorbed sun/heat.
- seriously buggy software
Let me know, if you have information that the new revision has improved on those aspects.
I bought one of these for my fiance for Christmas, and she loves it. She uses it to take notes during meetings, and then convert them to text and import into OneNote. It seems to work fantastically for that.
I was a little leery, after my experience buying a similar e-ink tablet years ago through indiegogo, which took forever to get delivered, shipped with a painfully obsolete version of Android, and bricked itself in short order, but this seems like a very solid product.
I know it would probably go against what they're aiming for (distraction-free, no social media), but it would be an instant-buy for me if I could have an email client (IMAP, Exchange), calendar (CalDAV, Exchange), RSS feeds (along with popular services like Feedly, Inoreader or your own server) and why not a service like Instapaper/Pocket/Wallabag builtin.
Being able to do work-related stuff other than taking notes would be easier to justify the premium price.
What's their portability story? I don't want my personal knowledge store to be locked into a platform, particularly one that's not guaranteed to last. PDF exports don't cut it, my notes are living documents.
I'm really sad that nobody has adequately addressed interoperability in the digital inking space; I'd gladly switch to an iPad or reMarkable, but so far I'm still the neckbeard inking in Xournal on an old Thinkpad.
Not great, you can only officially export PDF, PNG, or SVG, though their cloud management does seem to work really well and as I understand, files are stored locally on each device once synced.
That said, it runs linux so you could conceivably backup the files yourself. You can ssh into your tablet, run sftp, w/e. But they are in some proprietary .lines format.
I bought the original one during the initial sale, I think I paid something around $300 for it. Loved it and used it as my main reading/note taking device. I got an iPad Pro (12.9) last year and I've stopped using the remarkable, but will prob get the newer version. I find it much easier on the eyes and better to read using the remarkable. It was a great piece of hw before, the new one looks even better.
When looking at e-paper tablets in the past I found that the ReMarkable does not support using an external SD-card. If you google around you'll find many e-ink tablets using the same screen and stylus technology (as in they literally use the same parts from Wacom) that run slightly modified Android and do have an sd-card slot. If anyone else is interested in buying an e-ink tablet you should look into those.
I’ve been wanting a ReMarkable since the preorder. If I could afford it I’d buy one in a heartbeat - and the v2 looks like an fantastic improvement.
Came close to buying one last year, but went for an iPad Air instead as they are cheaper and more versatile.
While I’d still love an e-ink display, I found a screen protector for the iPad that has a paper-like texture and makes it significantly nicer to draw on.
I really liked Remarkable hardware, but I ended up returning it. The Software and general workflow to send and manage documents was cumbersome. Simple things like sharing meeting notes with colleagues shouldn't be that complicated.
It's one of those cases where the hardware is amazing but the software is just too painful to use (and I really wanted to like it)
Would love to see a bigger (13.3-inch) version. Many PDF books are Letter or A4 size by default and I don't like having to read them with (smaller) scaled fonts. Otherwise I would go for it as its software seems to be more complete than that of Sony's Digital Paper, which I've been using for a couple of years already.
I am the kind of person who takes notes and write on paper daily, for pleasure, and I have no problem managing or carrying paper notebooks. Does anyone know were could I personally try reMarkable 2 in Germany or Europe?
Does anyone know on whether it is possible to read kindle purchased books or converted ebooks? What about custom software?
Now that I read almost everything online:
- You can't read Kindle books directly on the reMarkable (DRM not supported)
- It has support for ePub and PDF
- It runs a Linux accessible by SSH and hacker friendly (check awesome remarkable on github)
The hardware on the first one was very good compared to others at the time, but some software features I'd like to have was missing. So I tested a friend's one, but never ended up buying one myself.
But from the looks of it they have added and worked on much of that software the last years. Looks very compelling now.
Is it possible to keep documents entirely local and guarantee that ReMarkable doesn't have access to data? From what I recall, their Terms of Service leave this possibility open.
This made ReMarkable a non-starter for many companies that have policies around where internal data may be stored.
Yes. The USB interface works well on the reMarkable 1, you just plug it in and go to http://10.11.99.1 in a browser. The cloud service is the default, but it is optional [1]:
>Our cloud service is a service we provide to our customers. You are more than welcome to use your reMarkable offline and store your documents in local storage if you prefer.
Aside: I have setup (via SSH) rclone to sync files to my own cloud storage, but that's not something that is officially supported.
I commented elsewhere that it's a big miss by marketing, they neglect to mention that all connectivity features are optional. You can use it without ever creating an account or connecting to the Internet.
Damn! It is beautiful. If I were to become a manager, where my greatest contribution will be sending the best damn meeting-minutes I can, I am buying this.
But I already have Onyx Boox for my note-scribbling-on-e-ink needs, and if push comes to shove, I can run termux from there :D
The devices are conceptually great: just an android tablet with e-ink. The software is kind of low-quality. They're fun to use, and good for reducing eye strain while doing things that you'd typically do on a phone, laptop, or tablet, without limitations.
But... the devices are absolutely the most fragile electronics I've touched in 20 years. I've had two break on me in as many months, babying them and being incredibly careful.
The first one developed a line of stuck pixels within the first week of use. It happened while I was using it, which was surreal to watch. They replaced it, but I had to pay shipping, which wasn't cool.
The second locked up a few days ago. I rebooted it, thinking it'd be OK, but discovered that the capacitive touchscreen was not recognized. I'm not the only one. You can see dozens of people complaining about this here: http://bbs.onyx-international.com/t/boox-note-pro-capacitive.... Now I have to use the pen, which doesn't work everywhere in the interface (e.g. for reading PDFs, it's impossible to turn pages) and the device locks up after ten minutes. So I'll be sending this one back too, because I'm outside of the limits for a full refund. Maybe the third one will last more than a month.
Their design and quality control are horrific. The high price of the device only makes sense from the perspective of them having to replace everyone's device three or four times.
I hope e-ink screen having android devices become commonplace and onyx gets competed out of existence.
I replaced my pool of failing Kindle DXes with the RM1. Wrote some tools to automate DeDRMing my Kindle books so I have them on the RM1 now.
Very similar reading experience. The RM1 is faster than the DX, but the software is slightly less reader friendly (harder to get to table of contents, go to specific pages, etc). I didn't use zoom on the DX, don't know if RM1 has it or how usable it is.
The ability to notate on PDFs on the RM1 is very valuable.
What I don't understand is why the display is not vertically symmetrical. Then the software could eventually be made to allow 180 degree rotation of the interface. This way the device could be used by both left-handed and right-handed people equally.
This is great but how many tablets do I really need to get rid of paper? At least two, because typically I will be reading and taking notes simultaneously, and often times more than two, because I may need to check multiple sources.
What is the security of these things? I'd really like a good encrypted notebook, but tbh I would want iOS like security (hardware enclave, so I can use a short PIN and still have moderate security).
For doctors to be able to use this they need encrypted at rest. I think this would be an amazing device for them but without encrypted storage it is a non-starter.
The price point is now low enough that I'm down to preorder. I could use pen and paper (as I do) forever and probably not spend $400 but the price is low enough for a gadget that would be fun and novel for now.
Actually, it has a webapp which you can acess via your browser over the wireless or USB connection ip, which allows you a rudimentary upload/download :
That said, there are whole lot of sync tools that users have created which work very well with Linux (for example, I personally use remarkablefs, which is a Fuse based filesystem to mount your remarkable)
There used to be a Linux client, but not anymore it seems. If you can live without the convenience of cloud sync on the PC, USB transfer should also work on Linux. You'll need to physically connect the device to your PC though.
The speed improvements are impressive. Wonder though if there is any physical change in the display? It seems to be identical, was hoping they could bring something with a whiter background.
I guess that using safari online on remarkable is not possible or at least difficult with exporting chapter by chapter. Any recommendation for 10 inch e-ink which works with safari online?
It is perfectly serviceable for reading, though it may lack some of the reading oriented features of other eink devices. I love the large size for some of my documents, which are unpleasant to read on smaller devices.
Based on other comments here, it seems that the Remarkable is missing several features that some people enjoy in their eReaders. The only one I can cite definitively is the lack of backlight. I can't speak to other allegedly missing features because I haven't investigated the issue. I am satisfied with the features I do use when I want to read certain docs on the large remarkable screen.
I don't think it's that great for reading. It does not have a backlight. I own both the reMarkable and Kindle Paperwhite and I prefer to read books on the Kindle.
Nice and intriguing but unfortunately this is still priced as a premium product.
Obviously the company making it has its reasons for pricing but a product like this needs to be priced as an accessible consumer electronics product (ie $50-$100).
I've been keeping an eye on largish-format epaper tablets for a while (I'm an avocational organist and singer, and would love to have my whole music library with me at all times). ReMarkable is actually on the cheaper end of the spectrum. I think it comes down to low volume and target users (professionals who wouldn't balk at paying this much for a business tool). Basically, a typical vertical market.
It probably depends on what you mean by really small.
Writing resolution is pretty good and most importantly it tracks the tip precisely. It's not as sharp as a real 0.2mm mechanical pencil, but you can write legibly down to ~2mm line height (1).
The larger factor is the contrast: the reMarkable screen is light grey so I usually write larger than I would on white paper.
(1) not at the very edge of the page, but maybe v2 fixes that
I looked over some of the amazon reviews, and they seem to be talking mostly about issues in older versions (2018) of the software, which I don't have direct experience with, but the software has gotten better, even in the time I've owned it (they just released version 2.x of the SW).
That being said, there is still room for improvement, particularly with reading (vs writing, which this device is very good at).
I mostly use it this to replace stacks of notebooks (my brain thinks better with pen and paper in hand, but with all the digital conveniences in hand. This device is the best that I've tried for writing (and I've tried many, including an ipad pro)
Cons: historically, the price. No blacklight. Clearly the device has been optimized for writing, not reading, although supposedly 3rd party ebook readers like Apollo are good (the device is not locked down and has a hacker community).
the only thing i want is a device i can write on that has a refresh rate (or whatever) that's near realtime (so that I don't get the cognitive dissonance from the lag in the line appearing). does such a device exist? i've tried surface and ipad and etc. all of them still have quite noticeable lag when writing.
That is the goal of this device. The original Remarkable was superior to the surface and the iPad, and according to their marketing the next one will be twice as fast.
To add to what jshevek said: Please don't insinuate astroturfing or shillage without evidence. Internet users are overwhelmingly too quick to leap to such explanations from (at best) a handful of data points, and it leads them to smear each other's integrity in ways that are not good for community. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
In this case, a new product was launched today, it's normal for companies to coordinate that with press, and it's normal for multiple submissions on a story to show up on HN. It's also normal for humans to overinterpret streaks as something other than the randomness they usually are; we all do it, but it's not good to do it in ways that insinuate dishonesty in fellow community members.
>why so many posts to hacker News about this today? Seems and feels like guerrilla marketing.
Are you accusing the people who posted these links of being employees of Remarkable? If so, you could just look at their comment histories to see if it seems likely before posting a general accusation.
I am fascinated by this product. It is far more interesting to me than much of what Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, or Amazon have done in a tablet form factor in many years. I'm not surprised that others may have a similar level of interest.
I am not and did not accuse anyone. I simply noticed many links to many resources about same product in a short period of time. You can make your own judgement call on that. Are press releases standard - of course. I would ague that guerrilla marketing is standard ops for many new products/services and it should not be perceived in a negative way. Its a tool, i was simply curious if this was the case. In addition i'm fascinated at guerrilla marketing operations and am curious if they in fact are, how are they are engaged, paid etc.....
This is essentially an advertisement. There's no need to read, unless you are looking to buy a $400 convenience replacement for a $1 pad of paper plus a scanner.
It's a very niche device but I've owned mine for nearly two years and am a big advocate. In some ways, the first model was proof of concept. Excellent hardware and writing experience, but the early versions of the software were horrible, and the device itself is very ugly. The software has improved dramatically in the time I've owned it, going from horrible to bad, then to almost acceptable, and now it's decent.
I'm happy to see the company is doing well enough to make a second generation reality. Looks like it will be an overall improved experience, with a magnetic marker, a slick-looking device and overall incremental improvements. I'd like to see some kind of trade up program though, it's expensive (and 50$ more for a marker with one extra sensor is ridiculous) and I can't justify paying that much for an incremental upgrade.
My only concern about the new specs would be the thickness, or rather the sturdiness. The first generation is thick by modern standards, but it's very sturdy. I've dropped the device, I've dropped the bag with it, I've bumped into things with it - not a scratch. Very refreshing in the age of fragile devices. Hopefully the rM2 doesn't sacrifice much sturdiness to be thinner.