[HN Gopher] ReMarkable Paper Pro
___________________________________________________________________
ReMarkable Paper Pro
Author : buro9
Score : 477 points
Date : 2024-09-04 12:07 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (remarkable.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (remarkable.com)
| ABS wrote:
| looks great and, at the same time, it seems they didn't address
| the single biggest problem I (and many, many, many other people)
| reported over the years :-( I even wrote about it here on HN in
| 2021 and nothing has really changed on that front.
|
| I have a Remarkable 2 and the device is great, software is
| improving as well and taking notes is a joy BUT finding those
| notes later on is next to impossible.
|
| OCR is very bad and basically makes indexing and full-text
| searching impossible (and off device)
|
| And no, "labels" do not address this problem.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's funny, I would have thought that OCR on handwriting on a
| tablet would be great, because they can capture each individual
| stroke, rather than just the final pixelated product. In other
| words, because you're witnessing it being written, there's a
| lot more information. In fact I wouldn't even call it OCR
| because it's not "optical", but rather "stroke" -- SCR?
|
| Is that something that exists? Is that what the tablet tries to
| do and fails? Or is it only trying to OCR after-the-fact, in
| which case I'm not surprised it's terrible.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| Apple newton did it. They required you to stroke your letters
| in a pedantically correct way because it used the stroke
| path, not the end pixel appearance, to detect letters.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| I genuinely liked the Palm Graffiti. It took a couple of
| days of playing Giraffe to get used to it, but afterwards
| the speed and precision was quite decent. Of course it's
| nothing compared to modern swipe keyboards but still.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Agreed, I often miss Palm's Graffiti input, I don't
| remember it well at all at this point I think I tried a
| similar input on android and went back to gesture
| keyboard. Of course, I kind of miss even developing for
| Palm as well, which was far simpler an experience than
| what Android and iOS are today.
|
| Then again, rose colored glasses and all.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| So did palmOS "Graffiti" input. It was fun!
| beAbU wrote:
| I had a Sony-Erickson phone with a resistive touch screen
| and full keyboard and a stylus. Very futuristic for the
| aughts! They also forced writing letters in a very specific
| way, in order to trigger OCR.
| WillAdams wrote:
| That got a lot better w/ v2 of Rosetta (also known as
| Calligrapher).
|
| Recognition for me was about perfect, and I took notes on
| my Newton MessagePad using a 3rd party outliner in almost
| all of my college classes (art history was the exception
| --- used the main Newton app for that, along w/ little
| sketches and reference folios to the text which I then
| faxed to the fax machine in the Art Department's office for
| a student who had a learning disability which prevented his
| taking notes --- turns out that he then shared them with
| everyone in the dorms, which I found out about after the
| course was over when the professor noted how much better
| everyone's grades were that year and how she had found out
| when asking other students.
| ABS wrote:
| there is no OCR on device fullstop, which in itself would be
| fine if it happened async in the background.
|
| You can use the OCR feature only in the companion desktop
| app, explicitly selecting pages you want to run the process
| on. The result is better than it used to be but still not
| great and, importantly, it does NOT seem they make any
| difference if you later on do a search on the device
| tecleandor wrote:
| Well, you can do OCR while using the device but... it's not
| on device. The device has to be connected to the Internet
| for OCR to work. I've never checked where does it connect
| to do it, as I never use it...
| ABS wrote:
| but the result is not subsequently used for full text
| indexing and searching (on device or on desktop)
| therefore it's useless
| tecleandor wrote:
| Yep, totally.
| mmikeff wrote:
| This is the biggest issue for me as well. Seems that the
| OCR has to be triggered manually, for each page of each
| notebook. Which of course I don't remember to do and now
| there are too many.
|
| The search doesn't appear to search across notebooks
| either.
|
| The experience that I would want (expect) is that OCR
| happens in the background, all the time, no need to trigger
| and that I can then search for a word/string and find all
| the notes on that topic.
|
| I've fallen back to tags and dates in filenames to have any
| chance of tracking down old meeting notes.
| estensen wrote:
| In research this is called Online Handwriting Recognition
|
| reMarkable does Online Handwriting Recognition with MyScript
| running in the cloud, not on the tablet
| https://remarkable.com/store/remarkable-2
| staticman2 wrote:
| In the old Palm Pilot days the way the OCR worked is you had
| to do the strokes in a special software approved manner, your
| natural stroke motion wasn't acceptable, you were expected to
| learn to write in a special shorthand system called Graffiti.
|
| I'd imagine going by stroke order would be a bit tricky since
| a lot of people don't write the way their teachers taught
| them to write. (Think anybody with bad handwriting).
| blakeburch wrote:
| Yeah... New product looks fantastic, but finding your notes
| will still be a pain. You have to be diligently organized with
| folders and notebooks to find anything.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Seems like they've improved the processor (at least the latency
| is lower) and that might help to add new features or improve
| pdf responsiveness, but they're still lacking on the software
| side, and even simple QOL features like the ones that rmhacks
| adds aren't available by default.
|
| I feel like it falls short on the reading side (not searching,
| dictionary, note management...), and short on the notes side
| (simple drawing tools, no dashed lines, no shapes, and I think
| you can't even position text on the wherever you like on the
| page).
|
| I really liked the initial hackability, as you have SSH access
| to the Linux inside the device, and people was building
| software to run on it, but seems like due to some changes since
| v3.4 of the firmware, it's either very difficult (or not
| possible) to do it, and the ideas I had for using it aren't
| feasible right now.
|
| The price for the color model is (at least in Europe) already
| higher than a Boox Note Air3C, that's a full fledged Android
| tablet. Of course, the battery won't last as long even with all
| the optimizations, but is a bit lighter, has more resolution,
| and you can put whatever software you like that runs in
| Android. I haven't tested the software, though...
|
| TLDR: not sure about this :(
| regularfry wrote:
| I'm absolutely fine without OCR and searching _if_ they can
| give us working links. All I want to do is to be able to doodle
| a star on a page, or a word, and have that work as a link off
| to another page in another notebook. That 's all you need for a
| zettelkasten-style system to hold your notes in but I've not
| seen anyone do it.
| joshjob42 wrote:
| Supernote has links, as does Boox. There is a specific Star
| based system for Supernote but I never quite got the hang of
| that, but I use the linking features extensively to link to
| pages of PDFs for more extended notes about them, and to
| serve as a sort of directory / tree structure for notes and
| subjects. I keep my notes structure fairly flat for that
| reason, there aren't many folders.
|
| I'd've shelled out $800 first thing this morning for an RM
| Pro if they added linking across the system.
| tr3ntg wrote:
| Agreed. I got the RM2 because I thought it'd be "a notebook I
| can search." No. I regret every piece of writing that has ended
| up locked up inside that device vs on paper notebooks.
|
| It's like an anti-discovery device.
| rtpg wrote:
| If you have an iPad already you can get screen covers that give
| your screen a paper feel. Elecom sells them
| a1o wrote:
| Uhm, like this one https://www.amazon.com/ELECOM-Pencil-Feel-
| Compatible-Scratch... ?
| krastanov wrote:
| That is frequently enough, but for a lot of folks who are fans
| of Remarkable, the preference is based on one or more of these
| three:
|
| (1) e-ink for both paper-like visual texture (the pixels are
| not square) and eye comfort (impossible with traditional
| screens)
|
| (2) single-purpose note-taking without distractions (although
| some hate that)
|
| (3) paperlike haptic feel (the only thing that can be addressed
| by screen cover on an ipad)
| Someone wrote:
| > single-purpose note-taking without distractions (although
| some hate that)
|
| You can get very close to that by locking your iPad down and
| setting it in kiosk mode.
|
| If you use Apple Configurator, you can even have it boot into
| a single app. See https://support.apple.com/en-
| gb/guide/apple-configurator-mac...
| orbital-decay wrote:
| I find (1) to be the biggest snake oil of electrophoretic
| displays. The only case where it's remotely true is direct
| sunlight. In normal indoor lighting conditions they severely
| lack contrast/whiteness/blackness compared to a good screen
| or printed book, and are hugely dependent on proper lighting,
| for example your hand will give it shadow so you're
| practically forced to use the frontlight if your device has
| it (reMarkable doesn't), as it's almost impossible to light
| evenly and match the background otherwise. In other words,
| when reading indoors they have all downsides of paper with
| none of the upsides. It just doesn't work as "paper
| replacement", it's strictly inferior, and feels like a
| downgrade compared to modern active displays.
|
| (3) is mostly matter of choice, and it's a feel of matte
| plastic, very far from actual paper.
|
| (2) is the only reason I'm using it. It's thin (although not
| as thin as a piece of paper) and single-purpose, a physical
| product.
| krastanov wrote:
| For what is worth, I am fully convinced that (1) (the
| paper-like visual feel) is completely true, not a snake-oil
| claim, even if it is just a perceptual placebo effect that
| is masking the ostensibly true nature you described.
| Placebo effects matter ;)
|
| I guess I should also have added (4) this tablet is a
| lifestyle and fashion statement about having the disposable
| income to use it instead of an actual high-quality paper
| notebook.
| felbane wrote:
| Paper texture is not the same as e-ink. The latter retains
| state when power is removed.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| E-ink is not "paper feel". It's a super low-power display, it
| only consumes power when the content on it changes. Since it
| works by moving around physical pigment molecules inside little
| cells, the screen will continue showing the last thing that you
| put on it literally forever while consuming no power.
|
| I have an e-ink tablet, the Boox Note Air 3 C, when I use it as
| an ereader or notetaker the battery lasts for weeks. A little
| less when I use it for web browsing or apps that change the
| content on the screen a lot.
| paulcole wrote:
| > E-ink is not "paper feel".
|
| The paper-feel comes in large part from the physical part of
| the screen the pen touches not from the display itself.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| The paper feel also refers to the viewing experience
| paulcole wrote:
| Yes, that's why I said, "in large part."
|
| The person I was replying to thought it had entirely to
| do with the viewing experience which I don't believe to
| be true.
| diggan wrote:
| While E-ink is a large selling point of the Remarkable, I
| think parent is talking about another one of the selling
| points: That it feels like writing on paper with texture,
| rather than a glossy display (like iPad's display).
|
| It has nothing to do with E-ink, but about how it feels to
| write on the Remarkable display with the pen.
| izacus wrote:
| I have both iPad Air with Paperlike cover and a Boox Note 3C...
| and the Boox with its color eInk and Wacom pen is SO MUCH nicer
| to write on and read that it's really not comparable.
|
| Also paperlike film for iPad significantly degrades the screen,
| making it darker and grainy. It's still a better all-around
| device, but its really not as good as these eInk tablets for
| writing.
| nihzm wrote:
| I concur. I switched from the very first remarkable to an
| ipad pro with paperlike but it's very different and much less
| paper-like. Also, the paperlike screen protector lost lost
| 100% of the roughness in just a few months, and now when I
| write it's basically the same as writing on the glass.
| ducktective wrote:
| Is this suitable for reading technical pdf textbooks (math,
| programming, etc)? Last I checked the screen size was smaller
| than A4 and ReMarkable had a focus on writing and taking notes
| rather than displaying books...
|
| So any suggestions here?
| j-pb wrote:
| Remarkable is very open source friendly and you can ssh into it
| from the get go.
|
| I'm really looking forward to installing Zed on this thing!
| teebs wrote:
| I've mostly used it for reading textbooks or academic papers
| (and taking notes on them) and it works fine for me. It can be
| a little small but you can zoom in if you need
| krastanov wrote:
| I read arxiv content on the Remarkable 2 and I am satisfied.
| The reader auto-removes the white margins, so the smaller
| screen is not a problem. The zoom functionality is snappy for
| an e-ink device from 3 years ago (slow by modern standards).
| The quick-view thumbnails used to scroll through far-away pages
| is sufficient for my workflow. Generally I am very happy with
| the device for consuming static academic PDFs.
| lokimedes wrote:
| That is the only thing I use mine for these days. Screen size
| is fine for that.
|
| I miss an API to their cloud storage. It is simply a
| dealbreaker that it aims to help avoiding distractions but
| leaves no room for building an automated workflow around it.
| demarq wrote:
| From experience,reading the screen size is not a problem at
| all.
|
| But writing is where you notice how small the screen really is.
|
| It's down to the size difference between printed text and
| handwriting.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| depends on source of books I find, and perhaps also if you have
| eye strain issues, I need to read mine with my glasses often,
| which is irritating. But the zooming in can often leave you
| with text being too big to fit on the display.
|
| So I sort of feel like I should love it more, but this bit
| makes it annoying for me.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| It's designed as a reading tablet with good pen support, so
| yes. And E-ink makes reading more comfortable than LCDs. For
| technical PDFs, size matters a lot. Normal reading tablets
| often resize the text to be easily readable, but PDFs cannot do
| that. So having a tablet of good size becomes a dealbreaker for
| such use-cases, more so than other features.
|
| Remarkable lacks a backlight, and e-ink displays don't have
| deep blacks, so depending on your reading environment, it may
| be a bit low-contrast. I got a kobo elipsa myself for this
| reason. Kobu is notably cheaper and has a backlight which helps
| the contrast a bit, but the pen support is waaay worse.
| criddell wrote:
| IMHO, it's too small for PDFs. If they offered an 13" / A4 /
| Letter sized version for a few hundred more, I'd buy it today.
| Instead I'm using a 13" iPad Pro which has different
| compromises.
| ithkuil wrote:
| perhaps you can try a BOOX Tab X 13.3" e-paper tablet.
| criddell wrote:
| I'm not buying anything from Onyx until they come into
| compliance with the GPL.
| mhitza wrote:
| From my past research 13" is the minimum I'd be comfortable
| with for a tablet that is tailored for research papers. The
| only one that seemed just right was the Sony DP-1 or (DPT
| equivalent) though it was around 1000 USD and Windows only
| compatible (for file sync and what have you).
| Terretta wrote:
| Kindle Scribe is fine for b/w research papers, while having
| two paperback book pages side by side in landscape mode
| (switch to unjustified text with smallest margins, change to
| size 3 Bookerly text, add a click of line spacing, switch on
| page numbers instead of location), makes a lovely improvement
| in book reading.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| I've had a remarkable tablet. I'm very much waiting for the
| Supernote A4 x2. There's also BOOX Tab X and BOOX Max 3 if you
| want a 13.3" today.
| barrell wrote:
| I check the Reddit post (iykyk) every month for updates on
| the Supernote A4.
|
| It still says this year!! :fingers-crossed:
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| There's no way they'll make it to this year. It took them a
| year to get A5X2 from prototype design to "shipping in
| September".
|
| For those not in the know, here's the post: https://www.red
| dit.com/r/Supernote/comments/rxddxj/some_info...
| barrell wrote:
| I know but even moving that to prototype stage this year
| would be amazing. I'm in no rush just excited, and very
| prepared to be disappointed by the time estimates
|
| PS Thanks, I was on mobile, I wouldn't be able to have
| found the link
| LegitShady wrote:
| It honestly depends on you. I used a Google Nexus 7 as a
| textbook and paper display during university back in the day
| and while in some cases you needed to zoom in overall it was
| fine. I don't have any experience with this remarkable but
| purely from a screen size perspective, if your eyes are healthy
| and you're willing it should be fine.
| itomato wrote:
| This video shows an interactive demo:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uyh6KSYVJ4
|
| I'm particularly interested in refresh latency and color gamut.
| You can get a feel for these here.
| panosfilianos wrote:
| I wonder why the folios put the display to sleep.
|
| Afaik, e-ink screens don't use any energy to display, but only
| to refresh.
| heyflyguy wrote:
| I love my Remarkable, it forces me to stay in creativity mode
| without jumping to the internet since it doesn't have a browser.
| That being said, the inability to simply put your own templates
| in the machine and have them persist through and update is so
| close to being a showstopper for me that I am not sure I would
| consider buying a new one. The RM2 template manager is great, but
| you have to update your templates after every firmware update and
| I hate that with a passion!
| pcl wrote:
| I have scripted this (well, installation of some systemd units,
| but the workflow is the same). So I just plug my tablet into my
| laptop and run my script every time it updates.
|
| It's not ideal, but not super tedious either.
|
| I've been planning to start charging via a raspberry pi so that
| the pi can automatically tend to the device whenever it's
| connected, but haven't gotten there yet.
| tjoff wrote:
| Why not script it over ssh (wifi), preference or is not as
| simple as I imagine? (never used one but the ability to get
| shell and be able to rsync files is one of the reasons I
| consider a remarkable).
|
| I could be misinformed though, haven't researched it a lot.
| pcl wrote:
| Firmware updates blow away any customizations. So you need
| to bootstrap things again after each update.
|
| Updates can be deferred, so the process isn't too
| disruptive.
|
| Edit: oh, yeah I see what you're getting at. That direction
| could work, and I used to do that years ago, as it turns
| out, but these days I am frequently not on a familiar WiFi
| network when I'm using the tablet, so cabling has been more
| practical.
| tjoff wrote:
| Ah, if I'm on the go I think I'd hotspot on my phone and
| sync via termux, but that is great to hear!
| pcl wrote:
| IME IP addresses handed out by my phone's tethering mode
| aren't stable, so it's sorta more of a hassle than just
| fishing out the little cable and letting my script run.
| (The device assigns itself a stable IP address on the USB
| interface.)
|
| Although I haven't looked at those addresses in some
| time; perhaps they are more stable now than they used to
| be.
| tjoff wrote:
| Good point, I've resorted to nmap in desperation in
| similar cases but would hope there is a more elegant
| solution.
| funksta wrote:
| Many rM owners (myself included) work around the template
| limitations by using pdfs as "templates" and writing on them.
| This covers probably 95% of my use of the device, their
| notebooks feel very limited by comparison
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| If you do it this way, can you move pages around within the
| notebook, across different notebooks, add additional pages,
| delete pages, change the template for a specific page, etc?
| Seems like a rather crude workaround
| mouse_ wrote:
| Not that trash Kaleido faux-color e-ink, very nice.
|
| This may be the first legitimate color e-ink tablet with good
| (EMR; see: S-Pen, Wacom, old style Thinkpad) pen input.
| FeistySkink wrote:
| According to the video [0], the pen needs to be charged and I
| thought EMR pens don't.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uyh6KSYVJ4
| WillAdams wrote:
| Probably it's Wacom AES, or NTrig, or maybe some other
| technology (whatever happened to Finepoint?)
|
| Perhaps something from the Universal Stylus Initiative?
|
| https://universalstylus.org/
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| There are quite a few samsung pens, which can be but don't
| need to be charged. That is, the writing works without
| charging but "air gestures" etc. additionally work via
| bluetooth or something and do need additional charging.
|
| That said, due to the fact that it does have an eraser, I
| would still guess that it is EMR but probably with a softer
| tip (e.g., the galaxy folds had special pens; other emr pens
| are "compatible", but might damage the crease, so they are
| not officially compatible).
| zapatistan wrote:
| I recently by remarkable 2 it is a good product. I wish I've
| waited a bit to get this one.
| mariusor wrote:
| I suspect they'll honor their 100 days return policy if you ask
| them.
| layer8 wrote:
| This uses the E Ink Gallery 3 display, of which you can find many
| reviews online.
| jsheard wrote:
| E-Inks official specs list the color refresh time as 0.5ms in
| fast mode, 1 second in standard mode or 1.5 seconds in quality
| mode. That sounds like it could get annoying when reading full
| color content (e.g. comics).
|
| At least it's an improvement from Gallery 2 which took 10
| seconds to refresh in color mode, no wonder hardly anything
| ever used that generation...
| konradb wrote:
| The main issue I had with my Remarkable 1 was that I couldn't
| quickly scroll through pages of e-books. If I was looking for
| something specific in the pages, an ipad allows me to swipe
| across rapidly. Remarkable was this tedious repeated button
| press, waiting each time for the screen to refresh. Had to go
| back to ipad although I loved the device.
| paulcole wrote:
| Which e-ink devices have had fast enough page scrolling for
| you?
| lidavidm wrote:
| Kobo lets you tap and hold a corner (or hold down the
| page turn button), and after a second it'll start fast-
| flipping through pages. Not as fast as an iPad but pretty
| quick, sorta like flipping through a book at a moderate
| pace.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Both Kobo and Kindle devices allow you to fast scroll
| page thumbnails, which helps work around the refresh
| limitations of e-ink. Something like that is still
| missing from RM's software. You basically have to switch
| to multi-page view and then scroll that if you want to go
| quickly through a document.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Onyx BOOX. Set the refresh rate to anything faster than
| "Normal"/"Regal", and you can page through docs pretty
| much as fast as you'd care to.
|
| NeoReader (Onyx's book reader app) also has a lightbox /
| page preview mode where you can see 4, 9, or 16 pages at
| once. Obviously too small to read at 16 pages up, but
| good enough to spot figures, diagrams, chapter breaks,
| and the like. That renders pretty quickly on ePub or
| generated PDFs, but can be slow on scanned-in books where
| you're looking at images of text rather than rendered
| text.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Is this the first mainstream Gallery 3 display tablet (as
| opposed to Kaleido)? I know BigMe made one but it never caught
| on.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| can I read mangas with this?
| lidavidm wrote:
| I posted some other comments in this thread - unless they've
| significantly improved the software in the past year I would
| 100% recommend against it.
|
| (Also, a lot of manga gets distributed through proprietary apps
| now so an iPad is probably your best bet anyways, at least if
| you read the serialized version and not the tankoubon
| releases...)
| Ancapistani wrote:
| The eReader functionality is... poor but usable.
|
| EPUB rendering is slow the first time you open it, and notes
| and highlights get lost when you change text size.
|
| On the other hand, PDF rendering is excellent. I make it a
| point to buy PDF versions of ebooks and have had no issues
| using it like that.
| artdigital wrote:
| 129,800 JPY to get one to Japan, vs $749 USD in the US. So just
| by paying in JPY, I am paying $895.10, so $146.10 more. What
| gives? That's VERY expensive
| tallanvor wrote:
| 10% VAT covers half of it. Possibly tariffs are responsible for
| some of it, or the difference could be due to strength
| differences of JPY, USD, and NOK since it's a Norwegian
| company.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| USD prices usually don't include sales tax. Not sure how it is
| with JPY, but EUR prices usually do include VAT.
| SamInTheShell wrote:
| Wonder how much of that is due to local taxes or perhaps
| tariffs. Pricing cross currency is more than just an exchange
| rate calculation.
| jks wrote:
| Would be interesting to hear from someone who has compared this
| and https://daylightcomputer.com/
| layer8 wrote:
| DC has even worse contrast than e-ink.
| mrzool wrote:
| Since when does e-ink have bad contrast?
| layer8 wrote:
| Have you ever compared with actual printed paper?
| mrzool wrote:
| Never, and I'm not even sure about the ratio -- I just
| never noticed poor contrast on my old Kindle, which I've
| been using for the last 10 years or so.
| layer8 wrote:
| Printed paper (black on white) has a contrast ratio of
| 1:50 to up to (for glossy paper) 1:200, significantly
| higher than e-ink.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Depends what your reference is. E-ink displays without a
| lot of layers (especially Carta 1250) have pretty good
| contrast, on par with matte paper. Some devices with a
| thick frontlight layer and a Wacom layer and a touch layer
| are less impressive.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| My Onyx BOOX has at best a background comparable to very
| dirty newsprint.
|
| I find myself reading with the frontlight on under most
| indoors circumstances, unless I'm in direct sunlight. With
| the frontlight, it's fine. Text may be somewhat more washed
| out, but that bothers me less than a darkish background.
|
| Under sunlight the contrast is actually about perfect, as
| white paper tends to be too blindingly bright.
|
| My tablet has several layers: capacitive touch, Wacom, and
| frontlight, all of which probably contribute to the lower
| contrast.
|
| Mind: I'm addressing your "bad contrast" question. I find
| the trade-offs reasonable, and for reading ebooks (as
| opposed to Web browsing or other app use), the frontlight
| battery consumption is quite reasonable.
|
| If I'm just using the device casually (e.g., listening to
| podcasts or checking something quickly) it's fine to use
| w/o the frontlight, but for immersive reading I'll either
| have a strong reading light, frontlight, or head for a
| convenient sunbeam.
| mattkevan wrote:
| I've got a RM2 and a Daylight tablet.
|
| In ambient light the contrast is worse on the Daylight than the
| RM2 - the screen background is quite significantly darker.
|
| However, the Daylight has a backlight which increases the
| contrast enormously. And it's usable in the dark which the RM2
| is not. The much faster refresh rate also gives it a more fluid
| feel.
|
| What I didn't anticipate is the difference the screen makes in
| how I use and perceive them:
|
| As the RM2 is so simple and static it feels more like a
| notebook or book reader that happens to be battery powered,
| whereas the Daylight is definitely a gadget.
|
| I'm more likely to use the RM2 to take notes or do some
| thinking and the Daylight as something to tinker with.
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| Good point!
|
| The remarkable is a lot more like paper and has that simple
| feel.
|
| Daylight was created for the express purpose of being a
| portable computer you can use in direct sunlight. It can also
| just be your notebook but it does so much more than take
| notes.
|
| I may be a little bit biased but I'd personally prefer a non-
| laggy device with a little bit worse contrast.
|
| To each their own!
| breck wrote:
| I have both. Daylight is _amazing_ for reading and marking up
| technical PDFs and books. Also good for marking up web pages.
|
| Remarkable screen and pen latency is much better.
|
| I hope they both succeed. Both awesome. I'll probably get this
| new Remarkable as well.
|
| (That being said, I use my pen and paper bullet journal ($30)
| more than both of these combined).
| steezeburger wrote:
| The Remarkable screen and pen latency are better than
| Daylight? That's opposite of what I've heard previously.
| breck wrote:
| The Daylight screen is _amazing_ for reading technical
| books. The pen isn't anything special, and I don't like
| it's thickness, but good enough to get the job done.
|
| Here is a photo I took from earlier this week:
| http://hub.scroll.pub/daylight2/
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| Afaik we put the same kind of high polling rate Wacom
| digitizer that remarkable uses.
|
| Any quirks you notice between it and the daylight would
| be fascinating to note! Wacom is the most fluid digital
| pen system on the market from what we could find,
| especially compared to Ntrig, USI and other approaches.
|
| Also you can use other pens other than the one we
| included in the box
| breck wrote:
| > Any quirks you notice between it and the daylight would
| be fascinating to note!
|
| Okay, my Remarkable 2 is currently broken (screen breaks
| more than I wish. They don't have Apple's level of
| reliability yet .3rd replacement), so I can't test
| directly at the moment.
|
| > Also you can use other pens other than the one we
| included in the box
|
| Oh cool! The pen in box is good enough for me, but now
| I'm going to look into getting a thin one. Thanks!
| funksta wrote:
| I haven't used a Daylight (yet) but here's a side-by-side video
| of them being used in sunlight:
| https://x.com/daylightco/status/1808213555579441214
|
| The reMarkable has better contrast, viewing angle, and
| resolution, the Daylight has a far better refresh rate. There
| are other tradeoffs between them of course, but display-wise,
| those are the main ones
| vermaat wrote:
| Wish I could also use this as external MacBook usb-c monitor so I
| can code during the day.
| sofixa wrote:
| There are two options for that:
|
| * Onyx Boox Mira and Mira Pro:
| https://shop.boox.com/products/mira
|
| * Dasung Paperlike Monitors: https://shop.dasung.com/
|
| Between them you can pick between multiple sizes and specs. I
| haven't tried either, but I have a number of Onyx Boox devices
| (a Palma phone sized one, and Nova Air small tablet sized one)
| and I'm very happy with their quality.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| The devices seem nice, but their piracy makes me hesitant:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onyx_Boox#GPL_compliance
| orlandohill wrote:
| I've been happy with my 13.3" Dasung Paperlike HD-FT. I can
| imagine eventually getting a larger color e-ink monitor for
| office work, and a smaller one for travel.
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm still waiting for e-ink displays that actually have inky
| blacks.
| Pr0ject217 wrote:
| Can it be used completely offline, without an account, etc?
| ebcode wrote:
| good question. they have a good product, but it seems like
| their marketing folks haven't figured out selling to
| engineers/geeks
| rvz wrote:
| Well exactly as expected a colour e-Ink version of Remarkable and
| a much larger internal storage (64GB) instead of the very low 8GB
| non-upgradeable storage.
|
| Given it now has Colour e-ink as I said before [0], I will buy
| one right now.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24295884
| ilynd wrote:
| Looks nice to use to write a note, but horrible to use to
| store/access existing notes. The file browser should recognise
| the low refresh rate and use something like column view in
| Finder, rather than a new window when going 'into' a folder.
| paxys wrote:
| Looks neat, but not being able to do something as simple as
| backup and sync without a monthly subscription makes this whole
| ecosystem a no go for me. Especially for a device that already
| costs $600-800.
| mtrovo wrote:
| Did they announce they're locking this new device? I have a
| remarkable 2 and it's basically a stripped down version of
| Linux that you can SSH in and install whatever you want on it.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| This feels like something some Chinese company can put out at
| much cheaper price, just a barebones large e-ink tablet, for
| hackers and tinkerers, with some linux distro with touch
| support, unlocked bootloader and ssh, powered by a
| microcontroller with mainline linux support, no fancy apps,
| no cloud service and no subscription, where they just supply
| the HW and the community on GitHub builds the SW for it, a-la
| RPi.
| plagiarist wrote:
| I wish they would. Currently I think at best they're all
| running a custom Android OS, though.
| lidavidm wrote:
| Could consider a Kobo Elipsa. (I have a different Kobo
| device.) It runs some sort of Linux and you can install
| Koreader and a couple of other things. You can tweak a
| config file and set up the device without an account. Not
| sure how the writing experience compares to reMarkable,
| though (probably not favorably).
| antimoney wrote:
| See https://pine64.com/product/pinenote-developer-edition/
| BadHumans wrote:
| This doesn't exist. It has been out of stock for at least
| a year at this point.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| The entire point of these devices is the tailored software
| experience, I don't know where your suggestion comes from
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| It comes from the fact that I'm tired of subscriptions,
| and some SW being "tailored made" is not always
| synonymous with very high quality. Community developed
| FOSS SW can sometimes be better quality and more
| functional than commercial SW.
|
| For example I see KDE as being far superior than whatever
| Microsoft is doing now on the Windows desktop side, where
| one is free developed by the community and the other
| costs money and is tailor made by a trillion dollar corp.
|
| Case in point, I had a Tolino(Kobo) ebook reader and the
| KOREADER PDF reader I sideloaded on it from github was
| way better than the tailor made one it shipped with. HW
| makers often suck at SW since their dev budget gets eaten
| away by the HW dev costs and they compensate by skipping
| on the SW dev side to keep their budget and profit
| margins in check.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Your examples are misinformed.
|
| First of all, you are comparing two desktop environments
| that have been around for almost the same amount of time.
| KDE is extremely mature, both because of its age and its
| popularity. This is not the case with some niche e-ink
| products.
|
| Secondly, you cannot even remotely compare the software
| needed for document rendering with the one for hand
| writing. The former is a very mature ecosystem and you
| can just write a UI on top of muPDF and port it to your
| platform to have a feature complete solution. The latter
| instead requires a wealth of expertise in how humans
| write and draw to develop both the drivers and the user
| land applications. Take the Librem phone or the PinePhone
| as exampleS. it took nothing to port Firefox or GIMP or
| DOOM to them, and yet the feel of their UI is terrible.
| Writing your PIN to unlock them lags, inputs are laggy,
| moving across the UI is slow and buggy. They are worse
| than the first iphone from almost 20 years ago, even
| though plenty of good developers have worked on them
| SSLy wrote:
| Ah yeah, that gobshite pdf reader shipped with kobos is
| adobe's digital editions. Incredible ass jank with bad
| concept (it's for their DRM).
|
| OTOH Kobo's Epub reader is very nice, if you convert your
| books to kepub - use callibre.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| It's deeply fascinating to me that the company who
| invented PDF can suck so hard at making PDF readers.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Why is it fascinating they suck at it? That's what every
| monopoly does, rentseek. It's not that they can't do
| better, it's that's there's no incentive for them to do
| before. Kind of like Google and their search getting
| worse and worse.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| I also have a Kobo, and I use Plato, created by the same
| person that made bspwm! It's great, and IMO a little
| easier to use than KOReader.
| chickenimprint wrote:
| I do really like Plato for its superior performance and
| design, but it's lacking in features and documentation at
| this stage. KOReader feels like a flimsy hack written in
| lua, mainly because it is, but it does support SSH, two
| columns, grid view, more flexible gestures and
| extensions.
| bluGill wrote:
| You mean like the pine note?
| https://pine64.org/devices/pinenote/
|
| The hardware is easy for China, but there is a lot of
| software that doesn't exist yet, or it exists but is too
| slow to be usable. If you want to work on that software,
| then the pinenote is a great deal, order one and get busing
| writing/optimizing code. If you want a tablet that works
| the ReMarkable has been around for years.
| diggan wrote:
| To be honest (and as a reMarkable 2 owner), the software
| side of reMarkable isn't a "out of this world"
| experience, it's basically "just enough" to do it's job
| but not more than that.
| pjerem wrote:
| For me, it's not even enough. My remarkable is sleeping
| in a drawer.
|
| I totally understand the "it's just a notebook and
| nothing else" limitation. Like : ok, you can't do
| anything else than using it as a notebook. Why not. It's
| how it's marketed and I bought it for that. My issues
| comes from the fact that it's actually a really dumb
| notebook where it could have been a "better" notebook.
|
| I mean, it's 2024 and they still don't allow you to
| create links between pages.
|
| And the global ergonomics are pretty barebones too.
| Navigation is slow. Ok, it's e-ink, e-ink is slow at
| rendering full pages. So maybe at least don't make your
| UX be a succession of screens ? It's like designers
| forgot that you can create interfaces that don't require
| to redraw the entire screen between each action.
|
| This thing is both a really beautiful and enjoyable
| object (the writing feeling is truly incredible) and a
| daily frustration of intentional limitations and
| laziness.
| password4321 wrote:
| For those curious, the PineNote is currently $399 +
| shipping, but out of stock (and has been for some time,
| not even mentioned on the store home page that includes
| just about everything else).
|
| https://pine64.com/product/pinenote-developer-edition/
| WillAdams wrote:
| Apparently, it was a big loss and probably won't ever
| come back in stock.
| itishappy wrote:
| There's plenty of competition in this space: Kindle Scribe,
| Boox Note, Supernote X, Koba Libra, Daylight Computer.
| glenngillen wrote:
| A couple of years in and really happy with my Supernote
| lorenzotenti wrote:
| Boox do something similar, with android
| mangoparrot wrote:
| "Boox" sort-of does this. slaps android and leaves
| everything to apps.
|
| For completely OSS, pine64 pinenote.
| nihzm wrote:
| > with some linux distro with touch support, unlocked
| bootloader and ssh, powered by a microcontroller with
| mainline linux support, no fancy apps, no cloud service and
| no subscription
|
| I am also not a fan of the subscription model & pricing
| scheme but I guess that is how they want to pay back their
| investors. However, besides this they are (relatively
| speaking) also a pretty open company with a sizable
| community on github maitaning a lot of custom tools /
| applications. They do not provide official support for
| these modifications, but these tablets are definitely not
| locked-in like an ipad or impossible to tinker with because
| of obscure undocumented chinese hardware
|
| https://github.com/reMarkable
|
| https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable
| j6m8 wrote:
| The reMarkable company has been super adversarial to a
| lot of these tools, and the file standards and API have
| been moving goalposts for years. MOST of the tools on
| that Awesome list are defunct because the primary open
| source tools for getting data to the reMarkable cloud
| (rmapi and rmapy) are no longer maintained -- the primary
| maintainers both cite reMarkable's moving target API as
| the final dealbreaker. SUPER sad.
|
| I've been hoping to write my own now that the dust has
| settled, but it's definitely a MAJOR project yet to be
| done by the FOSS community.
| mtrovo wrote:
| I started tinkering with their cloud API and it's not a
| major work at all to create a client to it, I managed to
| create a POC uploading and managing files on their cloud
| in a weekend. I still need to polish it a little bit and
| make sure I cover all the possible operations but
| definitely doable.
| loughnane wrote:
| I didn't see any announcment, but I'm in the same boat as
| you. It's honestly the main reason I don't look at other
| competitors.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > I have a remarkable 2 and it's basically a stripped down
| version of Linux that you can SSH in and install whatever you
| want on it.
|
| Could you for example mount a NFS or CIFS directory on the
| LAN, then access .PDFs and documents in other formats without
| signing to any external service? I was looking for something
| like that and have been waiting for years for the PineNote to
| become ready, usable and available, but have given up.
| Unfortunately all readers out there are tied to this or that
| cloud service subscription, and I would use them only
| locally. (I call them readers because I don't need the note
| taking feature; being able to place bookmarks would be more
| than enough)
| mtrovo wrote:
| My guess would be yes when you install KOReader on it.
| plagiarist wrote:
| This is my stance. I'm increasingly just not buying anything
| that isn't have FOSS. Artificial constraints that try to force
| a subscription are a hard no.
| zehaeva wrote:
| Good news for you! The ReMarkable is build on Linux and you
| can direct access to the whole system via SSH!! They even
| give you the su password so you can do _anything_ you want
| with it!
|
| You can break the custom integrations that they created or
| even brick the whole device.
|
| But nothing is stopping you from logging into the system and
| modifying anything you want. There's actually a whole
| ecosystem of 3rd party mods and software for the ReMarkable!
| plagiarist wrote:
| Oh, the marketing gave me a much different impression. How
| far does it go, do you know if you can get a different
| distro on there?
| zehaeva wrote:
| You probably could, but you'd have to find a way to port
| the display stack or write your own.
|
| Edit: here's one of the big sites for 3rd party software
| for the remarkable https://toltec-dev.org
|
| Edit2: Here's someone running doom on the RM https://www.
| reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/gkktxy/de...
| yohannparis wrote:
| You can easily sync your handwritten notes to your computer and
| phone for free using the app. Once synced, you can back them up
| with your preferred method. The cloud service is designed to be
| a convenient, set-it-and-forget-it option.
|
| Asking for a perpetual cloud synchronization at no cost is
| bold.
| djbusby wrote:
| Don't even need the app. I use ssh/scp
| maweki wrote:
| An open API to replicate and automate the app functionality
| for backup locally is not incredibly much to ask for.
|
| Nobody is asking for a free sync server.
| moritonal wrote:
| Bingo, Boox support WebDAV or FTP file sync and it's a
| breeze to use. It pains me how much of modern tech doesn't
| support the very standards half of it's built on. All to
| moat users into their domain.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I agree with your point more generally but FTP,
| specifically, deserves to die.
| mchicken wrote:
| Why is there need for their cloud in the first place? I mean
| if I already own a Google Drive account, why should I need a
| pair of hands in the midpoint to drag my data around?
| hnlmorg wrote:
| So use your Google Drive account for syncing instead of
| their services then.
|
| Remarkable supports Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive
| integrations.
|
| I use the Google Drive integration regularly.
| appletrotter wrote:
| The Google drive integration is completely different to
| the connect one.
|
| It's not automatic, it's manual.
|
| It works essentially in the same way that the 'send to
| email' feature works. Which means if you make a change to
| a file, you have to delete the file on gdrive and
| reupload it.
| kccqzy wrote:
| You do know that Apple provides 5GB free cloud
| synchronization right? And Google also has 15GB free. For
| those who value convenience this is now table stakes to
| provide free cloud sync for small amount of data. And frankly
| 5GB is enough for handwritten notes.
| yohannparis wrote:
| That is a fair point. But if a product doesn't fit people
| needs, there is no need to disparage it.
|
| For fairness, I bought a Remarkable 2 and works fine, but I
| do not use it anymore because it does not fit my needs.
| zuppy wrote:
| i tried to use it a few months ago for the real time share of
| the screen. it didn't work and also the files were not
| syncing with the service i am paying for. it wanted an
| update, but the update failed each time.
|
| after digging (which is something i shouldn't have wasted my
| time on), it seems that it lost the correct time because i
| didn't power it for a while and there was no way to set the
| time manually. because of that, the signature for validating
| the firmware update was failing (it uses the time).
|
| there was nothing i could do. it fixed itself few days later,
| after i gave up.
|
| this is still unpolished so many years after the first
| release. i'm not sure i would recommend it to anyone. i'm
| sure i will trust it to work next time i will give it another
| chance.
| mchicken wrote:
| Yeah, the subscription and the fact that it can't handle simple
| tasks pushed me away from buying the reMarkable 2. I opted for
| a more convenient tablet instead. Without those features, it's
| just a fancy toy that can easily be replaced by a sheet of
| paper. Plus, it's heavier and needs more care. Why spend almost
| a grand on a device when paper does the same job for free?
| ericd wrote:
| It's amazing for reading technical papers, and I can store
| reams of them on there. Useful to be able to mark them up as
| I go. Also textbooks. So for me, it ends up being much
| lighter than what it replaces.
| mchicken wrote:
| This makes perfect sense. I remember working with a pile of
| datasheets years ago, but my use cases have changed a lot
| since then. Now, I can't find any other purpose for the
| device besides writing. Even if I cloned myself ten times,
| I still wouldn't be able to justify the price tag.
| fragmede wrote:
| you're not the target market then and that's fine
| stonogo wrote:
| you can backup and sync without the subscription. you just
| don't get unlimited storage.
| WillAdams wrote:
| How much does the "Connect Subscription" cost?
|
| How well does the machine work w/o it?
|
| When will someone else make a device with this display? (I'm
| looking at you Amazon)
|
| Could we get this display in a larger size on a general-purpose
| tablet w/ stylus? (I still haven't found a replacement for my
| Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110 and its daylight viewable transflective
| display)
|
| A smaller size for a cell phone? (with a stylus please)
|
| How about a dual-screen device like to the Lenovo Yogabook which
| had an e-ink display for the lower half which would toggle
| between keyboard and other uses?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I'm paying $2.99/month. Got mine last year, and used it, then
| didn't, and started again earlier this year - was using it
| daily for about 4-5 months. My daily routines changed and I've
| not used it as much, but will be picking it up again shortly.
| Was more for daily journaling and planning, but not as much 'in
| the workday' use. I think $29/year is an annual plan (looks
| like a new offering) - I may switch to that.
|
| A feature I was using some is the 'desktop connect' thing -
| drawing on it is synced to the desktop app pretty much live
| (<1s delay, ime). Doing a screen share and letting people watch
| me draw using it has been useful, but not something I _need_ a
| lot. But... considering some of the discussions I 've been
| having lately, perhaps I do need it more. Trying to get data
| relationship concepts across to people seems to do better with
| pictures for some folks.
|
| EDIT: Works fine without it and paid account. I _think_ you
| even get a small amount of 'sync' data for free if you create
| an account (5meg or something?). I seem to remember I still had
| some stuff synced between desktop and device even before
| paying. I used it for months just as a standalone device with
| no issues.
|
| The OCR stuff does send the data out to the cloud, and my
| experience is it's not that great, but my penmanship stinks, so
| it's more me than it.
| foul wrote:
| Will it be ssh-accessible like the other Remarkables? It's a
| really cool device, and costs (in EU) less than the DC1.
| diggan wrote:
| I'm a Remarkable 2 owner and yeah, this is a "make or break"
| feature to even start considering a potential upgrading, but
| found nothing online about if the Pro version has this or not.
| paulcole wrote:
| I ordered mine and am very excited for it.
|
| I use it everyday at work (handwritten notes and reviewing short
| PDFs like resumes and white papers). It's one of the biggest
| professional ROI investments that I've ever made.
|
| The people who hate the Remarkable seem to be either zealots for
| openness or people who want to read ebooks on it or people who
| hate subscriptions. Those 3 things don't matter to me at all so
| I've been extremely happy.
| hiq wrote:
| What line of work are you in?
| lidavidm wrote:
| I had a reMarkable 2 and gave up it almost solely because it
| didn't support USB mass storage (like Kobo devices do), making it
| really annoying to transfer files. Also, their software update
| made the reader worse, since I went from being able to manually
| crop the page to fit the viewport to having to carefully pinch-
| zoom with a bunch of latency and really weird sensitivity. And
| they seem oddly insistent they're not a reading device anyways;
| if they supported ePub 3 (particularly ePub 3 fixed layout -
| again, Kobo supports this) that would have made it a nice comics
| machine, but no. (And their weird web interface choked if you
| tried to transfer "large" books.)
|
| 100K JPY too, which is in the range of an iPad Air. I hope some
| of these software issues get ironed out and maybe I'll consider
| it again...
| elric wrote:
| Similar experiences with the reMarkable 1. The USB interface
| really bugs me. It's nice for annotating and highlighting PDFs,
| but pretty bad for reading. Great for taking notes, but awful
| at extracting them, unless you get an expensive subscription to
| their "cloud" garbage, which feels extortionate considering how
| expensive the device is.
| _ph_ wrote:
| You can ssh into the remarkable and copy files via scp.
| lidavidm wrote:
| Yeah. Still way more effort than Kobo: plug it in, drag and
| drop.
| chickenimprint wrote:
| I've switched to exclusively using SSH on my Kobo, because
| I find it less effortful. The connection procedure consists
| of enabling wifi on the Kobo and clicking on the sftp
| bookmark in my file browser.
| whycome wrote:
| Wait is this an official method?
| SSLy wrote:
| No, it's KFmon stuff.
| MayeulC wrote:
| What's wrong with the USB web interface of the remarkable,
| though? It is quite spartan, but I haven't updated mine in
| ages, so I imagine they have improved it.
|
| The workflow is plug -> web browser -> remarkable IP ->
| drag and drop.
| lidavidm wrote:
| That's still quite a bit more than just plug -> drag and
| drop, also especially because sometimes I had to manually
| bring up the interface, and remember some IP that I might
| only use every week or two at most. (I guess I could set
| up a bookmark, sure.) Also, it chokes on large-ish files
| (it would just never upload, no indication in the UI), so
| I had to split up books.
|
| Anyways, I think I could have dealt with it if it handled
| large books fine.
| tecleandor wrote:
| But, afaik, they keep an index and some extra files in their
| own format to track them [0], so you can't "just" upload the
| files. You need a tool to do that additional work.
|
| I use RCU [1] for that. 0:
| https://remarkable.jms1.info/info/filesystem.html 1:
| https://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/
| Terretta wrote:
| > _Remarkable 2 and gave up it almost solely because it didn 't
| support USB mass storage, making it really annoying to transfer
| files_
|
| We had hoped to buy these for all our paperless office
| employees, and gave it up almost solely because it was far too
| easy to transfer files.
|
| If they deliver a device with on-device encryption (as this
| claims) and sync or manual transfer tied (and locked) to
| company-owned storage, we'd buy them for all our
| Pro(fessionals).
|
| To your point, instead we give our professionals iPad Air with
| Paperlike(tm) for pencil-feel and a keyboard for on-the-go use.
| We'd rather (for reasons) give them Remarkable Pros if it was
| capable of meeting Professional data-loss-prevention (DLP)
| needs.
| donatj wrote:
| Let me ask you this in all seriousness and with minimal snark
| - do you confiscate employees paper notebooks when they leave
| the company?
| rkangel wrote:
| We expect people to have a labbook per project. They are
| logged when handed out, and signed back in at the end of
| the project.
|
| For a science/engineering firm, this sort of arrangement
| isn't uncommon, because stuff you do in the lab leads to
| customer deliverables.
|
| Of course, people can also do things electronically, which
| they increasingly do.
| lovecg wrote:
| If you can transfer gigabytes of data with a paper notebook
| then I'm really impressed! But seriously this is similar to
| banning usb flash drives and the like, it's not that
| unusual.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I used to work at a federal contractor. Any paper you bring
| to the building /never/ leaves again. I liked to keep notes
| in a legal pad and would just shred them.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| This isn't unreasonable or unheard of in some contexts,
| especially anywhere requiring a security clearance.
| BadHumans wrote:
| I worked at company that required all paper notebooks to be
| handed in and destroyed. There are entire companies based
| on destroying sensitive paper documents.
| croes wrote:
| They know that smartphone have cameras?
| smithcoin wrote:
| employees often aren't allowed to have them onsite in
| these circumstances for this precise reason.
| samatman wrote:
| There are jobs where producing a paper notebook is the
| primary deliverable. Fewer than there were, due to y'know,
| computers. But it still happens.
|
| It's odd to describe that as confiscation. A lab notebook
| belongs to the lab, not the researcher, this is understood
| by both parties. They may or may not have permission to
| leave the lab with it, but making personal copies of the
| pages would be espionage.
|
| It's perfectly reasonable to want comparable properties in
| a paper-replacing device. I can see where you might find
| that jarring if you haven't been exposed to work conditions
| where it's normal and expected.
| gadders wrote:
| Not the OP, but eInk tablets are banned at our work for the
| same reason, and paper notebooks don't get destroyed.
|
| I one of the reasons is it's easier for a malignant actor
| to get access to notes without you knowing when it's
| electronic. At least with a paper notebook you can tell if
| it's missing.
| Terretta wrote:
| As you see in sibling replies, in many industries where a
| given hand writable concept has intellectual property value
| readily assessed in the millions to billions, and/or the
| deliverable itself may be in written or sketch form, it's
| quite often true that:
|
| (a) employees aren't allowed to have/use their own paper
| notebooks in the first place
|
| (b) if they do, then, yes, the notebooks don't leave unless
| Security reviews (if removal is even allowed)
|
| However, any number of such traditional approaches stop
| working when remote work is a thing.
|
| Technologies are needed if a firm wishes to retain the same
| level of awareness of what's happening to its IP while
| allowing employee flexibility (which, hopefully, firms are
| learning they should strive to allow).
| rcarr wrote:
| Feels ridiculous that we've had Kindles since 2007 but we've
| still got no A4-sized Colour E-Ink Tablet in 2024.
| nihzm wrote:
| Sony made one a while back but I've never tried it, and it's as
| expensive as the remarkable if not more.
|
| https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/design/stories/DPT-RP1/
|
| https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/sony-digital...
| AlanYx wrote:
| The DPT-RP1 line was acquired by Fujitsu and is now sold at
| the Quaderno. The hardware has been updated a bit in the
| Quaderno Gen 2, including a Wacom digitizer. They're still
| great devices, and the same open source software for the DPT-
| RP1 (dpt-rp1-py) works with both Quadernos.
| ctippett wrote:
| It's been awhile since I've looked into it, but are you
| sure the open source software is compatible with the latest
| Quaderno's?
|
| I've been following this issue[1] on GitHub that seems to
| suggest people are still holding out for a solution.
|
| [1] https://github.com/HappyZ/dpt-tools/issues/181
| AlanYx wrote:
| You're linking to dpt-tools. I've never tried that
| software.
|
| I have a Quaderno Gen 2 and personally use dpt-rp1-py
| (https://github.com/janten/dpt-rp1-py), so I can confirm
| that at least it works. (When I first set it up, I had to
| run the "dptrp1 register" command twice because I got an
| error message the first time, but that hasn't come up
| again -- you only have to register it once on a given
| computer.)
| mariusor wrote:
| You can see the price on this thing. Large e-ink screens are
| expensive, colour large e-ink screens even more so. How many
| people do you think would pay 900EUR+ for a device 2cm larger
| on each side?
| robin_reala wrote:
| Sure we do: https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-
| readers/readmoo-mooi... . No idea of the quality, but it
| exists.
| mhitza wrote:
| > You cannot sideload any apps, so you are stuck with the
| defaults, but the most damning thing, is that you cannot
| sideload PDF files, since the MooInk 2C lacks a PDF rendering
| engine.
| Multicomp wrote:
| That's why I'm waiting for further announcements of the
| Supernote A4x, it fits that bill as far as I can tell.
| gizmo wrote:
| What does the ReMarkable really excel at? You can make notes, but
| the software is not that great from what I've seen. It doesn't
| have end-to-end encryption so I wouldn't use it for anything
| important. You can read PDFs but typing notes is much faster on a
| desktop/laptop, and for nontechnical books a kindle is much
| better form factor. You can use it to draw, but e-ink is inferior
| to a wacom tablet or iPad pro. e-ink is great in bright
| environments, but in most places where people work that's just
| not an issue. And who is going to use their ReMarkable at the
| beach?
|
| It's a cool product but I don't get it. I don't get who needs
| this.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| If your notes are the kind that are written faster with a
| keyboard, you are not the target audience
| diggan wrote:
| > What does the ReMarkable really excel at?
|
| Writing notes with a pencil. I think they make this pretty
| clear. Anything outside of that is either a bonus or out of
| scope for the device.
|
| > It doesn't have end-to-end encryption so I wouldn't use it
| for anything important
|
| Don't use the cloud sync and instead manually sync things
| between your own hardware, encrypt at rest if you feel like it.
|
| > e-ink is great in bright environments [...] And who is going
| to use their ReMarkable at the beach?
|
| Living in a country with lots of sunlight and as a person who
| sometimes visits the beach, this is exactly what I want.
|
| One of the main variables I look at when I buy laptops is "How
| well can I read from the display when I'm in sunlight?", I'm
| sure I cannot be the only one who likes to sit outside with my
| computer, or have windows that let in sunlight.
| gizmo wrote:
| I don't think anybody gets real work done at the beach, and
| if you like to work outside you can use a laptop in the shade
| without issues. And if I have to sync my notes manually it's
| easier to use pen and paper and snap a picture afterwards.
| The use-cases for this tablet seem contrived to me.
| diggan wrote:
| > I don't think anybody gets real work done at the beach
|
| Writing notes is not just about doing "real work"...
|
| > if you like to work outside you can use a laptop in the
| shade without issues
|
| The ambient brightness does matter, even if you put the
| laptop in the shade, having anti-glare and a display that
| works well is really necessary in those cases. If you
| haven't tried it before, I urge you to try it, because it
| seemingly works differently than you think.
|
| > The use-cases for this tablet seem contrived to me.
|
| Within your parameters of what "real usage" looks like,
| then yeah. But if you take a look at the real world, you
| see there are plenty of use cases.
| cxvrfr wrote:
| > Writing notes with a pencil. I think they make this pretty
| clear. Anything outside of that is either a bonus or out of
| scope for the device.
|
| Awful/barely functioning OCR kind of eliminates one of the
| main advantages it could have over paper notebooks, search
| and indexing, though.
| aithrowaway1987 wrote:
| I learn best via writing things out by hand in my own words,
| and almost never read the notes afterwards. I am also
| profoundly disorganized :) Before I got a reMarkable I had
| accumulated (and thrown out) dozens of bulky paper notebooks.
| Now those are all digital.
|
| Despite reMarkable's marketing around high-quality hand-drawn
| professional notes, I suspect crappy "transient" notes to aid
| memory and mental organization are the most common use case.
| For me it's really a thinking device rather than a writing
| device.
|
| If I actually need to reference or organize my notes I will
| type something out in emacs.
| jamespo wrote:
| This is spot on, and my main use case as well.
|
| However it would be good if it OCR'ed in the background and
| created a searchable index.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-writing-by-
| ha...
| XlA5vEKsMISoIln wrote:
| I find it very useful when doing CAD (with intent to 3D print
| something). It lets me quickly sketch rough shapes and note
| measurements I've taken, visualize ideas to show them to
| colleagues, do geometry "math" with less chance of messing up.
| Paper would work just fine, I guess, but RM has editing and
| undo, so reworking large regions doesn't result in attempts of
| striking out with more ambiguous lines.
|
| So, to generalize, I'd suggest it for people that do bespoke
| construction of some sort often.
| xur17 wrote:
| Anyone that has one of these - does it work with Linux? From
| Googling it looks like at best it works via wine, but even that
| is questionable with the latest version. Pretty ready to buy, but
| this is a pretty big turn off.
| _ph_ wrote:
| The remarkable2 works well with Linux in the respect that the
| remarkable itself runs Linux and you can just ssh into it.
| rsolva wrote:
| I can access my RM2 with SSH via WiFi or USB-C, if that's what
| you mean. But the official reMarkable client is not available
| for Linux, which I find a bit odd, since it is a Qt-app and the
| founder of the company apparently is an avid linux user.
|
| I have got it working via Wine, but it keeps breaking after
| updates. I do not use it often though, as I mostly just upload
| new files via the website.
| nihzm wrote:
| > But the official reMarkable client is not available for
| Linux, which I find a bit odd, since it is a Qt-app and the
| founder of the company apparently is an avid linux user.
|
| If I had to guess it's probably because they want to keep it
| closed-source and that is a nightmare with linux distro
| packaging. I have also used the tables via the webapp like
| you for many years.
| solarkraft wrote:
| This is actually ... remarkable in that it uses color particles.
| From what I know most color E-Ink displays on the market today
| have b/w particles and a color LCD on top.
| xd1936 wrote:
| https://www.eink.com/brand/detail/Gallery_3
| loughnane wrote:
| I've been a remarkable user for several years and have spent
| hundreds of hours I'm sure in front of the RM1 and RM2.
|
| I love the increased storage (8GB goes fast with a bunch of
| scanned PDFs) and the addition of color (so long as it's as
| readable in sunlight).
|
| However I'm stuck on the old 2.x fw versions because I don't like
| the infinite page thing they added, so I won't be upgrading. Also
| it'd be cool if they offered proper support for self-hosting
| rather than forcing us to use tools like rmfakecloud (which is
| great btw).
| breck wrote:
| I haven't looked at the software stack in a while. Has RM gone
| more open source yet? I didn't like how they were pivoting to
| toward the SaaS subscription thing. I'd much rather pay a
| little more up front for a fully open device then cheaper
| upfront but with an annoying subscription plus closed source.
| loughnane wrote:
| I think they're the same as ever...not as good as I'd like
| but miles ahead of anyone else.
|
| It'll be neat to see if this device is more or less locked
| down. I hope less.
| zehaeva wrote:
| The RM runs on linux and they hand you the admin password.
| I'm not sure how much more open you can get. Just SSH into
| the device and then use one of the 3rd party stacks for
| syncing.
| breck wrote:
| No I get it and loved the RM open source community. I was
| involved with that a few years ago. At the time the SaaS
| stuff was new and I personally thought they should have
| gone the other way and doubled down on a fully open stack,
| but then I kind of moved on to other things and haven't
| kept up with what has happened since, and whether they were
| doubling down on closed source/SaaS or the opposite.
| zehaeva wrote:
| I do agree them pressing the SaaS angle feels bad. Once I
| found out about the stack that the RM is built on I was
| blown away, I definitely had a moment of "why are they
| hiding this?". I told a few others in my office (we're
| software engineers) and everyone was completely unaware
| that this was an option. They really do bury the
| capabilities of the hardware.
|
| It feels like a tax on the less technical/informed.
| breck wrote:
| > Once I found out about the stack that the RM is built
| on I was blown away, I definitely had a moment of "why
| are they hiding this?"
|
| Right?? I mean, their tech is amazing. They are clearly
| cream of the crop, passionate, engineer craftspeople.
| They should be the anti-Apple and be extremely open.
| RaspberryPi style.
| f1codz wrote:
| At last someone echoing my biggest gripe with RM2. I dare say a
| number of recent sw upgrades have been annoying - but the one
| that made me use my rm less is the infinite scroll and pressing
| a button to add a new page. Also the zoom feels very clunky.
|
| Is there a way to revert to the older versions of the software?
| davisr wrote:
| You can use RCU [1] to downgrade to a firmware of your
| choosing [2].
|
| [1]: http://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/
|
| [2]: https://archive.org/download/rm110/RM110/
| kotaKat wrote:
| Loving the dark pattern that it "starts at $579" and then the
| 'buy now' page tries to default you to adding on additional
| options that bump that up to over $700...
| danbruc wrote:
| Two big buttons to choose one of the folios and a small radio
| button below for no folio. And the Type Folio is _+ 249 EUR_
| but also _Save up to 49 EUR with bundle_ , so it actually
| "only" costs 200 EUR. Why would you even do this, make it
| appear more expensive then it is and on top of that confuse me,
| is selecting a folio already the bundle or can I somewhere buy
| a bundle that saves 49 EUR instead?
| jonahbenton wrote:
| A big issue is that it _requires_ a new pen. The earlier pens
| are not compatible.
|
| I use a 3rd party pen with the RM2, much better ergonomics, but
| not clear what now will work.
| WillAdams wrote:
| That is a big disappointment --- for a while it looked as if
| everyone would standardize on the new generation of Wacom EMR
| (w/ 4096 pressure levels) so that a Staedtler Noris Digital
| or Lamy Wacom EMR stylus works w/ a wide variety of devices
| --- I use them on:
|
| - Samsung Galaxy Note 10+
|
| - Kindle Scribe
|
| - Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360
|
| - Wacom One (attached to my MacBook)
|
| and I couldn't count the number of styluses I have floating
| around my home/office.
| DennisAleynikov wrote:
| Super weird, we use the Lamy pen on the Daylight Computer
| and it's the best thing ever
| echelon wrote:
| The new pen looks to be battery powered, whereas the old one
| didn't require a charge. They might be doing something fancy
| for better writing and gesture detection.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Candidates include:
|
| - Wacom EMR w/ Bluetooth (not likely)
|
| - Wacom AES
|
| - NTrig
|
| - something from the Universal Stylus Initiative:
| https://universalstylus.org/
| vimsee wrote:
| I want to challenge the idea that drawing/writing on what feels
| like paper is subpar compared to a surface that have the pencil
| glide a bit more.
|
| I always thought writing on paper is something we have to deal
| with because paper is.. well, the physical medium we always used
| because it is cheap to manufacture.
| diggan wrote:
| I guess it's a bit like putting lemon on fish, in the beginning
| we did so for a purpose but after a while people just got used
| to it and now it's a established thing.
|
| Similarly, we're so used to feeling at least a tiny bit of
| resistance when writing that when it isn't there, things feels
| "greasy" or unnatural.
|
| I personally agree with that it feels nicer with a bit of
| contrast compared to sliding around. Drawing on a Wacom tablet
| gives me a lot better results than drawing on an iPad, even
| when I get to see the lines where I draw it with an iPad and
| with the Wacom that drawing appears on the monitor instead at
| on the tablet.
| vimsee wrote:
| Yeah, the fish analogy makes sense.
|
| I have a Wacom tablet myself and I do think it is nice to
| draw on, but I wonder if the surface can be improved. Would
| love to try possible alternatives.
| WillAdams wrote:
| This can be adjusted for based on different nibs (and/or screen
| protector) --- a number of different ones are available and
| they are easily changed.
| regularfry wrote:
| I got annoyed with how quickly I was going through Remarkable
| nibs, so I bought myself a third party titanium replacement. It
| is _very_ slick in comparison.
|
| With the replacement I get wrist strain. With the originals I
| don't.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Higher quality, fountain pen-friendly paper tends to be
| smoother than regular paper (e.g, clairefontaine, tomoe river,
| japanese paper in general) yet still much less slippery than a
| glass surface.
|
| How slippery/grippy you want things to be depends on the type
| of pen you use (gel, ink, pencil, brush,etc.) and to some
| extent also preference, but people generally agree that there
| are cases which work just badly: very slippery (e.g. glass) and
| much too rough (e.g. sand paper).
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Yep.
|
| I'm a hardcore fountain pen user, to the point that I have a
| lathe sitting in my office behind me right now that I use to
| manufacture replacement parts for pens that have been out of
| production longer than I've been alive.
|
| Prior to buying the rM2, I kept all of my notes on
| Clairefontaine notebooks. I've stopped that completely and
| use the rM2. Their "fountain pen" tool is an adequate
| reproduction of the experience for everyday use in my
| opinion. I've been using it daily for around two years now,
| and have no real complaints. It's a very limited device, but
| they _nailed_ it as a "replacement for paper and pen".
|
| I also have an iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, and have tried all the
| various screen protectors. They're all a worse physical
| experience than the rM2, and I've never found an app that has
| a fountain pen tool that comes close to being realistic in my
| opinion.
| pydubreucq wrote:
| Really interesting ! I have the old version and I've often
| thought it would be much better with colors.
| lawlorino wrote:
| I noticed when reading through user reviews for the remarkable 2
| that I can find several that are pretty critical of the product,
| but the rating of the reviewer is apparently 5 stars.
| https://remarkable.com/store/remarkable-2#user-reviews
| OnionBlender wrote:
| Probably for visibility. It looks like only 5 star reviews get
| shown unless you specifically filter for fewer stars.
| _ph_ wrote:
| A highly interesting release. I love my remarkable2 as a note-
| taking device. I also own a Kindle and an iPad, so reading books
| or running apps isn't my requirement. I only need something to
| take notes and that the remarkable does very well. Funny though,
| that color wasn't the most missing feature. But it is very
| intriguing that it seems to have the first full-resolution color
| displays, with the color being part of the eInk pixels. From a
| practical side, the additional screen space probably is the
| biggest feature to me. I would hope for some more software
| improvements, like a few more drawing tools, especially as the
| colors make that even more appealing. Also, I would like to have
| an image slide show and of course an official option to customize
| the sleeping/off display images.
| surfingdino wrote:
| I did try to like e-ink tablets, but I'm afraid they just can't
| match an iPad or a decent Android tablet.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Horses for courses.
|
| Use an e-ink tablet if you want:
|
| - long battery life
|
| - paper-like writing experience
|
| - high resolution (for b/w)
|
| - an alternative to paper for books and notes
|
| That said, there are devices which are essentially Android
| tablets w/ e-ink screens, which aside from refresh rates work
| much as one would expect.
| laserbeam wrote:
| I love my remarkable 2. Bought it before "Connect" was a thing,
| so I don't have a subscription. But I cannot recommend it to
| anyone. There are better alternatives out there and MyDeepGuide
| (youtube) has reviewed them all better than I ever could.
|
| The software is moving too slowly and often in a wrong direction.
| Especially since they released the keyboard folio most updates
| were around typing (which is supar on any eink device)... and
| they generally made my experience as a pen user worse.
|
| I don't care if the new hardware is awesome, whenever mine breaks
| I will switch to a competitor.
|
| EDIT: the reviewer I mention is excited about the device
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkEg8WLeW4Q
| RyeCombinator wrote:
| Supernote is a good choice!
| xrd wrote:
| I excitedly went to that channel. I'm overwhelmed! Can you tell
| me the top three devices he recommends so I can review those
| videos? Man, he makes a lot of stuff!
| funksta wrote:
| I believe he has said the Supernote A5X is his favourite.
| There's a newer A5X2 coming out later this year to update it
| (though it has repeatedly been delayed)
| NoahKAndrews wrote:
| I like my A5X
| desert_rue wrote:
| I like my A6x
| vadansky wrote:
| Looking at the video there is a significant lag in the
| rendering. Is it noticeable when you're writing? Also looks
| like there is no pressure sensitivity so all the notes are
| come out in that ugly fat style. Maybe I'm just spoiled
| with my Wacom though!
| gpm wrote:
| > Looking at the video there is a significant lag in the
| rendering. Is it noticeable when you're writing?
|
| Speaking from my experience with a remarkable, not on
| that device.
|
| I think two factors contribute to this. One is that there
| are different rendering modes, and it uses a very fast
| one for updating pen strokes so there is less delay than
| you would guess by looking at larger updates. The other
| is that the stylus obscures the very end of the line
| anyways.
| widowlark wrote:
| The A6X2 is great as well, and fits a surprisingly small
| niche for smaller writing devices.
|
| I would also love a device that is the size of a pocket
| notepad someday
| ahci8e wrote:
| I have a Supernote A5X! It's great! I got it to replace my
| old rm and never looked back. I also recently bought the
| Supernote A6X2. Not sure which I prefer size-wise.
| Sometimes the smaller A6X2 is great, especially for
| reading. Other times drawing on the A5X is more
| comfortable.
|
| One thing I don't like about the A6X2 is that there is a
| noticeable gap between the screen and the pen. This gap
| isn't there (or maybe is just way smaller) on the A5X. The
| screen on the A6X2 is also textured, I guess to try to
| mimic paper, but I grew to like the gel pen feel of the A5X
| screen.
| laserbeam wrote:
| He does have best-of videos. There's at least one at the end
| of each year, but there was also one a few days/weeks ago.
| mancerayder wrote:
| I've just ordered the Supernote Nomad. Small but my first
| experience with these things. Hopefully I haven't made a
| mistake!
| mempko wrote:
| I bought one. No regrets yet. I use it for both reading and
| note taking.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Which device would work better than the remarkable for its
| intended purpose of note taking?
| freilanzer wrote:
| From my searches, Supernote A5x or Samsung Tab 9 series.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I'm typing this on my Boox Note Air 2 Plus. I absolutely love
| this device. I usually use it without the backlight, but
| sometimes at night I'll use the backlight and the adjustable
| blue light filter is an absolute must. This is my fifth or
| sixth E-Ink device, and probably my favorite. It's an Android
| device, so everything that I was already using works on it.
| Notably Firefox when properly configured, and Ankidroid.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I just worry about using Android... this sort of e-ink device
| seems somehow _even more_ personal than a laptop or cellphone
| (which are already quite personal); like a journal or
| something. I'd love one that had a community developed OS,
| like Linux or BSD.
| pjmlp wrote:
| By now it is more than proven that devices with community
| developed OSes never take off to the amount to keep a
| sustainable business, and then there is the whole FOSS OS
| distribution politics on top.
| agentultra wrote:
| ReMarkable2 is running on Gentoo iirc.
| pjmlp wrote:
| They use their own in-house OS, based on Linux, Codex.
| DavideNL wrote:
| > " _I just worry about using Android..._ "
|
| Exactly, I'm avoiding them for the same reason, I don't
| want to use a personal e-ink device running on an OS
| created by the biggest advertiser in the world.
|
| I was hoping Pocketbook would release something new this
| year running some Linux distro / with less tracking, and
| more privacy.
|
| PS. Also: i want a light sensor to automatically adjust
| brightness/night mode based on lighting conditions
| (previous Pocketbook models don't have this.)
| gcr wrote:
| I have the slightly older Boox Note Air 2, and can second
| this comment. It's a really nice device!
| ajot wrote:
| As I don't have an Android eink device (I do have an Android
| phone and a Kobo with KOReader, for the record), I would like
| to know: have you tried (and what are your opinions on) any
| apps designed specifically for eink screens?
|
| Thinking about EInkBro [0] as the browser or ReLaunchX [1] as
| the launcher, even KOReader as document reader.
|
| [0] https://github.com/plateaukao/einkbro
|
| [1] https://github.com/Leszek111/ReLaunchX
| dotancohen wrote:
| EInkBro is terrific. I filed a bug last year, the dev fixed
| it in less than a week. I use the stock launcher, but on an
| old Nook I used ReLaunchX, it was fine. On that device I
| only had two applications that I used anyway.
|
| I have not tried KOReader, but I can test it for you. What
| features do you use?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'll second EinkBro as an awesome browser. I absolutely
| cannot stand anything else on my e-book reader: Onyx BOOX
| Max Lumi, Firefox/Android, Onyx's NeoBrowser (rebranded
| Chromium), and DDG Privacy Browser installed, I only use
| those if EinkBro blows up for some reason, which it very
| rarely does.
|
| I've had a _lot_ of interactions with the developer and
| the GitHub repo, and he 's been quite responsive. Hasn't
| addressed everything, but several features added and bugs
| get smashed fast.
| ajot wrote:
| Oh, it was just out of curiosity, as an eInk device with
| a more accessible platform (compared to my old Kobo with
| it's old Linux system) is something I love to daydream
| of. Thank you for your reviews!
|
| As for KOReader, I mostly use the epub reading
| capabilities, and the FTP client for getting files onto
| it. I've tried it as an app on my Android phone but it
| felt a bit cumbersome in a smaller screen, and I think
| the faster refresh rate of LCD panels doesn't suit it
| well. I do really love it on my Kobo, though.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Every time I look at it I get turned off by Android 11 being
| so old. I don't know the Google ecosystem as well, how much
| longer will that API version be supported? Does it get
| security updates? Can I unlock it and install something less
| Googled?
| dotancohen wrote:
| I don't believe that there are third-party Android builds
| for the Boox devices, simply because they've modified it to
| better fit E-Ink screens.
| paradox460 wrote:
| I really do love mine too, and support has been rather good.
| I do worry about it reaching end of life, but only mildly. I
| do wish that boox would open source their android changes,
| they are arguably the best in class features for eink, and
| beat the pants off systems like the Kindle
| dotancohen wrote:
| I actually did love the E-Ink display algorithms, but maybe
| two months ago an update changed them and it is far worse.
| Lots of dithering, and I have a hard time configuring the
| "Enhance dark colours" and "Enhance light colours" settings
| to display apps as good as they were prior. Don't upgrade
| the OS!
| wavemode wrote:
| Last time I shopped for an e-ink device (as a gift for my
| brother), I considered the remarkable, and even purchased one.
| Ended up returning it. It's just too limited in too many
| unnecessary ways.
|
| I got a supernote instead. He couldn't be happier with it.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| I believe what you say is true for the average HN reader. I
| also believe the subscription is kind of ridiculous.
|
| However, I also believe there is a market out there for a
| device like this that is 1) extremely limited and 2) very
| focused on a few specific tasks (handwriting and document
| review workflow)
|
| Sometimes the other stuff is a distraction. My wife owns the
| remarkable 2 and it is really good for what she wants ("just" a
| replacement for paper).
| boomskats wrote:
| I've owned a rm2 since xmas 2020 and really used to love it. I
| even brought an old obsidian plugin for it back from the dead.
| But the power button gave up 13 months in and they were dicks
| about it, and then when the pen nib holder disintegrated and
| they insisted it wasn't a known defect, I just gave up and it's
| been sat on my shelf ever since.
|
| For anyone still into them though, a Lamy EMR pen coupled with
| the Wacom felt pen nibs (pn ACK22213) is an incredible upgrade
| which makes it feel like a real fineliner. Similarly, I found
| the various titanium nibs that you can get off amazon made it
| feel like a real ballpoint [0].
|
| [0]:
| https://reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/1545mn9/excel...
| sp1rit wrote:
| They absolutely know about this, given that the seemingly
| reworked markers for this tablet have a redesigned nib holder
| that doesn't look like it breaks as easily as the old ones.
| This is a common enough issue that there are people on ebay
| selling caps to replace the broken nib holder, but they seem
| to expensive for what amounts to a piece of 3D-printed
| plastic; I might just look into your solution with the lamy
| pen. It's just a shame that reMarkable is handling those
| issues so badly. They force you to buy a new pen for $130
| because a little piece of broken plastic.
| juahan wrote:
| Not sure if country of residence makes any difference (I'm
| in EU), but at least I got a new pen from warranty when the
| nib holder broke. And I think it was even little over 2
| years after the purchase.
| VeejayRampay wrote:
| stopped using mine because of the nib holder (mainly
| because I was furious at the build quality)
| DavideNL wrote:
| > " _But the power button gave up 13 months in_ "
|
| I had the exact same issue on mine... you can just feel it's
| bad quality.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Every single update has made my reMarkable tablet worse. I've
| stopped using it as a result.
|
| I have absolutely no idea why they went all in on keyboard
| input, when the whole freaking point of the tablet was that you
| could write on it like paper.
| bccdee wrote:
| I imagine a lot of people bought reMarkables, enjoyed the
| stylus handwriting for a few weeks, and then remembered that
| they actually prefer typing to writing by hand. So the
| product shifted to become a keyboard-driven device with an
| e-ink screen that incidentally offers handwriting as a
| novelty, rather than a primarily handwriting-driven device.
| geniium wrote:
| Is it just me or the camera man has Parkinson !?
| karaterobot wrote:
| If anybody else is wondering whether you need a Connect
| subscription to use the device, it seems the answer is no[1].
|
| I watched the linked video and got kind of excited about buying
| one, and I was wondering about whether they'd pull the move of
| making me pay them a subscription to even use the thing I
| already paid them to own. That would basically make the whole
| device a non-starter for me.
|
| Somewhere in the midst of this, I realized the actual reason I
| won't buy it is that I have no real use case for it, even
| though I think the technology is cool. Your mileage may vary.
|
| [1] https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Using-reMarkable-
| wi...
| destraynor wrote:
| 100 times this. The hardware is great. The software sucks.
|
| I literally can't believe in 2024 it's still not straight
| forward to "send a blog post from my phone to my remarkable"
| without some mangling happening along the way. It was genuinely
| jawdropping for me, I ended up contacting an employee on
| LinkedIn to confirm that this wasn't a well supported workflow
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| I regret buying mine. I like my Sony dpts1 much better which
| was 13 inches (a great size for reading book pdfs) while
| managing to be lighter somehow. I also used that to take
| university notes and do university cs homework.
|
| I just can't recommend an e-book reader that's smaller than a
| piece of A1 paper if its purpose is to replace A1 sized paper
| (either books or notebooks)
| daft_pink wrote:
| I own a kindle, but I find it's often just easier and better to
| use my iPad Pro and the upside of having a fully functional
| device outweighs the fancy display tech. I think it's important
| to consider if eink so great that it justifies such an expensive
| device over a more conventional tablet.
|
| Although, I do kind of want one.
| LegitShady wrote:
| i have a kindle. I use it for reading books. Its only function
| (to me) is reading books.
|
| I have an ipad pro (2018). It's functions are 1) watching
| youtube 2) drawing/painting on procreate and 3) using some
| music apps like AUM and various synths 4) acting a kitchen
| display for recipes and 5) general note taking if I need to
| take notes that involve drawing or diagrams.
|
| I have a phone. I read on my phone because its the device I
| have with me most.
|
| I look at this Remarkable and
|
| 1) It's much more money than either my kindle or even my phone
| cost.
|
| 2) I can't install the kindle app on it, for it to replace my
| kindle
|
| 3) It's not small or convenient enough to replace the kindle or
| phone
|
| 4) It's not good enough for drawing to replace the ipad
|
| 5) I don't understand why it doesn't interoperate with a lot of
| existing stuff. If I want to use my wifi to backup the
| remarkable to my onedrive, it doesn't sound like that's
| possible, which is possible on my phone and ipad, and isn't
| necessary on kindle since everything is already dealt with by
| amazon whispersync.
|
| Not for me either.
| ericd wrote:
| It's for taking notes, and you can put other formats of
| ebooks on it (and pdfs). It's much better than a kindle for
| reading technical papers and textbooks. And I find that it's
| really good for not getting distracted, and getting into deep
| work mode.
| LegitShady wrote:
| its very expensive as just a device for taking notes.
|
| I suppose using its limited abilities and rephrasing that
| as "not getting distracted" is an interesting marketing
| tactic but I prefer to hold my own self control instead of
| just buying worse but more expensive products.
| ericd wrote:
| I'm not saying it as a marketing tactic, because I don't
| work for them. I really enjoy the absence of distraction,
| in the same way that I enjoy it when I go to a place like
| a cabin in the woods with no connectivity, because the
| possibility of distraction is apparently always present
| in my mind until it's definitively not possible.
|
| I have enough demands on my self control in my daily life
| that it's nice to not have to rely on it further.
|
| But yeah, if you don't find that helpful, maybe this
| isn't useful for you.
| hoherd wrote:
| I've read quite a bit on Kindle and Nook, iPad, and iPhone, and
| I think these Remarkable style eink writing devices and kindle
| style reading devices are each firmly in a small niche. The
| tech is really sexy, but for most people I think these kinds of
| devices and kindle kind of devices are impractical.
|
| For instance, with Kindle and nook, the best use I got out of
| it was reading on the train and bus where having a paperback-
| book sized device was really convenient. Outside of that, I
| have rarely reached for my Kindle.
|
| As for eink writing devices, Even without the high price, I am
| very skeptical that they would be more useful than a stack of
| printer paper and a decent pen. Especially with modern phone
| camera features that can transcribe your handwritten text and
| save the image as a PDF. I suspect the target market for
| Remarkable is quite small, and I also suspect that many people
| who buy them rarely use them, just like I rarely use my kindle.
|
| Here's an experiment: navigate your browser to the Remarkable
| page, look at it, and pay attention to how you feel when
| thinking about using the device. Next, navigate to the PineNote
| page[1], a device that has technological capabilities that are
| quite similar to the remarkable 2, and do the same thing. I
| suspect that the Remarkable marketing is doing a lot of work
| here. (One caveat here is that the Remarkable Pro is color, so
| the comparison is more different than if they still had a
| marketing page for Remarkable 2)
|
| 1. https://pine64.com/product/pinenote-developer-edition/
| Apocryphon wrote:
| That PineNote page doesn't even have screenshots. Absolutely
| pathetic marketing.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| My understanding is that Pine64 isn't really trying to sell
| you anything. It's closer to a "nerd co-op" than a for-
| profit company.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| To me, eink is definitely better for reading books, which is
| what most of those readers (Kindle, Kobo etc) are used for.
|
| The other big advantage is battery life. I have an old Kobo
| Aura I got second hand on eBay. I keep the WiFi turned off,
| have installed KOReader and load books over USB (with the held
| of Calibre). With semi-regular usage the battery lasts weeks if
| not months. Way longer than any phone or tablet I ever had.
| Granted of course those devices do a lot more, but it's nice to
| at least very rarely have to worry about whether you have
| enough charge to read a book.
|
| Like you I'm not sure of the advantages of eink for more
| general computing. I wonder what the (actual) battery life is
| like on the ReMarkable.
| AlbinoDrought wrote:
| Like you, I have an old offline eReader (4th gen Kindle,
| replaced battery). My eReader lasts multiple books of use on
| one full charge.
|
| I also have a ReMarkable 2. The battery lasts about 14-16hrs
| of on-time for me.
|
| I keep it in airplane mode and have sleep mode disabled to
| prevent it from locking after 40 minutes. I turn it on around
| 10AM and turn it off at 5PM, writing on it sporadically
| between those hours. The tablet reaches a low battery state
| by Wednesday.
| shove wrote:
| Love my Remarkable 2. Give us an SDK!
| bekantan wrote:
| A "productivity hack" for folks who can't afford this and already
| own iPad+Pencil which they primarily use indoors: switch to
| grayscale mode, it is awesome :)
| create-username wrote:
| lack of USB-C thunderbolt to screen sharing while battery
| charging is a deal killer for me
| Ancapistani wrote:
| The rM2 at least allows you to screenshare wirelessly, which of
| course can be done while charging. I expect this one will be
| the same in that respect.
|
| The rM2 also "just runs linux" under the hood. I bet you could
| write a utility to screenshare over USB if you really wanted
| to.
| create-username wrote:
| Wirelessly using a pc connected to the screen. Which means I
| need a laptop as well.
| fumar wrote:
| It has 229 pixels per inch based on the E in Gallery 3 display.
| On E ink's site, the Gallery 3 product specs says support is up
| to 300 ppi. Remarkable should've gone with the higher resolution.
| thimabi wrote:
| I concur. For a device of that price, size, and considering the
| reading and note-taking use case, only 229 ppi is abysmal. Why
| cut corners in a key part of the product?
| noname120 wrote:
| E Ink has a monopoly on microcapsule displays and the prices
| are incredibly high. The device would be much more expensive
| if they used the high-density display.
|
| As an example the E Ink Kaleido 3 screen part (only the
| screen!) costs $449[1] per piece: https://shopkits.eink.com/e
| n/product/detail/13.3''Kaleido3eP...
| WillAdams wrote:
| One rumour is that Amazon negotiated exclusivity for the higher
| DPI screens.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I cannot support a piece of hardware that is purposely soft
| crippled in order to push you into a subscription.
|
| Think you can plug this into your PC to drag and drop files like
| external storage? Nope.
| regularfry wrote:
| The things I don't like about my rm2 are:
|
| - how fast the nibs wear out
|
| - how inaccurate the screen is
|
| - the screen update rate
|
| - infinite pages
|
| It sounds like they might have fixed the nibs. The rest of it is
| up in the air. I think infinite pages might be workable if the
| update rate is better, but it's also got bad ergonomics. It's far
| too easy to accidentally trigger a scroll. It was bad enough when
| all you could do was accidentally zoom, but the infinite pages
| update really messed with it.
| packetlost wrote:
| This is pretty much all of my concerns as well. The top like
| 2/3rds of mine is pretty accurate on the tip of the pencil when
| writing, but on the bottom 1/3rd it's off by about 2mm and it's
| freaking _obnoxious_. It makes me _hate_ writing on it to the
| point where I 've gone back to real paper. I do occasionally
| use it for reading papers and other page-sized PDFs, but it's
| really not worth the cost for _writing_.
| regularfry wrote:
| I use mine mostly for drawing diagrams and sketches, and the
| fact that I can barely predict the start point, end point, or
| route that a line I'm drawing will take means that it's rough
| sketches at best. Enough to capture an idea but I'm reminded
| how far from heaven we are when I go back to a propelling
| pencil on sketch paper.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Pen accuracy uniformity has always been one of the bigger
| issues with the RM2 in comparison to its e-ink competitors.
| It's beyond annoying to pick up the pen to dot an "i" and see
| the dot appear a mm away from the rest of the letter,
| especially if you're writing along the right edge of the
| device. This is probably one of the motivations why they're
| ditching EMR pens in this new device.
| packetlost wrote:
| If the new pens fix the issue, that alone is worth an
| upgrade, but I think it's too late for me. 1 RM Pro vs a
| nice notebook, pencil, eraser, lead, and iPad Air for about
| the same cost is just... not happening. I'm not falling for
| it again.
| Solstinox wrote:
| Use the pen that comes with it, magnet side facing the
| screen and sweep across the areas that are misaligned or
| the whole screen.
|
| This fixes things for me.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Mine actually usually has okay uniformity everywhere
| except about an inch from the right edge (particularly
| 1/3rd of the way from the top) and the magnet trick
| doesn't fix it for me there.
| regularfry wrote:
| Not for me.
| freilanzer wrote:
| This has never worked for me. Sometimes it's more than 1
| mm off.
| packetlost wrote:
| I haven't heard this trick. I'll try it out!
| tr3ntg wrote:
| I've heard this and tried and didn't notice a difference.
| What's supposed to happen here? I have the Marker Plus.
| tr3ntg wrote:
| Same. I can draw a straight line down my screen, and the
| drawn path deviates noticeably in certain areas, despite the
| pen moving in a straight path. Makes writing difficult. Have
| to sort of trust your hand movement, rather than watching
| your markings on the screen. Adjusting to the drawn marks
| will just lead you off slanted.
| jasone wrote:
| The addition of infinite pages made my RM2 unusable. It's far
| too easy to accidentally scroll, and hugely disruptive. I
| checked for tuning improvements for a couple of software
| updates, then set it aside permanently. That such a "simple"
| change could doom the device made me decide to go back to real
| paper, in all likelihood forever.
| ThouYS wrote:
| why get a remarkable, and get screwed by the company, when you
| can get a much cheaper boox go 10.3? it runs android and you can
| do what you like with it
| lolinder wrote:
| Does anyone with a ReMarkable have any experience with hacking on
| it? Can you write software for it, or are you pretty much stuck
| with what they offer out of the box?
|
| And if you can't write software for it, any recommendations for a
| hackable e-ink tablet?
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I haven't tried it but the PineNote is an attempt to be a
| hackable alternative: https://pine64.org/devices/pinenote/
|
| But from what I have read software support for the device is
| very unfinished and not moving that quickly. So while you _can_
| hack on it, you will also likely _need_ to.
|
| (EDIT: Some other comments here appear to be suggesting that
| this is unlikely to come back in stock.)
| hcaz wrote:
| Seems like you can, but not clear how easy it is -
| https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable
| j6m8 wrote:
| You can write software for it but reMarkable as a company has
| been downright adversarial to the open source community and
| MOST of the tools on that Awesome page are now defunct
| because reMarkable has obfuscated API endpoints or changed
| file-standards to prevent third party efforts.
| rsolva wrote:
| There is quite a lot of hacking possible on the RM1 and RM2 at
| least. This repo has a nice overview over the many projects:
| https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable
| appletrotter wrote:
| Many of those projects are defunct, remarkable hacking is
| truly in a dark ace.
| swayvil wrote:
| X-twitter puts their x in the top right of the box. Talk about
| your dark patterns. I just noticed that.
| 65 wrote:
| Just my perspective, but I returned my Remarkable 2 - I don't
| think I personally had a compelling use case for it.
|
| Ultimately this thing is not going to magically make you super
| creative and productive. Frankly it's easier for me to be more
| productive by using my laptop. I prefer typing notes because I
| can keep up with what my brain is thinking. I prefer reading
| books on my computer with the Books app. If I'm trying to work
| something out visually I'll use my sketchbook which I have at my
| desk.
|
| But this is just how I like to do things. You might be different.
| I really liked the Remarkable but it just didn't work into my
| workflow.
| keiferski wrote:
| This looks pretty interesting and definitely something I'd like
| to try out for reading - but, on a different note, I've been
| using ChatGPT to scan in my handwritten notes and have been very
| impressed with the results. So much so that I'm increasingly less
| interested in a clunky expensive device that isn't always
| accurate, and more interested in a way to efficiently scan in and
| organize paper notes. I haven't tried the Remarkable but in my
| experience there is nothing quite like a well-designed pen and
| high-quality paper that when you really want to write stuff down
| and think on paper.
|
| It makes me wonder if an alternative route to this type of tech
| is to integrate OCR more into a device.
| j6m8 wrote:
| ha -- that's exactly what I've been working on on a separate
| reMarkable project posted earlier today [1] :)
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41437740
| gocsjess wrote:
| > The future of paper is here
|
| Off-topic: If the future is less paper, then should we dig more
| holes in the earth's surface to make digital papers. I mean the
| alternative is just replanting.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| I have a remarkable 2 that never gets used any more. All I wanted
| was to be able to natively highlight PDFs and ePUB books, so that
| I could write some code to export those highlights for myself. I
| gave up waiting for that and I doubt it will ever be a reality.
| Such a shame and such a waste.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| It's disappointing there is no Kindle app, unlike the Supernote
| and some others. And yet on the Supernote, it's disappointing
| there's no night light.
|
| Please, Remarkable, find a way.
| gokaygurcan wrote:
| My wife has reMarkable 2, pre-ordered it before the release. If
| you are writing a lot or working on a text file to take notes
| etc. it's a great product. If you're connecting a keyboard to an
| e-ink device, you're doing something wrong. That's my take after
| seeing her using it for the last few years.
|
| I also agree with other comments here regarding the software
| being too slow to develop and some dark patterns (such as
| subscription stuff for the new users). Feels more and more like
| the makes are not sure what to do and trying to shoot in every
| direction sometimes. You have a very good product, just make it
| great and that's it.
|
| Pro tip (no pun intended): get a Lamy al-star emr pen for a
| better writing experience, if you are not comfortable with the
| default pen being too thin.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I have a cheap foldable split Bluetooth keyboard that I connect
| to my e-ink Boox often enough. Why not? The device has a large
| enough screen to be a laptop and it's very easy on the eyes. I
| really don't care what the typing latency is, I don't look at
| the keyboard nor the screen while typing.
| gokaygurcan wrote:
| Well, it's your device, and you can do whatever you want with
| it (within legal limits). But it feels like buying a 72-inch
| and using it as a monitor. Just because you can do something,
| it doesn't always mean you should do them.
|
| (and just like that, I also made enemies with 72-inch tv
| people)
|
| Self-correction: I guess that's also the direction reMarkable
| team wants to go with Type Folio anyways. Who am I to judge,
| right?
| 23B1 wrote:
| Which tip/configuration is appropriate for the RM2? Having
| trouble finding that information on the Lamy site!
| gokaygurcan wrote:
| Z107 works like a charm.
| freilanzer wrote:
| > If you are writing a lot or working on a text file to take
| notes etc. it's a great product.
|
| Even for this intended purpose, I am disappointed. The screen
| is imprecise up to 1 mm, no search in notes, etc. I went back
| to paper, which is certainly not what I expected.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Love the hardware hate the software. I'm a heavy user, but won't
| buy another device from them, unfortunately. Debugging sync
| issues has been very difficult for me and it's hard to just reset
| the device because it's hard to export annotated files.
| Fraterkes wrote:
| Question for hn people: does e-ink vs (blue-filtered) lcd
| actually matter? As in, is there much indication that lcds have
| worse effects on eye-strain, sleep and focus, as long as you the
| light is mostly warm.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I can use my E-Ink devices all day with zero eyestrain, which
| are Barnes & Noble Nook devices and now a Boox device.
| skydhash wrote:
| LCD screens project light on your face (and in your eyes).
| E-ink does not. And there's the whole sun thing (altough I
| rarely use my Kobo outside). I don't know about sleep and focus
| (I sleep easily and like a rock) but I can use my kobo without
| glasses, which I can only do for a short time with LCD.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It's much more _pleasant_ especially in very bright light like
| when outdoors. And this depends on the device but you usually
| have a much much lower minimum illumination level too. A phone
| or tablet on the lowest brightness still pretty much lights up
| a dark room while e-ink does not. Big difference if you read in
| bed with someone who is asleep.
| Fraterkes wrote:
| I have used my ereader for 100s of hours, so Im inclined to
| agree. Im just wondering if theres much concrete proof for
| this feeling. Im using a backlight with my kobo most of the
| time, at that point is it really much different from a screen
| on low brightness? I guess more broadly: is all the stuff
| about screens specifically causing eye-strain true? When I
| read a paper book all day my eyes get kinda tired too. This
| is probably a dumb question, but why is there a significant
| difference between an lcd projecting light into your eyes, vs
| light bouncing via a bookpage into your eyes?
| morning-coffee wrote:
| We've reached "peak _something_ " with this much collective
| energy spent contemplating an expensive and complicated
| "solution" to a problem that is solved pretty simply and cheaply
| by a good spiral bound notebook and a nice pen.
|
| I love this marketing soundbite too:
|
| > "reMarkable gives me the deep focus required to work on complex
| problems."
|
| Mmmm. Yeah. I usually have to find a quiet place and eliminate
| distractions to get deep focus, but nice to know I can just carry
| this new device around with me and never lose deep focus!
| skydhash wrote:
| Paper is nice, but can be cumbersome to organize. While I love
| physical books, my e-reader is so much convenient as it's
| lighter than the majority of book and I only have the one thing
| to bring. So if you like to take notes (and refer to them
| later) something like this could be great. But I agree that it
| is too much expensive for what it offers and too locked down.
| At least with the iPad, you can install third-party apps to
| sync files and what not.
|
| P.S. I was seriously considering it, but I went back to paper
| after trying to use my iPad for digital notetaking (too much
| distraction and the main apps, goodnotes and notability, have
| become awful). I have a clipboard and a ram of paper as a
| thinking tool. Then I copy the final result in a text file.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > a problem that is solved pretty simply and cheaply by a good
| spiral bound notebook and a nice pen.
|
| You're right, but only mostly :)
|
| The paper and pen that it replaced for me certainly wasn't
| cheap. I bought the rM2, keyboard folio, and the pen, so I'm
| all-in for around $1k USD. My EDC pens are all around the
| $150-$400 mark.
|
| There are use cases that it does much better, though. I
| regularly use mine in Zoom meetings, and the desktop app allows
| me to screencast my rM2 to the call. It's super nice to be able
| to draw a diagram "on paper" and have everyone on the call see
| what I'm doing.
|
| > I can just carry this new device around with me and never
| lose deep focus!
|
| This is a net zero, at least for me. Before, I had two
| notebooks (one for work, one for personal stuff) and a pen. Now
| I have a single device that's the same height and width, but is
| about 1/3 as thick. The weight is a bit less. It's not
| distracting because all I can do with it is take notes and read
| PDFs/ebooks.
|
| Actually, I take it back. It's a net win. I no longer have a
| separate Kindle that I carry with me.
| jmspring wrote:
| I've got an RM2. It was super useful when I was taking some
| glasses and had to submit electronically. Outside that use case,
| I rarely have used it.
| beoberha wrote:
| My RM2 is sitting in a drawer. I really wanted to like it and
| build it into my daily workflow, but the software never made me
| feel I was being productive. Scrolling through notes is
| incredibly slow, so any attempt to reference a past note was just
| met with frustration and yearning for a paper notebook.
| nfriedly wrote:
| Pass it on to someone else then. It looks like you can get
| ~$300 for it on ebay:
| https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=remarkable+2&rt=nc&LH_S...
| beoberha wrote:
| Woah I'm shocked! I'll definitely be doing that.
| withinrafael wrote:
| Same here, and PDFs are very slow to load and sometimes fail.
| It's also just a tad too heavy for one handed use.
| alexpetralia wrote:
| I use the Fujitsu Quaderno A4 as my daily reader and notetaker
| (PDFs only).. it is absolutely fantastic. Simple but extremely
| thoughtful design. Extraordinarily light, durable, long battery.
| "It just works".
| tuix wrote:
| Great to see Quaderno A4 mentioned. Using it everyday. Highly
| recommend it. Sad that it's not easy to find in many markets
| criddell wrote:
| Does it OCR handwritten notes? Can you export the PDFs that
| have been annotated? How do you get documents onto and off of
| the device?
| r0fl wrote:
| It's $1250 with a pencil and keyboard in Canada
|
| That pricing is just insane
| thefz wrote:
| Will I be able to use it without creating an account with the
| company?
|
| Will I be able to use it if the company fails?
|
| Will I be able to install third party firmware and software?
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I've had an rM2 for a few years now, and can answer these.
|
| > Will I be able to use it without creating an account with the
| company?
|
| I _think_ so. I created one, and am not willing to wipe my
| device to see if it's required. I _have_ used mine for months
| without connecting it to the network, so it's certainly not
| required on a regular basis.
|
| > Will I be able to use it if the company fails?
|
| Yes.
|
| The "Connect" service is nice and all, but really the big that
| that it provides is an easy way to sync files to and from the
| device. That's not required; you can just use USB to transfer
| if you want.
|
| > Will I be able to install third party firmware and software?
|
| Yes.
|
| There are active F/OSS projects out there for the rM2,
| including custom bootloaders, OS forks, and applications.
| thefz wrote:
| Thanks.
| ksec wrote:
| Something I always thought Apple would have done it. Instead it
| seems RM PP may just be good enough.
|
| I am now wondering if we could have a reMarkable Paper Pro Mini,
| a pocket version I can carry around and take notes.
| fph wrote:
| How do e-ink devices work for teaching? My use case is teaching
| mathematics: streaming my notes to a class using a projector, and
| recording them. I am reasonably satisfied with a Surface tablet,
| apart from the lack of Linux; do you think this would be an
| improvement?
| conradludgate wrote:
| I bought the rM1 but using it for notes was pretty poor
| experience :/ Writing was AMAZING. Reading back my notes on other
| pages was awful. I just want to quickly flip between pages.
| Apparently the rM2 was no better. I don't expect this to have
| significantly improved the refresh rate
| Tieje wrote:
| I chose Supernote because the battery is replaceable. Like a real
| notebook, I don't care about accessing the internet. I care about
| reading, writing, cloud storage, and product life-time. If I
| wanted to access the internet, I'd just use a real computer.
| oniony wrote:
| How does cloud storage work without the internet?
| jchoksi wrote:
| I considered getting a ReMarkable a couple of years ago. My
| primary needs were note taking and PDF reading for studies. The
| ReMarkable's low powered hardware and limited app ecosystem put
| me off. Also, I didn't want multiple devices i.e. a tablet and a
| seperate note taking device.
|
| So, I settled on getting a Samsung Tablet with a S-Pen and using
| the "Flexcil Notes & PDF Reader" app. The tablet was not cheaper
| than ReMarkable but I had access to all the apps in the Android
| ecosystem. The note taking app was not free and its premium
| features make it cost between PS4.59 - PS10.49 if billed through
| Google Play store. The app was well worth it and you can search
| for reviews of it on Youtube.
|
| If you are planning on getting a ReMarkable for studying, I'd
| suggest to instead consider using an iPad or Android tablet with
| pen support instead.
|
| - https://www.flexcil.com/ -
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flexcil.fl... -
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flexcil-note-good-pdf-reader/i... -
| https://www.youtube.com/@flexcil5010/videos
| bcye wrote:
| Adding to this, another great option is getting a Wacom One for
| your laptop. They're available for 30$ and you can use desktop
| note taking apps like OneNote or Xournal++ if you're more
| comfortable with them + you have the multitasking features of a
| laptop OS.
| charles_f wrote:
| As much as I like the concept, and would love to have a use, I
| don't see how I'd apply that to my life.
|
| Writing documents is likely impractical (ocr seems bad, and I
| doubt it'd like my handwriting in particular). Reviewing them
| maybe, but it doesn't plug to the online tools we use at work,
| and then comments are only for yourself. Maybe when reading a
| paper and underlining a few things? Which is the odd case
|
| I switch to paper for strides of time, which I don't see a point
| in replacing by a device that needs a charge and costs 1000cad
| Cieric wrote:
| I figure I'll drop this here just in case. I don't really use my
| RM2 since keeping it in my backpack caused the cover to start
| getting destroyed.
|
| I wrote this as a "is this possible" type program. It ssh's into
| the tablet and then emulates a stylus through the windows api.
| Worked with things like blender and krita. Can't say I'm likely
| to update it again, but it at least worked last I tested it. Also
| note it doesn't install anything on the device it only reads out
| the device file for the pen.
|
| https://github.com/ookami125/Remarkable-Stylus
| selykg wrote:
| I previously wrote about how difficult it was to return and get a
| refund on a Remarkable 2. It was hell. I would highly recommend
| avoiding them like the freaking plague if you're at all on the
| fence, because it's a hellacious process to return one.
|
| I also assume that if you were to ever need to use the warranty
| for any purpose that requires returning the product it's going to
| be the same thing and also awful.
|
| Buyer beware.
| kweks wrote:
| I appear to be in the minority where the RM2 is a perfect fit
| for my needs - but I can confirm that their support is
| aggressively anti-customer, and also non-compliant with EU
| consumer laws.
|
| My device broke in warranty (< 1 year). Customer support
| refused replacements, finally offering a 2nd-hand / refurbished
| replacement (illegal according to EU law).
|
| Despite my attempts at polite out-reach to individuals at the
| company, including C-level, everything was ignored until a
| lawyer friend sent a formal letter - and suddenly everything
| was magically resolved the next day.
|
| It's such an expensive device, and each press-release makes it
| more and more cultish - I couldn't recommend buying this - I'll
| wait for a competitor to do a better job.
| selykg wrote:
| Ugh, that sucks. I had hoped my experience was a one off
| situation but I've heard from others over the past few years
| that they have had the same type of problem.
| tr3ntg wrote:
| They even acted unhelpful in a bug report I tried to submit.
| I provided ample detail, and they continued to request other
| things that didn't seem relevant. I supplied all version
| numbers, my account info, versions of my devices (iOS and
| Rm2), a screen recording, and I think it never got fully
| filed since I didn't keep responding to them?
|
| The bug was critical imo. The app wasn't saving my work, and
| then would crash.
|
| It's supposed to be "like paper" plus sync. But it's not like
| paper, and sync is unreliable. So, I use for an extremely
| narrow set of functions now. That is, editing my writing.
| _benj wrote:
| I had an iPad Air, which I changed for a reMarkable 2 and I
| couldn't be happier! I see a lot of people here commenting about
| the limitations of it, and I get it. For me personally those
| limitations are features.
|
| My needs are mostly note taking and reading technical PDFs, and
| for that the reMarkable is fantastic. I used it extensively while
| taking Calculus, which, it was great to use as many pages as I
| needed and to write as big as I wanted without worrying about
| "wasting" paper.
|
| I miss background light from time to time, which I think is a
| great addition.
|
| I'm not super familiar with alternatives so I can't say that is
| better than X or Y, but I personally have been moving as much as
| I can to single purpose electronic devices. That allows me to be
| more focus and not fight my device wanting to distract me. That
| takes out every eInk table that has android for me, I don't want
| a yet another multipurpose device that I need to develop
| discipline to use it!
|
| On that line, I love my kindle, but that spends about 90% of the
| time in airplane mode, because, again, the kindle is for readin,
| the reMarkable for taking notes and reading Datasheets and
| such...
|
| But, that's just me :-)
| freilanzer wrote:
| > My needs are mostly note taking and reading technical PDFs,
| and for that the reMarkable is fantastic.
|
| I do both of those and I dislike the RM2. There's little space
| for notes above and below the PDF page, no infinite canvas. I
| have more space on the back of a printed PDF (to the left of
| the current text page) than in the RM2. So, all note taking in
| a PDF for me is just keywords, while I would much prefer to put
| text and drawing,s graphs, etc. all around the PDF page.
|
| So, for the last few months I have barely used the RM2 and have
| gone back to pen and paper.
| _benj wrote:
| Makes sense... my note taking is more like highlighting and
| such, since I later get those out into my project
| documentation
| jval43 wrote:
| I'm done with ReMarkable, the company. I have the original
| reMarkable and was enthusiastic at first, but it's been downhill
| since.
|
| It's clear the company is now run mostly by marketing and
| business people. At some point they didn't do any software
| development at all, and soon after they actually removed
| features. None of the original hacker spirit has remained.
|
| Most of your money is going to marketing. The device and software
| are insanely overpriced, and I see their ads everywhere.
|
| Never buying any of their devices again.
| moritzruth wrote:
| I had the same experience with the reMarkable 2.
| wslh wrote:
| I agree with the comment. Owner of the reMarkable 2. I also
| think that in this case making an open source ecosystem gives
| more business benefit for reMarkable because very soon they
| will disappear with the growing number of competitors (and new
| tech) arising.
| freilanzer wrote:
| I have the RM2 and it took them one and a half years of me
| owning it until I could draw straight lines. I still can't
| search in notes, even after converting them to text. If I don't
| annotate everything I write with tags, then I'll have a hard
| time finding it again.
|
| The screen is imprecise, sometimes the line appears 1mm away
| from the tip of the pen.
|
| Their synchronisation service costs monthly, I think 3EUR?
|
| I'm simply underwhelmed, especially for this price. The
| Supernote would have been a much better choice for me - now I'm
| looking at the Samsung Tab S9 series for real note taking.
| davidy123 wrote:
| Whenever I start looking into a device like this, I'm reminded
| how much progress has been held back by the grip Amazon has on
| the book world. Building on shared book annotations would be a
| great way to develop intelligence, but it can only be on the
| down-low.
| jarbus wrote:
| So crazy how divided people on HN are about this product series.
| If this device also supports SSH, it seems like it should be
| solid since you can bypass most of the other subscription
| features, no?
| dcchambers wrote:
| My first-gen Remarkable is still working fine although the
| software and display speed feel painfully slow these days. I even
| have a free "for life" Connect plan because I was an early
| customer...and it does work well for the most part like you would
| expect any cloud syncing service to do.
|
| But I am interested in replacing it with something newer...and
| while years ago I was pining for color e-ink - I am not so sure
| it's something I need/want any more.
|
| After seeing how _fast_ the Daylight Computer^1 display is
| (60fps), and the fact that it supports a massive variety of apps
| because it runs Android, I think that 's the route I want to go
| to replace my Remarkable...
|
| [^1]: https://daylightcomputer.com
| lallysingh wrote:
| It appears RM's out of fashion now. But mine does exactly what it
| promised to do: let me write and sometimes highlight PDFs.
|
| The latter got better after persistent zoom - you zoom the PDF
| once for the margins and it remembers it for ongoing pages.
|
| I got grandfathered into the connect service, it's also $36/yr,
| so not a huge deal? I transfer using the app. The app also lets
| you screenshare your drawing live, so I use it to draw during
| video conferences. That's been useful a few times.
|
| It didn't promise to be a full-on tablet, and its value prop is
| in not being one. I prefer that it doesn't run a full mobile OS
| with other apps. That's against the damned point. I just want
| something to replace the paper stack I usually have near my
| laptop.
| JadeNB wrote:
| Should the link be to the product page
| https://remarkable.com/store/remarkable-paper/pro , rather than
| to the overall ReMarkable home page?
| cubefox wrote:
| So according to the "deep guide" video review, this uses E Ink's
| "Gallery 3" e-paper screen. Which, unlike conventional displays,
| doesn't use additive subpixel color mixing.
|
| Instead it uses subtractive color mixing inside each pixel: It
| layers transparent cyan, magenta and yellow, and opaque white
| pigments, over each other. Which creates cyan, magenta, yellow
| and white as primary colors, and red, green, blue and black as
| secondary colors. Other shades are then created via dithering
| those eight base colors. So it works very similar to an inkjet
| printer.
|
| Since it doesn't use subpixels, the screen seems to have a
| similar brightness to greyscale E Ink displays, which is
| reasonably close to printed paper. However, the color saturation
| is clearly still not quite on the level of actual printed paper.
|
| Here is a comparison shot between Gallery 3 and Kaleido 3 (the
| latter uses conventional subpixels to create colors):
| https://assets.goodereader.com/blog/uploads/images/2023/03/2...
|
| And of course the reaction times are not as fast as LCD/OLED. As
| is well known, E Ink uses electrophoresis e-paper screens, where
| solid electrically charged pigments are moved around in a liquid,
| which is a slow process. It also still requires a "deghosting"
| refresh once the screen changes, but interestingly those refreshs
| are now only applied to the parts of the screen which actually
| have changed pixel values, which looks significantly less
| distracting in my opinion.
| freedomben wrote:
| There aren't many companies for whom I have love like Remarkable.
| All I've ever wanted is hardware that isn't needlessly closed or
| locked down, that is hacker friendly. Remarkable mostly delivered
| that.
|
| But it feels like they've been increasingly moving away from
| that, especially where the openness now competes with their cloud
| subscription.
|
| Given the amount of love the open source community has shown
| Remarkable, I think they could let the community build some
| amazing software for them. This would be doubly beneficial
| because the software is the weak point currently for the
| Remarkable. If they were to open source the existing software,
| even with a CLA copyright assignment, I bet there'd be a huge
| influx of people contributing.
|
| I hope with this new Paper Pro that they are moving in the
| direction of openness/hackability and not more closed like they
| did with the Remarkable 2. Would love to hear from people who
| have tried the Paper Pro about how that is.
|
| Side note: If you haven't gotten the RCU utility application, you
| definitely should! It's a great tool[1]
|
| [1]: https://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Pretty classic enshittification. I expect one response might
| end up being 'contract' developers who sign a contract of 3
| years to develop an application and then after three years they
| go out and find a new contract.
|
| I reason to this because software in hardware produces revenue
| only during hardware sales which typically fall off after the
| initial wave. Without continual revenue your business model
| goes upside down when you have developers for whom you don't
| have any work. So we get bullshit work and eventually we get
| 'RMR' or recurring monthly revenue because well we need to pay
| these folks.
|
| Of course building an enterprise like that would require
| retooling your process with massive emphasis on sustainable
| build tools that are 'done' and similarly libraries. We massive
| documentation on taking the product firmware out of the archive
| and re-createing the entire build / test workflow with new
| developers.
|
| A company like that might have 500 developers during initial
| product development and first shipments, that then reduces down
| to 10 or fewer for maintenance needs.
|
| The surprising thing is that a lot of open source is actually
| kind of like this, a new 'thing' is out there and the number of
| people making contributions grows, and then it is 'shipped' or
| 'done' and the number of contributors reduces down to a
| handful, sometime zero, developers. Growing again when a zero
| day or CVE needs to be fixed and then back to zero. Because its
| OSS nobody is paying them, or maybe they are being paid by
| another company that uses the package and needs a fix, but the
| whole software development model is going to be completely
| changed over the next 10 - 20 years.
| nerdjon wrote:
| Every time I see this device pop up, I really struggle to find
| out what exactly this has over something like an iPad with an
| Apple Pencil?
|
| With this one being $579 including the basic marker. The iPad Air
| with an 11" screen with the cheaper pencil is $678. iPad with an
| 11" screen and the cheaper pencil is $428.
|
| If it is the screen feel, how does that compare to the paperlike
| screen protectors for iPad?
|
| Some say a lack of distractions, but you can turn on do not
| disturb?
|
| I am just really curious what this solves vs other tablets that I
| am missing here, especially at this price point. Or is there
| something I am really missing here?
| adastra22 wrote:
| For someone with ADHD, "do not disturb" is not a reliable
| solution to the distraction problem.
| ilynd wrote:
| Why don't you just not install any apps besides work apps on
| the ipad?
| goosedragons wrote:
| I don't think Apple let's you completely remove Safari.
| That in itself is a giant distraction.
| nasmorn wrote:
| You can have a different person set up parental mode with
| an unknown pin
| adastra22 wrote:
| Mere internet access (which you can't really remove) and
| shiny UI elements are the problem.
| nerdjon wrote:
| That kinda sounds like a thing where a big improvement to the
| Focus feature to lock you to a specific app (or disable apps
| instead of just removing them from your Home Screen) would
| address this problem?
| vessenes wrote:
| Writing this on an iPad - have bought like 5 RM2s for myself,
| employees and kids. It's a great device. I just ordered the
| Pro. It comes very close to replacing a pad of paper, and has a
| bunch of quality of life benefits over paper. I'm not saying
| it's _better_ than a pad of paper, but it's the first eink
| device I had used that offered a principled alternative.
|
| I mainly use it for my journal/planner, using like a 1200 page
| PDF. Could I have that PDF on my iPad? Yep. Do I? No, the
| experience of the ultra high quality iPad color, pixels,
| brightness, interface, UI, all that just puts your (my) brain
| in a different space.
|
| Anyway, it's not for everyone, but I think most people who give
| it a try for note writing prefer it to the iPad.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| Reminds me of my old livescribe pen i had as an undergrad. It was
| a ballpoint-pen with a little computer inside and a camera
| pointing down the tip of the pen. You'd use it with special
| notebooks that had very small dot-patterns printed on the paper,
| and the computer could decode that to get its position on the
| page. Then you'd plug it into your PC's USB port to upload a
| digital copy of your notes. There was surprisingly-good OCR to
| make it searchable and also the pen had a microphone that
| recorded what your professor was saying during any given
| penstroke. And that's in addition to having the physical notebook
| the ballpoint pen wrote on.
|
| Looks like they still exist but they haven't done much in the
| last 15 years. They used to make these high-quality leather-bound
| notebooks but now it seems they only have cheap spiral-bound
| ones. Worse, the pen still costs about $200 so it's not in anyway
| competitive with remarkable.
|
| I'm contemplating going to grad school and I might try to dig up
| my old livescribe pen if I can find it (I think I saw it a year
| or two ago in some box of assorted odds and ends) but the lack of
| high-quality journals is a disappointment and if I can't find my
| old livescribe pen I'd rather try out remarkable than spend 10x
| as much on a nearly-dead product that had far more potential but
| seems to be on life-support.
|
| Wish livescribe would at least open-source their software if they
| no longer care about it.
| crooked-v wrote:
| For me the killer anti-feature of reMarkable devices is the
| limited storage. I have way more than 64 GB of ebooks and PDFs
| (lots of full-color tabletop game books), so anything that has
| both such limited storage and no SD card slot is off my radar.
| stonogo wrote:
| It's not good as an e-book reader regardless of how much
| storage you need. It renders epubs to pdf on the fly (so
| changing the font size induces a long delay in a big document,
| for instance). The documentation even tells you it's not a good
| ebook reader.
| gadders wrote:
| I'd love to use one of these at work (or a similar product) but
| they've been banned because they ship the data off to some other
| cloud somewhere so they've been deemed a security risk.
| beefman wrote:
| Better URL: https://remarkable.com/store/remarkable-paper/pro
| winter_blue wrote:
| I don't get why the Canadian price is CA$929 when the US price is
| $579.
|
| That's an "exchange rate" of 1 USD = 1.6045 CAD. That is a far
| cry from the actual exchange rate (which is 1 USD = ~1.35 CAD).
|
| And ReMarkable isn't the only company selling products at rip-off
| pricing to Canadians.
|
| This absolutely sucks.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Looks like 20% VAT
| winter_blue wrote:
| The duty on tablets & e-readers in Canada is 0% regardless of
| which country the tablet / e-reader was made in, according
| to: https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel-voyage/dte-acl/est-
| cal-en... (there's a _specific duty category for tablets and
| e-readers_ )
|
| Sales tax is 13% in Ontario, so even with that, the exchange
| rate should be 1.35 * 1.13 = 1.53 not the 1.60 exchange rate
| they use. I'm assuming shipping is already included in the
| price in the US as well, and shipping cost in Canada
| shouldn't be that much different compared to the US. I guess
| if the cost of shipping is higher in Canada, then that
| explains the USD-CAD conversion jump from 1.53 to 1.60.
| cpard wrote:
| I love to write, actually I think I have to write as it's the
| only way I've figured out on how to put guardrails on my
| thoughts.
|
| I got my first remarkable a few years ago and I was super
| excited, I thought it could be the bridge between my need to
| write and the digital world.
|
| I gave up, I also tried an iPad too but again I gave up.
|
| I ended up using a cheap fountain pen and the paper that I like
| its texture.
|
| I think the problem with all these devices is that from a product
| perspective they focus on the wrong things.
|
| I don't care about colors and syncing with the cloud or whatever
| else.
|
| I care about emulating an as close as possible experience to
| natural writing and that means latency of the device and the
| tactile feeling I get when I touch the screen with the pen are
| the most important aspects.
|
| I haven't seen much there happening and maybe these are just too
| hard problems to solve.
|
| Or maybe I'm just a member of a too niche group of people.
|
| But until I find a digital writing instrument that gives me the
| sensory feedback of a pen an a paper I don't see me going back to
| these devices.
| jrh3 wrote:
| I need a stack of these to replace paper. The great thing about
| paper is that it's easy to look at several pieces simultaneously.
| minimalist wrote:
| Just for everyone's reference, there is a rich community of
| third-party packages [0] ("apps") and launchers for rM and rM2,
| so it's possible to add on any number of sync (syncthing),
| encryption (gocrpytfs), epub (koreader), web browsing (netsurf),
| vnc (vnsee), wacom driver and more. The user get's root shell
| access from the beginning, and you can automate all sorts of
| things using systemd and standard shell utilities.
|
| The out-of-the-box software may be a bit barebones for some power
| users, but you can certainly add-on the functionality that you
| desire.
|
| [0]: https://toltec-dev.org/testing/
| freedomben wrote:
| Launch event video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcuoqE3Qumk
|
| Interesting approach/angle they are taking about being
| distraction-free. Intentionally no email, etc.
| tristor wrote:
| I have a reMarkable 2 that I use pretty regularly. I have had the
| same pin nib breakage other folks have had, but ate the $130 to
| replace my pen. Since that, I haven't had any issues. It's
| generally a great device that I enjoy using, although I don't use
| it while I'm at home because I have my custom mechanical keyboard
| and can type much faster than I write in Standard Notes in
| Markdown. Every time I take a trip though, I take my rM2 with me,
| and it's my primary on-the-go notetaking tool and I take a /lot/
| of notes.
|
| I did a bit of research and decided to go ahead and jump on the
| Paper Pro. I hope it's worth it, because it's quite a bit more
| expensive than the rM2 was.
| kkfx wrote:
| Well... While I admire reMarkable in technical terms, I'll not
| buy a black box where I have to hack the box just to manage my
| system. I do not care much about handwriting recognition and
| other "cool solution to help the end user", I do care about no
| eye strain reading of LONG damn documents, where scrolling
| distract instead of help, and casual ability to draw things.
| Period.
|
| Unfortunately they took a classic commercial path, maybe fueled
| by many "users desires" described by users who have not much an
| idea about how they can use such devices and the result is
| well... Not exiting especially for the price. I have no issue
| paying something I own, I do not pay for something I can only
| use.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| This looks insteresting to me.
|
| I did look at getting a RM2, but for the same price I could get a
| iPad with a pencil. Granted the pencil wasn't that great, but the
| software on the iPad is.
|
| I have good notes on the iPad which is great for "journaling" and
| it almost works like the microsoft courier concept
| beAbU wrote:
| I'm in the market for something like this, but for sheet music.
| Something where I can upload PDF copies of music to a reader,
| annotate them with the stylus, and easily page through the music
| as part of a performance. I sing choir, so weight is a factor. My
| Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra is just a tad too heavy.
|
| I read lots of discussions on comparable devices on this post,
| can anyone recommend something suitable for music?
|
| On android I use MobileSheets which does everything I need.
| techas wrote:
| If weight is a factor (and, of course, if you can afford it)
| the new iPad Pro is an amazing option. Without a cover is the
| lightest device I've seen.
| rapjr9 wrote:
| In order to replace paper, devices have to compete with paper. I
| keep paper and pen in every room in my house. I am not going to
| buy a $600 device for every room in my house. A device had better
| be very reliable and make offloading easy also.
| roninorder wrote:
| The website is using a scammy cookie consent modal. Why are
| respectable companies ok with that?
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