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The reMarkable paper tablet: An e-reader you can write on

Ars Technica's Valentina Palladino takes a look at the reMarkable tablet, a Kindle-like e-reader you can write on.

Released on 12/18/2017

Transcript

00:00
Hi guys, this is Valentina Palladino for Ars Technica
00:02
and today, I'm here with the reMarkable E Ink tablet.
00:05
This is a $599 Kindle that you can write on, per se,
00:09
and I'm gonna tell you some of the pros and cons
00:11
of using this device.
00:13
(cool jazz piano)
00:21
So one of the pros of the reMarkable E Ink tablet
00:23
is its design.
00:24
It's really interesting and cool,
00:26
it's extremely light, it weighs less than a pound,
00:28
and it has a 10.3 226 dpi display,
00:34
so if you're familiar with the Kindle
00:35
or any other E Reader device,
00:36
you will know what this display is,
00:38
it's a monochrome E Ink display,
00:40
and the overall design of it is very interesting.
00:42
It has this metal back to it,
00:44
but otherwise it's just kind of light and airy,
00:47
and it definitely will not weigh you down
00:49
if you put it in your backpack
00:50
and you have to go out for the entire day with it.
00:53
Another pro to this tablet is, not surprising,
00:55
it's a wonderful E Reader.
00:57
It is bigger than most Kindle devices
00:59
and other E Readers that I've seen,
01:01
but it's not unwieldy and the display is great for reading,
01:05
I mean you really can't get that much better
01:07
than an E Ink display if you're gonna be reading a lot
01:09
and consuming a lot of text on a digital device.
01:12
So it has great viewing angles
01:13
and it's also a really great experience
01:15
when you read in direct sunlight or really sunny rooms
01:18
or outside or anything like that,
01:19
you're not gonna get any kind of disruption
01:21
with the display.
01:23
The contrast is really great,
01:24
so any time you're reading any type of document
01:26
or any paper that you might have on this device,
01:28
you're not going to be obstructed at all.
01:31
Another great thing about the reMarkable tablet
01:33
is that it is a pretty good experience
01:35
when you're writing or drawing on it.
01:37
It comes with this little stylus right here,
01:40
and the stylus does not take any batteries
01:42
so you don't have to worry about that,
01:43
but it has, overall, good palm rejections
01:46
so you're not gonna get any stray strokes
01:49
when you're drawing on it or writing notes or anything.
01:52
It also comes with a lot of paper templates,
01:54
so if you prefer using a grid template,
01:56
lined, college ruled, anything like that,
01:58
there are even weekly planner templates.
02:00
You could kind of set up a whole notebook on here,
02:02
and organize it the way that you want to
02:05
thanks to those templates.
02:06
And artists will also like the fact
02:08
that there is a Layers tools,
02:10
and use the notes that you can make,
02:13
so if you do want to kind of separate things that you do
02:15
by layers like you would in Photoshop or ProCreate
02:18
or any other program like that,
02:19
you can do that on this tablet.
02:21
So now onto the not so great things
02:22
about the reMarkable tablet.
02:24
One of them comes with the fact
02:25
that it is a first generation device.
02:26
It has first generation software,
02:29
so there are a lot of weird issues
02:31
that you might experience while you're using it,
02:32
but one of the big ones that I found
02:34
is that your highlights aren't maintained
02:36
when you are highlighting in an epub file versus a PDF file.
02:40
So in an epub file you can change the text settings
02:43
if you want to make the text larger,
02:45
if you want the line spacing to be different,
02:46
all so you can read a little bit better.
02:49
However if you're highlighting any passages
02:50
and things like that, it will not be maintained
02:53
if you change the text settings afterwards,
02:55
which is kind of irritating.
02:57
Another weird issue with the software
02:58
is that you can't swipe from side to side to flip pages
03:01
in any document, which is very weird
03:04
because when you want to scroll through
03:05
those paper templates that we mentioned before,
03:07
you can swipe up and down.
03:09
However, like you would on a Kindle,
03:11
you just swipe from left to right
03:13
if you want to change pages in a document,
03:14
but you can't do that on this device.
03:16
You have to use the bottom two buttons on either side,
03:20
like at either corner of the bottom of the device,
03:22
which is very strange.
03:24
And there are also just some very typical things
03:27
you'd find in first generation software
03:29
where it's kind of slow and clunky,
03:31
some of the controls for the pen might disappear
03:33
if you're in portrait mode or landscape mode,
03:35
the startup time can take 15-20 seconds
03:38
just to get to the Home page, so overall,
03:41
I think reMarkable needs to take a little bit more time
03:44
in their second generation software,
03:46
because the first generation one
03:47
does have a lot of small but annoying issues.
03:51
Another con to the reMarkable tablet
03:52
is that it only supports PDF and epub files.
03:56
So that might be enough for you
03:57
if you're mostly looking at scholarly texts
03:59
or things for college or school,
04:02
things that are already saved
04:03
and available to the public for free.
04:07
But if you were expecting to get this device
04:10
and be able to use all of your Kindle books on it,
04:12
which are Mobi files, you won't be able to do that,
04:15
as it only supports PDF and epub files.
04:18
So you'll have to find free or dear and free
04:20
PDF and epub files to use on this device.
04:23
The final con I have about the reMarkable tablet
04:26
is the fact that the desktop and mobile app
04:28
that accompany this device are really limited.
04:31
At this time they're mostly just used to get documents
04:34
from your other digital spaces onto this device.
04:37
You can't create a document on the desktop app
04:40
or on the mobile app, you can pretty much just import things
04:44
to that app and then get them on this device
04:47
to actually read or work with.
04:49
And like we said before,
04:50
it only supports PDF and epub files,
04:52
so if you were to have a screen shot from your phone
04:54
that you wanted to mark up or take notes on,
04:58
have in your notebook that you have
04:59
on your reMarkable tablet,
05:01
you can't do that unless it's a PDF or an epub file.
05:03
So no image files, no anything like that,
05:06
you can't use the mobile app to get that on to this device.
05:10
So, other than the fact that you can't do anything
05:12
other than move files around,
05:14
there's no other reason to have those apps
05:17
on any of your devices.
05:18
So pretty limited, at least currently.
05:21
So why would reMarkable choose E Ink for a device like this?
05:24
For two real reasons.
05:26
The first is that it's arguably the best display
05:28
to read things on.
05:30
That's why you see it in Kindles and other E Readers,
05:32
because the contrast, because the good battery life,
05:35
and because you can just get a better reading experience
05:39
than you could on any LCD display
05:41
that you would see on any other type of tablet.
05:43
It's easier on the eyes as well
05:45
than that bright LCD or OLED display
05:48
that you might get on another device.
05:50
And the other reason reMarkable chose E Ink
05:52
is because they're claiming it provides
05:54
a more paper like experience
05:56
than those higher quality displays.
05:58
So writing on an E Ink display,
06:00
at least in my experience so far,
06:02
it definitely feels more like paper
06:04
than using something like an Apple pencil on an iPad.
06:08
You know, you're writing on essentially glass in that case,
06:11
whereas this, with the E Ink, you get that sound
06:13
almost like a pencil when you're writing on it,
06:16
and the feedback is a little bit better with E Ink,
06:20
and the contrast, like I said before, with reading,
06:22
you can get a really good contrast when you're sketching,
06:24
when you're out taking notes, different things like that.
06:27
So what reMarkable's trying to do with this tablet
06:30
is make it a kind of all in one document experience,
06:33
so you could read, write and draw on one device.
06:37
So those are the major pros and cons
06:39
about the reMarkable E Ink tablet.
06:40
Definitely go check out the full review on arstechnica.com.
06:44
(cool soft jazz)