Thoughts on the Remarkable 2

The remarkable2 is a highly opinionated device. Like most strongly opinionated people, if your needs &#x2F; incentives &#x2F; perspectives align, you&#x27;ll get on perfectly. If not, you&#x27;ll have a strong repulsion to the device.<p>They have an intentionally slow development cycle, which stays very true to Remarklable&#x27;s interpretation on how to use the device.<p>I find that I align perfectly with the workflow imposed by the device (note-taking, PDF Markup, casual reading, specifically of magazines &#x2F; PDFs).<p>I&#x27;ve tried other &quot;kitchen-sink&quot; android eInk devices (full-colour, etc) - and hated them for their confused approach.<p>However, the biggest reason to avoid remarkable are their anti-customer &#x2F; flagrant disrespect for customer rights.<p>The lower-half of my device&#x27;s screen began to malfunction, and eventually stopped working altogether. The EU has very clear laws on this situation: within the first year of purchase, the device must be replaced.<p>Remarkable initially refused to replace the device, eventually capitulated but sent a pen instead of the device, and then refused, once again, to replace the device. Bear in mind that I had sent my device to them.<p>Contact via the European Consumer Centres Network was ignored. I reached out politely to the CEO via email to ask for his attention to the situation. No reply.<p>Finally, when I initiated legal action against them, they proposed to replace the device with a &quot;refurbished&quot; device, and only when my lawyers insisted did I receive a new replacement device.<p>The craziest part is that I had purchased 6 devices for our team.

I got the Remarkable 2 and really liked the feel of writing and the build quality. But it has since landed on a shelf. The main reason for me is that it feels write-only, the notes I take disappear into it and I find it harder to search them than in notebooks. That&#x27;s a pity because I think this is something where a digital device can excel. My wishlist would include:<p>- On-device OCR. I don&#x27;t feel comfortable using it for anything sensitive as long as everything gets sent to the cloud. Come on, mobile processors get more powerful each year and AI has improved in leaps and bounds since the release of the Remarkable 2.<p>- Allow OCR without converting the document. You can either have a page as an image, or convert it to text. Why can&#x27;t you OCR your text, keep it as an image, and have the letters stored behind the handwriting? PDF supports that without problems.<p>- Use handwriting in the UI. This is also big. Why do I have to use a crappy on-screen keyboard? I want to write a search term with the pen and then find the pages with the original highlighting selected.<p>Some nice to haves would be:<p>- Higher resolution. The e-Ink makes it look very crisp, but the resolution is actually quite low, and I cannot write as small as I write on paper.<p>- A more innovative UI. It feels a lot like Windows CE clicking on things with the pen. You could be scribbling circles to select pages, drawing crosses to activate checkboxes, and arrows to move things.

I deliberated for a long time to choose between Remarkable 2 and the conventional iPad - and in the end just stuck to the iPad (after trying a borrowed Re-2 for a few days)<p>* The reading quality &amp; feel to the hands is far superior in Remarkable 2 and it looks much more affordable to entry level iPad, but at the end of the day it is constrained to be just a reading&#x2F;annotating device.<p>* For people like me who prefer Android as day to day driver, but occasionally require use of FaceTime or iMessage to connect with others (friends abroad or in group), iPad is very convenient.<p>* Apple Pencil objectively feels more polished and versatile as a stylus for variety of tasks - note taking, sketching, minor photo touch-up, evaluating paper &amp; reviews etc. The nibs are replaceable as well.<p>* The software ecosystem around Remarkable 2 still has enough rough edges. It is not that smooth to sync, transfer or update the device. iCloud+GoodNotes integration wins by large margin.<p>* iPad (and the Pro more so) has a camera which comes handy at scanning and annotating documents quickly (loaded directly to Goodnotes) versus going through scanning and transferring that to Remarkable 2

Remarkable used to be such a good option, but they instantly became unrecommendable when they added the shitty cloud subscription. The device isn’t worth it without it, and isn’t worth it with it.

Have had a Remarkable 2 for a couple years now. My general impressions have been consistently favorable but the use case is limited. I’m in academia, so it excels specifically because:<p>* it is basically an infinite shelf of notebooks that I can keep organized however I want<p>* it is great for reading journal articles at full size<p>There is a lot I <i>wish</i> it did, but it does work well for these!

I bought and returned a Remarkable 2. I primarily wanted it for note taking but I found it actually felt worse to write on than the iPad with Apple Pencil and a matte screen protector. The iPad is also much more responsive and versatile when taking notes, e.g. better shape recognition, pressure sensitivity and palm rejection. As others have mentioned the Remarkable software is very limiting too in terms of reading, annotating and sharing documents.<p>EDIT: one more complaint - the remarkable pencil nibs wear away very fast. They give you spares but they didn&#x27;t last long.

I will ask the one thing that is relevant to me:<p>Can I plug in the device into my PC&#x2F;Notebook and up&#x2F;download documents <i>via the cable</i>?<p>If the answer is no, or contains the word &quot;Cloud&quot; at any point other than in the context that there is no need to use any &quot;Cloud&quot; to up&#x2F;download documents, then I don&#x27;t care how well made the product is, I don&#x27;t care how good the writing experience is; If a notetaking device doesn&#x27;t work without relying on some &quot;cloud&quot;, I won&#x27;t buy it, end of story.

Despite all the negative fuss about it - I love the Kindle Scribe. It feels and sounds like paper and works great for work note taking and journaling. Oh, and I can read books on it too.

I&#x27;ve had a remarkable 2 for awhile, and it works great for what it was designed to be (writing). I would really love to be able to read on it as well, that experience has not been great. So maybe I&#x27;ll check out the Boox.

I have Supernote. It has some pretty nifty organization features that the Remarkable doesn’t have- you can create a table of contents as well as tag and star pages. It makes it easier to find the notes you need.

I own Remarkable 2, bought it on release day and received it from the second batch. The fill and design is awesome. I use it lightly for daily work notes. But the hardware and software is aging and becoming outdated - no light, slow ereader.<p>Remarkable needs to release updated device, not sure if they have money for that. I’m so sorry to see them wasting their money on ads - promoting outdated device.

I have a Supernote, so while I cannot really speak for Remarkable, but it&#x27;s mind boggling to see others compare them to the iPad.<p>With Supernote I can read without the eye strain, and I can write as if I was using pen on paper. These devices do not try to do everything a tablet does, but reading on an eInk screen is much more pleasant to my eyes -- and so is the writing experience.

I am very happy with my Remarkable 2 but I think that can depend on individual needs and expectations. My desk was perpetually covered with stacks of paper with notes from meetings. As I handled each note, I had to keep each piece of paper until the last note on it was handled. When I tried a paper notebook, I found that there would always be unhandled notes several pages back from my current page.<p>For me the RM 2 is an infinite persistent (editable) notepad. I can organize my notes by project&#x2F;task and can easily cleanup things that have been taken care of. Most importantly, like OP, I didn&#x27;t want yet another device that does it all. I don&#x27;t need to add to desktop PC, laptop PC, IPad, IPhone and then forget where everything is.

the main downside of the Remarkable 2 for me is I need to use my glasses to read on it. Resizing PDFS etc. always end up being too large and not fit in screen, the screen is too dark to give sufficient contrast.<p>This was not a problem for my Kobo, Kindle or Pocketbook readers. I got it really for reading and thought it was a nice size for what I wanted, but amazingly enough the bigger Remarkable is worse for reading than smaller ebook readers. It is very annoying.

I enjoy my Remarkable 1 even though it can be a bit sluggish from time to time (fixed in Remarkable 2).<p>It&#x27;s great to read some A4 pdfs even though one need to zoom when reading academic papers due to the small font used.<p>The e-ink screen is great to read under the sun but it really lacks some backlight to use it during evenings. I can read some paper books but not use the Remarkable unless I can have a direct light on it, but then there&#x27;s a bit of shining.

I love my rm2, but I absolutely hate the cloud subscription they force on you. I&#x27;m able to make use of the limited sync, but it&#x27;s ridiculous that it requires a monthly subscription.

I intentionally gave up the chase to marry “real” feeling writing&#x2F;reading with modern tech to avoid the inevitable uncanny valley these tools tend to get stuck in, and it seems like I was right to do so.<p>I fear, immensely, the idea that I might get stuck in how I operate to such a degree that I’m no longer open to new experiences, and to me that’s who remarkable2 is for; people stuck in the “paper is best” mindset but who realize technology is important to try to keep up with.<p>Getting comfortable with a tablet for these tasks is the real solution. Remarkable2 is a crutch.

I was at one point very interested in the Remarkable. Since then it seems like they&#x27;ve shifted in a much more locked down proprietary direction with their cloud services. My (not thoroughly researched) instinct is that I&#x27;m not sure I could just buy the device and use it offline, at least not without serious downgrades to the functionality that I&#x27;m not willing to take.<p>But I haven&#x27;t looked into it deeply enough to know if that&#x27;s actually the case or if I just had a knee-jerk reaction to their changes. It&#x27;s just tricky to add another locked-down device to the ecosystem, despite what people say about circumventing those locks. It makes me nervous that the APIs aren&#x27;t more supported and that the locks need to be circumvented. It makes me nervous because I&#x27;ve used devices that start getting more and more aggressive about pushing me into a cloud service over time -- and it&#x27;s usually an unpleasant experience.<p>I <i>highly</i> agree with the author that &quot;less is more&quot; but I&#x27;m finding that I still want radically open ecosystems where I can do a lot. The problem with having a full-featured OS with apps like Android&#x2F;iOS is that it&#x27;s annoying and difficult to pair that stuff down to being so basic that the device only does one thing and does it well. I want a device that can do a lot of things that I can then pair down into a device that does one thing well.<p>I&#x27;m lightly following the Librem Note but even though the hardware seems good I&#x27;m worried that there&#x27;s not going to be the same software focus on getting as physically low latency as possible out of the pen? My understanding is that there&#x27;s a lot of custom logic happening on the Remarkable to make that happen, and I&#x27;m worried that the Linux side of things is just going to eventually get drivers pen input and call it a day.<p>Latency is one of those things where... you can get it to an acceptable level where it feels OK to write on. But even the Remarkable itself is boasting 21 milliseconds of latency and that is noticeable latency -- it&#x27;s still in the area where I would be tempted to just keep using paper. Especially if you&#x27;ve ever gotten used to writing with a fountain pen or good ink pen where writing just feels <i>good</i>, latency on a screen really, really matters and every millisecond you can shave off is worthwhile.<p>And I still need to look into the writing feel and what textures they use for the surface. It&#x27;s really important for a casual notetaking device that it actually feel like I&#x27;m writing on paper. But if I could snap my fingers and make software and firmware magically appear out of thin air I&#x27;d love a Librem Note with similar latency that had an extremely paired down Linux OS that was less focused on porting Gnome and more focused on being <i>just</i> a notepad&#x2F;E-reader. It&#x27;s still just very early days for the device and a lot of its potential seems very theoretical right now.

Keeps being a very expensive toy. I think I&#x27;ll choose a nice paper notebook and whenever needed take some photos with my phone.