I am a handwriting note-taker. Scattered around my apartment are a couple dozen notebooks, all with an intended individual purpose that has in no-way been adhered to. Some have started out as story ideas that ended up with lists, others were for specific classes but ended up with half-baked design storyboards for websites. Many ended up being scratch pads for quick notes during meetings, but then I wouldn’t be able to find those notes when I needed them.
Along came the iPad Pro, with the Apple Pencil. Finally, the beloved Apple tablet could act as a digital notebook, with some really great apps to take advantage of this capability (GoodNotes has been a favorite!). Despite the capabilities with the Pencil and the iPad, the actual experience of writing on the iPad quickly falls apart for me. My handwriting, already not perfect (but serviceable) on paper, quickly becomes illegible when I try to take notes with any speed using the Apple Pencil on glass. The friction that normally comes with pen and paper that I’ve been used to for my whole life has been completely absent. I considered one of the screen protectors that give a more paper-like feel to writing on the iPad, but those have their own problems (that I won’t go into here).
So when I began seeing ads for the reMarkable a number of years ago, I was intrigued. I love E-Ink’s technology, and I think it has a wide application range yet to be discovered. However, trying to justify the cost at the time was difficult. I was still trying to force myself to love writing on the iPad, and even if I didn’t, it was still hard to justify the cost; during the reMarkable’s initial run, it was over $670 for a “complete” package, including the tablet itself, a pen, and a cover. It seemed a lot for a single-use device.
Fast forward to now, and the reMarkable 2 is out (well, it has been for awhile), touting better battery life, lower latency, a thinner design, and improvements to the accessories. As of this writing, the price is lower (not by much, and a much lower price requires subscribing to Connect, their new subscription service; more on this later).
Also, there is a 100-day trial period, so I figured – maybe it’s time to give this a try.
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