hckrnws

Since this thread is undoubtedly going to devolve into the usual whining about Remarkable that is entirely unrelated to the article at hand, and doesn't understand the intent of the devices, or is based on the entirely unnecessary subscription service, I'll add a positive contribution.

Since receiving the RMPP Move for Christmas, it has become my go-to daily device and other than the obtuse name, I am almost entirely pleased with it.

The writing experience is fantastic. I was skeptical of the pen change from the RM2 but it's been pleasant overall.

Its form-factor seems odd when you read the specs, but it works rather well in practice. It's easy to toss in a bag and go, and does fit in most of my pockets if I need to. It's much more convenient for traveling as an addition to the laptop.

It syncs with my RM2 with minimal issue with scale. Sometimes you have to zoom in but this is easy and natural.

The colors are a nice addition but hardly the main attraction.

The backlight makes it excellent for writing at morning or night in bed without disturbing the S.O..

The minimalism is a feature.

It does okay for PDFs, but that is far from its purpose.

I use it daily for notes, task management, and little printable logic games.

My only minor nits are: changing pens (for logic games mostly) takes more taps than on the RM2. The palm detection is somewhat lacking compared to the RM2 - it tends to change pages or change the zoom level unintentionally when writing on certain parts of the screen. This could be more about my usage of it. I really wish I could add links and/or a table of contents to notes on the device. I wish the zoom level would stick between pages or could be locked in for a document.

Same, I already had a reMarkable tablet and got the reMarkable Paper Pro Move as an impulse purchase (ignoring its ridiculously high price) expecting to return it within the 50-day return window, but the fact that it fits in my pocket (or “most of my pockets”, as you said) has made a huge difference in how much I use it and how I spend my time. The sync is also nice (I think it works up to some limit even without a paid subscription, though it turned out I had one grandfathered in); I can basically send webpages I’m reading to it using the browser extension (at least on desktop). On mobile it’s a bit more annoying, but e.g. I’ve printed long newsletters from the Gmail to PDF (paper size A6) and imported the PDF onto it.

It’s perfectly adequate for writing on, but so far I’ve almost never used the fact that it has (a rudimentary set of) colours, though.

I have been wanting a pocket-notebook-size tablet since the day I got my RM2. I've been considering the Move since it came out, but the stylus change was worrying me, and the price is pretty high -- I feel like I would have bought release day if they offered a lower priced monochrome one in the same form factor, especially if it used the RM2 stylus...

It's encouraging to hear you have had a good experience with it. Maybe I'll grab one if they ever go on sale!

Is there anything beyond your minor nits that you would caution someone like me about before buying?

Are there pens that work like Lamy Al-Star EMR pen, with a button to switch tools, etc, on the RMPP? I have been using my RM2 for years. Backlight would be nice, but not sure it's worth the trade off for me.

AFAIK this does not exist yet for the RMPP. It would be a nice addition and I would guess that they release something eventually.

If you are generally happy with the RM2 then the form factor is probably the only reason to upgrade or swap that ends up being worth it. Most Best Buys carry Remarkables and offer an opportunity to feel it before deciding.

The Paper Pro switched to AES like every other recent tablet out there instead of keeping the Wacom EMR, and it definitely takes a hit in almost every metric you can think of. Like accuracy, as TFA complains.

I frankly _cannot_ recommend the Paper Pro if you already have the 2. It is way too expensive for something that is almost a sidestep instead of an upgrade.

AES ruined tabputers and it makes me so sad

What's AES in this context? (i think of advanced encryption standard)

Is it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_electronic_signature ?

Active electrostatic. It uses a battery, EMR doesn’t.

What are the usual complaints?

Needs a subscription for sync, the sync system is pretty basic, the web/desktop experience is poor, no support for things like Google Drive or other cloud storage, and generally very limited software experience on the device.

(This is not to say I fully agree with these, but these are the criticisms I see a lot online)

my only complaint has always been that the contrast between screen color and text color is worse than in other eInk devices and as a consequence need to either wear reading glasses which I tend not to like over time, or use it in direct light, which drastically decreases the utility.

Often when I say this on HN I get told reading is not the purpose of the device, which is really strange since it is one of the mentioned purposes of the device on their site, and also because I just generally find people who don't read what they're writing, or read the text they are making notes in, to be strange people.

on edit: Of course mine is from a few years ago, and have not purchased another for the reasons given above, but have looked at it in the store and it didn't seem to be improved, and obviously it is not the Pro Move under discussion here.

As a user that doesn't pay for the subscription, I use their Google Drive integration quite often. I believe they support Dropbox and OneDrive too, no?

I always complain about the size. I want a 13" so I can read and mark up full-size PDFs (I'm normally dealing with A4 or Letter size documents).

I was actually thinking about buying Remarkable Paper Pro after Christmas. Not necessarily for the colors but just to have a portable e-ink tablet to scribble on and organize myself a bit better. In the end, I went with Supernote Nomad (A6X2). The build quality is not as good, the display does not have colors, and there is no backlight. But, for my use cases, it fits perfectly. I have found myself taking notes left and right, mostly during meetings.

What swayed me in the end was the software and repairability. Supernote actually released their syncing backend as a Docker image, so I can just roll my own and never have to touch any third-party cloud. All of my notes just live as normal files on my home server. The repairability is similarly open - Supernote sells all the replacement parts on their website. I guess this is the reason the build is not as nice as any Remarkable. But, for me, this sacrifice is worth it, given I plan to use the tablet as long as it can take me.

Bit late reMarkable is running Linux and the community is providing tools like https://github.com/ddvk/rmfakecloud

That's a pretty cool project. But with it living in the grey area of not being really supported by Remarkable, I would be skeptical if Remarkable does not block it down the line.

Supernote has full-fledged Linux support in the official pipeline. It has gotten postponed quite recently, so the devices still run on their customized Android distribution only. But even in the current state, I feel more ownership over my HW and SW than I would with Remarkable.

It's been about 6 years so I doubt it.

If they do though then I won't update and won't buy the next model. I can imagine them doing it for a new model for already sold one that'd be a first.

FWIW if you really want ownership and don't care much for weight the PineNote is probably the best our there, able to run Android (with root) but also Linux proper.

The good thing about the Remarkable is that it’s basically just a Linux machine and you have root access. There’s a great community of folk building extra functionality and tools / apps for it.

I did some minor research, I've only found that I can ssh into it in Dev Mode. Is there a way to run a fullblown nice terminal with keyboard over bluetooth and mosh? I'm dreaming of e-ink portable terminal.

Yep, my notes https://fabien.benetou.fr/Tools/Eink#remarkable on the topic.

Is that true on the pro? I trialed one maybe a year ago and got the impression that the company had stopped supporting third party devs.

SDK :) https://developer.remarkable.com/documentation/sdk

I got a remarkable 2 roughly when it was released and as far as I can tell the company never supported third party devs. They gave you root access but no relevant source code...

Really quite disappointing, the device could have been a lot more useful with even a tiny bit of energy spent releasing source code for things they already developed.

>I also have a fairly light touch normally, and the pressure curve on either the Remarkable 2 or Pro requires me to press too much for comfort to get any “width” in any of the tools.

Yeah, this bothers me a lot with mine too (an RM2). I can't believe how heavily I have to press to get full line width on many tools, it's harder than I press when I use an eraser on a stubborn mark in real life.

Responsiveness wise... the latency on common actions has increased incredibly in the past couple of years. Not pen drawing, that's still excellent, but general UI navigation and recognizing taps and long presses and whatnot have really gotten bad. At this point I've got it rolled back to 2.x almost all the time, which is also a whole lot more moddable than 3.x. I like many of the UI changes and additions in 3 (except infinitely vertically scrollable stuff, that keeps screwing up and interpreting taps and swipes as vertical scrolls when there's absolutely no additional content to show, so it just stops responding for a second while it scrolls three pixels down, and I would be thrilled if I could disable it completely), but not at the cost of responsiveness.

I would forgive quite a lot of the software decisions if they just let me export the snap-to-text highlights without the use of a third party tool. Many e-ink devices have had this feature for years now.

I currently use RCU (Remarkable Connection Utility) to extract my highlights: https://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/

How do you roll back to an older version?

SSH in and you have access to basically everything. The stock setup has two partitions for the OS (it toggles between them when you update, or toggles back if it fails to boot a few times) so you can:

Dual boot (disable updates and install any two you like): https://remarkable.guide/tech/dualboot.html

Some lower level details here: https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable-hacks/issues/304

And installing a specific release is largely automated: https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable-update

Last time I did it, I just did it manually - back up the OS version you want over ssh, then restore it whenever you want (on the non-active partition). And screwed it up the first time, and had to do a recovery: https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-recovery (requires using the contact pads on the spine for USB access - not too hard to solder up a pogo pin thing, but might take some time to get the parts).

So I'd recommend the automated way, though I haven't tried it yet :)

There's a (single) relatively active discord server if you want specific Q&As with other people too, or to double check whatever the current recommendations are (probably do that, as I'm somewhat out of date): https://discord.com/invite/nQ6nHwfDfc

And do definitely back up your data partition before making any major version movements tho, in case something doesn't work right and you need to roll back. I forget if/when that's necessary, but it's a good safety net just in case. And <8GB isn't much to store just in case.

Tinkered with RM1, have RM2 then RMPPro since they are out.

If you care about colors, do NOT buy that or any other e-ink devices IMHO. The colors are washed out.

If you NEED colors in some situations (e.g. reading research papers with important graphics, charts) or enjoy some hints of colors (e.g. manga covers) then why not. It's way WAY better than black&white for colored contents.

Finally, and that's THE #1 use case, if you take notes or sketch diagrams, and would like a dash of color here and there, then it's literally another dimension.

This is excellent, exactly what I wanted to check after learning about Remarkable Pro, complete with a comparison with a regular screen. Thanks for writing this.

Somewhat related, I feel like I'm waiting for a proper color e ink digital frame for decades now. If anyone knows such a device that they personally use and can recommend, please share.

This is fantastically useful if you use these “pro”-fessionally.

Would let you soft proof how any spot color you've used in a PDF will come through for folks using the color device, and fix ability to distinguish before shipping (much as spot colored PDF creators should be checking for color-blindness variants).

I don't have a Remarkable, but I do have a Pocketbook InkPad Color 3. I really like it, but color on that thing is pretty disappointing.

I was hoping that it would be a way to read through the comics I bought on Humble Bundle, but the colors are so washed out that I still just read them on a computer screen.

I have no idea what the engineering challenges are with making color e-ink, but they must be enormous because I (and many others) would pay considerable money for good color on e-ink.

Remarkable is quite different because it uses an E-Ink Gallery display, as opposed to the E-Ink Kaleido displays found on most cheaper colour e-readers such as yours. Gallery has true CYMK e-ink pigments while Kaleido is just mono e-ink with a passive RGB filter array on top.

I'm not a fan of Kaleido, as you say the colours are underwhelming, and the RGB filter attenuates light so the contrast is noticeably worse than classic mono e-ink. Gallery is way more expensive and slower to refresh though, so pick your poison.

I have been using color eInk displays since Triton was still thing, and despite promises everywhere that each new generation of color display was miles better than the previous one, this has never been true, and when I compare my JetBook (eInk Triton and still running Windows CE!) with the Remarkable Paper Color, I sometimes think the colors _are actually more vivid on the JetBook_. (Not a very high bar). In comparisons with the PocketBook/Kaleido, Gallery definitely _loses_. The contrast also _still_ takes a huge hit in the Remarkable Paper compared to the 2, and TFA also points that, albeit it may have to do with the frontlight rather than Gallery (but who knows).

This is the level of improvement in eInk over 20 years.

I want a work/gaming monitor that looks like a Samsung frame.

We have a little desk in the living room and I want to hang a monitor on the wall, that shows pictures when not using it.

I have an RM2 like how I don't have to charge it for months.

The little tiny pocket (Go) was pretty neat but yeah.

reMarkable just open-source your display drivers and E-ink render stack please. I'm pretty sure the pressure curve issue can be solved just by tuning a few parameters in the code. I appreciate reMarkable for adhering to GPL and giving us trivial root access to the machines, but while you're there I really don't see why you don't just do it fully.

Even with the limited amount of usability, the community has already made some amazing additions, for example KOReader. Imagine how far we'd get if we can just write any app we want for reMarkable. I would completely get a typefolio and ditch my laptop if I have the ability to *easily* write my own app on the reMarkable without going through the loops of binary patching and other quirks.

I'm not sure how that hasn't been done already. They're running linux so the drivers and kernel changes should be covered by gpl.

The display driving code is part of their "xochitl" binary, which is not GPL (and might not be allowed to be, eink-the-company is rather protective of their tech and waveforms). ~All modding happens by reverse engineering the binary to call into that code, either to change behavior (rmhacks) or to act like a display driver for other software: https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-framebuffer

The rest has been released a few times, though last I checked it was quite out of date. Far from ideal, but still significantly better than most companies: https://developer.remarkable.com/

Their E-ink display driver is userspace unfortunately...

Interesting article. The color is nice on the Pro, but could definitely use some improvement.

That aside, the Remarkable Paper Pro is one of the biggest deltas I have ever seen between hardware and software quality. The hardware feels and looks great. I was pretty excited when I unboxed it by it. That all disappeared rapidly as I started using it. Their entire user experience is terrible, and just shockingly unuseful. I don't understand who it's designed for, because it doesn't seem to do anything well.

> the faded colors, limited palette along with the dithering really grew on me

I wonder if the similarity of a faded photo (like a faded polaroid) might have helped with this, especially if already has memories and some similar photos.

I have not used a e-ink tablet in a long time (since the Kobo Glo), but since I've stopped reading fiction, I do not really see the allure of devices for myself. They're far too expensive to use as an alternative to a notebook, screens as usually too small to read technical non-fiction textbooks (Think, PDFs instead of EPUBs), and if I wanted to look at media with colors, I do not think most current color e-ink displays are good enough for a pleasing experience. I think, like the author said, it is nice to use a digital photo frame that does not need to be recharged often and can easily swap out the photos.

Is this just a way to process the color of images so we can see them better in RMPP?

If so, I found it very laborious. But I understand those who complain; the colors really have a LOT of room for improvement.

Sigh. ReMarkable.

It's just remarkable how they keep shooting themselves in the foot. Their hardware is great, but their software just sucks. And for no real reason, as far as I can understand. They technically do have a cloud subscription that needs to lock out users, I guess?

For example, they don't have handwriting recognition for non-Latin languages. They don't even have on-screen _keyboards_ for non-Latin languages. Their note-taker sucks. Their "remote whiteboard" feature doesn't work reliably. Etc.

Just open source it all, and allow people to fix it. It's clear that your in-house developers can't do that.

I've got a reMarkable 2 whose USB-C port just decided to break one day. Tearing the unit down, I see the USB connector puts all of its strain on some very tiny pads. The pads were torn off. Apparently this is a common problem.

Based on this, I don't think their hardware is great, either.

Yeah, that's a known problem The solution is to get one of those usb-c to qi adapters, keep it always plugged in, and use a qi charger to recharge. This minimizes insertion cycles and stress on the connector.

I repeat myself: I don't think the hardware is great.

I like handwriting, and reMarkable feels closest to actual pen and paper. It's also as thin as it can be (although it does cause the USB-C reliability issues).

But then they can't try to force people into their sweet, sweet subscription services.

Obsidian has a paid subscription sync service and is free but not open source software.

Joplin has a paid subscription sync service and is free and open source software.

It's a different business model, but it's possible.

I made a service to sync remarkable to obsidian. It's not free, but it _is_ open-source so you can self-host for free.

https://scrybble.ink

Yeah. But then people are not going to buy their hardware. I have a reMarkable from 6 years ago that I'm using to run Toltec and koreader, but I'm not going to buy any new hardware from them.

Was the subscription income worth it?

Same. I'm finally looking to get away from Kindle, and ReMarkable is off the list.

Was comparing the remarkable with the kindle scribe and the boox note 5c - and settled on the 5c - though the battery life trade-off is significant (I end up charging once every 3-4 days, with 2-3 hours of daily use - writing and reading) - and I am really happy with the device. Fantastic hand-writing feel, very good on-device hand-writing recognition, and decent to very good integration with google drive, notes export, etc. May be worth considering if you are looking for an colour e-ink device that you can write on (notes, thoughts, journalling), as well as run android play store applications, including the kindle app.

I tried Boox (Note Air 3 Colour) but it wouldn't run the one 'android' app I needed - O'Reilly bookshelf. Returned it and got an iPad instead. Seemed ok but only half supports apps. I didn't have it long enough to suffer pen accuracy or general performance, but the colours were muddy.

You probably have lifetime subscription btw.

I have two devices with lifetime (RM 1 + 2)

RM was very generous giving it to all devices bought before the service came out.

It's only $5/mo iirc w/ no hard limits, not a bad deal to sync your docs, pdfs, and books tbh.

> very generous

Are you affiliated with the company?