reMarkable 2—Long Term Review

My observations on the reMarkable 2, written on my reMarkable 2 in June 2021

I was a huge fan of the Newton MP2000, which I bought as a replacement for a Newton MP120 I dropped and broke. The MP120 was essentially the MP100 with vastly improved handwriting recognition, but still a bit underpowered. The MP2000 had power to burn (it had a 192MHz ARM CPU at a time when Apple’s desktops topped out at 80MHz) and I used it for all my meeting notes for about five years.

If all the reMarkable were was a modernized Newton MP2000 it would have been a killer product, but it is in fact less advanced in most ways, expensive for what it is, and just not good enough at what it does to justify buying it over cheaper, more versatile, and frankly more capable devices.

The Basic Value Proposition

The reMarkable is an e-Ink powered note-taking device. It’s basically an electronic notepad that is about the same size and weight (402g) as a notepad. It automatically syncs to the cloud and you can exchange data with it via an app on your desktop or mobile device. As well as allowing you to take notes and make sketches, you can sync PDFs to it using the app and then read them and annotate them.

It’s very good at all this and while it’s annoying that they charge a modest subscription fee for cloud sync, it does at least work quite well.

Strengths

Probably the single outstanding feature of the reMarkable 2 is the tactile sensation of writing or drawing on its semi-matte display with its very lightweight stylus. It feels closer to using an actual pencil on paper than any similar device I’ve used, whether it’s Wacom or Apple.

In use, once it’s on, it’s quite responsive for writing and drawing.

The e-Ink display looks great and the matte finish doesn’t show fingerprints.

Weaknesses

The reMarkable 2 doesn’t do handwriting recognition. This means that—unlike with the Newton MP2000, a device that shipped in 1993—it’s very hard to search your notes.

The reMarkable 2 doesn’t do precision drawing. The MP2000 would recognize shapes and straighten them out (if you wanted it to). I’d settle for explicit drawing tools.

The reMarkable 2 doesn’t have [much] gesture support. Again, unlike the MP2000 you can’t just scribble over something to erase it, let alone use proof-reader’s marks to make corrections (as you could on the Newton, nearly 30 years ago). You either need to flip the pencil over (if you bought the expensive option with an “eraser” tip) or switch to an explicit erase tool.

(When I say “much”, it does support swiping to change pages, albeit it’s not super responsive and you need to swipe from or to the edge that doesn’t have the tool palette.)

It’s worth noting that Apple also appears to have forgotten to implement most of the fantastic usability of the Newton, but the reMarkable is a one trick pony and this is its trick. The iPad does thousands of other things…

Despite being under-powered, the reMarkable 2 doesn’t get great battery life. I’ve actually been repeatedly shocked to find the device without power after tossing it in my laptop bag after not using it for a week or two.

Also, the battery level indicator is seldom visible, which means it’s much easier to not notice it’s running low.

The MP2000 was good to go for over a week on four AA alkaline batteries. And because it was so much better at everything than the reMarkable 2 is at what it does, that involved a lot more use. And you could of course carry spare batteries or buy a new set anywhere in a pinch. Today it would presumably do even better with LiOn batteries or eneloops.

And it’s not especially quick to charge.

There’s no support for third-party apps. I don’t necessarily want third-party apps, except that none of the deficiencies in the device seem to be being addressed by first-party apps.

There’s no web browser. Since almost anything I do tends to involve the occasional web search, the fact that there’s no way to surf the web means I’ll typically need another device.

It’s expensive. With case and pen, the reMarkable 2 comes in around $600.

It’s completely insecure.

Alternatives

Basically, if you want to be able to take notes and make sketches with a highly portable device, an Android or Chromebook Tablet with a USI display would seem to be better in every way except for thinness and lightness. In theory it will have less battery life, but its battery life will be sufficient and because it’s a more versatile and useful device, you’ll probably notice if its battery has run low.

I’m not going to compare the prices of dirt-cheap garbage devices, but take the rather nice HP x2 11, which includes a pressure-sensitive stylus, detachable keyboard, a fingerprint sensor. It weighs 555g for the tablet part, and another 470g for the keyboard. MSRP is lower than the reMarkable 2, and it’s available steeply discounted ($350 as I write this).

Or for a little more there’s the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 (497g) which has a very good 11″ display and a pressure-sensitive stylus (that fits inside it vs. precariously sticking to it via magnet) for $600.

Or you could get an iPad 10th generation (477g WiFi, 481g LTE) with an Apple Pencil and a case for roughly the same price as the reMarkable 2.

All of these devices have fast CPUs with lots of storage and RAM, high quality color displays, third-party applications, first-party support for handwriting recognition, a built-in web browser, and no subscription cost for cloud sync.

And if you go one step further and get a high end Chromebook with a decent Intel CPU, you can just install Linux as well and now you can use serious apps like Blender, and any of the fantastic open source graphics apps that have become available over the last few years (e.g. Krita). And both Chromebooks and iPads can be used as drawing tablets or extra displays in conjunction with your computer.

Conclusion

I wanted to love the reMarkable 2. For six months I carried it with me everywhere and used it a lot. Because it looks and behaves like a notepad, it’s completely acceptable to use it to take notes in meetings (a trait it shares with the Newton MP2000).

My wife was so jealous I bought her one. But even at my most enthusiastic, I always found myself needing to switch over to my laptop or iPad to look something up or find a visual reference. Eventually I just stopped using it and when I occasionally pick it up to use it, its deficiencies quickly annoy me and drive me back to other devices.

The true irony here is that if my iPad Pro (first generation) weren’t still working so well—I’m writing this final paragraph on it—I would probably have just bought a new iPad Air (today’s iPad Pros are overkill for my needs) and been completely happy. But the fact I could not justify replacing it made getting a different device more justifiable.

The reMarkable 2 is a one-trick pony and it’s just not good enough at that trick to justify its existence. An iPad with the Notes app is, aside from the slight tactile edge of the reMarkable, better at everything the reMarkable 2 does while also doing a bunch of other stuff. Add in my favorite third-party apps like Procreate, Art Rage, and Paper, and let’s not forget web browsers. It’s just not a fair fight.