A couple of years ago, a new type of e-paper device came out – one that allowed users to write onscreen, instead of merely reading from it, allowing you to use it like a digital notebook that’s a lot gentler on the eyes compared to traditional tablets. This year, that device gets an update in the form of the reMarkable 2.
Billed as a “paper tablet,” the device is meant to feel like regular paper, all while being able to digitally store all your notes and printed matter. That way, you can have years’ worth of notes, thoughts, and ideas all accessible from a single screen that won’t strain your eyes the way tablets, laptops, and other LCD-based devices normally would.
The reMarkable 2 is a 10.3-inch tablet with a monochrome digital paper display (1872 x 1404 resolution), so this is strictly a black-and-white screen (no grayscale shades, either). While that doesn’t sound so good, you have to keep in mind, it’s meant to be used for writing notes and reading books – two things that don’t actually suffer on a purely monochrome display. In fact, using such a simple display should allow it to have faster refresh rates, which is necessary to make writing feel natural on e-paper devices. As with your usual e-paper panels, it works with no glare or backlighting, making it extremely readable under sunlight with no brightness adjustments necessary.
The display has multi-point capacitive touch support, so you can navigate through notes, books, and other reading materials using your fingers, much like you do when reading from a traditional tablet. To make writing easier, the device comes with its own stylus, which boasts a high-friction pen tip for precision writing, tilt detection, and 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity. We know, pressure sensitivity seems more useful for a drawing tablet rather than one meant for writing, but if you want to sketch out designs and draw charts, it could prove a really helpful feature. The stylus, by the way, snaps magnetically to the side of the device, so you can keep them together at all times.
The reMarkable 2 is powered by a 1.2GHz dual core ARM processor and 1GB of DDR3 RAM, which should pack enough muscle to handle all the writing, reading, and sketching you’re going to do on this thing. It has 8GB of internal storage, which, the outfit claims, is enough to let you save around 100,000 pages of written material. Need to write more because you’re a compulsive note taker? Not a problem, since you can move some of your data to a PC, phone, or tablet instead, which you can do either via Wi-Fi or USB-C.
The tablet comes with built-in text conversion, which allows it to convert your written notes into digital text files if you’d prefer reading a cleaner, typed-out version of everything you write down, as well as ways to organize, annotate, search, and share your files to multiple platforms. For ebook reading, by the way, it only supports two formats: PDF and ePub, so those who want to read Amazon books on here may want to convert it to the latter format first (the free software Calibre is really good at that). It runs on Codex, the Linux-based operating system custom-designed for low-latency digital paper displays.
The reMarkable 2 is now available for preorder, with a June ship date. Price is $399.