reMarkable 2 review: an ambitious attempt to replace paper

The pen is, as the saying goes, more powerful than the sword. And modern computers, apparently: despite the leaps of technology, with tablet pens and Wacom digitizers, ordinary pen and paper have survived to this day. But the $ 399 reMarkable 2 – the company’s second-generation E-tablet – looks set to challenge that assumption, with an updated design, improved specs, and a better pen around the age-old paper technology to give some new digital flair.

The original reMarkable was a unique device: a solid E Ink panel with a unique pen and the ambitious goal of killing traditional paper. It fell short in a few key respects, with the first generation E Ink display not being able to match the speed and reliability of paper.

The company has made some remarkable progress in refining the design for the second generation model. Almost every facet of the device has been improved. The reMarkable 2 is 30 percent thinner than the original, with slimmer edges – at 0.19 inches thick, it’s actually the thinnest tablet on the market.

Charging via a modernized for faster charging and USB-C port for file transfer. There is twice the RAM, a faster processor, and a battery that lasts almost three times as long. And the design itself is just nicer, with the plastic frame replaced by aluminum and frosted glass – it’s much more appropriate for the premium price of reMarkable.

The new model is slightly heavier at 0.89 pounds (about twice as much as the standard yellow legal pad), but it’s the right kind of weight, one that makes the new model firmer in your hand and on your lap when you use it ,

The reMarkable 2 also offers major improvements to the actual writing experience for the E Ink panel. While the second-generation 10.3-inch Canvas display has the same size and 226 DPI resolution as the original model, the panel itself is now layered with actual glass (instead of plexiglass), making it a sturdier writing surface that does not look like much under your pen.

Latency has also been reduced by almost half: the reMarkable 2 offers a 21ms latency for writing – fixing the biggest issue on the original model. It’s a huge improvement, one that writes on the ReMarkable feels almost as fast as using a regular pen and paper. It’s not as low as Apple or Samsung reach with their styluses and tablets, but if you compare them side by side, you will have no problem with the latency of the reMarkable.

The second-generation tablet also narrows the gap between the display and the E Ink layer underneath, which further helps support the illusion that you are actually writing with real ink. However, there is still no backlight, which feels like a strange miss.

The reMarkable 2 still retains the best trick of its predecessor, though: a structured writing floor that works in conjunction with the custom-designed pens to replicate the sensational sensation of writing with an actual pen and paper. You can actually crawl the pen as you type – a kind of dry, rasping sound that mimics a Sharpie or fountain pen. (“Scraping away” is meant literally – as with the first generation model, the pen tips will eventually wear out over time and need to be replaced.) The new pens are also twice as pressure sensitive as the original model, with 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity.

The software on the reMarkable 2 is virtually unchanged from the 2.0 software that the company released last year for the original tablet, though the improved specs here help, creating ePubs and creating documents or sharing notes faster than on the original model. I still encountered wait times of several seconds when trying to load larger ebooks or convert handwritten heavy documents.

In addition to drawing and taking notes, reMarkable also supports reading and annotating both PDFs and ePub ebooks, which can be synced via an accompanying desktop or mobile application. Drawings (as annotated files) can then be shared from the tablet as PDF, PNG or SVG file via email. There’s also a Pocket-like Google Chrome extension that can send articles (like pure text documents or “print” PDFs) directly to your reader for reading. Lastly, there is a handwriting recognition service that can analyze and convert your written notes into editable text, which managed to even convert my chicken-scratch handwriting.

But that short list of features covers the whole of what reMarkable can do: draw, write, read and share.

According to reMarkable, this rather limited list of features is a deliberate design choice. The company states that the tablet’s goal is to offer a more advanced version of traditional paper – one that is unbounded by limits of physical space and easier to share in a digital age – but without weighing the experience with the distractions and temptations of a full-fledged tablet.

The reMarkable 2 wants to be for writing what a Kindle is for reading: a custom device that is the master of its digitized domain, instead of a jack-of-all-trades device like an iPad or Android tablet.

Unfortunately, even though the new model is $ 200 cheaper than the original, at $ 399 – plus $ 49 for the base, removable pen and $ 69 for a case – it’s still a hefty price to pay for a nicer writing surface and less derivatives.

The reason the Kindle works as a unitasking device is that it starts at around $ 80 (before the frequent sale of Amazon becomes a factor). It’s cheap enough to justify its more limited and targeted feature set. The $ 399 reMarkable, on the other hand, is actually more more expensive than a fully functional $ 329 iPad, which leaves it as a luxury device for the few who justify spending more on a margin more beautiful writing experience, instead of a real paper replacement for the digital age.

As a piece of hardware, the reMarkable 2 is a fantastic improvement over the original. The improvements to the pen and overall writing experience combined with the already excellent E Ink panel make writing with the reMarkable 2 the best digital replacement for paper yet. And fans of the former – be it for tactile writing, the distraction-free option, as well as the sharp E Ink display – will find plenty here.

But the high price tag and the limited features still do not matter but why a digital version of paper should exist in a world where tablets have long surpassed their analog counterparts. The reMarkable 2 is a compelling digital evolution of paper. But why be paper when you can be in place of a whole computer?

Photography by Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge