The Remarkable 2 E Ink sketch tablet is a lot cooler than I thought

A few years ago I tried a demo of an E Ink sketch tablet that surprised me. De Remarkable tablet had a style with low latency and realistic appearance E Ink, which provided a tangible drawing experience that ultimately felt significantly different, if not necessarily better, than my time with iPads and Apple Pencils, than Microsoft Surface pens.

The new Remarkable 2 is a thinner revision of the original made by the same Norwegian launch, available for $ 399 to order with a marker and slip cover included. This is expensive for a device for specific use that is ordinarily intended for sketching, drawing and as a digital companion for notes. But I have been trying one for a week or so and it has some very cool touches that need to transfer to other devices. Why, for example, is there no sketchy E Ink Kindle? I have no idea.

I tried the tablet with its sold separately folio, which is nice but costs extra. Here are my key takeaways:

My kids immediately liked it

I was shocked that both my kids just picked up the tablet and started doodling for a good hour or so (before they lost interest and did other things). The tablet interface is dead simple: There are sketch pages, templates, a few extra tools like adding layers to sketches and an in-beta way to cast your sketch live to the mobile / desktop app.

The gum is cool

The back of the Remarkable’s step-up version of their Marker ($ 99, sold separately) doubles as a eraser: just press the tablet and use as a normal eraser. It works. It’s great. You can also delete via a screen tool and also use the stylus tip.

The sketch and handwriting feel of Remarkable 2 feels really great, especially for handwriting

The matte finish of the display gives a friction I find lacking in iPad Pencil work and made my bad handwriting a little more normal. I love how tasty it feels. But also, the resolution of the marker / pen markers can sometimes be a little more digitized up close than I would expect. I can get subtler results from Apple Pencil work in pressure-sensitive sketch apps.

There is no backlight

A strange move on this tablet: I can not use it in the dark. No backlight seems to work fine for most everyday use, like a piece of paper, and the display is large and sharp (10.3 inches). But it is also limited. And that display is sometimes not as great as I would like for storyboarding or larger sketching.

There is handwriting recognition, but not in reality

I’m hoping for a way for my handwriting to just turn into plain text so I can create a document and copy it to one. Handwriting can be exported as font-based text, but it does not happen directly in notes or sketches.

You can import and mark ebooks and PDFs, but only through the Remarkable desktop app … and it is very limited

I had to drag and drop files that were synced with the tablet and I could not do direct sharing of files in the tablet. Everything I do in the tablet syncs directly with the mobile as a desktop app, but it’s an early handoff. I’m used to noticing things smoothly and sharing and sending them on iPads like Chromebooks or whatever I use otherwise, so the almost-detached feel of Remarkable 2 was awful.

I would like more E Ink sketch material

I would not want to buy one of these unless I wanted a digital handwriting pad and really wanted to use E Ink, but the much more natural sketch feel of this tablet made me envious if Kindles and other E Ink readers could adopt ideas like this . Also the battery life on Remarkable 2 is assessed two weeks, and I did not have to recharge yet. I would love it if the Remarkable was more of an e-reader with benefits for sketching, or something I could use for more tasks. It’s now a nice single purpose device and may not even be useful for artists accustomed to much richer toolsets on tablets, but it’s the closest thing to replicating the physical feel of pencil and paper on a digital device that I have ever tried.