Remarkable 2

Remarkable 2

I used a Remarkable 2 for a while. But I've ultimately decided to sell it.

The R2 is an 188x246x5mm e-ink tablet that runs Linux and is primarily sold as a note-taking device. Currently it retails for 389GBP, with no accessories beyond a basic stylus and charging cable. A folio or sleeve will cost you an extra 50-150GBP. An enhanced stylus with a capacitive nub that can be used to erase lines will push the price without folio/sleeve to 429GBP.

The great

There's a lot to like. It feels nice in the hand - the device has some weight to it, and the metal-and-glass construction is aesthetically charming. The folio case fits well, and is clearly not an off-the-shelf product. It (alongside the other accessories) were thoughtfully designed.

The second-generation CANVAS display is a monochrome "paper-like" capacitive touch display. It renders text well, and at a pretty nice DPI of 226.

The operating system powering the R2 is Linux. And you have full root access over SSH. This has led to a vibrant community of remarkable hackers doing anything from tweaking the UI to writing full-fat desktop management software.

Remarkable have kept on supporting the R1 (2017) despite launching the R2 (2020), which is admirable. Granted, I don't think these are the sorts of devices that are in need of constant updates. But hey - support is certainly a good thing.

Handwriting, the key function of the device, does work. And it works well for a tablet - which leads into the not-so-greats.

The not-so-great

Who actually thinks this feels like writing on paper? I'll admit, I don't use pencils very often, nor ballpoints or highlighters - but I do use fountain pens. I use them a lot. I'm fussy about fountain pens. I'm fussy about paper too. I care about shimmer, and sheen, and shading. I care about the way the nib feels and sounds against the paper.

So first point - it doesn't feel like writing on paper. It can't feel like paper. Writing in a notebook involves some transference of pressure from the page you're writing on to the pages underneath. The R2 is a solid surface with no 'give'. It feels like writing on an iPad that's had the top-glass scuffed with some 1200-grit. Sounds like it too. I dislikes the tap-tap-tapping I make while writing on it.

The stylus doesn't feel like a fountain pen either. The 'fountain pen' style selectable in the UI is a passable emulation of an italic stub nib. Though, if you use fountain pens, you'll know most fountain pens don't have stub nibs. The pressure detection works well enough to give you the appearance of a flex nib, but with none of the joy. Pressure effectively only changes line width - this thing isn't modelling ink flow.

You have three nib sizes to work with, starting with something like a Japanese extra-fine. Then something like a European medium. Then finally a European broad. If you would like a size in-between the first two on that short list, please sent your request on a postcard to Remarkable.

Jokes aside, it feels like they made the smallest setting for the fountain pen style too small. While I do like EF nibs, the screen on the remarkable looks a bit Windows-without-cleartype with lines that thin.

There's no backlight. Or frontlight. Or any other sort of light. It works like a notebook, but without the benefit of brilliant-white paper providing ample contrast against the 'ink'. As someone who reads eBooks, this is a pretty big missing feature. While we're on the topic of eBooks:

PDFs are how everything is done on the remarkable. Copied over an ePub? It converts the epub to PDF. This isn't the worst thing they could do. In fact, it works quite well. But when it doesn't work, it doesn't work at all. I've had a few eBooks crash the UI and kick me back to the home screen. Which is annoying when you know ePubs are just zip files with XHTML, CSS and images.

Getting files onto the R2 is a pain in the arse. Out of the box, you have the choice between:

All these options kind-of suck. Everyone, myself included, just wants a block-device formatted with like, exFAT, to appear in the device tree when we plug it in. We can't have that, but we can at least have a component cross-platform desktop management tool written in Python and Qt in the form of rcu.

Even when you get files on it, it feels laggy. Maybe some of that is down to the fact it's an e-ink screen, maybe some of that is down to their use of Linux instead of (for example) QNX, or anything else light and nimble. I don't know - but it can be a real piece of shit sometimes, and on more than one occasion I was unsure if my tap was missed, or was just processing.

The bottom line

It's mostly just me. I like fountain pens, paper, hand-writing, note-taking, and reading. The Remarkable 2 can really only do the note-taking part well.

For now, I've gone back to my trusty Stalogy 365Days Notebook and Noodler's Konrad, with a Kobo Libra Colour for eBooks.

No, the Kobo doesn't have as high-contrast a screen as the RM2. None of these colour ebook-readers have great contrast. It's also smaller, which is a blessing and a curse. It does however have a backlight with optional night-time tinting, and in general it feels significantly snappier than any e-reader I've ever used. And I've used quite a few.

Rant over. Sorry if you scrolled through all of that.

Update

Rant not over! As I set about photographing and factory resetting the RM2, I found that the pro marker could suddenly write without touching the screen. In some cases, from a good inch away. As I'm selling it, I'm not terribly bothered by it. Though it does mean I can't list it for the original price I intended. If I wasn't selling it, I'd be rather pissed. It isn't even a year old, and I take far too much care with my technology for this to be reasonable.

Rant over again.