[ralphb]

I've had my Remarkable 2 for 2-3 months.

I agree with some of the critiscims here (missing tags, bad typing experience, little integrability), but overall I am super happy with the tablet. I think it's just down to the usecase. It does what I most need it do to! (replace physical notebooks)

It also does some things that I didn't know I needed. It's just so amazing to have an undo for stuff you write on paper. The ability to select and move stuff around is also something I now do constantly.

I think it just comes down to what problem you're trying to solve. For me, replacing physical notebooks = solved problem.

[throwanem]

> It's just so amazing to have an undo for stuff you write on paper.

Sometimes. When drawing, absolutely. When writing, absolutely not. Nothing else in my entire life has improved my handwriting so much as using a pen to do it, because without an eraser there are no options left but to get better or give up, and it's also amazing how much an eraser slows you down.

[xvector]

I can't remember the last time I wrote something by hand for someone else to read. As long as I can read what I wrote, I don't care how shitty my handwriting is, and I'd wager it's the same for most people.

[mbreese]

I see taking notes like writing code. I write code as if it’s to be read and understood by “me, 6 months from now”. And let me tell you, “me from 6 months ago” can be an idiot at times. But ever since I started with that mindset, my code quality has gotten better, and it is vastly easier to understand.

Notes are the same way, but even more explicit. You largely aren’t writing notes to be consumed while the topic is still fresh in your head and you can remember what your cryptic scratches were meant to convey. You are writing for you in the future when you can remember what a particular acronym was or why you wrote “important!!! - check kobernets out”.

[throwanem]

This is an excellent point, and basically all of why I worked out the indexing scheme I've mentioned elsewhere today. An aide-memoire is only as good as the aid it can provide, and the index largely unbinds it in time - if I need something from a year ago, it's no harder to find than when it was from yesterday.

It takes a few minutes a day to maintain the index and keep it current, but only a few minutes, and that time is amply repaid by the benefits in utility.

Likewise, I'll sometimes spend the few minutes after a meeting expanding on my notes with context, thoughts for further action or research, etc. This stuff can be hugely useful both in the short term and especially in the long, when I'm revisiting or reconsidering a project and rebuilding the threads of context I had when it was last at the center of my focus.

On the whole, I think the general rule here is that taking notes is a good start, but what really makes them count is putting some thought and effort into taking that raw material and turning it into an accessible and useful mnemonic tool.

And that brings us back to the reMarkable's shortcomings, not least of which is that it offers no way to actually do that. It's all the more frustrating for how the platform clearly could support this capability, maybe in ways genuinely not seen in human history before now - but, as it currently is, it can't even provide the same utility you could get with a quill and hand-laid pages in the 1600s.

[WalterBright]

Yah, this is majorly true. I discovered at exam time my freshman year that I couldn't read my class notes. I then did a major upgrade to my lettering technique :-)

(I had never taken notes before.)

[ChefboyOG]

The "undo" functionality, in my experience, is not amazing because it provides an enhanced eraser. It's amazing because it allows you step backwards through your free-hand thoughts.

As an example, I routinely use my tablet like a whiteboard for working out bits of math. The ability to bring back a value I'd previously erased to see exactly where I miscalculated is extremely useful. Similarly, I find this sort of thing to be really helpful when whiteboarding my way through a particularly thorny programming problem at work.

[throwanem]

I used to say the same, and then found myself surprised by how difficult it is to go back and read even my own old handwriting compared to how it is now, enough so that I feel I've done myself a favor by putting in the effort to improve it.

Like good headphones, it seems to be one of those things where you don't know what you're missing until you know what you're missing.

[ralphb]

That's interesting. Maybe I should work on improving my handwriting. For now I just really love the undo feature, and I specifically use when I look at something I wrote and think "I wont be able to read that in the future" :-)

[throwanem]

That's entirely fair! And I don't mean to sound as if, using a pen, I never find the need to just scratch something out and try again. But these days it's maybe once a page, where looking back to the first volume of my diary from back in 2018, it was more like once a line.

And in general, I find a real benefit in facility of writing to facility of thought - not falsely is it said that we think a little differently when writing vs. typing, and each kind of thinking is both valuable and not precisely replicable in the other medium. Being able to write neatly, at a speed approximating that at which I think, has made it a lot easier to fix thoughts in a form that allows me to work with them.

[xvector]

Were you brought up writing, and did you do most of your schoolwork writing? I think that might have an impact.

As kids today begin typing more than writing, I think the perspective of writing facilitating thought might change.

The implications for this are interesting long-term, as humanity's methods of thought entry change. In the future we likely will one day revert to machine-assisted oral entry.

[stevekemp]

That was me, until the various recent lockdowns, when I've started writing letters to people.

Concentration is hard when I want to write quickly "just for myself", but force myself to slow down to make sure what I mail is readable.

It's a fun process, far harder than typing, but very worthwhile.

[biztos]

May I ask how you used physical notebooks before?

I’m really tempted by the ReMarkable — decent PDF reader with good annotations, and replacing pen and paper in meetings, would be enough.

But I’m a pretty hardcore pen and paper user. I find iPad and Pencil great for art but laughably deficient for writing and brainstorming.

Is the Re that far ahead of Apple?

[throwanem]

No. See my comments elsewhere in this thread, but the takeaway for me is that, even just to replace pen and paper in meetings, it's not up to the task - I need to be able to refer back to those notes later, and the reMarkable does nothing to facilitate that and, by inaction, a good deal to frustrate it.

[toomuchtodo]

How is it for reading PDF books and research papers?

[sidr]

This was my primary use case for this and I love it - I need to be taking notes in the margins for me to stay engaged with the material. My rare pain points have been: * sometimes the resolution is not enough and if you really want to zoom into a figure, the UX to do that is a little clunky * colors can be critical for some figures and the papers/books don't take care to pick colors that are easily distinguishable in greyscale.

I place a lot of value on paperfeel for writing though (I tried writing on pdfs with an ipad and...ugh). I've also really come to appreciate the distraction-free setting (I thought I could just be disciplined and not need a device specifically for this - I was wrong). I also use it for note taking in meetings where I want to be present and pay attention the whole time - game changer there as well.

[mbreese]

> I place a lot of value on paperfeel for writing though (I tried writing on pdfs with an ipad and...ugh)

I use a product called “paperlike” for my iPad and it has amazing paperfeel. I can write and it feels like I’m writing on a paper notebook. Okay, a very hard, flat, glass-backed notebook, but the pencil moving over the surface is great.

For me, the downside is that I’m writing on a mini computer that can do anything. So, it’s easy to get distracted from the primary job of taking notes.

[sidr]

I purchased the remarkable 1 where there was nothing else that had the same latency for pens/styluses. The apple stylus is down to 9ms now, which is way faster than even the remarkable 2 (and that is amazing). I would be annoyed with a paperlike protector on an ipad, if I were trying to use it as an ipad, but for use solely as a notetaking device, it might be great.

[mbreese]

The Paperlike screen protector isn't terrible for the iPad screen quality. It mutes the detail slightly, but it isn't very noticeable. I think it turns the screen from a glossy surface to a more matte surface, if that helps to describe the effect.

I keep my Paperlike cover on all the time and it doesn't really bother me when watching videos/movies on my iPad at all.

[throwanem]

On the note of paper feel, you might consider trying a fountain pen and smooth coated paper. The ink forms a liquid bearing and causes the nib to glide over the page, and there can be almost no friction - by comparison, the reMarkable feels extremely rough, like using a hard pencil on toothy sketchbook paper. It's not unpleasant, but an iPad would actually be a lot more like using a medium nib on a sheet from Clairefontaine or Tomoe River.

(While we're making this sort of comparison, it's also interesting to note that, as with a graphite or Apple pencil, the reMarkable stylus tip is a wearing item, while fountain pen nibs are not.)

[therein]

iPad feels too slippery to me as is. I get one of those screen protectors that give a paper-like feel to make it more like what I am used to from Remarkable.

[throwanem]

Higher friction at the interface between tool and surface makes for easier control at the cost of requiring more force to produce a given result. That's why your hand and wrist get sore so quickly.

With a fountain pen or (presumably) an iPad with no screen protector, you have no choice but to learn to control the tool without that excess force - force which will eventually destroy a pen nib, and in both cases will ruin your lines because there's no friction to damp it. Learning not to overcontrol does take a little while, but pays off both in work that's neater and more skillful, and in being able to work much longer before aches force a pause.

(With the reMarkable, too, there's a benefit in that your stylus tips will last longer, and you'll get more nuance out of the pressure sensitivity with tools that make use of it.)

[stewbrew]

For reading books, I'd rather go for an Android based device that features a more potent reader app that allows you to set bookmarks and to more easily jump around in big books. It works very well for reading papers and well structured books that don't ask you to look back x pages all the time.

[garren]

I agree. I’m waiting on a Boox Lumi at the moment. I read PDFs on my reMarkable primarily because other formats, specifically e-pub, aren’t that great on it. As strictly a PDF reader the reMarkable is good (albeit overpriced for just reading PDFs.)

The nice thing about android is that you can also get a kindle app. I know the parent is looking specifically for PDF support, but it’s nice to have solid kindle, PDF, and e-pub support on a single device.

[sidr]

Fair enough - the page change UX is a little clunky (and anything requiring changing screens many times on e-ink will be clunky). I read papers a lot more than I do textbooks. For fiction, the successive page turns are fine.

[spasiu144]

I think this is the perfect tool for PDFs and research notes.

My Remarkable is filled with research papers and books.

As I read them I scrawl notes all over the margins just like I did with paper printouts during my undergrad.

[lottin]

It's OK. You can use a highlighter and scribble on the margins. Taking notes on a separate notebook is a little awkward because you have to switch back and forth.

[nashashmi]

My biggest annoyance is that the reader did not give margin on the left side where the writing menu appears. The writing menu has to be collapsed and then made for writing. Other annoyances like links don't work. And color does not appear Either.