Oct 29, 2024

ReMarkable's Pro Backlit Color E Ink Tablet vs. iPad Still Has Advantages Living with a giant E Ink sketchbook tablet makes me wonder what I use an iPad for. Scott Stein Editor at Large I started with CNET reviewing laptops in 2009. Now I explore wearable tech, VR/AR, tablets, gaming and future/emerging trends in our changing world. Other obsessions include magic, immersive theater, puzzles, board games, cooking, improv and the New York Jets. My background includes an MFA in theater which I apply to thinking about immersive experiences of the future. Expertise VR and AR | Gaming | Metaverse technologies | Wearable tech | Tablets Credentials Nearly 20 years writing about tech, and over a decade reviewing wearable tech, VR, and AR products and apps 4 min read ReMarkable Paper Pro's color e-ink tablet feels more like paper. I just appreciate how much better handwriting feels on it. Scott Stein/CNET I've been procrastinating on editing a science fiction novella I wrote a couple of years ago. I'm afraid of the rewriting process, honestly. I don't like staring at computer screens with very long drafts, and I don't print out my work enough. I tried reading the draft over instead using ReMarkable's newest color E Ink tablet, the ReMarkable Paper Pro , a $579 piece of tech that's exclusively focused on being a better pen-on-paper substitute for notes, art or document markups. The process was pretty comforting and felt a lot like working on paper. I'm still procrastinating on the rewrite, but what it made me realize again is that devices like iPads still don't feel like perfect annotation devices for me right now, and somehow the ReMarkable does. Why is this? Why does a color E Ink tablet feel better? It mainly comes down to a few things done well. The pen-to-paper feel is right Much like the last ReMarkable tablet , I appreciated a certain friction between the stylus and the screen. Technically, Apple's Pencil Pro offers more nuance in control, but the ReMarkable stylus just feels more real, more analog. It has a scratchy-type texture as the stylus tip moves over the matte surface, and that also means I can exert more pressure with the stylus, which translates to crisper handwriting for me. On iPads, the Pencil's glossy movement over the display just doesn't help my handwriting at all. There are separately sold screen covers that add that matte texture (and Apple even has a matte nano-texture option for its Pro tablets). But on iPads as they currently exist with their glass displays and Pencils, they just don't work well for me as writing tools. ReMarkable's screen texture feels more immediate and tactile. I stop wondering about my writing process and just write. A layer of thought is removed. Also, to that end, the screen and stylus feel extremely close when working, without a sense of a layer there either. It doesn't slow me down. I used it at a back-to-school night at my kid's high school. Rapidly jotting down notes on class things, it felt just as quick as writing in a notebook. I never feel that speed when using a Pencil on the iPad. Even small markups on documents feel pretty effortless. Scott Stein/CNET The functions are simple and consistent The ReMarkable Pro doesn't try to do too much. That may be its biggest appeal. I find my markups are pretty straightforward on documents, or when I open up a new page and start doodling or writing. ReMarkable has some tools for moving text and drawing around, picking a few brush types or erasing/undoing work. It's not overloaded, and it's always the same. One thing that's a little weird to me about iPads when using the new Pencil Pro is the interface changes depending on the app. Apple has its own squeeze-to-open palette of tools, but they only appear in certain supported Apple apps, not OS-wide. Also, some apps handle the Pencil's functions and even the nature of Pencil interactions differently. I find I don't use the Pencil much at all with iPads, and maybe that's because I'm not an artist. But I don't find the annotation or note-taking aspects appealing, either. I'd rather use a keyboard. On the ReMarkable Pro, it's the opposite. ReMarkable does sell a separate keyboard case that elegantly unfolds to offer a compact keyboard for writing on the go, but I'm not wild about it. Typing on an E Ink screen feels laggy compared to an iPad. But on the other hand, handwriting feels far more direct and engaging than with an iPad. Using the ReMarkable Paper Pro on a plane, I appreciated the backlighting even more. Scott Stein/CNET Color and backlighting are welcome luxuries The 11.8-inch color display on the Pro is something other E Ink tablets are starting to dabble in, too. Amazon finally has a color E Ink Kindle . Amazon also has a second-gen notetaking E Ink tablet, the Scribe, that's similar in spirit to ReMarkable's tablets. But the ReMarkable Pro adds the best of both worlds, having both stylus and backlit color display support, one-upping Amazon. It's a premium product with a premium price compared to the Kindle Scribe, but color has its advantages. The color display doesn't feel anywhere as vibrant as a regular LCD phone or tablet screen, but it can show imagery or allow multicolor highlighting that can be extremely useful. The backlighting isn't particularly bright, but it's enough to use on a plane, at night in bed or anywhere else where you might need to see what you're working on. These extras mean the Pro is a bit thicker than the previous ReMarkable 2, just a bit less shockingly slim. But it's still an extremely compact device to toss in a bag, and it's much lighter and thinner than an iPad…but it's a long-feeling piece of tech, almost like a legal pad. The Apple Pencil Pro has lots of extra hover features, but the on-screen writing experience on iPad isn't as good for me. Numi Prasarn/CNET Apple could improve the iPad's relation with its Pencil The Pencil is clearly a bigger part of Apple's iPad pitch than ever, and the technology in the Pencil itself keeps improving. But a month of trying the new ReMarkable tablet reminds me that there's something still missing for me with where the feel of the iPad and Pencil lands. It's a bit of hardware, a bit of software and a bit of OS. To be clear, ReMarkable's tablet has lots of limits. For example, it syncs with Google and cloud services, but you need to load documents into its ecosystem via a browser on another device (plus, there's the added cost of a premium $3 monthly subscription for ReMarkable's cloud services). Beyond reading, annotation, writing and sketching, there's not a lot else you can do. But if you're really hungry for a note-taking tablet that's purely about handwriting and single-focus work, ReMarkable's experience still has a lot Apple can learn from.