ReMarkable Paper Pro Move

Remarkable itself does not promote the devices as hackable. That's the community that has evolved around it taking advantage of the company leaving the device open in this way. Furthermore, there is quite a thriving ecosystem[1] of custom software for the devices, so your assessment of it not working in practice is empirically untrue.

> the very restrictive underlying software

This is by design, based on publicly espoused principles, and everything about the product branding makes it very explicit and obvious. No one should buy a Remarkable device and be surprised about how restrictive it is.

> the user-hostile changes to the subscription

The "user-hostile" changes to the subscription is that they are charging for it.

It is worth emphasizing that nothing is restricted with device usage if you do not have a subscription. They expect you to pay if you want to use anything which runs through their cloud services, which is undeniably reasonable.

You can sync to other cloud providers without an active subscription.[2]

[1] https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable [2] https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Using-reMarkable-wi...

Nice to know. I was considering it but that is a deal breaker for me. I'm tired of companies trying to steal back what the sold me.

FWIW I didn’t like the Boox experience: For writing you’re limited to the stock notes app, which I didn’t find usable: You can’t even zoom in it (something I thought would obviously be possible when choosing the smaller Nova 2). It also has a full Android system, which comes with advantages for sure but invites distractions and leads to very disappointing battery life.

Yes, same. I have one that was grandfathered into the "no subscription" system, which means I can't buy another one (not sure if I will keep the ability not to have a subscription), and can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone else.

I do have a Boox Note Air4, which I bought with the intention of replacing the ReMarkable. On the plus side, it runs Android apps, but on the minus side, the UI is much less polished than the ReMarkable. Having said that, if I had the choice between the two, and weren't grandfathered into the no-subscription option, I would pick the Boox.

The boox indeed is nice.

These days I do quite a bit of field work outdoors (taking measurements, ssh'ing into mobile equipment) and a laptop is a chore to use in broad daylight. With the boox I can connect a bluetooth keyboard and install termux. It's not a perfect setup, but sure beats squinting at a dim screen.

Out of curiosity, what were the user hostile changes you mention?

> One of the promises that lead me to buy one was the hackability - "It's Linux!" "You can SSH into it!", which, on paper (heh) is still true, but in practice very much isn't.

Can you expand on this a bit? Can't you still run third party software on the newer iterations?

Which Boox in particular would you recommend?

I have two of these devices (RM2 and the Paper Pro) and haven’t experienced anything of what you’re describing despite using them extensively for a few years. I would recommend getting in touch with support about that, or trying a factory reset to see if that improves anything.

The pen writing without touching is usually a misalignment and fixed by removing and re-inserting (or replacing) the tip ime.

Not sure if you already did, but I would reach out to support. I’ve had many firmware updates on my rM2 and never experienced the issues you’re describing.

I have been on the fence, and this pushed me off it. Thanks.

The pen issue you are describing is most frequently caused by a worn out nub. Have you tried replacing it?

I only began to love my RM2 when I stopped trying to use it as a PDF reader and writer and instead only a scratch paper replacement. But it’s not as economical if limited to this.

I do wish they’d improve the PDF usability or embrace open sourcing the UI. There’s a lot of features that should be easy to implement, like split screen or floating sticky notes, but they seem almost wholly focused on the hardware. I thought it’d be the ultimate tool for studying math and saving money on books, thus paying for itself, but it’s just not there yet and I’m not sure they plan to get it there.

I found the lack of backlight and built-in dictionary to mostly cripple the e-reading experience on rM2.

Format support wasn't great either, only PDF and EPUB. Which does cover most bases, to be fair. AZW3 and MOBI aren't dealbreakers, but... really, no TXT?

tbh the write path on just paper is so good, and at least for me it's very rare that I need to actually digitize anything.

I just invested in a printer that works and print out a lot of stuff I want to deeply annotate. Otherwise I have the ipad for some other stuff.

I really enjoy eink for reading but it's really a super specific market. Competing against the ipad is tough! The generalist devices tend to get so good that the specialized devices stop being worth it.

I'm actually in the market for something this size, but it's too expensive for me given what I know about reMarkable's inconvenience. I'd pick it over a kindle scribe, but not sure I'd pick it over a boox or supernote. I haven't decided if I actually care about color yet. MyDeepGuide's review of reMarkables color tech has me pretty interestes in it... but I don't know I actually need color personally. I have a colleague who has a reMarkable and it seems pretty annoying software wise. Especially at this size I want ebooks easily loaded.

I mostly have a very aged Kindle that needs replaced and I would like a small digital notepad. Boox fits the bill generally. I have a larger boox, it's a little quirky and a bit too heavy to hold comfortably but works fine after some configuration.

>I am happy to be proven wrong but I’m shocked they believe there is a market for this size at all, let alone at $450

I was literally about to order one until I read the comments

I hear you but would bet heavy you haven't tried using a navigable PDF like hyperpaper.me, which solves most of this frustration.

I had a remarkable 2. I loved it until I got a pocketbook inkpad lite. Big enought, but with a backlight.

and I loved that until amazon killed "download" for kindle books.

The idea is kind of cool, but just doesn't seem useful enough to justify a very expensive dedicated device. For the same price you could buy both an ipad, a matte screen protector, and a real notepad and pen. The ipad does all of the tech significantly better, and the physical notepad is a more enjoyable physical writing experience.

The product seemed to be mostly aimed at tech bros with more money than they know what to do with.

So sad when something that could be fixed with a few lines of code/a pref toggle if the software were open entirely kills an otherwise great product experience for someone.

Mine goes somewhat unused because of this (although definitely less than 10 swipes per try). If I was to buy another ereader I'd want at a minimum physical buttons for forward/back.

I don’t experience the same level of recognition issues, but I do find flipping through pages quite tiresome. After reading other comments here, it seems clear that the navigation of the e-reader needs significant improvement. I submitted some feedback about this in one of their previous feedback surveys.

Perhaps this Hacker News discussion will lead to some user experience improvements.

Could it be caused by dry skin?

I have this problem but it’s mostly when I try to flick quickly. If I deliberately drag my finger over the page it generally works.

Do you know if you are on a grandfathered plan (I am too) and you get an additional device, does the new device need another subscription? Or is the plan tied to the account/login?

I have a Supernote Nomad and love the size of it, which is A6 sized. I struggle to see how making one more narrow than an A6 pad is useful. This Remarkable kind of looks more like a long post it note or grocery list instead of a notebook.

Is it the case that these devices are converging on 16:9? I don't know about the supply chain, but there seems to be no lack of e-ink tablets at A5/A6 sizes and/or with better ratios than 16:9.

Remarkable has the roughly A6-sized Paper Pro, Kobo has three e-ink devices with styli and good screen ratios, and Supernote has models named A5 (and A5 x2) and A6 after the paper sizes. I think the options are quite good.

eInk devices are very much not converging to 16:9 or wider aspect ratios. This device is intentionally the size and shape of a reporter's notebook, but there are virtually no other eInk tablets which diverge significantly from more common paper aspect ratios – they all (ReMarkable, Supernote, Boox, Kindle, etc.) are and continue to be exactly what you say you want.

I also got enthusiastic about them, but I ended up embracing the Kindle Scribe. I just completed my 12th monthly notebook, so I’ve been at it for over a year now.

I was using regular notebooks but I was collecting too many and I was worried about storage and loss.

I wrote about the experience a few months into it.

https://notes.joeldare.com/handwritten-notes-on-the-kindle-s...

I do not read on mine, it’s exclusively for writing. Possibly because switching is too slow.

I embraced an iPad w/ paper-like surface during my grad degree, simply because I needed the organisation (annotating papers, multiple subjects, project notes, etc.). It worked really well for that.

Funnily though, professional life is a lot simpler. I just need a single paper notebook with my running todo list. Everything else is stored in google docs or obsidian. Having an eink or tablet for taking notes would feel like friction without much benefit.

I've come to the same conclusion. It's just easier, especially for things that involve diagrams. $10 worth of notebooks and pens is a much better value than something that is more fragile, has to be charged, etc and orders of magnitude more expensive.

Also, I tend to only write things down as a note-taking and memorization exercise, or to think out a certain idea. I usually don't have to read the notes again. So the archiving functionality of having digital paper-like notes is not nessisarially more useful, and it is often more difficult to search through than physical notebooks. Anything I really need to read later, I can write succinctly in a text file or something.

I also don't like getting locked into a certain ecosystem. Xournal++ is the only open-source cross-platform app I can find, and it's not that good.

Even for reading physical books, you can find a lot of used paperbacks for less than $10, which is very little when you consider the value of the time you spend reading them, the ease of flipping through pages and being able to dog-ear them, and the collectible aspect of the book covers covers. An eink tablet be nice for reading textbooks and papers that are more expensive and require pirating, however. But for now I just use a regular screen in portrait.

I’m in the same boat. My Boox Go 10.3 is collecting dust. I used it for a while, but I just find it easier to flip back through paper notes as opposed to tapping or swiping through files. I don’t want to connect to work WiFi either on it. So now I’ve found pens I enjoy writing with and decent notebooks with paper I like and it’s great. I actually spend time journaling on paper. But I do have both a Boox Palma for reading and also a Kobo Clara.

OCR has also been getting incrementally better and has been surprisingly good if you have the handwriting for it.

I like the remarkable paper pro -- been using it for 8 months consistently.

not exactly what you asked for but there's a community project you can selfhost[1] that emulates the cloud on your own server

[1]https://github.com/ddvk/rmfakecloud

It's fine. You really don't need to pay for the connect service.

rm2 owner since it was released over 5y ago. connect service works well but is wholly optional.

I'm curious too, because there is a help page[1] linked in the FAQ that appears to be completely blank!

[1] https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Using-reMarkable-wi...

That Zotero sync seems nice! I wrote a daemon that does a (one-way) sync from a Zotero folder to my reMarkable that works pretty well, but it's rather hacky.