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Displays Hardware Technology

ReMarkable's Redesigned E-Paper Tablet Is More Powerful and More Papery (techcrunch.com) 69

Posted by BeauHD from the new-and-improved dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report from TechCrunch, written by Devin Coldewey: It's no secret I'm a fan of the reMarkable, a tablet with a paper-like display that's focused on text and sketching rather than rich media and games. The sequel to the original, announced today, looks to make a good thing even better. Designed for the creation and consumption of monochromatic content like long documents, e-books, notes and sketches, the reMarkable set itself apart as a more minimalist alternative (or complement) to the likes of the iPad or Surface. The device was crowdfunded and has sold more than 100,000 units; meanwhile, the company has grown and attracted a $15 million A round. One sees in retrospect that the money helped launch this successor.

The most obvious change is to the design. It has a bold asymmetrical look with a chrome band along the left side, indicating the tablet's main use as an alternative to a paper notebook: Hold it with your left hand and write with your right. Sorry, lefties. The new tablet is just 4.7 mm (0.19 in) thick, thinner than the iPad Pro and Sony's competing Digital Paper tablets, both of which are 5.9 mm. Let's be honest -- at these levels of thinness it's getting hard to tell the difference, but it's an accomplishment nevertheless. [...] The software running on the reMarkable has received several major updates since the product made its debut, adding things like handwriting recognition, a new interface, better performance and so on. But one of the most requested features is finally coming with the new device: saving articles from the web. The company is claiming a 3x boost to battery life, using the same 3,000 mAh battery, based on performance improvements throughout and a more efficient (but more powerful) dual-core ARM processor. That means two weeks of use and 90 days of standby. This is welcome news, because frankly the battery life and power management on the last one were not great. The reMarkable 2 will sell for $399 if you pre-order, and comes with a Marker and a folio case.
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ReMarkable's Redesigned E-Paper Tablet Is More Powerful and More Papery More

ReMarkable's Redesigned E-Paper Tablet Is More Powerful and More Papery

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  • Looks interesting (Score:3)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @07:30PM (#59842392) Journal
    this might be an interesting replacement for the newton.

    • "this might be an interesting replacement for the newton."

      OMG I guess it's also your fault that "Gunsmoke" got "Gilligan's Island"s prime-time Monday slot and therefore got cancelled.

    • Well, it is thinner.
      I'll stick with paper and my phone for ad hoc notes on the go.

  • Following Slashdot's lead, I'm buying one to enable a high contrast read of an e-book biography of Nero.

  • Like It, But Why So Little Storage? (Score:3)

    by BrendaEM ( 871664 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @07:45PM (#59842422) Homepage
    With only 8GB, I worry that I will have to micromanage the device. Reading would be a big thing I want to do on it, and PDF's aren't that small.
    • ... I am learning Ancient Greek, and a Greek Book and the Illiad take up about 250mb, alone. Through on an anatomy book and a few dozen chip spec sheets and I would be getting anxious, already.

    • Re:Like It, But Why So Little Storage? (Score:5, Informative)

      by weilawei ( 897823 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @08:21PM (#59842548)

      I actually own a version 1 reMarkable--and it really is freaking amazing. I use mine primarily as a replacement for graph paper. The onboard storage is very tight, and the way they partition it, you have about 5 MB on the root partition to add your own code. Did I mention it's Linux, and you get root?

      The latency is noticeable, but so low (20ms) that your sense of correlation between touch and vision doesn't suffer. The tips wear out a little faster than I'd like, but that's presumably for screen life.

      I've been playing with hacking it (had it about a month now). They've got a Wacom digitizer under the hood. Their pen and xochitl, the app onboard, doesn't support the eraser, but for all the world it looks like the hardware does. Xochitl is written with Qt, and there's been some work on making their internal APIs available, as well as sync daemons, and totally experimental apps.

      This is already really, really good, and has the potential to be flat out amazing. I'm already finding it a natural replacement for paper, reading more because (out of the box) it pretty much only does readin' and writin' and ssh'n.

      Now, back to what got me started: you can, and someone has, populate the SD card pins with a microSD slot, and it works fine. But, you'd better be fancy with an iron, and it's mostly glued shut. Although, once you're in, it looks pretty serviceable.

      • This brings up an interesting question. Are you allowed to load your own paper templates? For example, for years I've printed out my own paper where the paper is divided vertically in half. The left side is blank for drawings while the right is lined paper. This is great for planning out storyboards on one side and extra notes on the left.

        • Yes, you can. They're just PNG images stored on the filesystem. You can also customize all the various splash and sleep screens the same way.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        Didn't realize it's a Linux. So you can actually use it also to do some simple tasks under-the-hood? That's amazing. I'm starting to think what I could do with having a portable Linux device with me at all times. It does networking, so possibilities.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by wfj2fd ( 4643467 )

          I'm starting to think what I could do with having a portable Linux device with me at all times. It does networking, so possibilities.

          You mean like an Android phone? Or a Librem 5?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Tom ( 822 )

            No, I mean something that's actually useful. I have a phone and don't need a second one. I do need something that can do something useful on a screen and input size that is good for more than a goldfish attention span.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I'd mostly just settle for a decent size (A4) PDF viewer if it was cheap. I'm not really interested in writing on it, I just want to view datasheets and books.

        The ultimate would be a hybrid LCD and eInk display. LCD for finding what you want and interactive stuff, then switch to eInk for reading and extremely long battery life.

      • Looks like an interesting device to me. The biggest problem for me though, is lack of a microsd card slot.

        I like the fact that it does epubs, as I freaking hate DRM. I have a couple of thousand books on the tablet I use now. Its primary purpose in life for me is as a reader, though I do have music on it as well. E-ink displays are really just about perfect for my needs, but I really hate the way Kindles and some others lock you into their file formats and store, so I've never bought one. I just make do, and

        • If anyone has any suggestions for e-ink readers that are not vendor locked, I'd be interested in seeing them.

          You might like the Kobo ebook readers. I have two, and I only had to connect each one to the internet *once* to activate it, and have never connected them since. I side-load my epubs using Calibre (free software). Calibre can also convert between ebook formats, and there are plugins that can make DRM not be a problem. One of my devices has a micro-SD slot, and the other has 32 GB built-in. If I'm using them regularly, I have to charge every month or two. If they're off, maybe every 6 months.

      • I don't care, it's boring, less space than a Nomad,..

        Did I mention it's Linux, and you get root?

        Wait, what..?

        On second thought... It's actually fairly cheap, so now I must have one.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jon3k ( 691256 )
      Really curious, how big are the PDF files you're working with and where do you source them from? Most of my eBooks (converted from kindle to pdf) are in the 2-40MB range. Admittedly not exactly the greatest quality.

  • Lefties, and requests (Score:3)

    by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @07:52PM (#59842452) Journal
    Why "sorry, lefties"? No reason why you couldn't flip the screen in software and allow lefties to hold it by the chrome edge in their right hand

    Also, no current e-paper device focuses on rich media and games, the screens are simply too slow for that. What I would be interested in is the note-taking capability. What would be nice:
    - pen/finger sketching that doesn't suck
    - handwriting recognition that doesn't suck (offload this to the cloud if you have to. It's important because it makes my notes search-able)
    - some software that cleans up my sucky hand-drawn diagrams.
    - a search function that actually works.

    • Re:Lefties, and requests (Score:5, Informative)

      by dmoen ( 88623 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @08:06PM (#59842502) Homepage

      "Sorry, lefties" is lazy journalism. There is a preference setting to choose left- or right-hand mode.

    • So..here's a quick rundown on the pens.

      Pencil, looks very much like a pencil at high angles, but too much of the pressure range is dedicated to the high pressure/high tilt angles, so there's a fairly noticeable jump into the wider shading brushes at low angle, and there's not as much pressure range as you'd like for shading.

      Mechanical pencil is like the pencil, but no tilt modification to the brush width.

      Ballpoint pen gives a very smooth, fine line, with a small amount of tilt and pressure.

      The fineliner is

      • 3 fixed stroke widths on the fineliner, sorry about that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )

        In general, there are 3 levels of color, black, white, and grey

        Not to nitpick (oh, who am I kidding), but such a display is no more considered color than a black-and-white TV is.

    • Selection (both eraser selection and selecting/translating/scaling/rotating text is very nice. Needs side handles (instead of just corner handles) to do anisotropic scaling. Also, it's very hard to work with small selections because they put the handles over the selection. I wind up spinning things instead of moving them frequently. Pro-tip: put a dot out to the side, and add that to your selection to get a bigger selection box. Tip 2: Work big, scale down. It's stored as vector strokes anyway. It also need

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I'd prefer a Bluetooth keyboard over handwriting input whenever possible. I type faster than I scribble and if the keyboard is decent then typing is faster too. Also much easier to edit.

  • You had me right up to the "$399" part.

    That's the price for an iPad or a pretty nice tablet.

    And yes, I know they have different use cases, but still....it's a bit much for me for what it does. But if it floats your boat, I say, great, go for it. Sounds cool despite the cost.

    • Let's see. How many sketch notebooks can I buy for that price AFTER I've bought a sheet-feed scanner?

      Brother - DS-620 Mobile Color Page Scanner $90
      Pro-Art® Spiral Bound Sketch Book, 8 1/2" x 11" 80 sheets $15

      So $399 -90 =309/15=20*80=1,600

      So I guess it might be worth it if you would draw-on or otherwise create 1,600 pages of content before the tablet either failed or was no longer supported in software.

      • But then you have to carry around 1,600 notebooks worth of paper mass...

        I love my notebooks, but I don't want to carry all of that. Buuut... I still want the notes and the ability to write on a paper-like surface. That's what this offers.

        And, anecdotally, it works very well.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SteveSgt ( 3465 )

          1,600 pages would only be 20, 80-page notebooks, but I get your point.

          I don't think I would produce 1,600 pages of content before the device was obsolete enough that it was no longer supported.

        • But then you have to carry around 1,600 notebooks worth of paper mass...

          I love my notebooks, but I don't want to carry all of that. Buuut... I still want the notes and the ability to write on a paper-like surface. That's what this offers.

          And, anecdotally, it works very well.

          So does an iPad 7th Gen. And it's nearly $100 cheaper (ok, basically the same price if you include the Apple Pencil 1st gen); but absolutely wipes the floor with this toy as far as real-world usability goes. And did the "ReMarkable" even mention how much storage it has? I sure didn't see it...

          And the Apple Pencil even has alternatives, some even as low as $37. And none of them has a huge 20ms delay (which is absolutely noticeable!) like the "ReMarkable" does:

          https://www.reviewgeek.com/361... [reviewgeek.com]

          In fact, iPadOS

          • Writing on glass is awful.

            It's not even a comparison. The two devices aren't in the same market because they don't do the same things. This isn't about CPU power, but the actual way you interact physically, at a tactile level, with the device.

      • Let's see. How many sketch notebooks can I buy for that price AFTER I've bought a sheet-feed scanner?

        Brother - DS-620 Mobile Color Page Scanner $90
        Pro-Art® Spiral Bound Sketch Book, 8 1/2" x 11" 80 sheets $15

        So $399 -90 =309/15=20*80=1,600

        So I guess it might be worth it if you would draw-on or otherwise create 1,600 pages of content before the tablet either failed or was no longer supported in software.

        It's Android: Therefore it is likely no longer supported the day you get it. And as for "software"? Yeah, right! What software? It may be "Android" in name; but 95% of Android Apps would be more or less unusable on an e-Paper display.

      • In the previous century, teachers wrote on blackboards with chalk, and pupils had miniature blackboards called slates in lieu of notebooks... Then came along whiteboards and dry-erase markers (well, many surfaces work well enough, like glass with some opaque backing, or plastic sheets, etc.)

        In my backwards part of the world, some office supply company sells sets of slate/A4/A5-sized white writing surface material with a few assorted (thin) markers, and cheap enough too (say, under 10 USD).

        Whip out the pho

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by angel'o'sphere ( 80593 )

      An iPad is $1000 and plus plus
      $399 for this miracle is super cheap.

    • You had me right up to the "$399" part.

      Which turns into 729 of my local dollars. Also I "save" $252 if I pre-order, so I'm going to assume that will be $981 when it actually goes on sale.

      I can buy 2 very nice Android tablets for that money, or 4 cheap ones. Yes I know it is not the same type of thing, but it is not worth that much money to me.

      • The same type of thing is a different screen technology. It uses a 6 year old chipset that just happens to come with massive energy savings and extremely limited software that ... also limits energy usage. If you turned your tablet to ultra low power mode, disabled Bluetooth, WiFi, everything that could run in the background, and limited yourself to a single app that had some focus placed on efficiency, yeah, it becomes the same sort of thing.

      • You had me right up to the "$399" part.

        Which turns into 729 of my local dollars. Also I "save" $252 if I pre-order, so I'm going to assume that will be $981 when it actually goes on sale.

        I can buy 2 very nice Android tablets for that money, or 4 cheap ones. Yes I know it is not the same type of thing, but it is not worth that much money to me.

        There is simply no such thing as a "very nice Android Tablet", sorry!

    • You had me right up to the "$399" part.

      That's the price for an iPad or a pretty nice tablet.

      And yes, I know they have different use cases, but still....it's a bit much for me for what it does. But if it floats your boat, I say, great, go for it. Sounds cool despite the cost.

      This is quite lame.

      Base model iPad 7 (WiFi), at $329 USD:

      32 GB Flash
      10.2 Full-color IPS "Retina" Display. 2160-by-1620 resolution at 264 ppi
      Apple Pencil Compatible (1st gen)
      SmartKeyboard Compatible (plus BT mouse and keyboard compatible)
      Fully position/handed-ness agnostic.
      8mp Front and Back Cameras.
      AppStore with nearly 2 million Apps.

      And, and, and...

      https://www.apple.com/ipad-10.... [apple.com]

      Looks like that, other than sheer battery life (e-paper, duh!), by every other conceivable measure, the ReMarkable is anything-

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrSkwid ( 118965 )

      is this some sort of peasant joke I'm too rich to understand?

      it's less than a weeks work

  • Does the Devin Coldewey know?

    Also, as soon as somebody focuses on the looks... of a almost deatureless slab of "paper" nonetheless... highlighting a thin chrome band... and its thinness... I'm out. I'm not a plastic poser unperson.

  • Boogie board replacement? (Score:4)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @08:25PM (#59842552)

    I might be interested if this were not hopeless tied to reMarkable's servers. Basic things like software updates and file transfers should not require signing up for an account and other peoples servers to facilitate let alone associated forced data collection.

    Once this company goes under or gets bored of supporting hardware you purchased you are totally fucked. Why would anyone want to put themselves in that position?

    Until then a boogie board is just fine for my needs. Fairly low tech but gets the job done.

    • You can transfer PDFs entirely over the network device it presents (USB ethernet adapter) without ever turning on wifi or hitting their servers.

      Notebooks and annotations are trickier, as they're stored in a binary list of strokes separately. There are tools already to handle them.

      However, you're right about the cloud bit. There's a need for an open sync solution. You can change its host files to use your own servers (I've been working on this), and then after doing a MiTM to see what it's doing over their R

      • *hosts file. It's just a plain old /etc/hosts, because this is pretty vanilla Linux. It's based on some distro or other, but I don't recall offhand.

        Also, you can work over the WiFi too, I just wanted to point out that you don't need anything more than a cable for direct access.

    • You can access it with ssh directly and load your own files.

      https://remarkablewiki.com/tec... [remarkablewiki.com]

  • Can I read my kindle books on it?

    • If you can convert them to PDF or ePub, then yes. It doesn't directly support the kindle formats.

    • "Can I read my kindle books on it?"

      Calibre will do it for you.

      https://calibre-ebook.com/ [calibre-ebook.com]

      • Converting TO PDF isn't hard (yes, Calibre does a good job). Converting FROM PDF is damn near impossible. PDF is a page layout language. That's why you see things offered in PDF A4 and PDF Legal. EPUB and MOBI are textflow descriptions.

  • It has a bold asymmetrical look with a chrome band along the left side, indicating the tablet's main use as an alternative to a paper notebook: Hold it with your left hand and write with your right. Sorry, lefties

    Is there some reason you couldn't just rotate it upside down? Did they not implement the feature, or is the author just not aware of it? Rotating the screen in 90 degree increments has been a common feature in since long before the iPhone existed, and a 10" transformable laptop weighed several pounds. Heck, long before that - you might want to set your computer monitor on its side for a different aspect ratio. 180* is even easier since the aspect ratio is the same, and it can be completely invisible to

  • If this had a web browser and a microsd slot I'd buy it right now. Not even a fancy web browser; videos obviously won't work and I don't need javascript. I converted all my ebooks to html a long time ago (custom not epub) so I need a basic web browser to read them.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      apparently it has, or a converter. At least the website says "Any web page, simplified and ready to read on your paper tablet with our Google Chrome plug-in, Read on reMarkable."

      • I read about that. It's literally plugin for google chrome on your *desktop* which let's you click a button that says, "send this page to my reMarkable."

        It's not nothing but it's not suited to my need.

  • At 244 dpi, it's dot-matrix printer resolution.

    A great concept, without a doubt, but it needs to improve the resolution to at least 300 dpi.

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