Though typing and drawing on a colorful touchscreen tablet can get the job done, some prefer to jot ideas down using pen and paper. reMarkable combined the two in 2016 with a real paper look and feel, but digital tech running the show. Now the second generation has been announced.
The reMarkable 2 has been designed to bring paper-based notepad doodling into the modern digital age. As with a traditional paper pad, you can scrawl your notes, calculations and sketches onto the surface using the supplied high-friction, battery-free pen. You can also erase bits or whole pages, convert handwriting to text, load in PDF documents and annotate them onscreen, and save your pages to built-in memory.
There are other notepad tablets available of course, like Sony's Digital Paper range for example, but the reMarkable device is said to offer an authentic real paper experience, makes your notes available on all devices via its cloud platform and serves as a big ol' e-reader too. For this release, reMarkable has upgraded the display, improved the battery life, and put the device on a diet to create what's being billed as the world's thinnest tablet, at just 0.19 in (4.7 mm) thick.
"Our latest tablet is paper-thin and our innovations in display technology make it so much like writing on paper that it’s hard to tell the difference," said the company's Magnus Wanberg. "Today’s world is a frenzied place of ever-evolving technology that increasingly demands more of our time and attention. reMarkable 2 is a step in a more human-friendly direction. It’s designed to help people think."
All of the action takes place on a 10.3-inch monochrome CANVAS digital paper display partially powered by E Ink Carta tech, which comes in at 1,872 x 1,404 resolution (that's 226 dots per inch). Capacitive multi-point touch offers a paper-like surface feel with a responsive 21 millisecond latency. The pen that comes with the notepad doesn't require its own battery to operate, and offers 2,048 pressure levels.
The digital notepad runs a Linux-based operating system and rocks 1 GHz ARM A9 processing brains supported by 512 MB of DDR3L RAM and 8 GB of internal solid state storage, which is reckoned good for 100,000 pages. Handwriting conversion is helped along by MyScript technology, and a Google Chrome plugin will render reformatted online articles for distraction-free reading.
Elsewhere, there's Wi-Fi connectivity cooked in, the 3,000-mAh battery is reported to last for up to two weeks per charge over USB-C (if you use it for two hours per day), and can last for 90 days on standby, and the company says that the device is virtually unbreakable, which someone is bound to put to the test.
The reMarkable 2 is up for pre-order now for US$399, including a Marker that magnetically attaches to the right side (normally priced at $49), and a folio (normally $69). A second pen called the Marker Plus and a Book Folio will also be made available, at $99 each. Shipping is expected to start in June.
Product page: reMarkable 2
