Hands-on with reMarkable, the E Ink tablet that’s meant to kill paper

reMarkable was announced late last December with an ambitious goal: to serve as a digital paper device so good that it could make traditional paper notebooks obsolete. It’s been a few months since that original announcement, and earlier this month I was finally able to get some hands-on time with a prototype of the tablet to put those claims to the test.

The prototype I got to try was a seventh-generation model, with the company expecting to go through a few more rounds of hardware before the launch, which is still set for August for the first preorders from last December.

E Ink displays have gotten pretty good over the last few years, and the reMarkable’s 10.3-inch panel holds up with more established players, like Amazon’s Kindle line at 226 ppi. Although, like actual paper, it lacks a built-in backlight. Another sacrifice of the E Ink surface is a minimal amount of ghosting when erasing or opening up menus.

The most important thing the reMarkable has to nail is the actual act of writing with it. According to CEO Magnus Wanberg, a huge part of the tablet’s development involved figuring out a way to reduce latency with an E Ink display. The prototype I tested had that down to roughly 65–70 milliseconds, and the company hopes to reduce that even further to around 55 milliseconds in the final version that ships. It’s definitely one of the better pens I’ve used, although there was still some lag when I was scribbling words quickly. Spec wise, that’s still not quite up to par with solutions like Microsoft’s new Surface Pen, which boasts latency at just 21 milliseconds, or even the Apple Pencil, which is estimated at roughly 50 milliseconds. Given the nature of E Ink as a technology, however, it’s still pretty impressive.

The real standout feature to me was the feeling of writing on the tablet. The reMarkable screen isn’t made out of glass, but rather a more durable and fricative material that really does feel like writing on paper with a pen or pencil. Even the sound is a delightfully tactile scratching that mimics the experience of writing in real life. The reMarkable pen tip does wear down, however, and will need to be replaced from time to time, although the pen does cleverly conceal a spare tip hidden in the top of the pen.

The drawing app is fairly robust, with a variety of pen types and weights, the ability to zoom in and out, and support for layers. The company is also working on developing various preset templates for note taking, from a traditional college ruled notebook to a perspective grid for architectural drawings.

Along with drawing and writing, the reMarkable can display PDFs (which can be annotated) and EPUB files, both of which work well enough. All files — including drawings — are automatically backed up to the cloud and accessible from a linked Mac or Windows app. Drawings can also be shared live from a reMarkable tablet to show up on a computer screen, which is a neat feature for collaborative work.

reMarkable is planning on selling the tablet for a final price of $529. (The pen will be sold separately, at least for now, for an additional $79.) That’s expensive, no matter how you slice it, especially when compared to a fully featured iPad which costs roughly as much. For their part, Wanberg acknowledges that they’re aware of where they stand in the market and aren’t looking to compete directly with Apple. According to Wanberg, the reMarkable is designed for “paper people” who prefer sketching, note taking, or doodling by hand and just want a digital means to do that.

The reMarkable is certainly good at what it does, and compared to other products in this broad category, like Sony’s $700 DPT-RP1, it is a bit cheaper. But it’s still hard to see reMarkable’s paper tablet moving beyond a niche as a secondary or even tertiary device for people that price point. Still, it’s a nicely designed product that sets out what it accomplishes. If the company can find a way to get the price down, it could be a real success.