Remarkable review of The reMarkable Tablet
Hello! If you read this, most probably, you are like me three months ago: searching and looking for any review about this reMarkable tablet! Sure that this review will help you make the final decision: Invest money or not?!
“Invest” is the exact word how you should think about the purchase, because the tablet is quite expensive ($600 minus $100 discount which you can get with my referral link = $500), but at the same time reMarkable tablet is a Game Changer: it might change your life irrevocably.
reMarkable is a Game Changer
Long-time back, in 2009, I met with one Russian painter. We had a long discussion about all the different things: it was exciting to meet somebody, not from my IT world. I’ve got a lot from that conversation, but the main one: Form makes us free (or “restrictions/constraints can set us free”).
Our nature is fascinating: to be more creative and efficient — we have to have some constraints. That might be time: “I have to finish the article before Thursday.” It might be money: “I have to do something to make my marketing campaign effective.” It might be our family: “I have to make something to give my kids food.”
reMarkable tablet is great to let you focus. There are no tons of applications, no notifications, no ads. There are no things that are constantly requesting your attention and taking your working memory. There is no even possibility to get the current time! And I absolutely love it! That’s precisely The Form to make you free and your imagination.
Have you tried sensory deprivation? When you are lying in a big tube with warm salted water and floating… No sound, no touch, no visual contact. Nothing. Just silence on all “metering channels” of your body. But after some time, your brain starts to gush with new ideas and thoughts.
The same happens when you have reMarkable in your hands. It’s a piece of paper, pen and time. Ideas just find out a way out from your subconscious, and you have to be fast enough to write everything down.
reMarkable is a remarkable digital paper
Computers are relatively new for mankind. Not sure about you, but your parents definitely were learning hand-writing at school: and through all grades, the only way to express and write down was “hand-writing”. And all mankind had been primary writing by hands for lots of centuries. It’s our nature to remember better and think better if we are doing something by hand: writing on paper or whiteboard or sand. And reMarkable provides exactly those feelings as you write on real paper. It’s tough to explain: you just need to try it!
Of course, there are digital functions like “Move,” “Erase,” “Copy” etc. And Yes — you can write within e-books! These physical feelings and benefits of digital devices change entirely your mindset again. You become more “connected” with what you do right now on the device. If you are learning or writing, you can easily add marks, dive into examples, solve problems right there! There are no moving a mouse, opening/creating new documents, deciding where to store, how to name, tons of notifications around, etc. All of that stuff which you do on your computer to facilitate your learning time — all of that just gone! There are only you and the material which you are working on.
Wishlist
Tablet is really remarkable, but not 100% ideal. Here is my wishlist, which will be nice to see implemented.
- It will be great to have a Copy ability not only within a page but across different pages and even various documents.
- When you are working on some big documents and making marks — it would be cool to be able to jump to the previous/next mark which you made.
- Apparently, it’s pretty common desire: to have the ability to bookmark a particular page, but not a whole book. Also, some tagging of bookmarks should help to organize your work on documents even better.
- E-Ink requires much less energy to redraw a screen and no power just to display. It would be useful to have the last page frozen and displayed instead of showing a blank page with the message that “tablet is sleeping.”
- Did I mention that reMarkable has great page templates? Lines, grid, doted, calendar and a lot more! But it would be nice if you will be able to upload your own templates easily.
- It might sound strange, but currently, you can add a new page only at the end of your notebook. It will be great to be able to insert a new one everywhere and be able to hide some draft pages.
- You can organize your documents and notebooks into folders and subfolders, but filters work globally only. So you can’t filter out only notebooks in the current folder. Also, currently, you can’t change the order of search results: descending or ascending.
- Zooming functionality is great in the tablet, but it will be even more useful if Copy and Move will work when you zoom-in.
- Your documents are in reMarkable cloud, and you do have access to all your documents through mobile and desktop applications, but it will be even more convenient if files will be available right from their site: https://my.remarkable.com/
Summary
- Easy to use
- The pen doesn’t require a battery
- Can be used for drawing
- All data stored in the cloud
- A full battery is enough for 4–5 days, depends on usage style
- Solid design and manufacturing, not bendable
- Price: $600, but -$100 with my referral link
reMarkable tablet worst this money — at least for me. And it’s up to you to decide: invest or not. I do recommend to find a friend who already owns this tablet and JUST TRY to write on it. It’s really hard to explain, but that’s exact “aha-moment” when you understand that this product is just for you!
Useful links
- Official site: https://remarkable.com/
- reMarkable app: https://my.remarkable.com/
- Collection of awesome projects around this tablet: https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable
- YouTuber about reMarkable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOpkdHRRDMY&list=PLsSI9-gaSSmjgjpi4otY1xYWYusw38OtR
