AUDIO ADDICTED

The reMarkable 2 is one of those gadgets that for the gadget addict is a must have. At least it feels that way. The adds are very sexy and make you think your life will be “enhanced” by having one of these write with and read ebooks on. Now before the pandemic I spent a lot of time with customers (I’m an IT consultant by day) in meeting rooms I was always taking notes. I tried many methods and tools over the years, one of my favorites being the LiveScribe pen, which was ruined by taking out the voice recorder and forcing you to use a smartphone. The reMarkable pad seemed to ring all the bells for me, I co

nd out of the way, so to speak, not interfering with my meetings.

There are countless studies that show brining a laptop or even any smart devices (iPad) to a meeting can make you seem distracted and or not committed in a meeting. In a customer meeting that can be disastrous. In fact some well known enterprise organization have banned laptops from meetings and insist on only a pad of paper and a pen. So the reMarkable 2 seems like the perfect solution. No reminders popping up, no strange and or annoying beeps and sounds emanating from it. No bright screen.

But now since the pandemic it seems unlikely I will ever get to use it for that. It is relegated to drawing or sketching pictures (which it does very well BTW) and reading ebooks or PDF’s.

But is is it worth the $399 (plus accessories) price tag? Well the package I bought included the reMarkable 2, Marker Plus and Grey fabric weave folio and came in at $567.00. The marker plus is definitely a needed upgrade. It gives you easy “eraser access” without digging into menus. It also is heavier and feels better in the hand. The folio is also needed as it protects the tablet. The folio is actually the cheaper version, there is a book style folio also that is $99.00 for the polymer weave in grey and a leather folio available in black and brown for $149.00.

For me it’s not worth it. I love the sketching part, I used to study art and in my younger years I had dreams of being an artist. I still sketch from time to time but not enough to justify the cost of this device. It definitely has the capability to sketch as well as a paper and pencil. I tested this extensively and really liked it. I can see for a professional artist this could be a great tool for preliminary sketches. Or for a designer to scribble down design notes and then email to a team easily.

As far as an e-reader goes I don’t like it. Here is the problem and I hope they are listening to (reading) this. The number (according to US census) of people over 40 and working makes up about 32% of the working population. Many if not most are already feeling the effects of presbyopia. An eye condition where the muscles that control the eye start to stiffen and cannot control the lens to focus on smaller text. You know “reading glasses”. I started having to use reading glasses occasional at the age of 43. Now at 50 I use them all the time.

In order to use the reMarkable as an effective e-reader I had to zoom in. Zooming sucks on the reMarkable. Its jumpy and you have to move around the document in sections to see what you want in zoom mode. It reminded me of the movie “Blade Runner” when Harrison Ford is using the computer to review a photo and tells the computer “section 12 zoom in on that” and it makes a series of clicks and jump to get to that section, then makes more jumps and clicks to zoom in. Oh and you cannot pinch to zoom like an iPad, you have to choose zoom from the side menu, so if you have that hidden in “full screen” mode you have to jump through a menu to zoom. They need to improve this for sure. The other gripe I have is the device screen is grey not white. They say paper like and it feels that way for sure, but, paper is white in my experience not grey. I think having a “white” screen would help greatly in the presbyopia department and also in low light situations. In low light the grey screen was all but unreadable.

The battery life was excellent and start up from sleep is almost instant.

The device itself is crazy beautiful, seriously, if you don’t have the need or money to buy this don’t hold one in your hand. The feel in your hands will be too tempting to overcome. Whatever you say about it they really did a great job designing and constructing the hardware. I mean it probably is worth every penny of the $500+ you will have to spend as far as hardware goes. Is the price worth the functionality of the device? That’s up to you. If you take a lot of notes or are a professional designer or artist then I think yes. I will throw out that you can buy and iPad, Apple Pencil and get the “paper” screen cover that feels a lot like the reMarkble for a slightly lower price and have a lot more functionality. Well thats all I have to say about this, hope it helped you.