Remarkable Pro - tech review
I just recently bought a Remarkable tablet (Remarkable Paper Pro, Type Folio, Marker Plus). Here are my initial thoughts:
Overall, I think it's a beautiful piece of technology and I'm glad it exists in this world, but it is a flawed (perhaps, fatally flawed) product.
I bought it principally as alternate ebook reading device - something akin to a Kindle but with a bigger screen, and without the annoyances of digital restrictions. I can confidently say that the Remarkable is not an ebook reader, and especially not good for longform reading. It does read (nonDRM) ePubs, which is good news, but does not support in-built ePub navigation (as far as I can tell), and the scrolling is very, very janky. This is rather a dealbreaker if you're planning to read the Complete Works of Anthony Trollope which you bought as a single ePub file. If you are used to the smooth-as-butter inertial scrolling of an iPad, this will be quite a step back. The Remarkable is really designed for reading documents, rather than books, and you should keep that in mind.
It really is a beautiful, minimalist machine. The e-ink reading experience is excellent, and the writing is even better. Using the Marker Plus pen is an amazing, tactile experience and nothing at all like scribbling on a glass panel. The Type Folio (cover + keyboard) is nothing special - but the combination of a large e-ink screen, keyboard and minimalism makes for a wonderfully focused experience. In that sense, it is rather like the Astrohaus Freewrite, but not as limited.
The initial process of figuring out how to load documents is a frustrating one, and given that this is your first interaction with the device, it leaves a bad taste. I think this was a tactical mistake on the part of the company. Minimalism is great, but not to the point of annoyance. Why not have a designated folder on the computer that it automatically syncs with? If you want people to use your subscription-based syncing service, then limit the size of the free designated folder.
We all know that any technology is a series of tradeoffs, and the Remarkable tries to bridge the gap between being a reading device and a writing/annotating device. But as a reading device it's too limited and too stuttery and too annoying to load documents (unless you pay for their syncing service). And it's only good for reading short pdf documents.
As a writing device, it's fantastic. BUT:
It does not export as a txt file, only as a pdf. So if you want to use the Remarkable as a writing device, you will have to export as a pdf, and then cut-and-paste the text from the pdf into a text editor. Also, the Remarkable integrates with syncing services like Dropbox and Google Drive, but it exports only to the root folder.
It does not support CJK (Chinese Japanese Korean) fonts. This seems patently absurd in this day and age, and I have no idea what the company was thinking when they made that decision.
It does not support Bluetooth keyboards, nor USB-C keyboards (although there may be a hack to do this and perhaps the company will support it in the future).
In summary, the Remarkable is a remarkable writing device and a mediocre reading device. But it makes the mediocre experience more painful, and ignores the things that makes it remarkable.