reMarkable's new Paper Pro tablet brings the company's vision of combining PC and paper one step closer to reality, adding color and functionality while maintaining the same philosophy of focus.
The Norwegian company has been a somewhat unexpected success story. In an era where more and more features are being crammed into devices, the way reMarkable does some things well (mostly in black and white) seems almost self-defeating. But as it swam upstream, the company thrived and grew, and it funded itself without relying on venture capital. That’s something few startups can do.
With the first reMarkable tablet, the company established a philosophy of focusing on one document at a time, reading and writing on the device as if it were a piece of paper. The reMarkable 2 significantly improves and streamlines the device, making writing in particular much more responsive.
The $499 Paper Pro is a premium alternative to the current $379 reMarkable 2, with a new naming convention that signals it’s not a direct successor, and the addition of color and “frontlight” are significant additions. Both features, however, are muted.
We’ve received a unit to review, so expect that to be revealed (along with our photos) in due course, and we’ll have more technical details in a separate article on the hardware. But for now, here’s the top line on the latest from reMarkable.
Oreos and Skittles
Color e-paper devices have yet to convince me that this feature is worth the tradeoff. For example, if you compare the color and black-and-white versions of the Kobo e-reader, anyone can see that the color version is inferior for everyday reading. And while color content is passable, it is far inferior to what you see on a regular screen.
Mats Herding, hardware lead at reMarkable, puts it succinctly: On a reflective screen like e-paper, a pixel is like a glass of milk with an Oreo in it. When the cookie is underneath the surface, the pixel is white(ish), and when the cookie is up, it’s black. Color is usually added by placing an RGB filter on top, which colors the white pixel. But this also affects resolution and contrast.
As Herding explains, what they did instead was pour skittles (American; try the rainbow) into the milk, and they could float to the surface, whether it was an Oreo or a red skittle or a green skittle or whatever, without any loss of resolution or clarity.
The colors are still muted, and you wouldn’t want to read comics on this device, but the point of adding color is to enrich the interactive and creative options. Previously limited to black and white, now you can highlight, circle, stroke, and sketch in a few distinct colors (the colors can be mixed, but pure forms are best).
Anyone who works with text or mixed media knows how limiting it can be to work with only one color. At the very least, using a highlighter for important passages and a ballpoint pen for notes can help to improve clarity. The reMarkable team took great care to draw inspiration from real-world examples, and now the software supports the ability to quickly switch between the two pens, just like a professor or editor would mark up an article.
In theory, anyone who wanted to edit or display a document would be free to do so. Design treatments, pitch decks, article layouts, books, etc., but I felt limited by the colorless nature of my previous device.
Light, stylus, (active)
The writing experience hasn't changed on the surface beyond what's mentioned above, but ask Herding and he'll give you a full report on how difficult it was to simultaneously add color and frontlighting, increase the screen size, and further improve on what was already a standard pen/writing experience.
He stressed that everything had to be developed almost from scratch, because they didn’t want to compromise on anything (with one exception: weight; something had to be compromised). Just as filter-based color wasn’t an option, traditional headlights and stylus tracking technology weren’t either.
The new frontlight is not intended to be a light itself, but rather a replacement for the ambient light that illuminates the screen. It is also fixed to a specific color temperature range, as changing it too much will change the color cast.
It sounds limited, but the truth is that my experience with front lighting for e-books is that I pick one or two temperatures and minimum brightnesses and just stick with them. The reMarkable Paper Pro's screen is a bit cooler than I'd like for reading books, but it's pretty reasonable for a virtual piece of paper.
There’s a new active stylus that works in sync with the screen, offering a sub-20ms response time when drawing lines when writing, which feels good past the 25-30ms inflection point and still feels noticeably better. There’s no charging port for the pen, and it has to sit flush against the side of the tablet to collect power. It’s more expensive though, so be careful not to lose it, as I almost lost it about two hours after receiving my review unit.
Finally, is there a Typedeck that's ready to use?
One of the more ambitious, rather than functional, features of the reMarkable 2 is its ability to type. As a writer who’s constantly procrastinating until I get the perfect writing-centric device (people have generally resorted to building their own “type decks” because the market’s offerings are lacking), I was excited about it, but ultimately found the experience uninspiring when reMarkable’s otherwise well-made keyboard case debuted last year.
The company didn’t leave this feature alone, but doubled down, with a new typing case for the Paper Pro and a new typing/mixed media experience that accommodates the quirky and complex needs of writers. It’s really high-tech stuff like text selection, copy and paste, and writing in the margins. There are also dedicated keys for switching between sketching and highlighting, and editor-type tasks like selecting and moving.
I’ve only had a very light test of the new Paper Pro with typedeck (I got the device over the long weekend, and the announcement came right after that). But this time around, I’m optimistic. The type looks better, there are more inline options, the interface is more robust, and you can actually edit your work. The keyboard itself has also been improved, though I haven’t had time to compare it directly to the original. (Again, a review is coming soon.)
The new reMarkable tablet is still a tough sell in many ways. As I expected, the company hasn’t made Pocket, Notes, or any of your other services sync partners. You still have to live and work within the reMarkable ecosystem and export to those apps or services. But reMarkable has improved and accelerated that process.
But this isn't some perverted desire to cultivate a walled garden, it's a legitimate rejection of what the company sees beyond its walls. The whole idea of the reMarkable device is that it's not constantly connected. It doesn't tell you anything. You don't just consume, you interact or create. There's no app for that. If you want that, you buy a laptop or an iPad, like you already have.
But if you like the idea of a more immersive digital creative experience, Paper Pro is a major evolution of that idea. Is it worth the $500+ price tag (almost $900 if you add the Marker Plus and keyboard case)? If it lets me finish a few of the dozens of stories I have floating around in my head, it’s an easy choice for me (but that’s a personal preference). But for others, it’s an outright no-no if it doesn’t support YouTube, Spotify, etc.
The company has found enough buyers so far (and enough subscribers to its Connect data sync service) to survive and thrive in a competitive device market. The Paper Pro improvements are likely to continue that trend, even if it’s often people like me who are. want We use our devices more than we actually do. Over the next few weeks, we’ll see if we can change that.
