ReMarkable 2 ePaper Tablet
Jun. 6th, 2021 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroWhat I really wanted was a 10” color ePaper tablet that I could read my comic and rpg pdf files on comfortably. (My eyes get tired from so much screen time, and reading comics on my laptop is particularly bad; and my 7” tablet just isn’t big enough to read most comics on.) At least right now, nobody is making a color ePaper reader bigger than 7”, and even those are insanely expensive. So I decided to drop $450 on a device that was the right size and had all of right features, even if it was black and white.
(I paid extra for their stylus, which I think was the right move. I bought a $20 folio cover from Amazon rather than pay them $100 for the official one, though.)
So far, I’m really happy with that choice! There’s a desktop app you can drag files to, so the ReMarkable updates via wi-fi, rather than needing to hook it up and sideload it. It has 8 gigs of storage, which is generous for a reader device, but given the size of comic pdfs, I tend to wipe off things as I finish them. This natively reads pdfs and epubs and generally renders them nicely. It’s a very good size for most comic books, and also does a good job with pdfs of rpg sourcebooks. (They’re usually printed even larger, but the shrinking is manageable here. If you could read it on an iPad, you can read it on this.)
The other use of the tablet, as a replacement for a paper notepad, has been more mixed. It’s really comfortable to write on (it does feel pretty close to paper), but right at this moment I’m attending most of my meetings on Zoom and just taking notes in Word. When I need to attend meetings or lectures in person again, my opinion might change. The fact that you can put pdfs of forms or character sheets onto this, make handwritten notes on them, and then easily export those notes is GREAT—it means not having to print and re-scan something just to get a signature onto it. The handwriting-to-text is quite good, and you can send files that you write (or pages from pdfs you edit) directly to email.
On that topic, if you get a pdf form that needs to be signed, this is the optimal way to deal with that—no more printing and scanning.
And one feature that might just be accidental but I really like: When a Kindle goes to sleep, it switches to a lock screen. When this goes to sleep (via inactivity), it adds a “press button to wake up” bar at the top, but leaves the most recent page up. Which means you can use it for a to-do list or similar list of notes without worrying about the battery draining or constantly having to turn it back on.
Overall: In a lot of ways this is a toy; I didn’t desperately need it. But I’m definitely getting use out of it, having churned through multiple Humble Bundles of comics in the past couple months. How much paper it saves in the long run is yet to be determined.
(I paid extra for their stylus, which I think was the right move. I bought a $20 folio cover from Amazon rather than pay them $100 for the official one, though.)
So far, I’m really happy with that choice! There’s a desktop app you can drag files to, so the ReMarkable updates via wi-fi, rather than needing to hook it up and sideload it. It has 8 gigs of storage, which is generous for a reader device, but given the size of comic pdfs, I tend to wipe off things as I finish them. This natively reads pdfs and epubs and generally renders them nicely. It’s a very good size for most comic books, and also does a good job with pdfs of rpg sourcebooks. (They’re usually printed even larger, but the shrinking is manageable here. If you could read it on an iPad, you can read it on this.)
The other use of the tablet, as a replacement for a paper notepad, has been more mixed. It’s really comfortable to write on (it does feel pretty close to paper), but right at this moment I’m attending most of my meetings on Zoom and just taking notes in Word. When I need to attend meetings or lectures in person again, my opinion might change. The fact that you can put pdfs of forms or character sheets onto this, make handwritten notes on them, and then easily export those notes is GREAT—it means not having to print and re-scan something just to get a signature onto it. The handwriting-to-text is quite good, and you can send files that you write (or pages from pdfs you edit) directly to email.
On that topic, if you get a pdf form that needs to be signed, this is the optimal way to deal with that—no more printing and scanning.
And one feature that might just be accidental but I really like: When a Kindle goes to sleep, it switches to a lock screen. When this goes to sleep (via inactivity), it adds a “press button to wake up” bar at the top, but leaves the most recent page up. Which means you can use it for a to-do list or similar list of notes without worrying about the battery draining or constantly having to turn it back on.
Overall: In a lot of ways this is a toy; I didn’t desperately need it. But I’m definitely getting use out of it, having churned through multiple Humble Bundles of comics in the past couple months. How much paper it saves in the long run is yet to be determined.
