First thoughts after using the Remarkable Paper Pro tablet for about a day and a half:
[Shoot, I have too many thoughts even for discuss's 5k character limit so this is a 🧵 now I guess]
First some context: my main use case is reading and marking up academic papers. In my field, these are usually distributed as PDFs in US Letter form factor, usually (but not always) in a two-column layout. In theory the graphs and figures in them *should* be legible in black and white, but often they aren't. I'm usually either reading someone else's papers, in which case I'm highlighting, or I'm reading drafts and writing comments on them. I've been using a Remarkable 2 for this purpose for, mmm, I think a couple of years now.
## Where both the Remarkable 2 and the Pro are very good:
* They are really nice devices for reading and commenting on documents - low eye strain, quality displays, nice texture to hold, low distraction. I really recommend them for this use case. I'm less of a note taker, but I suspect they are pretty good at that too.
* The software that runs on the device is quite good (it's basically the same on the Pro, with a couple small additions for hardware features) - and so far when they put out updates they seem to be well thought out, adding useful features, etc.
* You can export their custom document format to PDFs that others can read in regular PDF readers, and they have some very nice features for commenting on documents, such as the ability to write "outside" the page, add new pages anywhere in the document, to write on, etc.
## Where the Pro is better than the Remarkable 2:
* The color is nice. It's very muted, but this is just fine for my use case. You wouldn't want to use it to look at art, but highlighting is much prettier, it's feasible to use multiple colors of highlights; and it's much easier to see my own written comments; many figures that I couldn't read before are readable now.
* Many aspects of the color are done well - the colors they picked for markup are ones that look good on this display; if you look close you can see some dithering but from a normal reading distance they show up very cleanly. There are some places where it seems like they use the black's faster refresh to nice effect, eg. when writing with a red pen, the black line follows your pen instantly, while the red "catches up" - I assume this is done due to different update rates, but it actually has a nice "wet ink drying" kind of aesthetic
* Scrolling around pages seems snappier (at least the B&W refresh part), so I find it better for zooming in on figures, flicking over to the side to write comments, etc.
* The "reading light" is nice and provides a way to read in the dark (reading in the light is really these things' strength, but the added ability to read in the dark is nice too) - it's a nice shade and surprisingly uniform
## Where the Pro is different than the Remarkable 2 (neutral):
* The aspect ratio of the screen is different; I assume it's more A-series than US letter now. Not ideal for my own use case, but a perfectly reasonable choice. It does make me want to be able to put the palette on the top or bottom instead of the left side, as this would make it work really nice with the aspect ratio of the papers I read.
## Where the Pro is worse than the Remarkable 2:
* The Pro marker is a step down from the Marker Plus for the Remarkable 2. The Plus uses this really nice tip with some texture to it, which makes this great tactile experience that's very paper-like. With the 2, they use a harder tip that's just like any other stylus - while the screen itself still has a good texture, this is just not as good of an experience. I've gotten used to it, but I really wish they stuck with the better tips, it was one of their strengths, I'm not sure why they tossed it aside.
* The Pro is bulkier. Thicker, larger, heavier, it's not awful, it still fits in my bag, but it's just not quite as nice to use.
* The refresh on the color screen is kind of unpleasant. You get flashes of yellows and reds, and it just looks weird and full refreshes of the screen seem to take longer. I'm getting used to it, and I assume that this is just how color e-ink works (my first color device), but I don't like it.
* They chose to make it completely incompatible with accessories for the Remarkable 2. Form factor is different so the folios don't work. Uses a powered stylus so the old Marker won't work. Pogo pins are in a different place so I assume the keyboard (which I don't really use anyway, but still) won't work. Can't even use tips from the old Markers.
* Battery life seems substantially worse. I haven't carefully tracked it, but I just completely ignore the battery on my Remarkable 2 and everything is fine; in contrast I've found myself having to pay a bit more attention to the battery life on the Pro.
#ReMarkable #ReMarkableTablet #ReMarkablePro #AcademicChatter
