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The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

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Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#21

Post by sdflhasjd »

Has anyone here used a reMarkable 2 and had the chance to compare it to a Supernote or a Note Air?

I've had the opportunity to use a reMarkable in person, and it's the first and only digital writing device that I could tolerate to write notes. The MS Surface, iPad Pro and Samsung tablets have never cut it for me. It's difficult to quantify why - a combination of pen-to-display distance, latency and screen texture perhaps.

Reviewers seem to agree that the Supernote and Note Air have higher latency, and higher pen-to-display distance, so I wonder if I could work with them or not.

The reMarkable seems to to be the go-to device as a digital notepad, but doesn't do anything beyond that, whereas the other devices offer a (near) full Android experience, which would be more useful to me as a dwevice that costs £400+.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#22

Post by 0-_-0 »

nicoburns wrote: post #11
oblio wrote: post #6

I wonder which will happen faster: A) classic displays (LCD/OLED/Mini-LED/Micro-LEDs) reaching a point where the quality and power consumption are so low as to be indistinguishable from paper B) Color e-ink displays get good enough for interactive use, movie watching, etc. Maybe someone who's an expert in display tech can chime in? My money's on A) since so much is invested in it.

I think A is fundamentally impossible. A backlit display is always going to look different to a reflective surface. My money's on C: a new display tech which works similarly to color E-ink, but isn't actually E-ink. Qualcomm's Mirasol technology looked amazing for this, but sadly it never made it into any mainstream products and they've basically shut it down at this point.

In principle it's possible to measure the ambient light and set the emitted light to simulate reflected light from paper so that an OLED looks indistinguishable from paper. Next gen QLED displays might have the brightness to pull this off even in bright sunlight.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#23

Post by ABS »

I have a Remarkable 2 and the device is great, software is improving as well and taking notes is a joy BUT finding those notes later on is next to impossible.

OCR is very bad and basically makes indexing and full-text searching impossible (and off device)

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#24

Post by sammorrowdrums »

sdflhasjd wrote: post #21

Has anyone here used a reMarkable 2 and had the chance to compare it to a Supernote or a Note Air? I've had the opportunity to use a reMarkable in person, and it's the first and only digital writing device that I could tolerate to write notes. The MS Surface, iPad Pro and Samsung tablets have never cut it for me. It's difficult to quantify why - a combination of pen-to-display distance, latency and screen texture per…

I mentioned below, but you.can see my thoughts on RM2 and Max Lumi here: https://sammorrowdrums.com/e-writers-remarkable-2-v-s

Personally I don't get a lot out of the Android (as I really try to avoid DRM e-books), but they are both nice devices. Haven't tried Note Air.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#25

Post by furgooswft13 »

martin_a wrote: post #4
noja wrote: post #2

Why the ReMarkable doesn't have a backlight I do not understand.

The whole purpose of E-Ink is to use "passive" displays which are more comfortable to the eye. Adding a backlight would remove that.

I have an Onyx Boox Max Lumi [1], there are 2 reasons why the "backlight" is very useful.

First off it's not really a backlight like you see in most LCD displays, it's a front-light, or edge-light that projects directly on to and is reflected by the e-ink display (the transparent top layer of the display acts as a wave guide for the edge lighting, and it's really quite an impressive engineering feat that they got it to apply so evenly on a 13.3" display area).

Obviously this will be useful when ambient lighting is too dim to even read paper, but the fact is current e-ink technology is just not as reflective, or high contrast as regular printed text on copy paper. The front-light illumination at low to mid levels (at least on the Onyx series) goes a long way towards making the screen background look almost as white as real paper. Granted if you are outside in the sun you will not notice the frontlight even at max brightness. But in dim indoor lighting, it's the difference between looking at greenish-grey kinda washed out image, and something that might fool a casual passer by into thinking it really is paper & ink.

1: https://onyxboox.com/boox_maxlumi

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#26

Post by codethief »

teruakohatu wrote: post #16
codethief wrote: post #9

> Later this month I'll take a look at Supernote which already has a enthusiastic community and promises to have a rich API for 3rd parties to explore and expand. I tried the Remarkable 2 for a month but ended up returning it and ordering the Supernote A5X instead – I couldn't be happier! Its main advantages (IMO): - The Supernote acts as a regular USB mass storage device, so syncing files (w/o resorting to the cloud…

How is it better than the remarkable?

I updated my post! :)

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#27

Post by hcurtiss »

Tho85 wrote: post #14

I bought the Onyx Boox Note Air some months ago, and I must say that I'm really happy with it. Screen refresh is good, there's almost no ghosting in default mode, and refresh rates are acceptable. There are only two downsides about it: The vendor does not respect FOSS and does not publish the sources for their modified Linux kernel, and the device constantly phones home to China. However, the device can be rooted eas…

Man, I don't know. I have the Onyx Poke 3 and I find the software pretty janky. For instance, in order to install a dictionary, I have to jump through a whole series of hoops to download one to a PC and then upload/install it on the tablet. I could install the Kindle app (after I enable the Google Play Store), but then I might as well buy a Kindle. In order to upload epub or pdf documents to the Poke3, I have to interface through a browser on a page with a very limited interface. They do not have upload by email, bluetooth, or any other convenient interface with my phone. All in all, it's just felt like a half-baked product to me.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#28

Post by sdflhasjd »

sammorrowdrums wrote: post #24
sdflhasjd wrote: post #21

Has anyone here used a reMarkable 2 and had the chance to compare it to a Supernote or a Note Air? I've had the opportunity to use a reMarkable in person, and it's the first and only digital writing device that I could tolerate to write notes. The MS Surface, iPad Pro and Samsung tablets have never cut it for me. It's difficult to quantify why - a combination of pen-to-display distance, latency and screen texture per…

I mentioned below, but you.can see my thoughts on RM2 and Max Lumi here: https://sammorrowdrums.com/e-writers-remarkable-2-v-s Personally I don't get a lot out of the Android (as I really try to avoid DRM e-books), but they are both nice devices. Haven't tried Note Air.

I don't think I'd get a huge amount out of Android itself, but just being able to install a browser with a reader mode would be really nice. In my mind, I'd install Firefox and use that when reading articles.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#29

Post by base698 »

Deukhoofd wrote: post #19

I bought a Remarkable 2 myself, and I have to say I'm really happy with it. The built in e-reader was a bit mediocre, but a quick SSH session and a couple community scripts later and with just a long swipe across the screen I could access Koreader whenever I wanted.

Link?

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#30

Post by codethief »

sdflhasjd wrote: post #21

Has anyone here used a reMarkable 2 and had the chance to compare it to a Supernote or a Note Air? I've had the opportunity to use a reMarkable in person, and it's the first and only digital writing device that I could tolerate to write notes. The MS Surface, iPad Pro and Samsung tablets have never cut it for me. It's difficult to quantify why - a combination of pen-to-display distance, latency and screen texture per…

> Has anyone here used a reMarkable 2 and had the chance to compare it to a Supernote or a Note Air?

I have! See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27513499

> Reviewers seem to agree that the Supernote and Note Air have higher latency, and higher pen-to-display distance, so I wonder if I could work with them or not.

The Supernote does come with slightly higher input latency but not by much – I got used to it pretty quickly and honestly don't really notice it anymore.

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