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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

#261

Post by xanaxagoras »

I don't have any of these note taking e-ink devices but I plan to get one eventually. I've been aware of both the Book Note and reMarkable 2 but for whatever reason I've wanted to wait another few generations and see how products in this space evolve. For now I have an iPad Pro with paperlike.

I followed a link at the bottom of this article to a product I'd never heard of before, Supernote [1], and something there caught my eye. Namely on the accessories tab, there's a link to a LAMY Series stylus [2]. For those who haven't heard of LAMY, they're a pretty big name in the fountain pen world. The page is pretty light on the details, but AFAIK this is the first ever collaboration between fountain pen giant & writing tablet. It even has their iconic pocket clip design... Definitely piqued my interest.

Although interestingly, the tip of the Supernote pen that comes with the A5/A6 series looks more like something that would produce more of a pen-to-paper feeling with its 0.7mm tip.

[1] https://www.supernote.com/ [2] https://www.supernote.com/#/part?id=SP-05

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

#262

Post by Terretta »

xwowsersx wrote: post #220
wastholm wrote: post #111

I bought a Remarkable 2 a month or two ago because I wanted a cool hackable e-ink Linux computer. But instead I immediately started using it as an e-book and document reader and note-taking pad, and nothing else. And, so far at least, that's perfect. The screen is beautiful (a bit gray, but the black is really black so the contrast is still good), the device is thin and reasonably light, I only have to charge it once…

I have been looking at the Remarkable 2 and other devices in the category. My use case is taking notes on CS and maths, which both often require diagrams and other drawings. Can you speak to how well it works for something like this and how it compares to note-taking with a pen and paper?

iPad Pro with Apple Pencil ... and the paper texture screen cover shown here last year.

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

#263

Post by edmundsauto »

CosmicShadow wrote: post #260

I'm always super intrigued by the reMarkable 2, but I think it's because it paints an image of the type of person I think it'd be cool to be, someone who can just write down notes and draw stuff with a really cool, slim device. Someone who carries around moleskines and uses them, instead of just buying so many of them in different shapes and leaving them in a drawer packed to the brim with notebooks. The problem keep…

This is pretty accurate, from someone who just got one as a gift. They are useful devices, however your criticism is spot on.

That said, a couple big advantages I haven’t seen advertised:

- I don’t have a dozen notebooks around, just one - easy to start a new notebook, plus the centralization, is sort of an “organized by default” mode - I can’t take notes on my computer, so it’s either this or paper - distraction free is good, and the physicality of the pen and screen is a much better experience than an iPad

Your other criticisms are valid and a little too accurate. It’s still a useful device, there’s just a bit of a premium price because of the fancy factors you discussed.

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

#264

Post by krastanov »

flatiron wrote: post #141
_ph_ wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually you can. The IP address is shown at the bottom of the copyright notice, you can ssh into the device and once your have put your ssh keys onto it, just scp onto it (the ip changes on reboot). Unfortunately, you cannot just copy the documents, but you have to bundle them with some meta data, it is pretty trivial to construct, I made a small script, will try to share it at some time.

you can fix the ip changing on reboot by pegging the MAC to an IP in your router. if you are also running something like pi-hole you can give it a local dns entry too, which makes it even easier to remember.

On my OS at least (ubuntu and probably many others) it can resolve by hostname (after all that is the whole point of having hostnames). So I just do `ssh remarkable` without even having an `.ssh` entry for it.

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

#265

Post by aidenn0 »

xeromal wrote: post #210
0_____0 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I long hated writing, and like you only wrote in block capitals, until I decided to re-learn to write cursive. Mostly I wanted to be able to write sweet paper notes to my lovers that didn't look like a 5th grader wrote them. I've found that when the process is approached as art, maybe even meditation, it's far more pleasurable than an act simply meant to record words on paper.

Anytime I write in print, I'm slow and janky but cursive seems to flow out of my hand. By default, it's not very legible except to me but I actually appreciate how it looks and it's easy to focus it when writing to someone else. Cursive definitely flows much easier than print. My only gripe with writing in general is that writing left handed excludes me from about 92% of pens that will streak under my hand.

Being left handed, you've probably found this, but the Zebra Sarasa Dry is what my left handed daughter uses. It's the only cheapish pen that she likes

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

#266

Post by krastanov »

bm1362 wrote: post #257
neves wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it good to read PDFs?

Frankly no, it doesn’t re-flow them so the text will often be too small. Quite a massive oversight and no one really talks about it.

I am surprised anyone would want reflow in their PDFs (that is what epub is for). The PDFs I read would be completely ruined even by minor reflow (e.g. I work with two-column text with many inline figures and math). PDF inherently as a format is not meant to have reflow.

With that context, I love reading PDFs on my remarkable 2. Zooming and panning also works pretty well (given the slow refresh rate of e-ink).

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

#268

Post by DenisM »

CosmicShadow wrote: post #260

I'm always super intrigued by the reMarkable 2, but I think it's because it paints an image of the type of person I think it'd be cool to be, someone who can just write down notes and draw stuff with a really cool, slim device. Someone who carries around moleskines and uses them, instead of just buying so many of them in different shapes and leaving them in a drawer packed to the brim with notebooks. The problem keep…

Put a stack of 3x4 index cards in you back pocket, and write thing down as needed. In the evening, (eg when you pull keys/wallet out of the pocket) review the cards briefly and toss the used once into trash unless you really need to keep one.

This is a low-commitment device that still achieves half the benefits of really writing things down.

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

#269

Post by Bayart »

I've been tempted to get one of those for my coding hours as I'm back in the office and can't use the whiteboard I have at home (on top of having a hefty amount of technical books and articles I want to get through in PDF), but I had doubts on the refresh rate and the cost. The feedback from the thread quite convinced me.

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

#270

Post by musingsole »

CosmicShadow wrote: post #260

I'm always super intrigued by the reMarkable 2, but I think it's because it paints an image of the type of person I think it'd be cool to be, someone who can just write down notes and draw stuff with a really cool, slim device. Someone who carries around moleskines and uses them, instead of just buying so many of them in different shapes and leaving them in a drawer packed to the brim with notebooks. The problem keep…

The remarkable tablet allows me to go sit under a tree and design system diagrams or draw mindmaps. And then recover them for reference later. It's particularly helpful for work-thinking. For personal thoughts, having written/drawn them is often enough to cement them and I'll reference them months/years later as a novelty.

But the core of all this is that the sitting-under-a-tree-habit came after the device. Before, it was a bit of a romantic idea I'd tried with moleskines, but it didn't really scratch my itches.

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