gadgety

[juliet]

Months ago, doop ordered a ReMarkable 2 (like a cross between a Kindle and an iPad -- e-paper device) for me, and it arrived this week. It is very good at doing what it claims to do: it really does feel very like writing with a pencil or similar on paper. (Not quite so much like a fountain pen, which is what I normally use, but fountain pens are a bit specific, given that I have different ones that feel different to write with, and it's still not far off.) There's some texture to the screen, which makes it a much nicer experience than using an Apple Pencil on the slidey glass screen of an iPad. The texture does mean that the stylus nib wears down; they give you about a dozen spares with the thing itself.

The handwriting recognition is very good, even with my (fairly loopy, joined-up) handwriting, though you can only convert-to-text to send it by email; unlike, eg the Nebo app on the iPad, you can't convert it and save the converted version back to the device. It is great for making notes in a phone conversation (I hate doing that with a keyboard, even with the phone on speaker/hands-free), because you can make the notes and then automatically convert them to text.

I gather it's nice for drawing on; I am not much of an artist, but it feels fun to mess around with.

I am still a bit dubious about whether I really have a use case for it...and if I do, whether this + phone replaces the iPad mini (quite possibly? in which case I could eBay the iPad?). I've been doing some Nano drafting on it though as a kind of end-run around days when I've been struggling to pick up the laptop, and that has worked well. I quite like drafting by hand but I hate typing it up afterwards. Maybe that's enough of a reason, if I do start using it regularly for that :)

Comments

[sfred]

If you are up for sharing further observations as you go along, I will be very interested.

[juliet]

It's very useful for writing stuff by hand (because handwriting recognition, which makes it superior to writing in a notebook because I don't then have to type it up, just check/edit it). It is obviously slower than typing, but sometimes I find it easier to write by hand than to type.

It is very useful for phone calls etc.

It's definitely better (as in, feels more pleasant to use, easier to find notes later on, easier to create a new note) for both these things than the iPad + apple pencil. Though it doesn't have multiple colours.

I've been using it more than I thought I might; however, I am probably still in new-gadget mode atm so holding off decision for a while :)

Happy to answer specific questions if that would help!

[sfred]

Thank you for all this information (ages ago now!). I am filing it under "maybe in future", and sticking with pen & notebook + computer for now.

[laurashapiro]

Yay fun gadgets!