I often Writing on a computer is very difficult. As soon as I sit down and unleash my creativity… Ding! You’ll receive a Slack notification. First let me take 2 seconds to explain thisA few minutes later, you feel the urge to check your inbox. Ah, six urgent emails.Two hours later, I might only have one word on the page, which usually leads to me continuing to write late into the night.
The ReMarkable 2 has come to the rescue in this process. With a comfortable stylus, this e-paper tablet is an excellent digital notepad. It mimics paper and pen much better than many other devices. The keyboard attachment has become the perfect way to type out your story without distractions. You can write notes, draw sketches, mark up PDFs, and organize all these documents in folders. Five years after the launch of this tablet, the company introduces a new product called the ReMarkable Paper Pro, which improves on the notepad experience while prioritizing the philosophy of distraction-free use.
“We invented the category,” says Mats Gelding Solberg, the Norwegian company’s head of product management. “We’re literally focused on narrowing our focus, on making a single product that’s really good in what we believe is important. We don’t want to be one of those companies that spreads itself too thin and tries to add extra features.”
Paper Trail
Photo: Julian Choccato
ReMarkable’s Paper Pro isn’t technically a successor to the ReMarkable 2. Think of it like a “Pro” version of the iPhone next to the standard model. It gets some nice upgrades at a higher price point, starting at $579, but if you don’t need the new features, you can stick with the older $399 model. It’s not going away anytime soon.
So what’s new? The highlight is color. At CES 2024, E Ink, the company that makes many of the e-paper displays found in devices like the Kindle, showed off more devices than ever before that use color E Ink technology. The list now also includes the new ReMarkable Paper Pro, but Solberg says that ReMarkable has built on E Ink’s technology and done a lot of work to perfect the color experience. Rather than putting another filter on top of a black-and-white display, the custom “Canvas Color” display stack is made up of physical color particles that move around the screen to show a specific color. Solberg says this should better replicate the actual feeling of “coloring on paper.”
Don’t expect the same vibrant, bright colors you’ll see on your phone screen: these hues are muted and there are only nine colors to choose from (ranging from magenta to cyan), but you can blend and layer them to create even more color options.
Photo: Julian Choccato
We also have a new frontlight system. This is different from the backlighting you often find on phone screens. A frontlight points a light source downwards onto the tablet screen and reflects the light back into your eyes. This has been the standard design in the world of e-paper devices for years. The ReMarkable 2 only reflects ambient light, making the screen hard to see in a dark room. This doesn’t happen with the Paper Pro. You can adjust the brightness of the light, but it’s still bright enough that it won’t burn your eyes. It’s just bright enough that you can use it in low light.
Because the Paper Pro has a larger 11.8-inch display, none of the ReMarkable 2’s older accessories will work with the device, so there will be a number of folio covers available at launch ($89 and up) that support the new device, including a Type Folio cover ($229) that lets you add a keyboard. The stylus has also been redesigned; the Marker/Marker Plus is an active stylus, so it needs to be charged. Just place it on the edge of the Paper Pro and it will magnetically attach and begin wireless charging.
