4 years in the past, the ReMarkable 2 arrived and adjusted my writing life.
This ultra-thin, silver-framed e-ink display, which I nonetheless consider as a authorized pad from the longer term, helped me kickstart a handwritten diary I’ve saved up practically every single day for the final two years. I exploit its Marker in calligraphy pen mode, which has an aesthetic attraction even the mighty iPad cannot match. Plus, the older I get the extra I really feel the enjoyment of e-ink, tech’s most soothing various to all that LED screenlight blasting our faces.
So when Norwegian pill maker ReMarkable handed me the machine it has been engaged on ever since 2020, the Paper Professional, you possibly can wager my peepers went wider than a side-eye emoji.
A much bigger display? A backlight? A redesigned Marker the place the nib does not put on down as continuously? Half the lag (that milisecond-measured hole between nib touching display and e-ink showing) of the ReMarkable 2, the place the lag was already impressively low? And a variety of colours, not simply black and gray? Sure, sure, sure, sure, and sure please.
The ReMarkable Paper Professional additionally updates the keyboard folio, an elective additional I would been toting round with the ReMarkable 2 for the previous couple of years however not really used that a lot: the typing lag felt a tad too lengthy, the textual content column was too slim, the keyboard wasn’t backlit. The Professional folio fixes all these issues, and it comes with a pleasant little wrap-around magnet that helps lock the Marker in place.
Was this, lastly, the excellent distraction-free machine for writers I would dreamed of for a decade?
The Paper Professional is not excellent
After testing the Paper Professional for per week, I am much less enthused. It has some points, although not sufficient for me to cease utilizing it. Nonetheless, I can see why ReMarkable will proceed to promote the $399 ReMarkable 2 ($449 with the extra delicate Marker Plus) alongside the Paper Professional ($579; $629 with Marker Plus; add a $199 keyboard folio and also you’re speaking severe scratch for any e-ink machine).
For a lot of customers on tighter budgets, the ReMarkable 2 will stay a superior selection.
I am additionally stunned to search out that the 2 gadgets do not play effectively collectively. The Markers usually are not swappable. You possibly can sync paperwork between machines utilizing ReMarkable’s Join service — however a doc began on the Paper Professional’s 11.8-inch show will spill over the perimeters of the ReMarkable 2’s 10.8-inch display.
Primarily, ReMarkable is making a expertise fork, asking you to decide on one machine or the opposite.
In case you take the Paper Professional path after touring with ReMarkable 2, you would possibly hit some bumps within the transition. You will not essentially discover the brand new one is heavier (by 0.17 lbs) for the reason that weight is distributed in a bigger kind. You could discover it is just a few hairs thicker, regardless that the Paper Professional’s ridged sides are nice to the touch. You’ll most likely discover that the screen-nib mixture is extra slippy on the Paper Professional, somewhat extra like the graceful glass really feel of writing on an iPad. I merely faucet the display tougher on the finish of sentences, interval.
Additionally your mileage might range on this one, however I felt that the essential black shade you will use for writing more often than not seems somewhat extra washed out, from sure angles, on the Paper Professional display. This may very well be the fault of the brand new backlight, which does the job however has an ethereal, barely uneven glow across the edges of the display, and which I discovered myself turning off as typically as potential, for the sake of the battery (which, as you would possibly count on, appears to expire somewhat sooner on the Paper Professional.)
Or it might need to do with the truth that black is not really black on the Paper Professional: it is yellow, cyan and magenta all smooshed collectively.
Paper Professional Coloration: a (enjoyable) work in progress
Left: How my coronary heart drawing seems on the display. Proper: The way it seems in PDF kind.
Credit score: Chris Taylor / Mashable
Technologically talking, the Paper Professional is a formidable leap ahead. Taking e-ink from monochrome to CMYK is not any imply feat, contemplating the ink really sits there in an actual layer beneath the display glass. Combos of cyan, magenta, yellow and white provide you with a second set of choices — black, purple, blue, inexperienced — and by layering all these colours on prime of one another, you may get 1000’s.
In concept, not less than. In follow, you will see a number of bumps on the street to paint. First off, there’s the truth that whenever you raise the Marker from the web page for a second, something you’ve got simply handwritten or drawn in shade (you possibly can’t kind in shade but) has to refresh. Even in the event you’re simply writing in blue pen reasonably than black, that little bit of the display you’ve got simply modified flashes on and off just a few instances, in a short time.
The flashing seems a bit bizarre at first, like your ink cannot determine whether or not it is invisible or not, like your phrases aren’t safe in their very own existence. Nonetheless, I used to be stunned to search out I finished noticing it after some time.
There is a bigger shade downside, and you’ll see it within the screenshots above the place I made my first-ever e-ink shade drawing — a whimsical anatomy of a human coronary heart — utilizing the Marker’s brush and pen settings. What you are drawing on the display is delicate, like pastel colours. However whenever you ship the picture (you possibly can e-mail your ReMarkable output with or with out turning your handwriting into textual content), the PDF will present much more intense, virtually cartoonish main colours.
In different phrases: sure, you possibly can dither your approach to attention-grabbing shade mixtures, however the Paper Professional display will not provide the clearest picture of what you are really creating. Coloration e-ink is one thing of a piece in progress, and ReMarkable will proceed to tweak the software program with updates each few weeks. But it surely’s onerous to see the corporate getting round this elementary divide between e-ink content material and a LED display world.
Are you a Paper Professional sort of professional?
Which leads us to the query: For whom was the ReMarkable Paper Professional made? Artists and designers might take pleasure in taking part in round with it, however the shade illustration downside means they’d be higher off utilizing an iPad for severe work. In case you simply take pleasure in distraction-free handwriting and typing, you could be higher off shopping for a monochrome ReMarkable 2, and preserving an additional $180 in your pocket.
The core viewers for ReMarkable, if Reddit enthusiasm is something to go by, is college students and information staff.
The Paper Professional is for taking and highlighting notes — ReMarkable has taken pains to make sure the spotlight strikes with the textual content it is highlighting, irrespective of how the remainder of the web page modifications — and sketching out new concepts on the fly. Medical and engineering college students could have makes use of for that shade. IT departments will like the brand new six-digit PIN safety; I preferred the four-digit PIN as a result of that is all I wanted to maintain prying eyes out of my diary, however I am not the target market right here.
Then once more, my informal shade sketching fashion, the place I care extra about having enjoyable than true colours, is a pleasant match for the brand new machine. I may be extra inclined to succeed in for it, after I really feel the urge to make artwork, than fireplace up Procreate on my iPad.
The ReMarkable 2 modified my writing life; maybe the Paper Professional will change my artwork life.