I own a kindle, but I find it’s often just easier and better to use my iPad Pro and the upside of having a fully functional device outweighs the fancy display tech. I think it’s important to consider if eink so great that it justifies such an expensive device over a more conventional tablet.
I've read quite a bit on Kindle and Nook, iPad, and iPhone, and I think these Remarkable style eink writing devices and kindle style reading devices are each firmly in a small niche. The tech is really sexy, but for most people I think these kinds of devices and kindle kind of devices are impractical.
For instance, with Kindle and nook, the best use I got out of it was reading on the train and bus where having a paperback-book sized device was really convenient. Outside of that, I have rarely reached for my Kindle.
As for eink writing devices, Even without the high price, I am very skeptical that they would be more useful than a stack of printer paper and a decent pen. Especially with modern phone camera features that can transcribe your handwritten text and save the image as a PDF. I suspect the target market for Remarkable is quite small, and I also suspect that many people who buy them rarely use them, just like I rarely use my kindle.
Here's an experiment: navigate your browser to the Remarkable page, look at it, and pay attention to how you feel when thinking about using the device. Next, navigate to the PineNote page[1], a device that has technological capabilities that are quite similar to the remarkable 2, and do the same thing. I suspect that the Remarkable marketing is doing a lot of work here. (One caveat here is that the Remarkable Pro is color, so the comparison is more different than if they still had a marketing page for Remarkable 2)
To me, eink is definitely better for reading books, which is what most of those readers (Kindle, Kobo etc) are used for.
The other big advantage is battery life. I have an old Kobo Aura I got second hand on eBay. I keep the WiFi turned off, have installed KOReader and load books over USB (with the held of Calibre). With semi-regular usage the battery lasts weeks if not months. Way longer than any phone or tablet I ever had. Granted of course those devices do a lot more, but it's nice to at least very rarely have to worry about whether you have enough charge to read a book.
Like you I'm not sure of the advantages of eink for more general computing. I wonder what the (actual) battery life is like on the ReMarkable.
Like you, I have an old offline eReader (4th gen Kindle, replaced battery). My eReader lasts multiple books of use on one full charge.
I also have a ReMarkable 2. The battery lasts about 14-16hrs of on-time for me.
I keep it in airplane mode and have sleep mode disabled to prevent it from locking after 40 minutes. I turn it on around 10AM and turn it off at 5PM, writing on it sporadically between those hours. The tablet reaches a low battery state by Wednesday.
i have a kindle. I use it for reading books. Its only function (to me) is reading books.
I have an ipad pro (2018). It's functions are 1) watching youtube 2) drawing/painting on procreate and 3) using some music apps like AUM and various synths 4) acting a kitchen display for recipes and 5) general note taking if I need to take notes that involve drawing or diagrams.
I have a phone. I read on my phone because its the device I have with me most.
I look at this Remarkable and
1) It's much more money than either my kindle or even my phone cost.
2) I can't install the kindle app on it, for it to replace my kindle
3) It's not small or convenient enough to replace the kindle or phone
4) It's not good enough for drawing to replace the ipad
5) I don't understand why it doesn't interoperate with a lot of existing stuff. If I want to use my wifi to backup the remarkable to my onedrive, it doesn't sound like that's possible, which is possible on my phone and ipad, and isn't necessary on kindle since everything is already dealt with by amazon whispersync.
It’s for taking notes, and you can put other formats of ebooks on it (and pdfs). It’s much better than a kindle for reading technical papers and textbooks. And I find that it’s really good for not getting distracted, and getting into deep work mode.
its very expensive as just a device for taking notes.
I suppose using its limited abilities and rephrasing that as "not getting distracted" is an interesting marketing tactic but I prefer to hold my own self control instead of just buying worse but more expensive products.
I’m not saying it as a marketing tactic, because I don’t work for them. I really enjoy the absence of distraction, in the same way that I enjoy it when I go to a place like a cabin in the woods with no connectivity, because the possibility of distraction is apparently always present in my mind until it’s definitively not possible.
I have enough demands on my self control in my daily life that it’s nice to not have to rely on it further.
But yeah, if you don’t find that helpful, maybe this isn’t useful for you.
Although, I do kind of want one.