A tablet for people who prefer paper
I remember when the blackberry came out, the mini keyboard on it was awesome. Then slowly came phones with no keyboard at all, touchscreen became a reality. The App world exploded both on Android and iOS. We were given access to digital libraries and could read on the fly. We were given apps to help us take notes and draw digitally – constantly improving hardware and software. Tablets eventually came and replaced many computers simply because the tablet proved itself to be a viable and practical solution for ordinary tasks such as checking emails and browsing the web. Then Amazon did something amazing, they created the Kindle. The Kindle Reader came which offered us a better reading experience which replicated reading a physical book but on a digital screen. It now gets better with a new piece of hardware called reMarkable.
Meet reMarkable
ReMarkable is a tablet designed to take notes, read, and draw as if on physical paper. There are no apps, there is no color, there is nothing but a digital sheet of paper and some basic functions to help you read, write and sketch. This tablet is for those who cannot separate themselves from physical pen and paper but still want to dive into the digital world. Not because they can’t cope with an iPad, Android tablet or Kindle, but because it’s not the same feeling. The Kindle reader is excellent and I feel it’s great as a reader with some added functionality. ReMarkable, however, is like having the Kindle Reader plus a new way of drawing digitally that has not been tried yet – replicating the feel of paper on the screen. I don’t mean some sort of wallpaper background with digital textures, I mean actual physical texture on the screen surface itself which “looks and feels like paper with just the right friction.”
Features
The pen itself, called The Marker, is responsive, tilt, and pressure sensitive and does not require batteries, setup or pairing. The display, called the CANVAS display is described as being a 10.3″ monochrome digital paper display, no color, no glass parts with virtually unbreakable paper-like surface friction. It connects to other devices for file transfers via Wi-Fi and supports PDF and ePUB documents with more formats to be announced. It has storage to store your documents but it doesn’t look like it connects to Dropbox or other cloud storage solution which is probably because it runs on a custom OS called Codex which is Linux-based. So file transfers sort of remind me of how iOS’s AirDrop works.
Conclusion
reMarkable + Marker + Folio will cost $716, and for a limited time offer you may pre-order now and get 33% off which amounts to $479 at the time of this writing!