I love handwritten notes. I don't love writing notes on paper. It's just too messy. Even though I romanticize filling notebooks with ideas, scribbles, and everything that goes through my mind, I always arrive at the unfortunate conclusion that it's just too much of a mess to be useful to me.
So I went down the rabbit hole of e-ink tablets.
My goal was to find a perfect digital notepad with:
- A good writing experience (pen feel, latency, writing tools)
- A good and easy-to-navigate interface
- Focus. No clutter, no weirdness
- Beautiful hardware, bonus points if it's pocketable
- A backlight
What I don't need is:
- A good ebook or PDF reading experience
- Android and the ability to install apps
There are currently six companies that offer relevant products in this category: Supernote, Boox, Amazon, Viwoods, Rakuten Kobo, and Remarkable.
Supernote
Their devices don't have backlights. And the hardware looks like a DIY project by some nerd.
Boox
The Note Series has the aesthetic of Lenovo's ThinkPads. Some people might like that, but I'm not a mid-level IT manager at IBM.
The Go Series devices are nicely designed, but they’re primarily e-readers, not optimized for note taking. Same for the new Palma 2 Pro.
Amazon
I'm a huge fan of my Kindle Paperwhite, and the perfect device for me would be a Paperwhite with a textured display that feels like writing on paper. Unfortunately that’s not on offer. Instead, Amazon sells the Kindle Scribe. They announced a new version in September, but it hasn't been released yet.
Amazon has the best backlight of them all, but the current Scribe is basically a big e-book reader with note-taking features. I'd prefer it the other way around.
Viwoods
An underdog on this list. I actually bought the AiPaper Mini and didn't like it. At all. Running Android with a tacked-on custom interface made everything feel bloated and confusing. The device never managed to connect to my Wi-Fi and, worst of all, the writing feel was bad. The lag between my pencil strokes and the text showing up just wasn’t good enough.
Rakuten Kobo
The Kobo Elipsa 2E has a notes feature, but it's an e-reader with note taking added to it. The device isn’t optimized for writing.
Remarkable
The Remarkable Paper Pro and Remarkable Paper Pro Move offer the fewest features. They’re hyper-focused on handwritten notes and syncing them with your other devices. You can't install apps, and there aren’t 2000 things to tweak. It’s just an e-ink notebook. You could say “It just works,” which is what people say about Apple devices — and yes, Remarkable is the Apple of the e-ink tablet world.
Their custom OS offers everything I need, has a good user experience (I have a couple of gripes, but that's nothing compared to the other devices), and doesn’t need any explanation. It’s notebooks in folders. That’s it.
It’s an opinionated system. People who like to tinker won’t be happy with it. It’s streamlined e-ink note taking and nothing else. A focused experience where the device and software quickly fade into the background and what’s left are your thoughts on digital paper.
I love it. I love it so much that I bought the Paper Pro Move and the Paper Pro to test and eventually send one back, but I decided to keep both.
This niche is still in its infancy. E-ink technology isn’t new anymore, but it only recently got good enough to do anything with it beyond displaying a book page. And I’m here for it.
