INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
It no secret I&m a fan of the reMarkable, a tablet with a paper-like display that focused on text and sketching rather than rich media and
The sequel to the original, announced today, looks to make a good thing even better.
Designed for the creation and consumption of
monochromatic content like long documents, e-books, notes and sketches, the reMarkable set itself apart as a more minimalist alternative (or
complement) to the likes of the iPad or Surface
The device was crowdfunded and has sold more than 100,000 units; meanwhile, the company has grown and attracted a $15 million A round
One sees in retrospect that the money helped launch this successor.
Sony and reMarkable dueling e-paper tablets are strange but impressive
beasts
The most obvious change is to the design
It has a bold asymmetrical look with a chrome band along the left side, indicating the tablet main use as an alternative to a paper
notebook: Hold it with your left hand and write with your right
Sorry, lefties.
The new tablet is just 4.7 mm (0.19 in) thick, thinner than the iPad Pro and Sony competing Digital Paper tablets, both of
Let be honest — at these levels of thinness it getting hard to tell the difference, but it an accomplishment nevertheless.
Probably the
best thing about the original reMarkable, however, was how good it felt to write and draw on, and the company has spent the last few years
improving that wherever they can
For one thing, the already very small delay of about 40 ms between touching the screen with the stylus and a line appearing has been nearly
cut in half.
That an area where every milli-unit counts
The lag on a real pen and paper is zero, of course, and while the reMarkable was good, there was still a very slight lag, especially when
making large gestures or lines
As the company explained to me:
The hardware to further push the latency down further did not exist, so we decided to invent the technology
We redesigned both the hardware and software architecture that controls the display through a completely new display controller that changes
how the display itself is electrically controlled, down to the voltages and electrical currents applied in complex waveforms to each
individual pixel, millions at a time
The result is a 20ms latency, smoother ink flow with less jitter, and a completely uncontested digital writing experience perfected.
I
intend to investigate this myself once I get my hands on one of the new devices
The company worked with E Ink, the main manufacturer and investor in e-paper type displays, to accomplish the new display, which has the
same specs as the previous one otherwise: 10.3 inches, monochrome, 1872''times;1404 resolution for 226 DPI.
Here the inevitable, yet
well-executed, aspirational promo video:
The software running on the reMarkable has received several major updates since the product made
its debut, adding things like handwriting recognition, a new interface, better performance and so on
But one of the most requested features is finally coming with the new device: saving articles from the web.
Unfortunately they didn''t
answer my specific request of adding Pocket integration, deciding instead to roll their own with a Chrome plugin that sends a reformatted
Unfortunately I use Firefox, but I can make an exception for this.
The company is claiming a 3x boost to battery life, using the same 3,000
mAh battery, based on performance improvements throughout and a more efficient (but more powerful) dual-core ARM processor
That means two weeks of use and 90 days of standby
This is welcome news, because frankly the battery life and power management on the last one were not great.
Lastly, the &Marker& itself is
getting an upgrade I&ve desperately wanted since the first day I tried the tablet: an eraser
You could always erase by selecting that tool, of course, but now one of the tips of the stylus will activate it automatically, a feature
borrowed from Wacom and accomplished in collaboration with them
Of course, the eraser-enabled &Marker Plus& costs $99, $50 more than the plain one
They both stick onto the tablet via magnet, though.
We&ve worked closely with Wacom the last two years to create Marker Plus, the most
beautiful pen we have ever made,& reMarkable co-founder and CEO Magnus Wanberg told TechCrunch
&In addition to premium materials and design, it features an end-cap eraser that works seamlessly with the reMarkable software
We&ve fined-tuned the eraser sensor in collaboration with Wacom engineering team to make sure it looks and feels like just a real eraser on
paper.
But overall you&re looking at a much cheaper package
The reMarkable, for all its merits, was not cheap at $700
The reMarkable 2 will sell for $399 if you pre-order, and comes with a Marker and a nice folio case
For anyone who was on the fence about the first one, the sequel may prove irresistible.
