Tag: Tablets

Screen size: 10.3-inch | Battery life: Two weeks | Network connectivity: Wi-Fi | Capacity: 8GB | Included stylus: No, extra cost | Supported file types: PDF, EPUB

The latest reMarkable tablet isn’t topping our list because it’s the most full-featured or even most interesting writing tablet we tested. Rather, it provides the best mix of features people will find useful in an e-paper device like this.

We’ll get into them all, but first, it’s worth mentioning build quality. The reMarkable 2 weighs less than one pound and is one of the sleekest E Ink tablets we tried. It has a 10.3-inch monochrome digital paper display that’s surrounded by beige-colored bezels, with the chunkiest portion at the bottom edge where you’d naturally grip it. There’s a slim silver bezel on the left side, which attaches to accessories like the folio case and the new Type Folio keyboard. Hats off to reMarkable for making an E Ink tablet that feels right at home with all of your other fancy gadgets.

Let’s start with the writing and reading experiences on the reMarkable 2, both of which are great. From the get go, scribbling, doodling and writing was a breeze. I tested out the Marker Plus, which has a built-in eraser, but both it and the standard Marker are tilt- and pressure sensitive pens, and require no batteries or charging. I observed basically no lag between my pressing down onto the reMarkable 2’s screen and lines showing up. The latency was so low that it felt the closest to actual pen-and-paper. But I will say that this is not unique among our top picks in this guide – almost all of the E Ink tablets I tested got this very crucial feature right.

When it comes to reading, the reMarkable 2 supports PDFs and ePUBs, and you can add files to the device by logging into your reMarkable account on desktop or via the companion mobile app on your phone. You can also pair your Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive or Dropbox account with your reMarkable account and access files that way as well. That should be good enough for anyone who, say, reads a lot of academic papers or reviews many documents for work. It’ll be harder for people who purchase their ebooks from online marketplaces like the Kindle or Kobo stores, but there are other options for those.

Another fun way to get documents onto the reMarkable 2 is via the Read with reMarkable extension for Google Chrome. After installing it and pairing your reMarkable account, you’ll be able to send articles you find online directly to your reMarkable 2 so you can check them out later. You can even customize these files to be sent as text only, which will let you change their format directly on your reMarkable, or as a PDF file. Regardless of which you choose, you’ll be able to mark up these articles as you would any other file on the E Ink tablet.

I used this extension a lot and I enjoyed reading longform articles on the reMarkable 2 more than on my iPhone. Being able to underline, highlight and otherwise mark up those stories was more of a bonus than a necessity for me, but for others who glean sources from online materials will be better off for it.

Overall, it’s pretty easy to get files onto the reMarkable 2 and it is possible to access them elsewhere when you may not be able to whip out the E Ink tablet. Those with a reMarkable Connect subscription will have the best experience, and it’s a nice perk that you get a one-year membership when you buy one. The $3-per-month (or $30-per-year) subscription provides the ability to edit existing notes and take new ones from anywhere using the desktop and mobile apps, plus unlimited cloud storage and syncing.

That said, I kept most of my testing local on the reMarkable 2 itself and was impressed by its ability to be a digital notebook without a steep learning curve. You can create different notebooks and “quick sheets” to organize your handwritten notes, and folders to make sense of imported files. You’ll find eight different brush types with which to mark up documents and take notes, along with customizable line thicknesses and “colors” (which just show up as shades on the tablet itself). You can even type wherever you want in a doc, and the reMarkable 2 can translate handwritten notes into machine-readable text with surprising accuracy.

It was no shock that the reMarkable 2 ended up having the best mix of features, along with a relatively low learning curve. The company was one of the first on the scene with a truly viable E Ink tablet back in 2017, and they’ve been refining the experience ever since. But that comes at a cost – the reMarkable 2 isn’t the most expensive E Ink tablet we tested, but it’s not cheap either. The tablet will set you back $399 with the standard Marker, or $449 for a bundle with the Marker Plus. You could get a 10th-gen iPad and the USB-C Apple Pencil for around the same price and you’d have a more flexible duo, purely based on the capabilities of iOS.

But you’re probably not considering an iPad for a specific reason, whether that’s your love for E Ink or the feeling of pen-to-paper writing, or you simply want a more distraction-free experience. If you’re looking for an E Ink tablet that will not take ages to get used to, offers a stellar writing experience and makes it relatively simple to access notes elsewhere, the reMarkable 2 is your best bet.

Read our full reMarkable Paper Pro review

Screen size: 11.8-inch | Battery life: Two weeks | Network connectivity: Wi-Fi | Capacity: 64GB | Included stylus: No, extra cost | Supported file types: PDF, EPUB

ReMarkable upped the ante in basically every way with the Paper Pro, without sacrificing anything we loved about the reMarkable 2. Both my colleague Dan Cooper and I tested out the new device and you can read his full reMarkable Paper Pro review here, which goes in-depth into the Paper Pro’s achievements and shortcomings. In my testing, I was most impressed by the refined design, faster response times and small joys that came from having a new color display.

The $629 Paper Pro has an 11.8-inch display, which is slightly larger and taller than that of the reMarkable 2. It’s not cumbersome, though, and with its 5.1mm thickness, it gets really close to the legal-pad notebook size I personally love. It feels quite premium on its own, especially with the new grooved edges, and even with its Folio protector, it stays quite svelte. The reMarkable 2 certainly isn’t an ogre by comparison, but the “pro” in the Paper Pro’s name is well-deserved.

Inside the reMarkable Paper Pro is a 1.8GHz quad-core Cortex A53 processor, 2GB of RAM and 64GB of storage — all of which are specs that have been bumped up from the reMarkable 2. It truly makes a difference in the performance of the new model. The Pro feels zippier than the reMarkable 2: page refreshes are quicker, actions and transitions are more smooth and pen latency is only 12ms (almost undetectable in my experience).

Where you see the gears working most often is in the use of color. The Paper Pro’s screen uses a modified version of E Ink’s Gallery 3 technology called Canvas Color, which is capable of producing 20,000 colors that can layer on top of each other (think when you highlight a line more than once using two different colors over one another). You can actually see the pixels turning from a standard black color to the color of your choosing when you’re scribbling in a note, which isn’t a bad thing because the screen doesn’t lag or freeze because of this — write at your own speed and the device will up and produce the right colors as you go along.

As for software, you’re getting the same experience as you would with the reMarkable 2, which is to stay a pretty streamlined interface that makes it easy to organize all of your documents, notes and other reading and writing material. The reMarkable 2 offered one of the most approachable software experiences in an E Ink tablet, and that continues here on the Paper Pro. These devices prioritize a distraction-free environment — or at the very least, a lower-distraction zone — and I appreciate how reMarkable has kept its devices’ interface simple and straightforward.

Arguably the biggest caveat to any reMarkable tablet remains the monthly Connection subscription — an optional $3 monthly or $30 annually service that provides unlimited cloud storage, device syncing and the ability to create and edit notes in reMarkable mobile apps. Power users will likely find it worthwhile to pay for Connect, but the Paper Pro’s 64GB of internal storage might be enough for others who want to keep it simple (and keep all of their activity to the Paper Pro itself). New device owners get a 100-day free trial, so it’s easy enough to give Connect a shot and then cancel if you don’t find yourself using all of its perks.

The most important thing to remember if you’re considering a reMarkable tablet is that, based on our testing, both the reMarkable 2 and reMarkable Paper Pro are solid devices. The Paper Pro certainly earned its “pro” moniker thanks to noticeable improvements the company made, but those do not negate how good of a device the reMarkable 2 still is. But if you’ve got the cash and want to invest in a luxury E Ink tablet experience, the Paper Pro is the way to go.

Screen size: 10.2-inch | Battery life: Months | Network connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth | Capacity: Up to 64GB | Included stylus: Yes | Supported file types: AZW3, AZW, TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively and more

You really have two options in this space: the Amazon Kindle Scribe and the Kobo Elipsa 2E. The Scribe edged out the Elipsa 2E purely because of its low-latency pen-and-screen combination. The Elipsa has its merits, which we’ll get into in a bit, but it just couldn’t compete with the Scribe when it came to a seamless and smooth handwriting experience.

We already gave the Kindle Scribe the full review treatment and tested out the latest Kindle Scribe, which incorporates more AI features. As mentioned, there’s little to no latency when writing on the Scribe with its companion pen. Thanks to the latest software update, you also have more brush types to choose from now, including fountain pen, marker and pencil, which add to the charm. Like other E Ink tablets, the Scribe makes it easy to create multiple notebooks, and you can add pages to them and change up their templates if you wish.

As an e-reader, the Scribe shines not only thanks to its 10.2-inch touchscreen with auto-adjusting front lights, but also because you have Amazon’s entire ebook store at your fingertips. If you get most of your reading material from Amazon or subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, you’ll be able to jump right into all of your titles instantly on the Scribe just as you would on a device like the Kindle Paperwhite. In addition, the Scribe can connect to Audible via Bluetooth for audiobook listening. It’s also easy to get ebooks from your local library and read them on a Kindle. This will be crucial not only for voracious readers, but especially for students who buy or rent digital textbooks and those who consume books regularly for research purposes.

I thought about students a lot when using the Scribe. I started college in 2009, two years after the first Kindle was released and one year before the first iPad came out. Getting textbooks digitally really wasn’t an option for me – but I can understand the appeal a note-taking device like the Kindle Scribe would have for students. It’s arguably even better than a standard Kindle because of its bigger screen size, which will make it less tiring to stare at for long periods of time. Adding the ability to take handwritten notes while you’re studying is icing on the cake.

However, Amazon’s execution of book notes is not my favorite. You cannot make annotations in the margins of Kindle ebooks. Instead you press and hold the pen’s tip on the screen to highlight text or add a note to a particular word or phrase. If you do the latter, a window pops up on the bottom half of the screen where you can either take a handwritten note or type a text note using the Scribe’s mildly frustrating and sluggish on-screen keyboard.

Amazon rectified this a bit with a software update that allows for direct on-page writing in certain Kindle books. The Kindle Store now has a section that showcases “Write-on Books,” which is currently mostly made up of journals and game books that feature puzzles like crosswords and sudoku. This is certainly a step in the right direction, but it means you still won’t be able to mark up your favorite fiction and non-fiction books until they support the new feature.

This is where I give a nod to the Kobo Elipsa 2E, where you can write notes in the margins, underline, circle and otherwise mark up your reading material. It’s a more natural (and fun) experience since it mimics what you’d do if you were reading a physical book. It’s a shame that the latency on the Elipsa was just a hair more noticeable than that of the Scribe. If it weren’t for that, it might have beaten Amazon’s device here.

What that extra bit of latency translates to in practice is handwriting that can come out just a bit messier, and that increases precipitously the faster you write. But that also means that you’ll notice this the most when taking notes longhand on the Elipsa; if you’re primarily using an E Ink tablet to mark up documents, it won’t affect you as much.

Despite that, I did like the way Kobo executed notebooks on the Elipsa. You can have a standard notebook where you can write and scribble away, or an “advanced” notebook that supports handwriting-to-text conversion and inserting things like diagrams and formulas. Text conversion is actually pretty accurate, too, even when dealing with some of my ugliest handwriting. Kobo also has a pretty sizable ebook marketplace, so it’s certainly a decent option if you want to stay clear of the Amazon ecosystem.

Screen size: 7.8-inch | Battery life: Weeks | Network connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth | Capacity: 32GB, expandable up to 2TB with microSD card | Included stylus: No, extra cost | Supported file types: PDF, EPUB, Word, Text (.txt), PNG, JPG, Comic book archive (.cbz), FictionBook2 (.fb2) and OpenXPS (.xps)

Supernote impressed me with its X tablet when I first tested it and now the company is on the X2 version. The A6 X2 model has a 7.8-inch screen, and the recently released Manta A5 X2 has a 10.7-inch display. I’ve tried both out at this point and the main difference, as one might expect, is screen size.

But before we get into a comparison of the two Supernote devices, let’s talk about the upgrades the company made to both recently. With the Nomad X2, the design has been tweaked in subtle ways from the original Supernote I tested. You get the updated FeelWrite 2 screen protector experience, which is a smoother, less scratchy one than other E Ink tablets, and a plastic body that’s pretty lightweight. There are dual sidebars, sections on both long edges of the tablet that, when swiped, bring up a menu, making this version easier for right- and left-handed users alike. The software auto-rotates when you flip the screen, too. On top of that, both the Nomad and Manta X2 devices are user-repairable now with replaceable batteries and a microSD card slot, both of which you can see on the backside of the tablet thanks to its clear panel (there’s an opaque, white option too that’s also just as upgradeable but nowhere near as futuristic looking).

Unsurprisingly, this is still the most fun I had using any E Ink tablet. Thanks to its support of a range of file formats (PDF, ePUB, Word, PNG, JPG, etc), you can put plenty of material onto the X2 and do what you like with it. In my previous experiments, I wanted to see if I could treat it almost like a digital bullet journal, and that wasn’t hard to do. There are built-in page templates, but I was able to download daily, weekly and monthly planner templates online, resize them and move them onto the X2 using Android File Transfer. The device has a dedicated “MyStyle” folder where you can save files you want to use as templates. The most difficult part was making sure I had the dimensions right while resizing the documents. Once saved in the right folder, I could make an entire notebook out of the templates I had gotten from the internet for free.

But you don’t have to get that deep if you don’t want to; Supernote’s software comes with a number of built-in note templates that are more than suitable for a range of situations and scenarios. The device still has its own app store, but it’s pretty sparse, save for the Kindle app (although, the last thing I wanted to do on the Supernote was read) and the new Atelier painting app. The latter is described by the company as “professional painting software” that has a number of different brush options, marker and spray tools, 16 levels of grayscale color and the option to export your creations as PSD files so you can take them to the next level in Photoshop. It’s a fun take on a more artistic notebook of sorts, and those who find themselves wanting to separate their artistic creations from their mostly-words notes will appreciate the inclusion.

This device really shines as an E Ink notebook and the company clearly put a lot of thought into “building a better mousetrap,” so to speak. You can translate handwritten words into typed text, but you don’t have to do that in order for the software to recognize your handwriting. There’s a keywords feature that lets you basically bookmark important phrases for quick access later. All you need to do is lasso the word, press the keyword button and the tablet’s software will translate your writing into typed text. Then you can add it as a keyword and quickly jump back to it from the left-side tablet of contents menu. Similarly, you can bookmark titles and add stars to pages that are important, all of which help you jump between important bits.

That said, a Supernote device is similar to one from Onyx Boox in that it’s not going to hold your hand. You have to be ready to play around, mess with settings and generally tinker with it right when you open the box, and some will be just fine doing that (like our own weekend editor Cheyenne MacDonald). The software isn’t as polished as that on devices made by Amazon or Kobo, which leads to an unavoidable learning curve. But notebook nerds like myself will be thrilled with all that the Supernote Nomad has to offer.

That said, this isn’t the most expensive E Ink tablet on our list, but it will set you back $329 or more: $329 for the Nomad A6 X2 or $505 for the Manta X2, and $89 (or more) for an accompanying pen. Which size you choose will ultimately depend on personal preference. The Nomad, as its name suggests, is the more portable of the two and feels more like interacting with a paperback book (albeit a very thin one), whereas the Manta gives you noticeably more screen real estate. If you know you’ll do a lot of writing on this device, consider your handwriting sizer — those who default to cursive or big, loopy print may find a more spacious companion in the Manta.

Screen size: 10.3-inch | Battery life: Weeks | Network connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth | Capacity: 64GB | Included stylus: Yes | Supported file types: PDF, PPT, EPUB, TXT, DJVU, HTML, RTF, FB2, DOC, MOBI, CHM, PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP

Onxy continues to iterate on its lineup of E Ink tablets with the Note Air4 C, a tablet that looks and feels almost identical to the Air3 C, but now it’s slightly less weighty (literally 10g lighter than its predecessor), includes two extra gigabytes of RAM and runs Android 13.

I experienced little to no latency when writing on the Boox Note Air and I was happy with the number of brush options it has in the Notebook app. Thanks to the color E Ink display, now you can even add and save a few different brushes with colored ink, line thickness and other specifics and quickly switch between them. This is particularly useful on a color E Ink tablet like this because you can save, say, black, red and blue brushes to use to differentiate different types of notes and switching among them is super quick. You can also now add different shapes to notes and fill them in with color; I made something that resembled a sticky note using a simple square filled in with yellow. The most visual learners among us will find features like this very helpful.

Like the Supernote A6 X2, this tablet comes with a bunch of page templates you can use for note-taking (including some color options now as well), or you can bring in your own PDFs and other documents to use as templates. There’s an “AI recognition” feature that translates a whole page’s handwriting into typed text, and it’s actually pretty accurate. (Though, it did consistently confuse my “&” for a capital A). I also appreciated that you can add other kinds of material to your notes, including web pages and voice recordings, and share notes as PDFs or PNGs via email, Google Drive and other services. Features like those ensure that, with this partially analog device, you don’t miss out on some of the conveniences that a true digital notebook system would have.

The fact remains that Boox’s entire Note series is what you’d get if you removed some of the notebook-specific features from the Supernote A6 X2 and added in a more complete version of Android. Boox makes a number of interesting E Ink devices and the Boox Note Air is the one that best compares to the others on our list thanks to its 10.3-inch display. They are E Ink Android tablets, so that means you can actually download Android apps from the Google Play Store like Kindle, Kobo and others. There’s even a web browser, and yes, you can watch videos on this thing, too.

Of course, just because you can do all of that doesn’t mean you should. E Ink screens are truly best for reading and writing, so I didn’t spend much time binge watching YouTube on Boox’s device – but I was happy that I had the freedom to do so. Really, the utility of Android comes in with the app store and I expect that most people will use it to download all of their favorite reading and writing apps. Much like a standard tablet, this will be a great option for anyone that gets their reading material from a bunch of different places — and since you can manually transfer documents from your computer to the device, too, it’s far-and-away the most versatile option on our list.

And, importantly, Boox tablets in general offer an interesting value proposition. A Boox Note Air4 C bundle with the tablet, a standard pen and a folio case comes in at $529, putting it on the higher end of the price spectrum among the devices we tested. But considering it’s a full Android tablet, that doesn’t seem absurd. Those who want to avoid distractions most of the time while still having access to email and a web browser might gravitate towards a device like this.

Screen size: 13.3-inch | Battery life: Weeks | Network connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth | Capacity: 128GB | Included stylus: Yes | Supported file types: PDF, PPT, EPUB, TXT, DJVU, HTML, RTF, FB2, DOC, MOBI, CHM, PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP

Most E Ink tablets available now max out at 10 or 11 inches in screen size. But the latest model from Boox, the Note Max, has a gloriously large 13.3-inch Carta 1300 display. It’s not the only E Ink tablet from Boox to get this big — the Tab X has the same size screen, albeit with a lower dpi (207 vs the Note Max’s 300) — but it is one of the few e-paper tablets with such a large display made by an established manufacturer in this space.

Aside from the luxurious display, the Note Max feels and works like any other tablet in the Note series so get ready to tinker with it if this is your first such Android-based device. But I found the note-taking and doodling experience to be remarkable on such a large e-paper display. I’m someone who prefers large notebooks (B5-sized and larger, A4 or legal-pad sized preferred) so it’s not surprising that I was drawn to the Note Max.

One of the native Boox apps I particularly loved using in this large-format device was Calendar Memo, which gives you a month-view calendar that you can tap into individual days and take notes that correspond to that day. So for example, you can take work notes, journal, write down to-do lists and more and return to those writings even after the day has passed just by tapping on a specific day in the calendar. And if you use Boox’s native ereading app, the books and documents you read on each day will also show up with your notes, providing a handy log of your progress. Not only did I find it useful to have all of that information in one viewport thanks to the huge display, but I could also see myself using the Calendar Memo app regularly to log all of the most important things I want to remember long-term for each day.

That said, the Note Max doesn’t come cheap: it’s $689 for the tablet, plus the included cover and stylus. While it’s great that Boox doesn’t make you pay extra for those much-needed accessories, it’s still likely too cost-prohibitive for most people.

Screen size: 7.3-inch | Battery life: Two weeks | Network connectivity: Wi-Fi | Capacity: 64GB | Included stylus: Yes | Supported file types: PDF, EPUB

If you like the idea of the reMarkable Paper Pro but either want something smaller or cheaper (or both), the new Paper Pro Move was basically made for you. With its 7.3-inch Canvas Color display, it resembles a steno-pad version of the full-sized Paper Pro. It’s most similar in size to the Supernote Nomad, but the Paper Pro Move is slightly smaller in width and height, which should allow it to slip into wide pockets more easily.

The hardware is top-notch just like the regular Paper Pro, with solid, ridged edges and a luxe screen that provides good feedback when you write on it. Its marker attaches magnetically to the right side of the device for charging and safe keeping, and you can optionally get a folio case for the Paper Pro Move that will protect the screen when you’re not using it and secure the marker even further.

Software is identical here to the regular Paper Pro as well, with a few new added features like a drag-and-drop toolbar, note search and handwriting-to-text conversion that will be available across other reMarkable tablets. In addition, you can create all manner of notebooks for handwritten text and upload documents using reMarkable’s mobile app and web client. The device supports PDFs and EPUB files, which limits things a bit if you were hoping to use this like a ereader. There are better E Ink tablets for that purpose; the Paper Pro Move, just like the regular tablet, is best for handwriting notes, marking up documents and the like. And thanks to its size, it’ll likely be much better for those who work on location or in the field, rather than at a desk.

The price is also a bit more manageable than the full-sized Paper Pro. The Move will run you $449 when paired with its standard marker, but if you want the upgraded marker and want to add the folio case into the mix, be prepared to spend more. Still, $449 is a better starting price than the regular Paper Pro’s $629 floor.

Screen size: 7-inch | Battery life: Up to 40 days | Network connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth | Capacity: 32GB | Included stylus: No | Supported file types: EPUB, EPUB3, FlePub, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR, Kobo audiobooks

The Kobo Libra Colour not only adds color to its screen but also stylus support. That means you can highlight text, write in the margins of e-books and create notebooks. The low-latency, feature-rich stylus, plus integration with Dropbox and Google Drive, make the Libra Colour a surprisingly effective E Ink tablet. Ultimately, we still think the Kindle Scribe is your best bet for a tablet-and-ereader combo, thanks to the more expansive Kindle library and the larger, ten-inch screen — but Kobo’s latest deserves a mention.

The Libra Colour is our current pick for a model with buttons in our ereader guide. It has a premium build, plenty of text customizations for comfortable reading and a crisp, warm-light, seven-inch display. The addition of color adds interest to book covers and lets you highlight text in four different hues. Kobo also stuck a faster processor in the device, which makes waking from sleep, turning pages, navigating the menu and changing orientation zippy fast.

The Libra Colour doesn’t come with the Kobo stylus — another point in the Scribe’s favor — but if you add the $70 accessory, you’ll be able to highlight text and scribble notes in the margins of any book. You’ll also unlock access to Kobo’s two styles of notebooks: Basic, which lets you draw, scribble and write freehand, and Advanced, which can convert handwriting to typed text and lets you add diagrams and sections.

The stylus offers three pen styles, plus a brush and highlighter, and switching between them is quick with an unobtrusive menu. Thanks to the color technology, you can write and draw in ten colors and highlight in four. One of the few issues I ran into was with the highlighter button — it’s in a great spot for spotlighting text on the fly, but that location is also right where I rest my pointer finger, so I often hit it while writing. But the utility of the built-in eraser balances out that irritation.

I noticed a barely perceptible latency and good pressure sensitivity, which is most obvious using the fountain pen. The tap-to-convert feature almost always correctly turned my weird printing-and-cursive-hybrid handwriting into type, and uploading notebooks to Dropbox or Google Drive took mere seconds. (You can also do hardwired, USB-C transfers to a computer.)

With the added cost of the stylus, you’ll pay $300 for Kobo’s set, which is still $100 cheaper than the base model of the latest Kindle Scribe. If you don’t need a larger screen or access to the hundreds of Kindle titles you may have already purchased, the Libra Colour makes for an appealing ereader/E Ink tablet alternative. — Amy Skorheim, Senior Reporter