Paperless Power: E-Ink at Work

A little while ago, a work colleague asked me if I had any possible solution for the ever-growing mound of paper-based notes accumulating on his desk. A very little bit of research and ‘off the top of my head’ knowledge led me to recommend either the reMarkable 2 or an iPad with the Apple Pencil. But the conversation ended there for several months.

One of the videos I did watch following the initial question fairly rubbished the concept of using devices like those from reMarkable. The question was why would you use a device that can only do one thing, when you could have an iPad that can do so much more?

Several months later, and this same question was posed again by the same colleague (who you may imagine now suffocating under a mound of paperwork). In reality the issue was that they had come back from a week’s holiday and of course struggled to pick up where they left off amid a pile of various printed engineering drawings, notebooks, and other stationary.

Now, my initial reaction was to just recommend an iPad with an Apple pencil, as I’d been using both in the past few months myself. But I realised that I’d never actually used it for note-taking. So I did. And the results were…underwhelming.

Now, I’m aware that there are various solutions to improve the note-taking experience on an iPad, including Paperlike’s screen protector. But following a prompt from my colleague to consider the Onyx Boox Note Air 2 Plus (catchy name right?) I quickly realised that there was a world of e-ink devices out there just waiting to be researched.

Most of my recommendations are taken from the comprehensive research done by Kit Betts-Masters. His incredibly in-depth reviews on each device, and comparisons between them for various use-cases, can be watched on his YouTube channel. He is also responsible for the website Evaluate Everything. I also used Dan Dutton’s website eWritable. Both good resources if you’d like to compare and contrast all the devices on offer.

From my perspective, when doing this research, there were a few considerations I had in mind:

• How good was the note-taking and annotating experience?
• How good was the reading experience (for Kindle books, PDFs, and drawings)
• Was there a synchronisation facility via a cloud provider such as OneDrive?
• What other features could add value to the user experience?
• And of course, what was the cost point of each option?

If you spend a few minutes looking into the e-ink options available, it quickly becomes apparent that there are some great companies working in this space. Onyx are pushing out the latest and greatest technology, Ratta (Supernote) are known for their transparency and great customer service, and reMarkable have made some important changes in the last year that makes their product a more compelling all-round product.

Below are my thoughts on the current raft of options available. This is basically identical to Dan Dutton’s list, but summarised by company, rather than by device.

Onyx Boox

The three top offerings from Onyx Boox at the moment are:

• Tab Ultra
• Note Air 2 Plus
• Tab X

The biggest advantage to these devices is that they give you access to the Google Play Store. This means that you can use apps such as the Microsoft Office suite natively on the device. Depending on your use case, this may make these devices a no-brainer for you if you want to basically use an e-ink tablet. Obviously not everything you can do on an iPad or Android tablet is going to work in grayscale (although colour e-ink is here and getting better). But as Kit Betts-Masters reports, the capabilities of these devices mean you are more likely to find opportunities to use them, over your other LCD or OLED devices.

If you’re not sure which of the three to choose, here are the key differentiators:

The Tab Ultra really is most like a regular tablet or laptop. It can be paired with an official keyboard folio, has a MicroSD slot, and even a camera (which can be used for document scanning)

The Note Air 2 Plus is a couple of years old now, but is effectively the previous version of the Tab Ultra. It lacks the keyboard folio, MicroSD, and camera, with the other notable hardware differences being a smaller battery and less storage. If those aren’t what you’re looking for though, then this is still a solid model, and can be purchased for a little less

Whilst the Tab X is the latest model (released in 2023), it is really more an updated, larger version of the Note Air 2 Plus. Effectively this is an A4 tablet, as opposed to the A5 size of the other two offerings. Those who want that extra screen real estate struggle to downsize to anything else

Ratta Supernote

As a pure writing device, the Supernote A5X is ahead of the game, despite being the oldest (along with the reMarkable 2). Released in 2020, this device is still holding it’s own with a set of unique features that provide a superb writing experience. Here are some of the unique features worth noting:

• There are several pens to choose from (the most recent Heart of Metal Pen 2 being the best), but whichever you go for, these have a ceramic nib. Which unlike the competitors, mean you won’t ever have to replace them. They are reported to provide a writing experience most like a ballpoint pen on paper, which is what most of us are used to using everyday.
• You can easily structure and store your notes, and even search them without converting them to text. (Although Kit demos this being quite a slow process)
• Most tablets require you to either use the back of the pen as an eraser (if they have that feature), change your writing tool, or click a button while scrubbing to erase. Supernote’s beautifully simple method: just put two fingers on the tablet while scrubbing with the pen. It’s probably the best example of how well thought out this product is.
• Whilst there’s no Play Store, you do have the option to turn your handwriting into a professional Word document, manage your calendar, and even access emails.

Supernote’s website and YouTube channel showcase some of the innovative solutions they have created for common problems on these devices. There are simple but effective gestures you can use when correcting text that has been converted from handwriting, something I found commonly frustrating when attempting this workflow on the iPad.

The company is commonly highly rated with regards to customer service, and have a track record of going above and beyond for their users. They even have a public roadmap for software updates. However, these devices are three years old now and so due a refresh, which by all accounts will happen this year. So if being out of date puts you off, then you’ll have to wait or choose one of the other options here.

reMarkable 2

During my last bout of research, I completely discounted the reMarkable 2. Everything I read from users of the tablet echoed frustrations of software limitations holding the device back. Effectively, in order to make the device usable, you had to pay for a subscription to the company’s ‘Connect’ plan. This was priced at either $5 / month for the Connect Lite plan, or $8 / month for the Connect plan with unlimited storage.

But then, just over six months ago, reMarkable departed from this pricing strategy. Suddenly, all reMarkable devices had the ability to sync via popular file hosting services (OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox) at no cost. And the high-end Connect plan was suddenly priced way down at $3 / month.

So what was a poor choice previously, suddenly has become a very tempting offering. It is still the least equipped of all the choices listed here. There’s no bluetooth, no accelerometer for portrait/landscape switching, and it’s the only device here that doesn’t support Kindle, as well as a host of other formats. But…it’s still probably the best built e-ink device and it’s right up there for it’s note-taking capabilities. So as a pure replacement for paper and pen, it’s perhaps the best solution of the lot.

That being said, it is likely that we’ll see reMarkable 3 in the next eighteen months. So whilst this is still a great device, it might fall into the same category as the Supernote. It’s great, but it’s not a great time to buy one.

Kindle Scribe

Now that we’ve dealt with all the other piddly little offerings, we can welcome an industry giant to the e-ink table. Except of course that Amazon have been here for some time. Their Kindle devices have sold in their millions for years. It’s perhaps surprising then that took quite so long to bring out a version of their e-ink reader that allowed for input. It’s even more surprising that (in my opinion) they well and truly stuffed up the launch.

The Kindle Scribe brings with it all the benefits of prior Kindle technology. It has the highest screen resolution, all the hardware features that the reMarkable 2 doesn’t, and the best reading experience possible. Plus (of course), it’s the cheapest. And by some margin. On paper, or rather, on e-ink, it’s a no-brainer to buy this over the reMarkable 2. And so much cheaper than Supernote or Boox you’ll stop to wonder if you really need all those bells and whistles.

Some of the major issues have been dealt with since the Scribe’s launch. Those are detailed in Kit’s video here. However, the other two issues mentioned are still outstanding. There is no way to sync notes or annotations with your computer, or even other Kindle devices. Basically, your notes are stuck on your Scribe. I imagine the folks at reMarkable 2 are incredibly glad of this reprieve, as it gives their device a great selling point over the Scribe.

Also, as Kit mentions, Amazon had promised an Office integration, or at least a solution for Word documents. But this was slated to be released in ‘early’ 2023. And there’s no sign of it yet. However, it is likely that this is a device and product range that’s only going to get better, and stay cheaper, than it’s relatively small-fry competition. sigh.

Prices

On first glance these devices have widely varying prices. But actually, by the time you add in the folios and pens (some devices come with them and some don’t), the gap is not so wide. It’s fairly pointless listing prices here as these will change depending on options and offers (no doubt the Scribe will see some eye-watering reductions). But for the sake of argument, here are the devices I would go for at the prices I found them:

• Supernote A5X Black Leather with Heart of Metal 2 Pen: £675
• Boox Tab Ultra with Magnetic Case AND Keyboard Cover: £555
• Remarkable (new) Leather: £557 or refurbished grey: £507
• Kindle Scribe 32GB with Premium Pen and Leather Cover: £457

(For comparison, my refurbished iPad Air and Pencil came to £535 all in)

Summary

So which device should you go for? Well that really depends on how you want to use an e-ink devices. Personally, I think that the Supernote A5X is the best of the bunch as a note-taking device with just enough integrations to make it usable for everyday tasks. But it is soon to be replaced, so if you can’t wait until later in the year…then I would probably go for the reMarkable 2. Or if you want an e-ink device that you can actually use instead of your laptop on a daily basis, then I’ll have to throw the Boox at you.