What Is an E-Ink Tablet Useful (and Useless) For?
I’ve had an e-ink tablet, specifically a reMarkable 2 , for a couple of years now. There are several similar products on the market : devices with Kindle-like black-and-white e-ink screens and a stylus of sorts that gives you the ability to take notes and mark up existing PDFs and e-books. They exist somewhere between an iPad and a pad of paper.
Most of the time when I use reMarkable in public, people don’t realize or care that it’s not just a notepad. I love it—part of the appeal is that these kinds of devices stand less between me and the people around me than an iPad or laptop. However, those familiar with the e-ink tablet category often notice this and want to know: how do you like it? What do you use it for? Could it completely replace something like the iPad? And that’s what I want to talk about today.
My answer to questions like this is usually that e-ink tablets are very good at replacing paper-based workflows and very poor at replacing computer-based ones. At some level, you have to think of it less as a computing device and more like a notepad with an infinite number of pages. Of course, it’s not that simple; Most e-ink tablets sync your notes with other devices and convert handwritten text into plain text. Some can even run applications. But in my experience, an e-ink tablet works best when you treat it like virtual paper.
This limited functionality doesn’t mean they cost less than a tablet. The reMarkable 2 starts at $400, which isn’t cheap. The Chinese company Only BOOX is well known in the market and sells tablets with electronic ink starting at $400 (for Note Air 3). Kindle Scribe is slightly cheaper at $240. Meanwhile, the iPad starts at $350 and is arguably more capable. All of this is to say that if you’re buying an e-ink tablet, there needs to be a specific reason for it.
What are the benefits of e-ink tablets?
People who love paper know that lined paper, blank paper, and grid paper have different uses. The same can be said about special notebooks and diaries. My favorite part of Remarkable is that it’s the only device that offers all of these paper types in one place, and that I can add even more flexibility by finding custom-made PDFs. With that in mind, here’s what I use my e-ink tablet for most often.
Brainstorm
Almost all of my writing happens on the computer, with one major exception: brainstorming. Whether I’m trying to come up with new ideas for an article or figuring out what an article should look like, I find that sitting at a desk with a pen and paper works better than sitting at a laptop.
There are several reasons for this. First of all, it’s too easy to get distracted while on the computer. Another thing is that brainstorming is less linear than writing, and non-linear thinking is easier for me to do with a pen. I can write anything on the page, draw little arrows connecting them, and generally just make a mess. It’s this combination of focus and open writing that works for me, and e-ink is perfect for that.
Reading and marking up documents.
Every now and then, something I’m working on requires me to analyze an academic text or a long article. There is nothing stopping me from reading on a computer, but I have found that I understand content better if I read from a laptop. At one point in my life I printed documents for this very reason, but now I just use my e-ink tablet. I send a PDF to the device and switch between highlighter and pen to mark it up. When I go to the computer, all my annotations are synced.
Taking notes during a meeting
I was once the person who was constantly typing in the corner of a meeting. I type loudly, so it distracted everyone and also meant that there was a barrier between me and other people in the room. An e-ink tablet doesn’t seem so intrusive. Sometimes I can write something down and feel completely present in the room. My notes are waiting for me when I get back to the computer, and I can even quickly convert them to text.
Planning my day
Don’t get me wrong: I love digital to-do lists and calendar apps and can’t live without them. However, when it comes to blocking projects of the current day and week, they never work. That’s why I love the planner templates in Remarkable—they allow me to quickly plan what I’ll be working on and when. There’s something special about writing it down on a calendar that makes me happy. The process got even better when I found this PDF planner , which uses the linking features of PDFs to make it easier to navigate between days, weeks, and months, and even day-specific notes.
Game of Dungeons and Dragons
I love playing DND and hate any character control system based on a smartphone, tablet or laptop. No matter how hard they try, none of them are as flexible as a paper sheet of characters. But the paper does have some distinct disadvantages, mainly because I tend to wear it out so much that I have to replace it every few sessions. My Remarkable avoids this problem and also makes it easy to quickly add new pages when I want to write down something else. I even created a separate document with all the information about my character’s race, class, and spells, which saved me from having to constantly dig through the Player’s Handbook during a play session.
Which e-ink tablets don’t work?
If you want to do something else—anything you’d normally use your tablet for—e-ink tablets range from capable to incapable. There are a few obvious downsides: no color (unless you pay for a color tablet with e-ink, but the technology is definitely not quite mature yet, so colors look muddy and dull). Typically you can’t watch videos or play games on them (although newer tablets with higher refresh rates make this technically possible, but it’s never enjoyable ). But they’re also not a complete replacement for a notes app.
Anything you want to find or index
I journal every day, but I don’t use reMarkable to create my entries. Part of it is habit: I’ve been using Obsidian as a journal for years and don’t want to switch. But I also really like being able to search and index my journal, and I haven’t found a great way to do this with an e-ink journal—no method I know of can index handwritten text by default. Of course, you can get around this problem by converting your handwriting to text every day, but at that point you might just be typing something first.
Integration with other applications
Many e-ink tablets cannot open apps or even browse the web. There are some exceptions that can run apps – the Boox Note Air 3 running Android is one of them – but even in those cases the experience will suffer due to the inherent limitations of e-ink. Simply put, scrolling and browsing on these devices is not a smooth experience and you will encounter issues like grainy images, lag, and ghosting. They work best when used like a piece of paper.
Limited app support isn’t a bad thing: for me, a big part of the appeal of e-ink is that the distractions of the Internet aren’t as easily accessible. But if you’re trying to decide between an e-ink tablet and an iPad, and access to your regular apps is a priority, you should get an iPad.
Fast file sharing
If you type something in a document, you can quickly email or text it to someone, or even post it to a Google Doc. You can do this with an e-ink tablet, but you’ll have to use one of two workarounds. There’s built-in optical character recognition (which you’ll have to clear whatever it outputs first – typos are common), or you can simply send an image of handwritten text. Neither is ideal, and in both cases you’ll probably have to do it from a computer. It’s probably easier to start with a computer.
None of these negatives mean that e-ink tablets are useless or that the disadvantages I noted are universal. Moreover, they are only useful in certain contexts, and these are the contexts I am referring to. Your experience may vary. But hopefully reading my thoughts will give you the context you need before spending big bucks on a device that may not do what you want it to do.