The Remarkable 10.3 inch writing tablet has just come out and many people are wondering how it compares to the second generation Sony Digital Paper. The focus of this video is to give you a sense of the different writing toolsets that are available and how the stylus factors in. The Remarkable has a pressure sensitive stylus, whereas the Sony exclusively relies on different pen/pencil sizes.
The Sony Digital Paper is much larger than the Remarkable it is 13.3 inches and the Remarkable is 10.3 inches. When you put them side by side, you can see that the Sony towers over the Remarkable, but that device is thinner and lighter.
The DPT-RP1 features a 13.3 inch E-Ink Carta screen with a resolution of 2200 x 1650 and 207 PPI. The screen is completely flush with the bezel and not only does this make the device have a premium feel, it also provides a ton of benefits. You can easily employ the stylus to take notes from one edge of the screen to the other, whereas the original Digital Paper had a sunken screen and was more challenging to do this.
Underneath the hood is a Marvell IAP140 64-bit Quad-core IoT Applications Processor and ARM Cortex-A53 CPU, up to 1.2GHz, and has a separate power low-power Cortex M3. It has 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal memory, but when you power it on the first time, there is 11 GB. The rest is reserved for the Google Android operating system and some of the stock PDF templates that are available.
The Remarkable Writing Tablet features a 10.3-inch Canvas display and utilizes E-Ink Carta. The screen has a capacitive touchscreen and you can interact with most elements with your finger or the accompanied stylus. The note taking experience has palm rejection technology, which means you can easily rest your palm on it. The screen is completely flush with the bezel and the resolution is 1872×1404 with 226 PPI.
Underneath the hood is a 1GHZ Arm A8 CPU processor and 512MB of RAM. You have 8GB of internal storage and there is no SD card. The Remarkable has Wi-Fi that is primarily uses to fetch firmware updates and to synchronize your notes on a local network. This device does not have an internet browser or any other way to connect to websites.
The Writing experience is really different on each of these devices. The Remarkable is better than the Sony because it has more writing features and the stylus is pressure sensitive. You can establish up to six different layers for complex drawings and there are over 64 different templates. The stylus can be turned onto its side and shade, exactly how you would hold a pencil. Simply put, the writing features are simply more advanced on the Remarkable, period.
Sony does have a number of software elements that customers will like. You can work on two different documents side by side and write on both of them. You can have a PDF file on one side of the split screen and the note taking app on the other.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
