The Remarkable Writing Slate is one of the most popular digital note takers on the market. The drawing tool is similar to Adobe Photoshop and the pen has pressure sensitivity. Other people dig the device because you can import in EPUB and PDF files and do some light reading. One of the drawbacks of the Remarkable is that you can only have one device attached to your account at any given time and there is no option to remove an old one. This will prevent enterprise or business users who have an IT department from setting up all devices on one account to push out updates or to send documents to many users at once.
The Remarkable is heavily dependant on their PC software or their official apps for Android or iOS. In order to push documents, notes, PDF files or books you need to enter a one-time code and each tablet needs to have its own individual email address in order for the cloud syncing system to work. You cannot have more than one Remarkable on an account and if you try to enter the one-time code with multiple Remarkables it gives a generic error message and users are generally are confused on why it does not work. Once you have a Remarkable attached to your account, there is no way to actually remove it or see any details of the tablet, including MAC address, serial number or device name. Finally once you have the Remarkable PC software installed, you can uninstall it, but there is no way to attach a new one-time code to the software.
You can elect not use the one-time code or setup a Remarkable account, but there is no way you can back up any of your work or import in books or other documents. This sucks if you accidently factory reset your device and lose everything. I suppose all of the above errors is why locking users into your own proprietary software is not very good. Remarkable and Sony are the only two companies that prevent users from sideloading content in via Windows Explorer and push their own crummy software that rarely receives any support.
The ReMarkable tablet suffers from the telltale limitations of E Ink technology: Tapping on a menu key or scroll wheel basically guarantees a delay and screen flashes while the tablet refreshes. Each option you press does not have great responsiveness.
If you use a PIN number to lock your tablet and then forget the PIN number, there is no way to recover it. The Remarkable PC software does not let you conduct a factory reset while being plugged into the computer via a USB cable.
When you are reading an ebook, that has a table of contents, the TOC does not have hyperlinks.
In the end, I could not recommend the Remarkable for business users or companies that want to buy multiple units and push out the same documents to each user. This makes the Remarkable not a good buy for law firms, design companies or schools.
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.
