How Does reMarkable 2 Hold Up In 2024?

What's going on? Welcome back to the channel. Today we are unboxing the Remarkable 2. This is a device that's been on the market since 2020. I actually had pre ordered this device. I got served an ad back in 2019 on Instagram, I think. And I loved the marketing of this. I thought it was a really cool looking thing. I had never really seen a Kindle type device that you could draw on before. I've had my eye on Remarkable for a while. They seem like kind of the OG in this space. Some things I'm going to look at is, you know, Been around for four years without really like a, hardware update. So we're going to try to see how this thing compares to maybe the BOOX Note Air3 C, which I just reviewed recently on the channel and, you know, take it with a grain of salt, knowing that this thing has been on the market for a while, see what the use cases are. See the build quality, all that stuff, even now in 2024. So I'm really excited to get. into this. Thank you so very much to Remarkable for sending me this device. Without further ado, we're going to hop into this thing. Before we do, though, on this channel, we talk about tech from an intentional living and minimalist perspective. So if that sounds cool to you, please consider subscribing and like this video for more. Let's get into it. I do have the box right out of the packaging here, and I did this for a reason. I want to open this on my own, and I have always really liked How this company has done things and the fact that the packaging perfectly encapsulates the tablet right here as well as they sent me the typing folio and the marker plus pen. We've got kind of like the full suite of what you could want with this device which I'm super excited about because I think I'll be able to test it fully. But what we're going to do is we're going to start here. With the pen, it says tear here. I just, I really enjoyed the way this was packaged. Let's get into the pen here should have a little bit more features. I believe then the just basic marker that it comes with. So built an eraser. If you flip it on the other side, designed to deliver paper, like friction, no charging or set up needed, which is cool. These kinds of devices that don't need charging are strange to me, but really, really neat. So, all right, here it is. Ooh, it has an interesting feel to it. It feels nicely weighted and here on the end. So this is the eraser and I don't know if you can see this, but like. It kind of pushes in, which is interesting. I guess it's kind of like a button and the nib is right there. It says marker tips. Oh, so they've added a lot more and it looks like a way of taking it out, which you just kind of slide it along there. That's a really nice look in this sort of glass deal here. And then, Whoa, you like go like that. Oh, that's super cool. So you, it says on the directions on the back, you bend it out like this and slide on the new tip and we'll keep our little marker tips up there. So there is our pen tool. So we also have here. Typing without distractions. I'm really excited about this because I think it takes this sort of like focused handwriting experience to a focused typewriting experience as well. I'm excited to see how quickly it sort of responds to typing and things like that on the screen. Take focus notes and keep your remarkable safe with typefolio. Snaps into place. No charging your cables, perfectly designed to protect your paper tablet, three position for focus, typing, reading, and writing. All right. So in the same vein here. It says tear here, so I'll go ahead and do that. Wow, I really like this color. I'm a huge saddle brown leather fan, and this is sepia brown. It seems very similar. Let's pull this bad boy out here. What is this? Interesting smell. I don't know if this is real leather, but it smells pretty interesting. Okay, that's a really interesting. feel there. So you can do that, and then I guess this slides out the back? Feels chiclet style, of course. A little similar to like my Mac, kind of my Macbook experience there, so it's not bad. It's actually very light. It won't add too much bulk or weight to the tablet here, which is nice. Take notes, read and review documents with unparalleled paper feel designed to help you focus. Paper like writing and reading? Convert handwritten notes to type text? Nice. Take notes directly on PDFs? Also great. No distractions, just you and your thoughts. I will say. Again, I reviewed the BOOX Note Air 3C, and it has access to the full Google Play Store, which I think has its pros, but I think in a lot of ways it can also have its cons. This is sort of locked down, and I think if your goal with this is to take notes, distraction free to type notes distraction free. I'm interested to see if I actually enjoy this more. So that's just a little caveat there. I remember when they were first putting out their marketing and stuff, pre orders, and still haven't cleaned my knife. Here we go. Let's open up the flap. Welcome. Nice. All right, let's see what's in our little welcome here. Cool. Welcome to Better Thinking Community. Like I said, I think Remarkable was one of the first in this sort of e ink writable tablet realm. I could be wrong there, but. Basics, set up your device, navigating using hand gestures. We have our intro and our welcome down here in the bottom. It seems our, is our, so it says pair here. Okay. All right. So our charger, which is USB A to USB C. Wow. Okay. Okay. So here is the device. Even this is really nice. I don't know. It feels very Apple to me. But I'm just going to see if I can slide it out. It's pretty light. We designed Remarkable to not get in your brain's way to help you think. So it is a very focused device. All right. We do have little prongs here on the side, nothing here on the bottom, but right here, it seems is how you charge. So no other buttons on the sides or the top, just this single button here. And then these little prongs here, which I'm guessing is how you use the type folio. So it says, hold the power button to get started. Ooh, I like that there's like little rubber feet here. Alright, so let's hold the power button to get started. Remarkable is starting. Fantastic. Welcome to Remarkable. Express yourself, write, sketch, or scribble below. It seems like the pixels aren't as dense on this. Like it, like the writing looks a little more pixelated than what I'm used to. It feels interesting. Definitely feels like paper. I know I'm really making a show of this right now, but it is okay. I don't know. All right, let's, let's continue on here. Here it is. All right. It looks like we've got about four out of five bars of battery. Quick sheets. Let's go over here to this little menu and see. All right, so this is literally just notes. It is what it is. I guess the last thing I'm going to test before I leave you all for a little bit and come back to you with a full review is throwing it in the case. So that's nice and snug. That's a good look there. I really love this color. The pen still sticks. Yes, it does. Let's give this a test. So pull, okay, pull that up and there. That's a little strange. Ooh, look at that. A keyboard just as focused as you are. Let's see if I can do this so you can see it a bit better. You successfully connected a typefolio. Set up the keyboard exactly how you like it. Okay. Let's choose our preferences. I like Mac or do I just select it? Oh, I select it like that. Okay, cool. Start typing without distractions. Digital text handwritten. Alright, cool. So, oh, it kind of automatically changed here. So let's see, how does this work? There once was a ship that put to sea. Interesting. Billy of T. Man, I can see me just like writing letters to people. In like writing. All sorts of stuff just in a focused mode here. It's weird that it doesn't really go around The writing that I've done or anything. I Don't know. I'm gonna have to play with this a little bit I'll get back to you guys in a couple weeks once I have sort of run this thing through the works at work and in Life and yeah so far first impressions are good. Seems like a very focused device, which is interesting And I know my editor Ben used to have one of these and he said when you're taking notes You It does that really well. Anything outside of that, there's not much you can do. Which can be a good or bad thing, depending on who you are and what your needs are. So, I'll get back to you guys in a bit with my thoughts on the Remarkable 2. I'll see you guys then. Here's the thing. I've had this for a week or two now. And I love the Remarkable 2. And if that's all you need to hear to buy one, Link in the description. Go grab your Remarkable 2 tablet. If you want to know why I love it so much, stick around for the rest of this review. So yeah, one thing I think is going to be kind of hard to do is the tablet that I reviewed before this, the e ink tablet, was the Books Note Air 3C. It's a color e ink tablet, which is really interesting and intriguing, and I really did love that tablet. But when it came to Like if I had to choose between the two, it's a hard choice, but I'm gonna try not to compare the two so much in this video and just talk about the Remarkable as its own thing. So I was super excited when I got in touch with Remarkable and started talking to them about what this Review could look like on this channel. And something they asked was like, what products, right? And I said, I feel like I need the keyboard case because I want to give like the full review experience. And I'm really glad that I asked for the keyboard case. And I'm really thankful to you, remarkable for sending me the keyboard case, because though I think the tablet and maybe just like the folio case would be amazing in and of itself. The keyboard ads. So much more like I think it adds double the amount of joy because what you get and maybe what I'll dive into here in A second with remarkable two is you get very focused note taking period which is what I was after There are no apps on here It's just notes and it organizes them well and you take notes and they sync to the cloud and That's what I wanted in a device like this now add the keyboard case and you get And now you get focused typing, which the experience of both of these things and using them at the same time as well, like typing and then annotating your typing, is also awesome. Whenever I really need to sit down and write something, Besides, you know, using ChatGBT or something, I just want to have my own thoughts pour out onto the page. This is my new favorite way to do that. I can take this, some headphones, go sit in the office, go to a coffee shop, go wherever, and type. Undistracted. The entire time. I was a little hesitant because there aren't apps on this system. It's just note taking, and you've got all your files stored away. Nice and clean. And I really love the way this looks as well. You can obviously do like a grid kind of deal. I actually liked this list view better. There's no frills here. Go in here. You hit that, you open up a new note. There's my yesterday note right there. I add a new page. I start writing. It's very focused. My favorite way to use this actually is to hit this little button here, which is awesome. Like there's literally nothing on this page. And that is so nice when I'm trying to engage with a client and listen to them, when I'm listening to a sermon in church, when I am Thinking up ideas for my business and I might be researching stuff on my desktop, but I want to be taking notes, doing math equations, little things like that. These are all the things that I do in my day to day at my job. I'm constantly doing like tiny little math problems to figure out budgets for clients and CPMs and CTRs and all that stuff, which I won't bore you with. But this is just such. A great way of having a scratched piece of paper that is endless, right? I just really enjoyed that premise. And I think one thing I'll say as compared to the books is The books does have access to the entire Google play store, which I think in a lot of ways, that's great. Like I can check my emails on it. I don't love to, it's a little clunky, but I could, I can check my Google calendar on it. Same thing there. Notion you can use with the books, note air three C and that's fine. It's not really. Notion's not really made for an E ink tablet, and you can kind of realize that if you get to use one and use Notion on it. But there are certain things that I thought were maybe cooler to be able to have access to the whole Play Store. And what I found was, I downloaded a few apps I thought I would use. I didn't use them and I, you know, it's not like having access to the, the whole app store is like a bad thing. It's just, I didn't use it. I was just using the books for note taking as well. So between the two, I feel like this tablet, though it's now four years old, build quality, intentionality. It's all there. And that has me very excited for the remarkable three tablet. Whenever they come out with that, I honestly don't know if technology has improved enough. I have one thing I'll say about it for them to even update the remarkable two for the foreseeable future. E Ink is about. how it's been since this came out. And I think because of the time they took to make this product and the premium feel and look, and I mean, that just looks so smart. And I think this is a huge difference. And I think this is the upgraded, I think the base model or whatever of this pen, whatever you want to call it is white. This one does have the eraser on the back, which I have enjoyed using the eraser. On here. I'm not going to lie. That's a nice touch. Now, something I missed from the books, note air three C was with that one. If you write something, you can scribble through it and it will erase. And I think that's a really cool thing that maybe Remarkable should bring over as well. You know, if this thing was like 10 pounds and super thick, maybe let's move on to the Remarkable 3, but it's thin, it's light, the e ink is good enough. The fact that everything's so minimal, like let's, let's go back and here's our battery percentage in airplane mode and you can like screen mirror this to your computer. Coming over to settings, there's not a butt ton of settings. It's like, it's, it is. All it needs to be. And I love that as a minimalist, as someone who loves design and intentional thought that goes into a product, they're not trying to give you access to everything. They're trying to give you access to what you need to be intentional, to be essential to your workflow. And in all honesty, I love this and I've really enjoyed using it. I've enjoyed like taking notes during meetings and sending them to my sales rep or to a client. That's pretty cool as well. It beats having to write down on a pen and pad, having to type up those notes and then send them off. You just do it all from here, which is super nice. I use ChatterBT quite a bit nowadays as my workflow, as a check, as fixing grammar, as rephrasing things as. It's giving me prompts to write about. I think you can kind of go with how easy it is for this to sync to the cloud. Like the other day I sat down in a focus setting and I wrote out like a long blog post or whatever it was. I can't even remember, article or something. I then went on my computer, you know, went on to the cloud, took it, put it into, you know, chat GPT. And that's a few extra steps, but the distraction free work that I was able to do before that, like that can't be beat. Right, so that's kind of the pros of this thing. I think the writing is great. I think the erasing I think there's a couple little tiny things that I think I'm still kind of comparing to the books note air 3c when I say These things but I think that's okay because my points are Maybe these three things are what makes this a little dated. So the first is Like if we go back in here to a note, so when I look into my pen tools here, there's only three Widths That I can choose from. I can choose this one, right? I can do, and I like the fine liner. I also like the ballpoint. There's only three options. Whereas something like the books note, you have a slider and you can get more precise, I guess, with the size that you want to work with. I want something in between those two, the thickest and the. You know, second thickest. I, I just want to be able to do that. Now, I think in the same fashion of how this is designed, how Apple has designed products, they give you the three things they think are best and we get used to them, right? I was talking to my editor, Ben, about this compared to the books, not air three C. And I said, I feel like the books is more PC. This is more Apple. Apple has always kind of been in this space, especially with their first computers, where they're like, you're not going to be able to get into this thing and mess around with it. We're not going to give you. thousand ports to plug in things. Like we're going to give you what you need to use your personal computer and it's going to work for you. Whereas PC has always been like, go in the back end, mess with what you want to add as much stuff as you need, take things apart, put it back together. And I feel like books is like, here's the whole play store. Here's how you can customize it to your heart's content. Whereas remarkable is like, here's how it works. Use it as a tool. It's not going to be confusing, there's not going to be an overwhelming amount of choices to make. You got three, pick your favorite and use it, right? Which can bug a lot of people, and that's what bugged a lot of people about Apple as well. That's one of the things that I've honestly gotten used to, I've been using the middle one. I think that is the best thickness for me. Especially writing, I use I'm so used to the dotted journals that, uh, bullet journals and stuff. I've been using the dotted more than really anything in this system. The next thing I'll point out, I don't know the proper term and don't get mad at me for this, but the amount of pixels per inch PPI, right? Or is this DPI? Isn't it different for E Ink? It's not as many. So you can kind of see, especially on like very slight curves. Hopefully you can see this unless you're you can kind of see like like it's it's mine crafty, right? It's kind of pixelated when you write whereas with the books It was a lot more smooth and I think that's because of the higher amount of pixels or whatever They're called in the books compared to this and so it's a it's a matter of technology advancing I think becoming more affordable they can pack more into this so I would expect Remarkable three whenever it comes out to have a higher density of pixels here, so that doesn't happen as much. That was one of the first things I noticed. Honestly, it doesn't really bother me. It's something I got used to very quickly, and I think the pros outweigh that one con. As you all know, I'm pretty new to this market of like e ink tablets and devices, and so something I, you know, didn't realize with color tablets is there's an extra layer they have to put in to add that color kind of illusion almost and It makes the screen itself darker. So I was way happier with how bright this screen appeared Especially like in darker settings like sitting on my couch with the lamp over there at night I can see it clearly it feels very much like actual like a book or a notepad Of course when it's pitch black you're pretty much kind of screwed unless you have a flashlight because there's no front light on this thing, which that's something to note. But I honestly don't use this in my bed while my wife's asleep in the middle of the night, right? So I'm only really using this in well lit settings, and I, I just, I prefer this look. And I think I'm finding as cool as color e ink is, I prefer the sharper image, the less grainy image, the brighter image. In black and white compared to color. And again, I'm not an artist. I'm not using color a whole lot. And even within this, like I can choose red. And then when I go to look at this on my computer, it is red. So it's not like completely void of color. It's just while you're using it. It's without color and this isn't really made to be some sort of like art device It is made for focused note taking and that's why I love remarkable to really appreciate remarkable for sending me this I'm excited for remarkable three, but honestly, I'm happy with this It's been a pleasure to use the typing experience the writing experience everything. It's great I could talk more about this I think but if you have any questions about this Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about this this compared to the note air three C from books. Let me know in the comments, I might make a comparison video in the future. I'm really not sure about that one because I do enjoy both tablets a lot. There's things I like about the books that I don't like about this. So that's it. That's my review of the remarkable two tablet here in 2024 it's a device that came out in 2020 it's. still hold strong today. I truly believe that it's been an absolute joy using this. I wish I had picked it up in 2020, but I'm glad to be using it now. Thanks again to remarkable for sending me this product. Again, if you want to pick yours up, grab it at the link down below. You're going to really enjoy this. I do recommend getting the keyboard. If you have a little bit of extra cash, I think it just adds so much more to the functionality in that. focused work environment that you're probably after if you're looking at something like this. So yeah, let me know if you have any questions down in the comments below, check out this video next. I think you're going to love it. Subscribe to this channel. If you like tech from an intentional living and minimalist perspective, like this video for more and I'll see you in the next one.