Do you enjoy working with paper but also like the benefits that a digital environment brings? Magnus Wanberg hails from Norway and is the founder of reMarkable, the “paper tablet.”
The reMarkable paper tablet inherits everything that people love from the Amazon Kindle and tries to extend the functions to allow for a little more productivity. They don’t try to be a standard tablet though. They designed reMarkable on keeping things simple and allowing people to focus on work without being distracted by push notifications and the like.
One more positive aspect is that they provide a pen that lets you write notes or sketch pictures. They simulate a paper-like surface which emulates the artistic look and feel, but I am not sure if artists will accept it for this purpose.
Comparison with the Amazon Kindle
It’s about twice the size of an Amazon Kindle, but the reMarkable device is not able to connect to the digital books you bought through Amazon. While that might be okay for people who haven’t been using eBooks from Amazon, it’s a critical no-go for people who acquired a lot of digital assets via Amazon.
Apart from officially supported apps by Amazon, they’d usually not open their ecosystem to third parties like reMarkable. That’s possibly avoided to limit the attack likelihood of new contenders to the eBook market.
Price information
They currently accept pre-ordering the reMarkable paper tablet for $716. This price includes a pen, a cover and the shipping costs as well. You can do that right on their website. Shipping is planned to start in September 2017. As of now, there is a discount for 40% on pre-orders.
Specs
Of course we gathered some of the specifications of the reMarkable paper tablet for you:
- 177 x 256 x 6.7mm (6.9 x 10.1 x .26 inches)
- Approximately 350 gram (.77 pounds)
- 10.3” monochrome digital paper display (no colors)
- 1872×1404 resolution (226 DPI)
- 8 GB internal storage (100,000 pages)
- 512 MB DDR3L RAM
- 1 GHz ARM A9 CPU
- Wi-Fi connected
- Rechargeable 3000 mAh battery (14-21 hours work time per charge)
- PDF and EPUB files supported
Summary
The concept video paints a very nice picture with all the lifestyles and productivity scenes. It makes me want to make a purchase it on an impulse. Yet, you could just as well buy a new iPad Pro, larger than the reMarkable for just a little more money. Certainly, there are even cheaper variants for an Android tablet, if you’re on a budget.
I want to like the reMarkable paper tablet solution, but I just can’t get myself to accept it in the price segment of around $700. If it works really well, it will maybe gain some traction in a niche market, but that might not be enough to hold the company and then this might start to get interesting for Amazon, who could throw the devices on the market for a lower price.
What do you think? Paper killer? Kindle killer? iPad killer? I would love to hear your thoughts. Drop your comments below!
YouTube: reMarkable – The paper tablet
Story pitched by news scout Pupu Liang.
Thanks for that!
Photo credit: reMarkable
Editorial notice: We tried to contact reMarkable for additional insight in January, but they have not responded to us. The information used in this article was sourced from their website.
