Why I’m Returning the remarkable 2 [Audio Note]

I got the reMarkable 2 with the Type Folio keyboard to see if I would like writing on an E Ink display, and honestly, the device is super thin. Writing on the keyboard felt nice. I generally liked the environment, but I am returning it in part because getting stuff off of it was harder than I would have liked.

So it created a lot of friction in my normal workflow, which is write in Obsidian or Ulysses, so that I can then publish online. Natively publishing or getting written text off of the device, you have to—there's really no syncing, no automatic syncing. I could email the text to myself, and so I tried setting up an automation that would email it to a very specific plus modifier Gmail. It was my Gmail plus RM for reMarkable. And then I'd have an automation send that text to my drafts folder in Obsidian, but the conversion added line breaks where there shouldn't be any, and it didn't process markdown as well as it should have.

I also tried syncing the articles to your Google Drive. Again, this is a manual process, but it basically converted it as a PDF, which was very frustrating. I found a service called Scribble. I think it's called Scribble, scribble.ink, that will specifically sync your reMarkable notebooks to Obsidian, like in a folder for Obsidian, and it will do it as a PDF, as well as if there's typewritten text, convert the text. That was cool, and it was $3 or $4 a month, but I just realized that the friction of getting that stuff over was not really worth the trouble.

The other thing I noticed, though, was that the whole point of me wanting to have an E Ink writing device was so that I wouldn't be distracted by notifications on devices. And as I was writing one of the articles, I kept stopping to pick up my phone to do some fact-checking or double-checking some stuff. If I'm referencing an internet-connected device anyway to double-check facts as I write them, I like to—my first drafts, I like my first drafts to be as close to finished as possible, and so I don't do a bunch of research before writing. I start writing, and then I fact-check and things like that.

Maybe that's a bad process or maybe I could improve my writing by creating an outline and doing some research first and then writing, but then I still have to reference that research somehow. On the reMarkable, switching between notebooks isn't the easiest thing either because of the refresh rate and things like that. I figured if I'm going to be referencing an internet-connected device anyway, it kind of defeats the purpose of typing on an E Ink-only device.

Maybe there's a world where I could have done a bunch of research, taken notes on my reMarkable Paper Pro Move, and then referenced them as I was typing on the reMarkable 2, but that feels like too much. I shouldn't need a thousand dollars' worth of devices to do distraction-free writing. I was also creating typos and grammar errors at a higher rate.

Something that was shocking to me maybe is that it doesn't feel like the reMarkable 2's screen is as crisp as the reMarkable Paper Pro Move. I thought it would be more crisp because it should have a higher PPI or DPI, pixels per inch, dots per inch. Usually, black and white only E Ink is crisper because it doesn't need that extra layer. But I don't know, maybe it was just that there's no backlight in it. I didn't feel like I could see the text as well as I would have liked for writing.

It's those three reasons, and then finally, I really love my reMarkable Paper Pro Move. Because they are different sizes and aspect ratios, while I am syncing my notebooks between the two, automatic sync between reMarkable devices is good, they're not super interoperable. So if I'm writing on the reMarkable 2 and then I try to write on the reMarkable Paper Pro Move, I have to shrink the size of the text. When I write on the reMarkable Paper Pro Move and go over to the reMarkable 2, those notes have a lot of space between them.

Ultimately, I like the reMarkable Paper Pro Move better, and so for all those reasons, I am returning the reMarkable 2. It's a really good device. If it's the only device I had, I would probably like it a lot, but right now I'm struggling to use both devices in unique ways. My next experiment is going to be: Can I recreate an E Ink-style writing environment on my iPad? I'll probably do a YouTube video about that.

What do you think? Do you have a reMarkable? Which one do you have? Do you like it? Do you type on it? Maybe I would like the reMarkable Paper Pro better than the reMarkable 2, but at this point, I'm very happy with my Move. I think that's the only one for me right now. Let me know over at streamlinedfeedback.com. Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, I hope you find some space in your week.