reMarkable Paper Pro Move Review

The device that helped me embrace the world of digital notebooks.

In my post For the Love of E-ink, I expressed my joy with eink and epaper tablets and why over the years they have become more important to me. As a way to escape blue light screens but also provide a more focused device to help with all the noise in the world.

After using mostly Kindles and ereader versions of eink, this year was the first time I took the epaper tablet world more seriously. I never found them to be super useful, and the ones I did try in the past like the Boox Note Air2 Pro, seemed more cumbersome than to just use a iPad or traditional tablet. 

When I picked up the reMarkable Paper Pro Move, going to just call it Move for the rest of this post, for the first time I still didn’t get the appeal. It wasn’t until I was waiting on a Boox Go 7 (black and white version) to come, which was delayed in shipping, that I realized that I wanted something more than my jailbroken Kindle Voyage that I was using at the time. 

The Boox Go 7 was really not going to do anything for me besides replace the Voyage and started thinking more about what I actually wanted or needed. I stopped using my iPad as a digital notebook/journal, and started the year trying out the Theme System Journal again but that ultimately didn’t feel right either. 

My addiction to scrolling, watching bullshit, and getting sucked into the disastrous world we are living in; it was hard for me to focus on anything. I realized I needed to make a big shift in how I do things so my focus on goals were more meaningful.

That is a lot of weight to put on a single device to take on, and I am not saying the Move has ultimately fixed all these problems for me. But I will say that it has helped… ALOT. Instead of grabbing my phone when I am at home, I am more eager to “do something” and will pull out my Move instead.

What I do on it, when I pick it up, varies. If I realize I haven’t done my daily journal that day I will start there. Sometimes I just start brain dumping all my thoughts. A lot of times that brain dump is me trying to understand why I want to pick up my phone or watch something. 

So far, the Move has helped a lot in keeping me from devices that I don’t want to use as often as I do sometimes. But it has also become a notebook to jot things down, a daily journal, to-do/task list for personal needs and work, and also a sketchbook plus an ereader. 

I will say that all of these things, except one, are fantastic on this device. The only one lacking is the ereader experience which I have solved a bit with putting KOReader on it, which I will go over more later. Overall this device has fit in my life way more than I expected.

The Hardware

I don’t like to do traditional reviews that many do online; YouTube video hot takes, and blog posts just listing specs and comparisons. I like to use the device, go over some of the spec details briefly but focus more on the usefulness and how the device fits in my life that may relate to others.

So first let's focus on the hardware. Once you take the Move out of the box, you can immediately tell this is a premium device. It has some weight to it, but not heavy per se, and the build quality is fantastic. I love the white bezel around the display, the solid aluminum frame, and textured back with non-slip feet.

It just feels like a device you want to hold. I know that sounds cliche, but it is so true. The Move feels like a true futuristic notebook that has so much opportunity over a regular paper notebook that I have used for years. Comparing paper to epaper is just not worth it in my opinion, I don’t feel like those two should, or will ever, be identical.

When I first held the Move, I thought the frame was made of stainless steel since it feels so solid. It also has some neat details surrounding the entire device to look like pages in a notebook — something also on the bigger Paper Pro too. It is a nice detail that makes the device more premium, but it also provides a nice feeling when holding it too.

The back is plastic which some found disappointing, due to the bigger Paper Pro having an aluminum back, but I actually don’t mind it. I like having a textured back, something the Boox Go 7 devices also have—if it also reduces the weight of the device, I am also all-in. The best part of all is the little non-slip feel that makes the device stay still when sitting on my desk as I write.

The glass screen on the front is laminated but still has a very slight gap from the actual glass and eink display though it is barely noticeable (and worth it to have a front light). I also don’t notice the gap at all when I write, I feel like the digital ink from the pen is inputting directly on the screen.

The front light works great, reMarkable added a feature to make it “extra bright” which I have turned on and makes it even better in low light conditions. I do wish I had a warmth setting to make the screen a little more yellow when I am reading at night, but with the front light low and the e-ink display it is way more comfortable reading in bed over a phone or iPad.

It also has a power button at the top left, and a USB-C port to charge and use to connect to my computer. That is pretty much the hardware on the Move and it is genuinely great. Some people have had bad units where the screen is very yellow or has bad ghosting, but my device so far has been perfect.

Next, I want to go over the software, then last, I will go over the writing experience and some opinions about the Marker Plus. 

The Software

One of the things I didn’t realize when I first bought and started using the Move was that it has a customized version of Linux running on it. Unlike so many other epaper tablets that just default to using Android, reMarkable actually made a custom OS using a Linux distro, Codex, to run on reMarkable devices. 

This comes with two things that I want to touch on, bad and good. The bad thing about this is that the feature set with the OS is limiting, and slow to introduce some things that many reMarkable users want since reMarkable is the only one who can make changes. The good thing about this is that I can "hack" and customize it to my liking,  to a point.

I am lucky that a lot of great features exist now on the reMarkable tablets that have been a long time coming in the past. Since the very first reMarkable the company has made a ton of changes overtime, and most if not all of the features are available on the reMarkable 1 as well. So they support older devices for a very long time.

With any large company, especially as they become even larger, things get more complex and frustrating. If you scroll through the r/remarkabletablet subreddit you can see all the complaints that many people have. Like other tech companies as they grow and their market widens, priorities change from improvements to “how much more money can we make this quarter?”, which could lead to things getting worse, but their are still a lot of good that exists on this platform.

Let’s start with the good then, shall we? I really like the simple organizational structure on the reMarkable. You literally have a files section that stores all the files that sync to the reMarkable connection service, and you can add folders to organize them. You don’t have to use folders, but after while with a lot of documents that main "My Files" section can get cluttered.

You can also have subfolders in folders to get even more organized. You also have the ability to use tags too. Like I said, the organization is simple but effective. I have some main folders to keep certain things organized and keep my main documents that I use ever day in the main files section.

The settings are also limited. You have the ability to change how long it takes for the device to go to sleep, power off, and change your passcode. You will also find the other usual settings like WiFi, brightness, some display or accessibility settings, etc. The reMarkable devices are to use not tinker with settings so it makes sense these are limited.

The one thing that can be frustrating is how reMarkable handles documents. Notebooks use a custom file type, but can be converted to a word document, plain text, or PDF. Everything that is imported are treated like a PDF, even epubs, so the ability to do certain things with ebooks are just not possible on the reMarkable like you will find on other e-readers like a Kindle, Kobo, or Boox.

For example, you can’t bookmark a sentence or paragraph and look up it up in a list of highlights later, use a dictionary to define a word, and the formatting settings, including fonts, are very limited. I tried adding my own font, I really like Booklery that is used on Kindles, and though there are ways to do it, reMarkable just doesn’t let you add them natively.

The technical team at reMarkable had an AMA on Reddit months ago and explained their approach to epubs, though it makes sense, it isn’t that reassuring. The companies argument is that they want to provide active reading experience so being able to write in the book or on the margins is how they have designed reading on the tablet. Again, very opinionated but it makes sense and I can see the use case, even if it isn't for me.

Many who like to view PDFs on their reMarkable, like reviewing scientific papers or technical documents, this active reading use case makes a lot of sense. I also understand that some might want to treat books the same way, but I feel there is a way you can have both. Some devices like the Kindle and Boox e-readers do offer all the normal functionality that your would see with ebooks but also implement a way to write in and around the books as well.

I am hopeful that with enough push from their users, which happens a lot on Reddit and elsewhere, reMarkable will eventually beef up the reading experience for ebooks. They even hinted in the AMA that they may be working with some integrations with other apps so we might see a Kindle or other ebook app coming in the future. I don’t love this, but if it does allow me to load KOreader on natively I am all for it.

So yes, the software can be very limiting but that is the selling point of reMarkable. It is supposed to be a focus device that eliminates the need to change and configure things but just allow you to use it. But because it is running Linux, developers have provided tools to allow you to do more which I have done myself on my Move that I will go over next.

Customization

This isn’t a post about me going through all the steps of customizing your Move, but just an introduction to some of the things you can do. If you want me to do a tutorial on some of this, let me know in the comments and I may follow up with some “how-tos” for setting some of these up.

Going back to Reddit really quick, the subreddit that I mentioned earlier, r/remarkabletablet, is where you can learn a lot about the devices but also find some cool hacks that people have created or done to customize your own device.

One of the tools that I found was reManager, it is open source software on GitHub that lets you connect to your reMarkable tablet, over SSH, and offers some utilities using another open source software. The developer of reManager, rmitchellscott, has provided a lot of cool utilities you can find in reManager and is very active on the RemarkableTablet subreddit and wanted to make sure I shouted him out directly.

I don’t know a ton about how all this works, so I won’t go into detail, but ultimately once you install reManager on your computer and connect your Move, you have a variety of tools that you can choose from to install on your device. Some of the things that I implemented on my device are: 

1. bettertoc: Adds the ability to add, delete, and edit Table of Contents entries in notebooks, PDFs, and EPUBs.
2. enable-extra-pen-on-move: Adds extra pen slot to toolbar (RMPPM only, requires qt-resource-rebuilder v16+).
3. hide-document-close: Hides close button, use slide-down from top instead.
4. koreader: An ebook reader application supporting PDF, DjVu, EPUB, FB2 and many more formats.
5. ghostbuster: 5-finger tap to perform a full screen refresh.

This is really cool because now I can have things like two pen tool choices in the menu, link pages as a table of contents in a notebook manually, removing the X to close a document since I can slide down from the top to go home, and I also added the ability to tap my screen with five fingers to do a full refresh.

These aren’t huge changes but small changes that make the experience that much more fun. The big change I did make though was install XOVI and KOReader on the Move. What this does is add a new option in the main menu bar and be able to use KOReader to read books.

This has made reading on the Move much better. It isn’t perfect like for instance when I reboot the device I have to start the XOVI service again by either triple tapping the home button or using SSH into the Move from a MacBook and start the service manually. Once started the App Load option is available again and I am able to use KOReader, until the device is rebooted again.

Maybe it is the tinkering bug in me right now, but being able to hack into this little device, that the company allows (also kind of encourages) to make changes to how certain things work to make it more unique to me is so much fun. It isn't side loading apps unless you consider installing KOReader on it is a type of side loading, but I can't put Instagram or a RSS app on it but instead forced to keep the same experience always and add  a few tweaks here and there while keeping most of the experience very much the same.

The Pen and Writing Experience

Which leads me to one of the most important parts of using a digital notebook over a paper one; the writing experience. The Marker Plus is nice and I really have no complaints. I like having an eraser and use it all the time, though I do also use the tap-two-fingers on the screen gesture to undo a lot. Being able to just turn the pen around and erase something is really nice.

The texture of the screen is very nice and is what has really drawn me to want to use it so much but has also provided some downsides too. For writing with the stylus, handwriting feels amazing. Some complain about the tapping sound it makes since the tip of the stylus is a bit hard and the screen is glass, but that has never really bothered me. The feeling of writing with the pen on the texture screen is what is really great, it really provides the experience of pencil on paper.

Again I don’t want to imply this is a one-to-one replacement over pencil and paper, I honestly believe these will always be different and that is okay. But the sound and feeling of writing with the Marker Plus on the textured Paper Pro glass display is really nice. The performance is also great and feels like literal ink is pouring out of the pen onto the screen, the latency is so good. Even with a front light, I feel like the pen tip is very close to the digital page.

A couple of downsides though, one I mentioned early regarding the textured screen, is that the clarity is not that great when reading text. It is far better than a Paperlike or other matte screen protector I have used in the past on a LCD or OLED display, but it is clearly there and can make things feel a bit grainy.

The other downside is that textured screen does wear down the tip of the Marker Plus pretty quickly in my use. I have been trying to not press too hard, something I know I do with a regular pen, but after about a week or two of using it I definitely feel like I need to replace to the tip to go back to a good experience in writing. The replacements aren’t cheap ($20 for 6 in a pack) so this can be costly over time.

The last thing I will touch on is the eink color aspect of the device and the Gallery 3 display. Some speculate that this is the reason for some of the quality issues many have found on the Paper Pro version which many have reported bad ghosting, severe yellowing, and other display hardware failures. So far, I haven’t seen these issues on my Move, but Gallery 3 does come with other compromises.

A couple of things are that the black color isn't truly black but a very dark blue. Most of the time I am using the black color and with the brightness really low or the front light off, my brain just sees black ink. So in my opinion this is a non-issue. Other colors aren’t as vibrant as you would expect on an LCD but they do look better in some ways than Kielido displays that you see in all other color e-ink tablets. 

The only difference for me is that the green is very subtle, and many times the color that I write initially looks better than the version that sticks after refreshing. Which leads me to the last compromise with Gallery 3 is that when you use color it does constantly refresh. Every time you write with a blue or pink pen, flashing happens on the display. 

From my experience this is also not an issue, I am willing to put up with it and maybe that is because I don’t use colors that much. Black ink never needs a refresh so for the most part I just don’t experience it. So, again, this is another non-issue for me but maybe something you may want to consider before picking it up for yourself.

One last thing is the PPI of the display with is around 260. With all of the 300 PPI eink displays out there this does seem like a miss, and you can tell when reading text. For handwriting though, everything is very crisp, so I have not found it to be a deal breaker, but it is disappointing, especially with the new Paper Pure that was just announced has the same PPI as the reMarkable 2 it is supposedly replacing. 

Conclusion

Over the past 6 months I have truly loved using this device, and this isn’t just the Move but embracing digital notebooks in general. I also have a Supernote Nomad that I have been switching back and forth with the Move (which I will have a review for and comparison coming soon), and I am ultimately really enjoying switching from physical notebooks to epaper tablets.

I think the Move was the really the device that pushed me to really see the advantages of making the switch, and I don’t see going back anytime soon. I still have paper notebooks, and regularly use them, but everything eventually ends back up in a digital notebook in some way. It is my journal, brainstorming tool, and a device that I feel has truly helped with focus and my mental health.

If you want a small and compact digital notebook that has color and a front light you really can’t go wrong with the Move. It has its compromises and limitations but even with those, you are still getting so much more over a paper notebook. The only other caveat is the price, with everything included, case, Marker and tax, you are looking at spending $500-$600 brand new, but I have to say that the quality and other benefits that come from using a device like this, for me, has been well worth it.