Remarkable Paper Pro Move Review: I Returned It. Here’s Why

Reading Time: 13 minutes.

Every once in a while I get it in my head that I should get an e-paper tablet. I take a lot of notes, and I prefer my work notes to be in a format I can easily search for later reference. You have no idea how frequently I have to work with a technology I haven’t used in months or years and my notes offer a refresher that helps me stay on task. I replaced my Leuchtturm and Moleskine notebooks with my iPad mini and Notability many years ago, but I’ve been looking for a more simplistic, smaller, and lighter solution for years. The iPad mini is nice, but I do wish it was smaller, had better battery life, and was more focused on just note-taking. However, none of them stood up to my simple requirements:

• Small enough to fit on a small desk and in a small bag or even pocket
• Private and secure

Seriously, you’d think at least one tablet would fit the requirements, right? Well one came along that looked like it might fit the requirements, at least with some workarounds. The reMarkable Paper Pro Move looked to be just the tablet to finally replace my iPad. I was excited about it. However, after using it for a short period of time, I realized it’s not right for me either.

I should have added “reliable” to my list of requirements, I suppose.

I was able to withstand the fact that the reMarkable Paper Pro Move lacked the secure cloud functionality I wanted, but the limited features I had to put up with for that security was a headache. On top of that, reliability quickly became a breaking point. I could work around reMarkable’s cloud service, but only if my tablet actually worked.

Specs

• Screen:
  • 7.3″ display
  • 1696×954 pixel resolution (264 PPI)
  • Built-in screen light
  • Glare-free paper-like texture
  • Pen-to-ink distance: 920µm
• Size:
  • 195.6mm x 107.8mm x 6.5mm
  • 230g
  • About as tall and as thick as an iPad mini, but narrower
• Battery life (reported) “2 weeks,” 2,334 mAh
  • Fast charging to 90% from 0% in 45 minutes
• Storage Space: 64GB
• USB 2.0 USB-C port. Wi-Fi 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands

Hardware

The reMarkable Paper Pro Move was made to fit more nicely in a small bag, but still isn’t quite pocket-sized. the height sees to that. The device is about as tall as an iPad mini, perhaps just a few millimeters taller with the woven folio I got with it. It is more narrow, which makes it fit in something like a hip sling more easily, but still is only slightly more compact than Apple’s smallest iPad. There are large bezels around the display, especially at the bottom. I wish these were smaller, the device could be more pocket-friendly. While an A6 notebook can fit in one of my larger cargo pants pockets, this certainly cannot.

The back feels like a flimsy plastic. I put the device in the folio immediately, so I didn’t think much of it, but the plastic is thin and flexible. It buckles as you press on it, and seems to flex throughout the device. It’s a little unsettling how thin it is. I wouldn’t use this without a folio cover, I believe it could be easily damaged.

The storage will be quite sizable, at 64GB. For these relatively small files, that’s enough to keep you writing for a few years. However, it’s limited to this. You could offload older notes, but you’ll have to either use third party software or make your own to do this, as the only way to “expand” the storage is by signing up for reMarkable’s Connect sync service, which comes with the side effect of putting your notes in storage on Google’s servers, and giving Google the keys to their encryption. We’ve talked about not trusting Google for anything already. They make mistakes, eagerly work with law enforcement, and can pull your access on a whim, and won’t fix their mistakes. I wish it could have a micro-SD card slot for adding storage. Being able to catalog my notebooks in much the same way I do my physical journals once they fill up. However, reMarkable wants to sell you a subscription, allowing you to purchase and use your own storage makes their subscription less attractive.

Display

I knew I wasn’t going to be getting a display that I could watch movies or play games on. And that’s exactly what I wanted. I just wanted a display that looked and felt like paper. In that sense, the reMarkable worked remarkably well. Setting aside the texture of the tablet for a moment, the display technology at use here is a Canvas Color display with a decent 264 PPI resolution and reading light. You get a few color inks to choose from, and, while the display can’t do all colors perfectly, it can give an almost newspaper-like color profile. It’s not vibrant, but it gets the job done for sketching and note-taking.

Often, when using this on my desk, I’d have the screen light set to off. This is great for battery life, as is not using color or scrolling much due to the need for a whole screen refresh. However, I did find that in settings that didn’t have bright overhead lighting, I’d need the screen light set to full. This is fine, it operates like a backlight and you can’t tell that it’s anything different than a standard screen light, but you will go through battery life much more quickly this way.

Besides the fact that the screen rotates way too easily (you can turn screen rotation off), this was largely what I was expecting from this display. Yes, the colors are muted and yes it has to refresh frequently when those colors are on the display and moving around. However, for my normal use case of note-taking, this screen size and technology worked incredibly well.

Battery Life

The battery life, in my testing, didn’t last weeks. More like a few days. Backlight affects this a large amount. Perhaps never using the backlight could lead to a battery lasting through several weeks, but I don’t think it could for my more frequent usage.

Of course, I didn’t get to do my usual lengthy testing because my device became bricked, and, once I revived it, I realized it wasn’t a safe space to store my notes and returned it. They actually thought the bricking issue could be a poorly calibrated battery, but when I finally was able to get the device on, it was at 60%, long after it should have become useful again if this was the case.

Writing and the Paper Feel

My first notes on this were along the lines of: wait, this doesn’t feel like paper. It doesn’t feel exactly like paper. It’s not the sensation of a ballpoint pen or a fountain pen on paper. However, it’s still a good sensation. It has just the right amount of friction for a truly satisfying writing experience. It responds so quickly it really feels like you’re writing directly on the page. It’s so good that, once I returned my reMarkable, I couldn’t go back to my iPad mini with a Paperlike screen protector. Instead, I had to use the Rock Paper Pencil 2 screen protector that I had previously tested. This isn’t a very good protector, as it scratches easily and the pen tips wear down, so I ordered the RPP 3. Review to come in on that in a few weeks.

The biggest issues stem from the screen technology. The fact that, if you’re writing in color the tablet has to refresh again afterwards is a little annoying. And that refresh rate issue also applies to using the eraser on the Marker Plus. This refresh rate issue also means you can’t use colors to highlight items to notice as you’re quickly scrolling through a note. This doesn’t always get in the way of the writing experience, but it did bother me while taking notes.

The feeling of writing on this is what made me start to fall in love with the tablet. It’s really a joy to write on… when it works. Unfortunately, everything else about the experience is broken.

Marker Plus

I went with the Market Plus because I just knew if I didn’t get its eraser features, I’d regret it. I like how I can swap between tools on my iPad with a tap on my Apple Pencil, so I figured having an eraser right there would be handy. It was! The eraser is a bit too large and wasn’t very accurate, but it works and came in handy. I liked it enough that, when I moved back to my iPad, I caught myself spinning my Apple Pencil around to erase something, before realizing I had to tap on it instead.

The Marker Plus has this wonderful grippy texture. It’s not the slick gloss of Apple’s Pencils. It feels like it actually belongs in your hand. One of the first things I wrote was “Apple, take note!” It’s grippy and you can hold and write with confidence over long periods of time. It was one of my favorite features of the reMarkable.

I wish Apple could design something as nice as this, but Apple design is lazy and inhuman. They want it to look glossy and shiny, not actually feel good to use. It’s why Apple can’t design products for actual users anymore. Everything is just a marketing stunt for them, nothing is actually supposed to be used. Even your phone goes right in a case as soon as you get it, unable to survive in the real world for a few weeks without one. Nothing is made for the real world anymore, just a billboard or a glossy image on a display.

The only issue I really noticed with it seemed to be that the nib wears down faster than I expected. I had taken a lot of notes as I was working on a variety of reviews, but the nib had worn down enough that I could see it was worn slightly. It’s not as fast as, say, a real pencil, but fast enough that I realized I may have to go through nibs more frequently than I’d want, perhaps buying a pack of them yearly. Now that should be part of their subscription! The tablet came with a few marker tips, and in the week of testing, I wasn’t close to giving up on the one I was using, but I could see needing to in a month or so. They’re longer lasting than Apple’s on a similar texture display though, because Apple’s nibs can’t be rotated to find a spot that isn’t worn down like reMarkable’s can. Unfortunately, due to issues, my test was cut short, and I didn’t feel like trying another unit anyway. Why fill up something with notes if it could become bricked?

Software Features

The worst part of the software is just how much of it is locked behind the Connect subscription. I’ll detail that below, but here I just want to talk about the software features you can use without the subscription. This includes taking notes, creating folders to organize those notes, tagging your notes to search or organize them later, and interacting with your notes. As it is, you’re not much better off than having a nice pocket notebook where you keep the table of contents at the front updated properly.

Gestures

I thought the gesture recognition would be cool. While the e-ink display can take a while to refresh for color content or erasing, the writing is fast, so I expected the gesture recognition to be as well, right?

You know where this is going already.

Gestures were often laggy enough that I wouldn’t be sure if they worked right away. A flick gesture, which normally pages down in a note, may take 3 tries to work, but you might not realize the third try worked until you go for a fourth swipe. Scrolling with two fingers is a lot smoother, but far from smooth due to the janky screen refreshes. Also, any colors you used to highlight parts of your notes will just display in black and white as you scroll anyway, so don’t expect to be able to use colors to catch your eye as you’re scrolling.

I also found the gestures to return to the folder the note was opened from didn’t work well either. The gestures were unreliable enough that I only used the on-screen controls for anything.

Image Support or Transferring Files

One thing I often do with my iPad is take screenshots from my Mac and import them into a note on my iPad. I can do this with AirDrop, and it’s a great way to take a code snippet or other material from your computer and put it on your iPad’s notes. The reMarkable, however, doesn’t support images in notes. You’ll have to write or draw anything you want to record.

Not that you can use any online features without a Connect subscription anyway.

Without that subscription, you can’t collaborate, whiteboard, or share notes in any way. You can use a USB connection to load PDFs onto your computer, but this is a clunky process. reMarkable could have put a simple email client on there, but chose not to.

Laggy Performance

You can use a USB connection to transfer PDFs to your reMarkable tablet, but don’t expect the process to be fluid. In my testing, notes that came from a PDF were very difficult to annotate, and simply not worth the time. There was so much lag when writing that it just didn’t feel like I was using the tablet as intended. It’s marketed as a feature, but in practice, it doesn’t work at all.

Imported PDFs weren’t the only items that had lag. It felt like the on-screen keyboard updated far slower than I could type, resulting in text that would sometimes miss chunks of words. I wished the reMarkable could use a small physical keyboard, either through USB or Bluetooth, but it cannot.

Missing Options

Expandable storage, keyboard support, and all the online features are certainly missing, but what about options? I found the toolbar, for example, had no customization options, and often had items I didn’t want to use or wanted to be able to hide. The settings for this tablet could have fit on a single page.

I liked that I could have nested folders for organization, but didn’t like that these folders could not feature additional encryption and protection, such as folders that are password protected. Not that privacy is at the forefront of the reMarkable team. You’re limited to 6-digit passcodes for the device, there’s no fingerprint reader to speed that up after a first launch, and the online service won’t even let you keep your own keys for the encryption. What did I expect?

Syncing Offline

So, you can’t have any of the “advanced” features of the reMarkable tablet without syncing your notes to Google’s servers. Bummer. But what can you do to back up your tablet? reMarkable doesn’t have a lot in the way to help you. Sure, they could easily make an app that could do this, but why would they? Cut into their subscription sales? That’s just bad capitalism. But they still gave users a backdoor to do it themselves.

If you’re planning on backing up your own device, you have to do it from the start. That’s because to turn Developer Mode on or off, reMarkable makes you wipe your entire device. Yeah. They really didn’t want to make this easy.

Once you do that, you should be familiar with SSH. I personally use Terminal, but there are a variety of SSH clients you can use. This allows you to access the drive of the reMarkable as you would a computer on a network. It’ll simulate your reMarkable’s mass storage at an IP address, and you’ll use the SSH key found in your reMarkable tablet. Then, you’ll want to execute a few Terminal commands to copy files from your reMarkable to your device. You’ll be taking those files from this directory /home/root/.local/share/remarkable/xochitl/ \.

You can find more detailed instructions here.

I wrote a little script that could back up my files and config files into timestamped directories. It’s not too difficult, but it’s one of those things that reMarkable easily could have made themselves. They really want you to get that subscription though!

The Connect Subscription

Many of the features you’d expect a tablet like this to have are hidden behind the Connect subscription. You can’t even send a note in an email without a subscription. You can’t search into notes either. While nearly all electronic note-taking solutions contain handwriting recognition and a search feature, you’ll need the Connect subscription to do that with your reMarkable tablet. You can tag pages and notes, but that’s about the same as keeping a table of contents in a paper notebook.

The Connect subscription includes search, internet-connected features like email, Slack, and sharing notes, and templates called “reMarkable Methods.” You also gain access to your notes in other apps. There are even features for businesses, like device management and single sign on (SSO).

There’s also unlimited note storage with a Connect subscription. All notes are uploaded to reMarkable’s cloud service, which is hosted on Google’s platform. Google retains full control of the end-to-end encryption keys, which means they can both lock you out at any time or unlock your notes for them or anyone else to read. Obviously they’ll have protected these with policies, but policies aren’t security. Besides, a lawsuit against a tech behemoth like Google wouldn’t even register as a slap on the wrist. Apple, on the other hand, offers their Advanced Data Protection, which includes end-to-end encryption with your key, so no one can access your data but you. It’s why I returned to using Notability on my iPad, with my notes exclusively synced with iCloud.

reMarkable’s Connect subscription is free for the first 100 days you have your tablet. As soon as you are out of reMarkable’s return period, the subscription expires. Perfect timing. That’s when users find out that many of the features they like about the reMarkable, features that seem on-device and like the device would be capable of doing without internet access, like search, are actually tied to this subscription. For just $3/month, I’m sure most continue it. What choice do they have at that point?

The Connect subscription was a large reason I wasn’t enthused about the reMarkable Paper Pro Move on day one. I realized there was no way to use all the features the subscription provides without syncing your files. This means all of the note-taking features that are locked behind a subscription are also locked behind uploading your notes to Google’s cloud, using Google’s encryption keys, which they’ll let you use. Many of these features are ones I’d like to use, but I’d never want to upload my notes to Google. Unfortunately, you can’t pick and choose. You can either search your notes or have your notes remain private. There’s no middle ground.

Reliability

I had an interview one morning. I take notes during my interviews, questions I want to ask, details about the position, that kind of thing. I was going to use my reMarkable tablet for it. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t wake from sleep. No tricks could get it open. Charging, holding the power button, nothing. Support said the battery likely died, but it had over 40% battery life the night before. It shouldn’t have died. It took a suggestion from someone online: hold the power button down for 60 seconds, to revive it. There I found the battery was at nearly 70%. It was not a battery issue, the device just froze up and couldn’t unlock.

Suddenly I realized I couldn’t rely on this for note-taking. If you can’t quickly open it and start taking a note, what’s the point? If you can’t trust it to turn on, why keep it?

Furthermore, I had another issue. While it was like this, I couldn’t access the storage space. While I had been performing manual backups to my own computer, I couldn’t use the cloud service. Also, those backups are in a specific reMarkable note format, so I’d need another app to even read them or convert them to PDFs. I couldn’t use the cloud service because it places all the security and privacy at the hands of Google, a company I could never trust with my data. I couldn’t restore locally because the device was completely locked down and couldn’t emulate a mass storage device. It was bricked for about a day.

In that time, I simply moved back to my iPad mini for notes. There, I could trust that my notes are backed up to a cloud that I control, with keys only I have access to, and encrypted in a way that ensures my total security and privacy. And best of all, my iPads in all the years I’ve used them have never bricked themselves overnight.

Magnetic Confusion

When my reMarkable first locked up, I thought it was just another case of the “magnetic confusion” issue I seemed to have earlier. My device started treating the docked pen like I was closing the lid of the folio. At times, I couldn’t unlock my tablet if my marker was attached to the side. It seemed like I’d have to do guesswork any time I couldn’t get the tablet to turn on. Usually removing the folio, moving the pen along the side a bit, or simply waiting a bit with everything disconnected, made the features start working as they should.

Unfortunately, the last time this happened it was just my device becoming unusable. Not that anyone should ever have to play a guessing game of which sensor isn’t functioning properly on their device.

Overall

The reMarkable Paper Pro Move is a good idea. A paper-feel tablet with e-ink display? Great! The marker is grippy and comfortable to use, I don’t even need a grip for it, the folio is well designed. The reMarkable Paper Pro Move feels nice to write on, it’s thin, lightweight, attractive, and has great battery life. However, it can’t be trusted to function properly because the software seems plagued with bugs and the remote backup is insecure.

If you never care that Google could potentially have access to all of your notes, and even leak them, then it might be a good device for you. But for now? My best option would be an iPad mini for the notes you want to catalog digitally and a simple A6 notebook for note-taking on the go. My preference is the Leuchtturm1917 A6 notebook, lined, with a soft cover and a third party pen loop large enough to fit my Kaweco Sport fountain pen. I can’t back it up, but, then again, I’ve never had a Leuchtturm refuse to open for me.