A reMarkable Tablet for Reading and Sketching

As an avid reader and digital enthusiast, E-readers have been one of my favourite pieces of tech. E-ink has seen much success over the years and bookworms all over have been getting onboard with their digital library. Replicating ink printed on a paper using technology was a direction for very specific use cases yet it has seen implementation across different industries. It was but a few days ago that I was wandering around my local 24-hour grocery store and noticed that the store’s shelf labels were not paper, they were digital E-ink tags that would update in real time. Times move fast and tech is making life a little more efficient at every opportunity.

E-readers are very popular and Amazon recently announced a new edition of their popular Kindle aimed at children. Education is a great sector to target and Amazon should see success if parents and children see benefit from the device. Across the waters on Norwegian soils, reMarkable is ‘sparking’ up interest after successfully raising a handsome $15 million for a new line of products, courtesy of Spark Capital. reMarkable is an E-ink writer rather than a tablet which allows for drawing, notes and pretty much anything else you could think of when holding a pen and paper. For students and frequent note takers, this is a valuable use case where the company has seen much success since its launch campaign a few years ago.

For the last half a decade, reMarkable have been refining their digital paper tablet that is able to convert handwritten notes into text. I’ve used various drawing tablets and stylus specific devices but none of these have ever come close to a pen and paper feel. Lag felt when making each stroke from stylus to screen has always been an annoying irk that has simply left me wanting to doodle now and then but never to take lengthy notes and written pieces. Using CANVAS, a ultra-low latency display, reMarkable are solving this issue and providing their users with an experience that is very much on par with pencil and paper. Great benefits are realised where the device captures the data input and is able to convert written words into typed text. I still recall writing pieces from lectures and taking pictures for later reference. On-the-fly conversion is an efficiency that can be taken advantage of for both time saving and organizational benefit.

It’s clear that the company have found a market where users can gain great value from such a device. The price point of the device is a little on the high side and perhaps a sweet spot in supply and price is still waiting to be discovered. Growth and projection have been sufficient enough to secure subsequent funding for future generations of the device and I look forward to seeing what else comes out from reMarkable’s development department.