Is it? I think this will doom the device and the company. They exclude a lot while not being cheaper than competitors and they shove basic functionality into a subscription. And yet this notebook replacement doesn't even come with the pen in the box either.
Why would anyone spend $300+$80 for a Remarkable 2 when a Kobo Elipsa or Kindle Scribe is less and they are better at book reading, have features like a screen light and don't need a subscription to do things like cloud sync? Marginally better note taking feel?
Right. But as someone with a similar Boox device I find I get most of the benefits while still getting a lot more functionality. When I had an iPad I found it was a lot easier to just go hop on YouTube or Reddit or whatever than to read that paper or think about my problem. With the Boox device YouTube and Reddit are still miserable to use because low refresh rate B&W eInk but I still have the ability to read my Kindle library, access my OneDrive and use Libby. Most of the bad distractions are eliminated, the writing feel is good enough IMO and it cost about the same while having a better feature set.
I just don't understand paying $40 more than a Kindle Scribe to cut out maybe 1 or 2 minor distractions.
I'm honestly torn. I love the positive statement of minimalism.
But I think a product category has grown up around them and eaten some of the lunch that they decided not to eat. Even if they continue to differentiate themselves from other e-ink tablets, they are still in the same market category. So, competetively, if they differentiate on fewer features, they should probably do so at reduced cost.
Which puts them in a bind, because the hardware isn't simpler so the raw materials don't come cheaper. And even more irony, their software is custom, so it's not even cheaper to build or maintain than the Android based ones.
I think reMarkable as an org just isn't very good at software. They are continually adding functionality, and it's like really basic core stuff a lot of the time, but it just comes in at a _glacial_ pace. They are older than Boox's notepad type offering, and much older than Kindle Scribe, but they are already behind in software support and quality.
I have one, and the physical device is excellent, and the experience on it is great if you stay WAY in your lane (note taking on top of PDFs is probably the single strongest use case), but the software just always feels behind.
Why would anyone spend $300+$80 for a Remarkable 2 when a Kobo Elipsa or Kindle Scribe is less and they are better at book reading, have features like a screen light and don't need a subscription to do things like cloud sync? Marginally better note taking feel?