I was happy with the Remarkable 2 and when the Remarkable Pro came out I decided to go with a second one in order to be able to see two pages at once: one as a reference for reading and one for…
I was happy with the Remarkable 2 and when the Remarkable Pro came out I decided to go with a second one in order to be able to see two pages at once: one as a reference for reading and one for writing, as one would normally do with paper. Expensive approach, I know.
As an added bonus, the Pro comes with “color”. Very… very bland color. It’s a welcome addition nonetheless. Despite all the limitations, I came to appreciate the Pro for doodling way more than I expected. But when one exports the drawings for PC viewing, the files don’t match the colors as used on the tablet. This often breaks the original drawing intent, and got me annoyed.
I also realized at some point that I could display regular photos on it as a digital frame, despite not being something for which the Remarkable was intended for. Yet, the faded colors, limited palette along with the dithering really grew on me. The effect evokes more the feel of a fond memory to think about instead of just being another pretty picture to look at.
You can see how the image on the right looks when shown on a laptop screen compared to the Remarkable. If you click for a larger version, the dithering is pretty apparent.
I started to want a simple way to preview or display the color output of the tablet more accurately on screen, so that I could either export the doodles as I drew them or to adjust the images on a PC for better display on the tablet.
I made a basic palette of the real pen colors and a rough color profile that you can use with image editing software that support color proofing, such as GIMP. None of this is meant to be truly accurate, and something I tried for fun to be “better than nothing”.
The method I used isn’t very sophisticated, and definitely not the best: I took a few pictures with a DSLR camera of the tablet alongside a white reference card under medium, indirect sunlight in order to avoid glare. A full color card would have been nicer, but I didn’t have any at hand.
The backlight on the Remarkable Pro was kept at the medium setting to be a little bit more balanced as I use it frequently indoors.
I then compared the pictures on a calibrated LCD screen with the actual tablet as a quick visual check.
These are the main pen colors you can use on the Remarkable Pro. As you can see, “white” is downright gray and it is sadly not an artifact. It is significantly darker than the Remarkable 2, and also why I feel some amount of backlight is always required. But in turn, the backlight also shifts the black very slightly towards blue. This is intentionally made very obvious here through the background pairing. On the actual tablet you mostly don’t notice if you have some ambient lighting.
| Color | White | RM White | RM Black | Black | sRGB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Black | #3a4861 | ||||
| Gray | #7f7e82 | ||||
| White | #a8aaa7 | ||||
| Blue | #3c5483 | ||||
| Red | #866369 | ||||
| Green | #6e7860 | ||||
| Yellow | #a09e66 | ||||
| Cyan | #5f6d80 | ||||
| Magenta | #7f627b |
Since there are a discrete amount of colors on the tablet, a correct approach for color simulation would be to use the same conversion logic the Remarkable uses: probably auto-contrast followed by quantized dither with a fixed color palette. However this wouldn’t have been too convenient to use without also writing a viewer or plugin.
My aim was to have something usable enough to perform hue/contrast adjustment on an image with instant feedback. For example, to avoid detail in the important part of an image to be crushed by the limited palette, or to shift the hue enough to move it to a more pleasant dithered color rendition.
I thought of using argyll to build a color profile indirectly through a test chart as described here. I’m honestly surprised it worked as well as it did. The result is in downloadable files. The profile can be easily be used for soft-proofing and it gives best results in “perceptual” mode.
In GIMP you can go to “Image -> Color Management -> Soft-proof profile …” to load it first, then set the rendering intent to “perceptual” and finally also enable “View -> Color Management -> Proof colors”.
The results are not too far off. You can compare the original image with the same image with soft-proof, and again the same image with soft-proof and dithering which makes it very close to what you’d see as the final result.
LCD and Remarkable
Soft-proof
Soft-proof + dithering
There’s an unintended shift of blues towards violet in the result, but it didn’t bother me enough to attempt to repeat the process or tweak the profile. I repeat, due to how the image is processed on the tablet, using a color profile for simulation is really not the best idea.
These are a few extra images for comparison with the soft-proofs and the actual result. They are aligned so you can flip through back & forth when zoomed.
The last image is repeated twice to show the intended behavior I was aiming for: adjusting the image for improved presentation. The grass looks basically brown in the first version, whereas the second is more green (for the Remarkable Pro’s impression of green anyway). The medium field is also less crushed, showing overall more detail.
Originals
Soft-proof
Remarkable Pro
| Color Profile: | rmpro-v0.icc |
|---|---|
| GIMP Palette: | rmpro-palette.gpl |
Still here? Oh.. dang. Well, I’ll share some impressions I have with the Pro then. I paid the full hefty price, and I’ve been using both the Remarkable 2 since late 2021 and the Pro since 2024 so I have some entitled rants to go through.
My main complaint on the tablet is with the pen precision: we’re still far off to something which I would consider a pleasant alternative to a real pen. Since I did drafting, I can retrace an existing line with a mechanical pencil down to 0.1mm if needed, easily. On the Remarkable Pro instead, even attempting to nicely continue a stroke in my (poor) handwriting feels like a crapshoot. Somehow this seems worse on the Pro compared to the 2. This matches my experience with basically any pen digitizer I ever tried so far and I’m sad that we didn’t get any significant improvements in so many years. I also have a fairly light touch normally, and the pressure curve on either the Remarkable 2 or Pro requires me to press too much for comfort to get any “width” in any of the tools. This is normally adjustable via software on most painting programs, but not on the Remarkable. On the positive, on both versions the pen shapes are great: they’re just pens. The eraser is also precise and works as you’d expect. By comparison I cannot stand the default thick form factor of all Wacom Bamboo/Intuos digitizers.
The second biggest complaint would be the tablet being too dark. The Remarkable 2 “white” is still far from regular white paper. But the Pro is downright gray. While you can still use the 2 in dim or office light conditions without issues, the Pro requires to use some backlight almost at all times. The backlight itself is also blueish with notable bleed around the corners, which is the worst color shift I would have wanted to see indoors or for night reading. Aiming for a cool or warm white in the 3000-4000K territory would have been a better choice.
If you don’t care about color or night reading, the Remarkable 2 grayscale rendering is also superior. When reading a PDF, this has an effect on text rendering quality, especially visible on thin typefaces.
The display coating on both tablet versions is very good, but I’m still sometimes annoyed by glare with overhead lighting. Glare I wouldn’t have with a piece of paper.
I’m happy with the improvement in display responsiveness on the Pro. It really makes a difference when browsing through pages. For this reason I often find myself using the Pro as the “reference” tablet, and the 2 for writing.
Going towards the software side, on my idea of using both tablets together, I’m kind of disappointed that the notebook sync is not happening per-page but only when closing the notebook. As a result I cannot view my last written page on one as I edit the next: I need to go back by switching page on the same device, which is still too slow compared to a real notebook page flip and something I never truly got used to.
Over the years the writing interface has been kept minimalist and slowly improved. I’m very happy with this. Less is more.
What I really find lacking is the management interface in general. With virtual sheets I’d like to do what I cannot do with a true notebook: move everything around at will. I want to be able to quickly create a note wherever and then move it into the appropriate place later. Yet, right now, when you’re in the “grid view” of notebook, instead of being able to just drag something, I have to hold-to-select (which takes a good full second), then “Move”, then select a destination and then select “before or after”. This is ridiculous. It gets worse if you want to move a page from one notebook to another. Again: select the page, select move, then notice the “More …” menu on the top-left which contains a single action inside: “Move out”. Daaaamn, top notch user interface design right there. What about removing the “…” and just showing “Move out”? Or, god forbid, remove the useless step and add “Move out” directly besides “Move”? It’s not like we’re lacking space in the empty toolbar. This happens on the current 3.24 version of the software.
The mobile app is similarly clunky. No way to rearrange pages by dragging either. But at least they had the courtesy of showing the “Move out” action directly without the extra “More …” menu. I barely use the app anyway: on a phone the screen space is too cramped to do anything, and certainly if I have to drag a tablet around I’d carry the Remarkable directly, not an android one… right? This mobile app could have been skipped entirely for a better web interface instead.
The “my files” page through web doesn’t allow to do much besides organizing notebooks. No page previews. The only reason I use it for is to import PDFs because the Read on reMarkable browser extension only works on Chrome, and works poorly at that too.
This finally brings me to the desktop app, for which I have no clue because I’m on linux and so… no app. I was pretty attracted by the available OSS/linux ecosystem when I purchased the Remarkable 2 in late 2021, and it was one of the main driving reasons I decided to get it. Remy was great and did everything I wanted it to. Sadly, with each software upgrade, almost all these great OSS interfaces got broken. I’m lucky I’m still owning a Remarkable 2 where rmview works because I’m heavily using it for screen-sharing.
Unlocking the “Developer mode” nowadays also shows dumb scary warnings about reduced security too, while at the same time uploading all your documents on the cloud without end-to-end encryption.
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Comments
By cooperadymas 2026-02-0423:055 reply Since this thread is undoubtedly going to devolve into the usual whining about Remarkable that is entirely unrelated to the article at hand, and doesn't understand the intent of the devices, or is based on the entirely unnecessary subscription service, I'll add a positive contribution.
Since receiving the RMPP Move for Christmas, it has become my go-to daily device and other than the obtuse name, I am almost entirely pleased with it.
The writing experience is fantastic. I was skeptical of the pen change from the RM2 but it's been pleasant overall.
Its form-factor seems odd when you read the specs, but it works rather well in practice. It's easy to toss in a bag and go, and does fit in most of my pockets if I need to. It's much more convenient for traveling as an addition to the laptop.
It syncs with my RM2 with minimal issue with scale. Sometimes you have to zoom in but this is easy and natural.
The colors are a nice addition but hardly the main attraction.
The backlight makes it excellent for writing at morning or night in bed without disturbing the S.O..
The minimalism is a feature.
It does okay for PDFs, but that is far from its purpose.
I use it daily for notes, task management, and little printable logic games.
My only minor nits are: changing pens (for logic games mostly) takes more taps than on the RM2. The palm detection is somewhat lacking compared to the RM2 - it tends to change pages or change the zoom level unintentionally when writing on certain parts of the screen. This could be more about my usage of it. I really wish I could add links and/or a table of contents to notes on the device. I wish the zoom level would stick between pages or could be locked in for a document.
By svat 2026-02-051:25 Same, I already had a reMarkable tablet and got the reMarkable Paper Pro Move as an impulse purchase (ignoring its ridiculously high price) expecting to return it within the 50-day return window, but the fact that it fits in my pocket (or “most of my pockets”, as you said) has made a huge difference in how much I use it and how I spend my time. The sync is also nice (I think it works up to some limit even without a paid subscription, though it turned out I had one grandfathered in); I can basically send webpages I’m reading to it using the browser extension (at least on desktop). On mobile it’s a bit more annoying, but e.g. I’ve printed long newsletters from the Gmail to PDF (paper size A6) and imported the PDF onto it.
It’s perfectly adequate for writing on, but so far I’ve almost never used the fact that it has (a rudimentary set of) colours, though.
Are there pens that work like Lamy Al-Star EMR pen, with a button to switch tools, etc, on the RMPP? I have been using my RM2 for years. Backlight would be nice, but not sure it's worth the trade off for me.
By cooperadymas 2026-02-0513:43 AFAIK this does not exist yet for the RMPP. It would be a nice addition and I would guess that they release something eventually.
If you are generally happy with the RM2 then the form factor is probably the only reason to upgrade or swap that ends up being worth it. Most Best Buys carry Remarkables and offer an opportunity to feel it before deciding.
By AshamedCaptain 2026-02-0423:551 reply The Paper Pro switched to AES like every other recent tablet out there instead of keeping the Wacom EMR, and it definitely takes a hit in almost every metric you can think of. Like accuracy, as TFA complains.
I frankly _cannot_ recommend the Paper Pro if you already have the 2. It is way too expensive for something that is almost a sidestep instead of an upgrade.
By functionmouse 2026-02-052:151 reply AES ruined tabputers and it makes me so sad
By jjtheblunt 2026-02-0517:071 reply What's AES in this context? (i think of advanced encryption standard)
Is it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_electronic_signature ?
By jjtheblunt 2026-02-0521:42 thanks!
By nja 2026-02-0518:36 I have been wanting a pocket-notebook-size tablet since the day I got my RM2. I've been considering the Move since it came out, but the stylus change was worrying me, and the price is pretty high -- I feel like I would have bought release day if they offered a lower priced monochrome one in the same form factor, especially if it used the RM2 stylus...
It's encouraging to hear you have had a good experience with it. Maybe I'll grab one if they ever go on sale!
Is there anything beyond your minor nits that you would caution someone like me about before buying?
Needs a subscription for sync, the sync system is pretty basic, the web/desktop experience is poor, no support for things like Google Drive or other cloud storage, and generally very limited software experience on the device.
(This is not to say I fully agree with these, but these are the criticisms I see a lot online)
By bryanrasmussen 2026-02-053:261 reply my only complaint has always been that the contrast between screen color and text color is worse than in other eInk devices and as a consequence need to either wear reading glasses which I tend not to like over time, or use it in direct light, which drastically decreases the utility.
Often when I say this on HN I get told reading is not the purpose of the device, which is really strange since it is one of the mentioned purposes of the device on their site, and also because I just generally find people who don't read what they're writing, or read the text they are making notes in, to be strange people.
on edit: Of course mine is from a few years ago, and have not purchased another for the reasons given above, but have looked at it in the store and it didn't seem to be improved, and obviously it is not the Pro Move under discussion here.
By ainch 2026-02-0511:18 As a user that doesn't pay for the subscription, I use their Google Drive integration quite often. I believe they support Dropbox and OneDrive too, no?
By criddell 2026-02-0514:08 I always complain about the size. I want a 13" so I can read and mark up full-size PDFs (I'm normally dealing with A4 or Letter size documents).
I was actually thinking about buying Remarkable Paper Pro after Christmas. Not necessarily for the colors but just to have a portable e-ink tablet to scribble on and organize myself a bit better. In the end, I went with Supernote Nomad (A6X2). The build quality is not as good, the display does not have colors, and there is no backlight. But, for my use cases, it fits perfectly. I have found myself taking notes left and right, mostly during meetings.
What swayed me in the end was the software and repairability. Supernote actually released their syncing backend as a Docker image, so I can just roll my own and never have to touch any third-party cloud. All of my notes just live as normal files on my home server. The repairability is similarly open - Supernote sells all the replacement parts on their website. I guess this is the reason the build is not as nice as any Remarkable. But, for me, this sacrifice is worth it, given I plan to use the tablet as long as it can take me.
Bit late reMarkable is running Linux and the community is providing tools like https://github.com/ddvk/rmfakecloud
That's a pretty cool project. But with it living in the grey area of not being really supported by Remarkable, I would be skeptical if Remarkable does not block it down the line.
Supernote has full-fledged Linux support in the official pipeline. It has gotten postponed quite recently, so the devices still run on their customized Android distribution only. But even in the current state, I feel more ownership over my HW and SW than I would with Remarkable.
By utopiah 2026-02-0516:27 It's been about 6 years so I doubt it.
If they do though then I won't update and won't buy the next model. I can imagine them doing it for a new model for already sold one that'd be a first.
FWIW if you really want ownership and don't care much for weight the PineNote is probably the best our there, able to run Android (with root) but also Linux proper.
By okuntilnow 2026-02-050:002 reply The good thing about the Remarkable is that it’s basically just a Linux machine and you have root access. There’s a great community of folk building extra functionality and tools / apps for it.
I did some minor research, I've only found that I can ssh into it in Dev Mode. Is there a way to run a fullblown nice terminal with keyboard over bluetooth and mosh? I'm dreaming of e-ink portable terminal.
By utopiah 2026-02-0510:28 Yep, my notes https://fabien.benetou.fr/Tools/Eink#remarkable on the topic.
By GeorgeHahn 2026-02-051:492 reply Is that true on the pro? I trialed one maybe a year ago and got the impression that the company had stopped supporting third party devs.
By caseyf 2026-02-0513:58 By gpm 2026-02-052:25 I got a remarkable 2 roughly when it was released and as far as I can tell the company never supported third party devs. They gave you root access but no relevant source code...
Really quite disappointing, the device could have been a lot more useful with even a tiny bit of energy spent releasing source code for things they already developed.
