Recommendations for e-ink tablets?
Last year, I took a promotion at work which meant I would be managing a few people and also involved with/overseeing a number of long term projects. As I've learned how to manage people, I've also learned that my previous methods for note taking are insufficient for what I'm doing and I'm losing track of things in my paper notebooks.
My employer has offered to buy me a new laptop but I'm actually pretty satisfied with my current laptop, so I've been doing some research into e-ink tablets which I think will help me stay more organized while also allowing me to take notes by hand (my preference) rather than typing things into a Google doc as I've been doing for my one on one meetings.
I don't have any experience with this technology and no way that I can get any hands on experience before buying something, so I'd love to hear from anyone who has used something like this, and especially if there's anything I need to consider that I haven't thought of.
My use cases:
- note taking / digital organization
- online reading (I run literary magazines and our submissions come in through an online system, and there's no convenient way to download them as pdfs to read offline, so having access to a web browser is important)
- access to Google Drive ideally so I can get to my notes from my desktop or laptop
- it'll be used at my desk or on my couch in full light, so no backlight or front light is not an issue
One of my coworkers has a remarkable tablet but he told me it's been less useful for him than he thought. In my research, this seems to be too limited for my uses.
The Onyx Boox Go 10.3 seems to be what would work best for me but I've also read a lot of warnings about their poor customer service so I'm a bit hesitant.
I would definitely recommend any of the Boox devices if you're keen on online functionality. They essentially operate like an android tablet which gives you a lot of flexibility.
You can buy them on a store like Amazon if you're concerned about returns and whatnot. That's what I did and how I managed to swap it with no trouble when I noticed a defect.
Another thumbs up for the BooX. I put on a custom launcher for my kids so they only had access to Libby and Hoopla.
Good suggestion for Amazon. Out of curiosity, how long after you bought yours did you notice the defect?
Within the first 3 weeks.
The defect itself was a tiny, tiny hole in the eink screen which let the light pass through and was distracting enough for me to ask for a return (I mostly read comics so a tiny bright white dot in the middle of the artwork is not nice). I'm not sure if it was there all along and it just took time to notice or if it developed as I used it, but once I saw it I couldn't unsee it, and believe me I tried.
This is actually a well known issue with eink, it's not boox specific. You can read about it here if you wanna know what to be on the lookout for.
Adding a word of caution for Boox: the device is lovely (I had the Boox Airnote 5), and the flexibility with being an android operating system is great.
Customer service is pretty awful though. When my Boox bricked (which in my case was my fault, liquid spill, can't really blame that part), it was over a week before they originally responded to my request, and another two before they finally gave me an RMA #. At that point I had already given up and got myself a Remarkable, and with my experience plus many many online complaints I didn't bother to send it in, as there's lots of posts on the internet of them essentially holding items hostage after raising the prices up way beyond their initial estimates for repairs, including free warranty repairs.
So: cool device, but if anything goes wrong expect slow and possibly no support.
Ah, yeah, this is what I've read from multiple people which has me concerned
I own a Remarkable Paper Pro and it's very good for my exact use case. That's taking notes, reading and marking up PDFs, and nothing else. If you need a web browser, you won't be happy here, but to me that's kind of the point.
Getting files on it is painless, though. It comes with a quite well designed app that drops itself into the share sheet on your phone, so you can send PDF or link directly to it. Set its primary Wifi network to the one sent by your phone in personal hotspot mode, and you essentially have it connected all the time.
There's also a first party Google Drive integration, although I've never used it.
Edit: I also want to point out that all of the alternatives, Kindle, Onyx and Supernote, are all using EMR pens, like the earlier Remarkable 2. I can't stand those pens, and really love the feeling of the new Paper Pro/Move/Pure pen on the display. It's as close as I've ever seen one of these devices get to a pen-on-paper feel, although it's still miles from the real thing.
I've heard people say that Remarkable feels closer to a pencil on paper, is that not true?
This nerd sniped me.
After extensive testing, I've determined that it feels most like a medium-blunt Faber Castell 9000 pencil on Harmony Enviro 300 Paper, on a wooden desk. That being said, this is the "closest" in terms of feel. It's still not identical, far from it. The digital pen has much less friction, albeit not as bad as, say, a Galaxy Note. Nowhere near. Better than an Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro, even.
I tested a Palomino Blackwing 602, a Mitsubishi Hi-Uni, a Faber Castell 9000 and a Faber Castell Grip 2001, Caran d'Ache Technograph 777, Staedler Mars Lumograph 100 and Staedler Noris 120, Dixon Ticonderoga #2. All Pencils are HB (#2).
In terms of paper, I tested Mondi ColorCopy 100 and 120, Ovol Enviro Harmony 100, 160 and 300, Mondi Nautilus 120 and 160, Antalis OLIN 160 and 200, and Mondi DNS 160.
Hope this helps (?)
I also got a Paper Pro, but my use case is primarily reading, with sketching and note-taking on the side. Not what OP asked for, but want to add my experience with these use cases:
For reading anything other than small PDFs, the native experience on the remarkable is awful: it auto-converts your Epubs to PDFs, bloating the size and hindering or outright removing the ability to resize text etc. There's basically no e-reader features (page count, bookmarks are a pain). If you're looking for an out-of-the-box reader, stay far away.
What is nice about the remarkable though, is that since it's built on Linux it has to have developer options, and as a result there's been a decently featured community built around hacking the device. It was not difficult (but somewhat involved) to get several new features added to my device, including a proper E-reader app in KOReader. It's still much more involved (adding books to my device involves SSH), but it does work and I've come to appreciate KOReader 's many granular options.
For note taking, great as you'd expect, and the writing feel is fantastic, much more natural than my previous two Kindle Scribe and Boox Airnote 5C. I don't pay for their subscription, but even for free I can easily backup my notes and drawings and have built-in Google drive sync too. The drawing tools aren't super diverse, but it has the important bits imo (layers, different tips). The coolest part is the "shader" tool that puts down slightly transparent color, which you can use to put many layers of different colors to create your own colors! I would still vastly prefer just a color wheel, but that doesn't seem to be a feature on any e-ink tablet for some reason, so this is the next best thing.
I have a Supernote Manta and it works great for note taking. I don't connect it to the internet for security reasons though, so I dont know how it is in that regard, but it supports sideloading any Android apks so should be fine in theory.
How is the battery life for you? That's one of the biggest complaints I've seen on that tablet
I have the Nomad so I can't comment on the Manta specifically, but I haven't had any issues with battery life. The software and community are excellent.
I use mine for daily tasks and meeting notes at work, tracking a handful of long-term projects (just me and two others so nothing crazy), personal writing and puzzles/games (plenty of fun and interesting PDFs around the internet!), and of course reading ebooks. I chose the Nomad to fit in my crossbody bag or cargo pants for site walks and inspections, but if I had more desk time the Manta would make more sense.
I don't connect mine to the internet either, but they just rolled out a private self-hosted cloud option if you don't want to use their servers. About once a month I plug into my computer and make a backup.
Haven't had any issues, lasts a pretty long time for me. But again, maybe enabling internet and sync would change that.
I can confirm that you should stay away from remarkable products. I have the remarkable paper pro and the writing experience is amazing, but everything else has been a pain.
I had a serious ghosting issue that required me to send it in to remarkable and get a replacement. I appreciate them replacing the device under warranty relatively pain free, but they made me send my device back first before sending a replacement. I had to wait for my tablet to be received by them before they even sent the replacement, so there was about a 3 week gap where I didn’t have any tablet.
Now, I’m having charging issues where when I try to charge with a USB-PD cable, it doesn’t actually charge. I have to use a standard USB cable connected to a 5V, 0.5A source to get the tablet to charge. This takes an incredibly long time to charge the tablet.
Everything about their hardware just feels a bit half baked even though it’s amazing when it works properly.
I have the Boox Go 7, an android E-ink tablet that is by far the best reading focused machine I have ever used.
With that said, my sister is staying with me over the summer and she has the Boox Note Air 4c tablet (Color) e-ink tablet for when she is taking notes for class + doing rounds as a veterinarian and the quality on that thing is incredible. The visual depth, the battery life, how smooth and perfect the stylus and note taking is, is just incredible and makes me incredibly jealous (don't tell her).
I've looked at the Note but I'm not sure I need color at all, and that seems like the biggest difference to me (unless I'm overlooking something)
For a slightly different suggestion:
It might be worth looking into the TCL Nxtpaper line of tablets. They aren't eink but they screens are spectacular with a nice textured surface and a few settings to turn them black and white or low-saturation. More enjoyable to read on than a regular LCD screen, less enjoyable than an eink but it solves a number of the eink issues, such as refresh rate and I've had some issues with PDFs/more niche files on eink.
The battery life is not as good as a eink reader but is still decent enough to last a couple days for me.
I like my Boox Go Color 7. I don't think it quite fits the bill of what you're looking for. It does support a stylus, and has Play Store access, but at 7" its primary use is reading with note taking as an extra. That said, I've been impressed enough with its capability in that department that I can see their other tablets geared more towards that use case being fantastic.
A word of caution about Android e-ink tablets: Having full Play Store access is awesome, but most apps are not designed with e-ink displays in mind, so they can be unpleasant to use. The custom Android mine runs lets you tweak some behaviors on a per-app basis to mitigate some unpleasantness, like changing the screen refresh mode or having it wait for animations to finish before updating the display, but these are largely band-aid solutions.
Thanks -- definitely not thinking of it as a tablet proper, really just need access to a web browser for one specific website and ideally access to my Google Drive
I haven't tried newer e-ink stylus devices, mostly because of potential for dropped support. I don't really trust the vendors to exist a year or two from now or to support their old devices properly. Amazon will be around, but device support might not be in the future.
Although an e-ink tablet might resemble paper a bit more, is it possible you could use an iPad or Samsung tablet? I have a Samsung Tab S10+ that I really like for handwritten notes.