reMarkable 2

What hackers pick instead

• Amazon KindleA light, distraction-free e-reader that's easy on the eyes and lasts for years, though Amazon's locked-down ecosystem and dropped support for older models draw heavy criticism.222recommend
• Xteink X4A cheap, pocket-sized e-ink reader people carry everywhere to read instead of doomscrolling, though the stock firmware is clunky and many reflash it with open-source CrossPoint firmware.178recommend
• Kobo Aura OnePeople recommend it as a single-purpose e-reader that supports custom firmware, and owners say they found no clear upgrade among comparable devices.5recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 176 comments. Each links to the original.

1. the refresh-rate/software is slow enough that trying to "page through your notebook" to find specific notes is a grueling experience

   Mixed · Apr 2026 · in “Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom”

2. the fact that it is a tech gadget makes me more likely to write stuff down instead of believing I can remember everything

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2”

3. they are indeed slow for full page updates though remarkable seems to have done a lot of smarts for local updates

   Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Let's put Tailscale on a jailbroken Kindle”

4. The remarkable 2 is entirely separable from the cloud bullshit. You have root SSH access out of the box

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “71% Desk Workers Say Screen-Related Visual Discomfort Is Reducing Productivity”

5. so happy to have invested in a remarkable and ony taking (most of) my notes during classes with it

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “School cell phone bans and student achievement”

6. I noticed a few years ago that when I wrote down my notes I actually remembered them more easily.

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Writing by Hand is Good for your Brain”

7. for a device priced at a premium, there sure are lots of corners that feel like they were cut.

   Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Hacking on the ReMarkable 2”

8. I appreciate reMarkable for adhering to GPL and giving us trivial root access to the machines

   Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Remarkable Pro Colors”

9. I buy paperbacks, chop and scan them then use a reMarkable tablet + RCU to do the reading.

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Writing by Hand is Good for your Brain”

10. SSH/USB/HTTP/Unix with root access, instead of closed systems, hardware that you own 100%.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2”

11. I use my ReMarkable 2 for that, so it's pretty easy to import to desktop and run scripts.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Writing by Hand is Good for your Brain”

12. As long as you're fine with greyscale, the rm2 size is great for comics and textbooks.

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2”

13. has helped me immensely in retaining course material when taking notes vs my laptop

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Writing by Hand is Good for your Brain”

14. I've stuck with Kobo, Pocketbook, and reMarkable and have been happy with them.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th”

15. However, for reading technical docs or workshop docs in daylight, it's great.

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Quill OS: An open-source OS for Kobo's eReaders”

16. The tablet stopped being able to update just from sitting unused for a few years. That really decreases my faith, at least in reMarkable.

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2”

17. Leaving your Remarkable idle means losing your entire charge; it will never transition from awake-but-pretending-to-sleep to off.

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard”

18. My reMarkable is still stuck on a super old version (v3.3 I think), precisely because of xochitl being closed source

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Show HN: Edsger – A handwritten Clojure REPL for the reMarkable 2”

19. Any device that powers off fully functional should be able to power on fully functional barring hardware failure.

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2”

20. The USB C port is poorly designed and will break at the drop of the hat, leaving you unable to charge the thing.

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “Show HN: Edsger – A handwritten Clojure REPL for the reMarkable 2”

21. the ReMarkable 2 had a wildly inaccurate pen tip, but only on like the bottom 1/2 to maybe 1/3 of the screen

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Take Better Notes, by Hand”

22. I made notes, saved them. Only for the next morning to find my device out of battery and the notes missing.

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2”

23. mine didn't even start up, even after overnight charging, batteries have such short lives these days

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2”

24. the company never supported third party devs. They gave you root access but no relevant source code

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Remarkable Pro Colors”

25. a live syncing folder of images/pdfs that wasn't tied to the subscription remarkable walled garden

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Hacking on the ReMarkable 2”

26. The fact that this would have been impossible on more closed tablets, or indeed most mobile phones should show reMarkable in a positive light surely?

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2”

27. after using a Remarkable for years, I've wanted something that actually tried to make use of the "digital" part of digital paper

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “PlayBook: A Programmable Paper Notebook [video]”

28. absolutely love my reMarkable for those reasons, as well as not needing to manage the _annoying_ physical properties of paper

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “The Paper Computer”

29. I see it less like an iPad and more like a bottomless pit of scratch paper and printouts that I can carry more conveniently

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Apple Introduces MacBook Neo”

30. as this feature works perfectly fine in Airplane Mode, you don't need an internet connection to use your Remarkable.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Writing by Hand is Good for your Brain”

31. the only device that semi-worked for me was a reMarkable 2 tablet. But its software is too shitty to be useful.

    Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “Writing by Hand is Good for your Brain”

32. Loves the epaper and extra screen real estate and claims it's easier to pack around than the alphasmart.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Writerdeck.org”

33. It's selling point is a lack of features. There's no web browser, no Instagram, no Facebook or Slack.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Hacking on the ReMarkable 2”

34. I decided to use appliances (for example feature phone and Garmin navigation system and reMarkable)

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “The era of 15GB free Gmail storage is ending”

35. reMarkable software has its faults, but I keep coming back to them for the best-in-class hardware

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2”

36. You want an editor that also has an option for previewing the markup text in its formatted view.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “How Markdown Took over the World”

37. for my use case (reading textbooks and occasional note taking) the old version is perfectly fine

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2”

38. It's a cool product though and a lot of the code is open source or has open source alternatives

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Using e-ink tablet as monitor for Linux”

39. their software has flaws that break the update process after a few years of sitting unused

    Mixed · Aug 2026 · in “Reviving a four year old reMarkable 2”

40. where it wins, is that I can select an arbitrary region, and copy and paste and resize

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “The Paper Computer”