the reMarkable 2, or the notebook i finally finished

There is a notebook on my shelf with "do not write in this one" written on it, in pen, by me, addressed to me. I have bought forty seven notebooks in my adult life and finished six, and one of them is reserved for emergencies of ego. So when a little norwegian company offered me a notebook that is also a single-purpose object, I, a person with no self control and a design salary, said yes.

the honest bit, ebay included

I bought mine used on ebay in fall 2024 for $260, marker included, from a seller in ohio whose listing photo showed it next to a lawnmower manual. It was the reMarkable 2, the 10.3 inch e ink tablet that launched in 2020 at $399 without the marker, which they still sell separately. Then I spent $8 on spare marker tips, because the tip erodes like pencil lead and lasts about as long as a good eraser phase, and $28 on a third party folio instead of their forty dollar one.

Plainly, the 2 is old in tablet years. The paper pro arrived in 2024 with color and a light, the smaller move came in 2025, and the paper pure replaced the 2 this may. I bought a discontinued-adjacent object on purpose and I would do it again, which is either a compliment or a diagnosis.

what i actually care about, in order of care

The paper feel is the whole product and it is as good as people say. The pen has almost no lag, the screen has drag, and the sound is a soft graphite scratch, like a pencil on toothy stock. Wired's verdict from launch was that it excels at handwritten notes and does not do much else well, and two years later I have nothing to add except an amen. I annotate a 60 page design spec in it and my hands are happy the whole time.

The "it does almost nothing" is a feature, and I resist it and love it. No apps, no browser worth using, no notifications, nothing. When I bring it to a meeting I bring a surface that can only hold my attention hostage. It is the only screen in my life that has never once shown me a red dot.

Handwriting to text conversion is better than it has any right to be. My handwriting is a rumor, and the tablet still converts most of it into searchable text on the phone app. When it misses, it misses beautifully. My note from march says "ask marcus about the copay flow" and also "ask marcus about the copay glow," and honestly either works at a healthcare startup.

Battery is weeks, real weeks. I charge it maybe every two to three weeks over usb-c, forget it exists, and find it at 60 percent like a friend who never needs anything. In a world where my phone begs nightly and my watch begs nightly, one object in my house is self sufficient, and I would like more objects like this.

The ecosystem is the part that will make you say hm. Storage on their cloud is limited on the free tier and a subscription unlocks the fuller sync and features, and the file system feels closed in a way my design brain notices. No backlight either, so at night it is a paperweight next to the kindle, which owns the night shift. I pay for the free tier and move files by cable like a pioneer.

10.3 inches is a size, not a spec. It is a4-adjacent, thin enough to slide into a tote, 403 grams, and it makes the ipad air feel like a toy in the best way for reading documents. Printing a pdf and marking it with a real-feeling pen turned out to be the thing I missed about print design, sold back to me as a screen.

the tangent with the pantone chips

I used to be a print designer, before the pivot, which most of you know. My favorite part was never the poster. It was the moment the proof came back from the shop and the whole studio smelled like warm toner and somebody said "the blue is right." There is no version of that in software, and I have made my peace, mostly, until I draw on this thing and the marker drags across the screen with actual friction, and for a second I am twenty two and checking registration on a business card order. The tablet is not trying to be my career. It is trying to be the proof copy of my own thoughts, and it keeps getting the blue right.

My dad saw it on the kitchen table at thanksgiving and asked if it was "a kindle for pen people." Kind of. Exactly. I have been trying to describe it for a year and that is it.

the soft landing

I keep meaning to try one of the community software projects, the ones the linux people maintain where the tablet becomes something weirder and more capable, but every time I read the instructions I

The truest thing: it is the first notebook I finished, and then finished again, and the pages never run out, and I did not know I needed that to be true somewhere in my life.

go fill a page with something bad

ava