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Comment by devindotcom | Hacker News Reader

I have the 2 right here and it's better than the first. There's still a perceptible lag (that is, it isn't imperceptible) but it's better than anything else out there including other eink devices (I also have a Boox here that I compared it to, and the Sony DPT before it).

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In terms of latency, I have trouble believing it's better than the newer iPad Pros (120Hz screen, 240Hz pencil scan).

I have an iPad Pro and the deal breaker is using the pencil over glass.

I wouldn't mind a little latency if they get the paper feel right.

Couldn't the paper feel be solved by a simple screen overlay on an iPad? Something thin enough to give the texture? Almost like an anti-glare screen protector. I'll admit, the pencil on glass just doesn't feel right. I'd rather some perceptible drag/friction. It also helps me reduce errors as my drawing and writing styles are abysmal so I need something to keep some traction.

a < $10 matte screen protector completely changes the experience on an iPad, it is a necessity if you have the Pencil

I tried 2 different ones but didn't like that either.

I have an iPad pro 11" (the last gen) and it's in par with professional drawing tablets from Wacom in terms of feel on glass, and that's solveable with a $15 screen protector.

It also has access to procreate or Adobe fresco if you're still up to getting abused by Adobe as opposed to whatever remarkable can come up with. It seems odd to be coming down on the iPad pro for drawing/writing - it's a lot of money but the experience is on par with much more expensive Wacom devices.

Yeah but it's also a locked ecosystem, so no thanks. The nice thing about a device like this is that it's purpose built: it can basically do one thing, and claims it does it well.

An ipad is a walled garden of expensive hardware and software that does everything, at a high price. Those are completely different worlds, and if we're talking "it costs a lot of dollars", I already own a universal tablet monitor. I don't need something that does less and costs more.

I have Sony's Digital Paper. It is beyond awesome. I notice no lag while writing, and yes it does feel like writing on paper. Is there some way maybe you can measure the difference in what you are observing, lag-wise? Lag has never been an issue I even perceive with Digital Paper. It 'just works'.

I had the DPT too and the remarkable 1 was noticeably better, and the 2 is noticeably better than the 1. I put some gifs in this article but it's really easier to feel than see.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/05/sony-and-remarkables-dueli...

generally the approach is to point a camera at it and record yourself under real world conditions writing and drawing. For instance, if a fast stroke starts to show up by the time you're already done drawing it, that's problematic latency, even if you personally don't notice.

would you be willing to actually point a camera at your device and show what the latency and precision is while writing and drawing? So far I haven't found a single device that doesn't start showing a fast stroke on the screen before I'm already done drawing it.

Just to confirm, when you say, "better than anything else out there," that includes the latest generation of iPad Pro with Apple Pencil 2, correct?

Is iPad Pro an e-ink device?

The iPad Pro is not an e-Ink device, however since the OP was speaking of it being better than anything else out there _including other eink devices_, I wanted to confirm that "anything else" refers to devices like the current generation of iPad Pro.

Of course not. That wouldn't be an apple-to-apple comparison.

In what way? I find the lag on the iPad to be annoying enough that I've never bothered with it. I've never found any of the E-Ink devices to come close enough to paper to make me consider giving up paper notebooks - Though it's been about 3 years since I last checked them out.

Have you tried the current generation of iPad Pro? They claim a 9ms lag, and coupled with their technology for up-rezzing refresh rate and touch sensitivity when using the Pencil, it's quite a substantial improvement in experience.

That being said, the iPad Pro is clearly a high-end general-purpose device, with a price to match. The device that fits our pocketbook is always superior to the device that is amazing, but remains in a box in the manufacturer's shop because we can't justify the price.

It's better than any e-ink device for sure and it's competitive with the iPad Pro. I think the latter now has somewhere around 15-20ms of lag? So it's close.

But honestly they're different devices. Similar in many ways of course but different too. I don't think it's really apples to apples.

IpadOS cut pencil latency to 9ms.

That number was calculated by taking a high-speed camera and watching how long it took the line to catch up with the pencil. They cheat on the metric by juicing up the prediction. You can see this by flicking the pencil and then picking it up -- the line will go farther than you intended. And if you change directions, the line will take more than 9ms to catch up with you.

Do you normally draw or write by flicking the pencil? Prediction that increases the speed usefully is not cheating

Apple are cheating the 9ms lag measurement the way speculative execution and aggressive cache population are cheating performance benchmarks.

In general, this point makes me think of computational photography. If you have extra computing power, you can do things that are synthetic, but nevertheless real enough to deliver satisfaction, in real time.

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