Comment by michaelmior | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelmior | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for sharing. I got the reMarkable 1 pretty early and I've been debating ordering the reMarkable 2. I've heard almost exclusively good things about it, but right now I'm happy enough with the original device. I hadn't heard of Supernote until seeing this comment, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on when I think about upgrading.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say the RM2 has "pretty much none" when it comes to PDF reading and annotation capabilities. That's pretty much exclusively what I use my RM1 device for and it works great.

EDIT: Wow. Looked at the A5X and for the price compared to the RM2, it's very enticing. (Once you throw in the folio and the pen for the RM2, the A5X is comparable if not cheaper.) Since my old Kindle Keyboard died a while back, I haven't replaced it. Looks like the A5X can also read Kindle books which is a huge draw for me. Do you know if there's any API that allows me to write my own utilities to sync with the A5X? Specifically, I want to be able to send PDFs to the device programmatically that will be eventually synced the next time I use it.

> I'm not sure what you mean when you say the RM2 has "pretty much none" when it comes to PDF reading and annotation capabilities.

Well, all you can basically do is scribble within a PDF. The RM2 doesn't offer proper PDFs annotations and it doesn't even come close to the Supernote in terms of other useful features like bookmarking, digests, etc.

> EDIT: Wow. Looked at the A5X and for the price compared to the RM2, it's very enticing.

Yup, exactly. It seems more expensive upon first sight but it's actually a pretty good deal.

> Do you know if there's any API that allows me to write my own utilities to sync with the A5X? Specifically, I want to be able to send PDFs to the device programmatically that will be eventually synced the next time I use it.

This is exactly what I'm waiting for, too! My hope is that once they open up their platform I'll be able to install the Syncthing Android app and sync my Supernote with all my other devices over WiFi.

> RM2 doesn't offer proper PDFs annotations

This is true and I don't really mind that personally although having read up a bit more on the Supernote, the annotations it generates do seem much nicer.

> it's actually a pretty good deal

Pricing seems about the same really. Especially when you consider the bundle of table, folio, and pen together for each. I was disappointed to see that the standard Supernote pen does not include an eraser and the LAMY pen which does lacks the ceramic tip and instead requires replacing nibs just like the reMarkable pen.

> Pricing seems about the same really. Especially when you consider the bundle of table, folio, and pen together for each.

Fair enough. On the other hand, the Supernote comes with more features than the RM2 and gets updates much more frequently, so one would have to price that in, too.

> I was disappointed to see that the standard Supernote pen does not include an eraser and the LAMY pen which does lacks the ceramic tip and instead requires replacing nibs just like the reMarkable pen.

True. I hear that Ratta (the company behind the Supernote) is working on a pen with built-in eraser, though.

I recently saw that in a firmware update last month there was a new "gesture eraser" feature added. Supposedly if you hold two figures down elsewhere on the screen, then drawing turns into area erase. Curious if you've tried this and how well it works.

Oh, I hadn't heard of that feature yet! Thank you, I'll check it out and let you know!

This is going to sound like an odd question -- does the Supernote do too much? Or is it still simple to use?

I've been wavering on a RM2. I already have an iPad with the Paperlike screen cover. And I absolutely love writing on it. However, it has two downsides for me that keep me from using it all the time for notes:

1) It's still pretty heavy

2) It does too much. Seriously, I also have a keyboard for it, and there are tons of apps that I can use. This is the problem -- because it can do so much, I can't just use it for only notes.

I never heard of the Supernote until today, but it sounds great. I'm just worried that it might do a little too much? I'd love to have a note taking device that I used as much as I used to use a paper notebook.

I understand where you're coming from! Let me dodge your question by saying that, at least for me, the RM2 provides too little . Remarkable (the company) seems to pursuing Apple's vision here in that they're trying to avoid feature bloat – this I appreciate but I still think they should provide more than the most basic of features.

As for the Supernote, it comes with quite a few features I love but also a few ones (email, cloud sync, OCR) I don't really use. But that's fine as they never get in my way, so I don't really notice them.

One exception where the RM2 is (still?) superior feature-wise: Brush styles. The Supernote doesn't come with a lot of options here and is still missing a caligraphy pen and a pencil. It hasn't really bothered me but it might bother people who want to use their e-ink tablet for drawing.

Supernote does not do too much.

It has an excellent note taking app, a quirky way to create word docs, a calendar, ability to read and annotate pdf/epub, an email app (which I found impossible to set up), and kindle. That's it. You cannot install/side-load apps.

So, it is a perfect device for no distraction note taking.

I don't use those features but currently you can sync it using Ratta's own cloud (which is optional by the way, no obligation to create an account), dropbox or email. Otherwise you can copy files via USB. There's no APIs that i know off and currently the device is not hackable so there's no alternative software.

Thanks! Syncing via Dropbox would not be my first choice, but probably sufficient for my use case. I'll definitely have to keep an eye on this :)

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