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Comment by xwowsersx | Hacker News Reader

I have been looking at the Remarkable 2 and other devices in the category. My use case is taking notes on CS and maths, which both often require diagrams and other drawings. Can you speak to how well it works for something like this and how it compares to note-taking with a pen and paper?

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I have a ReMarkable 2 as well, and there are zero drawing tools or alike, if you want some graphical object, you just draw it.

You have a multitude of background-guides (lines, grids, etc.) for easier aligning.

The only features you have that you don't get with pen&paper are a layer system and a select tool which you can use for copy/paste/cut or move parts around.

Page management is pretty basic, but ok. You have notebooks which are folders of pages and you can change their order.

Are you able to achieve a split-screen-like functionality, so you can do scratch work while referencing the text?

Unfortunately no. Not even with the 3rd party modifications. Though there are some full GUI linux installs iirc.

It's a common question in the community Discord, and the official patches have been accelerating and implementing a lot of long-asked-for features (e.g. pinch to zoom), but nobody really knows what's on their roadmap. So hard to say if it'll ever get side-by-side.

Hopefully they add open sourcing the whole stack to their roadmap. That'd be the best thing they can do imo. I'm so eager for a device like this that I can 100% get behind.

My experience: iPad with a pencil is much better. But it is a personal choice in the end, I'd say.

I use the Remarkable 2 daily. It feels like writing in a notebook - the screen gives you just a little bit of drag like a mechanical pencil and paper would. Very good to use.

Kobo Elipsa appears as a very strong contender.

https://youtu.be/X9UNZqfHEtU

iPad Pro with Apple Pencil ... and the paper texture screen cover shown here last year.

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