It is thin. Like, impossibly thin. When you first pick up the reMarkable 2 note taking tablet, you expect it to bend or snap under the slightest pressure, but it doesn't. It’s a weird sensation. You’re holding a device that feels like a piece of stationery from a sci-fi movie set.
Honestly, the tech world moves fast, and in 2026, we are surrounded by foldable screens and augmented reality glasses that try to do everything at once. But this slab of glass and aluminum does basically one thing. It lets you write. That’s it. And for a specific group of people—writers, engineers, distracted executives—that’s exactly why it hasn't been tossed into the junk drawer of obsolete gadgets.
Most people get it wrong. They compare this to an iPad Pro or a Samsung Galaxy Tab. That's a mistake. Comparing a reMarkable to an iPad is like comparing a high-end fountain pen to a Swiss Army knife. Sure, the knife can cut things and open wine bottles, but if you want to write a long-form journal entry, you want the pen.
The Paper-Like Lie (That is Actually True)
Every company claims their screen feels like paper. They usually lie. Usually, you’re just dragging a plastic nib across a piece of Gorilla Glass, and it feels like a hockey puck on ice. Click, click, click. It's annoying.
The reMarkable 2 note taking tablet uses a proprietary CANVAS display. It’s an E-Ink surface, but they’ve textured it to have a specific amount of friction. When you use the Marker Plus, there is a tactile "grab." You can hear the scratch. It sounds like a pencil on a heavy-duty sketchpad. It’s satisfying in a way that’s hard to describe until you’ve actually tried to sketch a floor plan or map out a project timeline on it.
Latency is the Secret Sauce
If there is even a millisecond of delay between your hand moving and the ink appearing, your brain hates it. You feel it. It’s called "latency."
The reMarkable 2 nailed this early on with a 21ms latency. While some newer tablets have technically faster refresh rates on paper, the way the E-Ink particles physically move in the reMarkable display makes the "ink" feel like it’s flowing out of the pen tip rather than being rendered by a processor. It’s visceral.
Distraction is the Enemy
We live in a world of pings. Notifications. Red bubbles. "Click here to see who liked your photo." It's exhausting.
The reMarkable 2 note taking tablet has no browser. It has no email app. There is no App Store. You can’t check Twitter (or X, or whatever it’s called this week). You can’t watch Netflix. For some, this makes the $300+ price tag seem insane. "Why would I pay more for something that does less?"
Because focus is expensive now.
When you open a notebook on this device, you are alone with your thoughts. There is a "Read on reMarkable" Google Chrome extension that lets you send long-form articles to the tablet. This is a game changer for researchers. You find a 5,000-word deep dive on the history of lithium mining, click the button, and five seconds later, it’s on your tablet in a clean, black-and-white format. You can underline, highlight, and scribble in the margins without a single popup ad interrupting your flow.
It turns the internet into a library instead of a circus.
Build Quality and the "Marker" Situation
Let's talk about the hardware because it’s honestly stunning. It’s 4.7mm thick. It’s the thinnest tablet on the market. The left side has a greyish "spine" that makes it look like a physical notebook. It feels premium.
But there’s a catch.
The Marker Plus—the one with the built-in eraser—is expensive. If you lose it, you’re out nearly a hundred bucks. And the nibs wear down. Since the screen is textured to feel like paper, it acts like sandpaper on the plastic nib. Depending on how hard you press, you’ll be swapping those nibs out every few months. It's a "razor and blade" business model that some people find frustrating.
However, the experience of flipping the pen over to erase something—no clicking buttons, no selecting tools in a menu—is so intuitive that it’s hard to go back to a standard stylus.
Where It Sorta Falls Short
I’m not going to sit here and tell you it’s perfect. It isn't.
If you do a lot of heavy PDF manipulation, the 1GHz dual-core processor can feel a bit sluggish. When you’re turning pages in a massive 500-page technical manual, there’s a slight ghosting effect as the E-Ink refreshes. It’s the nature of the technology, but if you’re used to the 120Hz refresh rate of a modern smartphone, it will feel like you’ve stepped back in time.
And then there’s the light. Or rather, the lack of it.
The reMarkable 2 note taking tablet does not have a backlight. Or a front light. If you want to write in bed while your partner is sleeping, you need a lamp. The company argues that adding a light layer would increase the distance between the pen tip and the ink, ruining the writing feel. They might be right, but it’s still a bummer when you’re on a dimly lit flight and realize you can’t see your notes.
The Connect Subscription
For a while, reMarkable locked a lot of features behind a monthly paywall called "Connect." They took a lot of heat for it. Thankfully, they’ve walked a lot of that back. You now get cloud sync and Google Drive/Dropbox/OneDrive integration without needing a top-tier subscription, but to get the unlimited cloud storage and some of the handwriting-to-text features, you still have to fork over a few dollars a month.
Is it worth it?
If you’re using this for business and need your notes to show up on your desktop app instantly, yeah. If you’re just sketching for fun, probably not.
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Real World Use: The "Notebook" Killer?
I know a structural engineer who replaced three years' worth of physical Moleskine notebooks with one reMarkable. He uses the "Layers" feature to sketch over blueprints. He puts the blueprint on Layer 1, turns the opacity down, and then draws his annotations on Layer 2. When he’s done, he hides the blueprint and just sends the notes to his team.
That’s a workflow you can’t do on paper.
Also, the handwriting-to-text conversion is surprisingly accurate. Even if your handwriting looks like a doctor’s prescription written during an earthquake, the AI (which is actually powered by MyScript) does a decent job of turning it into a clean email or Word doc. It’s not 100%—nothing is—but it’s close enough that you aren't spending hours fixing typos.
Comparing the Competition
By 2026, the market has filled up. You’ve got the Kindle Scribe, the Boox tablets, and the Supernote.
- Kindle Scribe: It has a light. It’s great for reading books. But the writing software is basic. It feels like an afterthought.
- Boox: These run full Android. You can install Spotify and Gmail. But then you’re back to the "ping" problem. The interface is also incredibly cluttered.
- Supernote: This is the real rival. They use a ceramic nib that never wears out, and the screen feels more like writing with a gel pen on a silicone mat. It’s a different vibe.
The reMarkable 2 note taking tablet stays in the lead because of its "Zen" approach. The software is minimalist. The UI stays out of your way. There are no "settings" to get lost in. You just pick it up and write.
Why It Still Matters
In an era of AI-generated everything, there is something deeply human about handwriting. It helps you remember things better. Multiple studies—like the one from the University of Tokyo published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience—suggest that the complex spatial and tactile information associated with writing by hand on physical (or paper-like) surfaces leads to better memory retrieval.
You aren't just typing characters; you're creating a map of your thoughts.
The reMarkable 2 is for the person who wants to escape the digital noise but still needs their notes to be searchable and shareable. It’s for the person who misses the feel of paper but hates the clutter of 20 half-filled notebooks on their shelf.
Actionable Insights for New Users
If you’ve just picked one up or are thinking about it, here is how to actually make it work for you:
- Organize by Metadata: Don't just make a million notebooks. Use the "Tags" feature. It’s much faster to find a "Meeting" tag across ten different notebooks than it is to dig through folders.
- The "Send to Tablet" Hack: Use the mobile app to upload PDFs of recipes or sheet music. It’s the perfect size for a music stand or a kitchen counter, and the screen doesn't turn off or time out like a phone does.
- Custom Templates: You can actually upload your own PNGs to use as templates. If you have a specific way you like to track your habits or your daily "To-Do" list, design it in Canva, upload it, and set it as your default page background.
- Nibs Matter: If you feel the writing getting "mushy," change the nib. A fresh nib makes it feel like a brand-new device. Don't try to squeeze every last second out of a flat tip.
- Airplane Mode: If you really want to save battery, keep it in airplane mode. The battery can last for nearly two weeks if you aren't constantly pinging the Wi-Fi for cloud syncs.
The reMarkable 2 isn't a computer. It's a digital upgrade to a 5,000-year-old technology. If you treat it like a laptop, you’ll be disappointed. If you treat it like a stack of paper that never runs out, it might be the best piece of tech you ever buy.