Review: reMarkable Paper Pro writing tablet feels almost like paper, for a price

Enlarge / The reMarkable Paper Pro tablet. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Our main critique of Amazon’s Kindle Scribe when it launched in late 2022—and one that still mostly holds up—was that it felt like a big e-reader with writing functionality tacked on rather than a tablet designed specifically for writing and note-taking. Though Amazon’s hardware is arguably superior (and definitely more affordable), we definitely wanted software that was closer to what was available on the reMarkable 2 tablet.

The reMarkable 2 mostly doesn’t bother with e-reader features, though it does support EPUB and PDF documents; it’s focused almost entirely on the creation and organizing of notes in various formats. And now reMarkable (the company) is out with a new reMarkable (the tablet), one that attempts to catch up with and surpass Amazon’s hardware while still keeping the focus on writing.

Writing is fun

The new $579 reMarkable Paper Plus is an evolution of the previous design—slightly larger and heavier, but with a much bigger 11.8-inch display (up from 10.3 inches in the reMarkable 2) that also adds a front-light and color e-ink support. Where most color e-readers use E Ink’s Kaleido technology, which offers faster page refresh times but relatively dull, washed-out color, the reMarkable Paper Pro uses E Ink Gallery, which has richer color reproduction at the expense of refresh speed.