A comparison of (mostly) eInk tablets

After seeing this new Kickstarter project I’ve decided to write down my experience with eInk tablets mostly so that I can track my own path to my current conclusions. Also, maybe it helps some people out there as well.

As a caveat, this is my own personal experience with eInk devices. I own(ed) everything I write about so everything is first-hand. Also, it’s about *my* experience and my general feel about these eInk devices serve my workflows. I don’t intend to delve into technical aspects, you can find the specs online easy enough — it’s more about usability for no-nonsense needs.

To start, my needs were fairly straightforward:

• I wanted an eInk tablet so that I can have a distraction free device which either can’t run various apps altogether or they’re unusable on this screen so that I can do some things temptation free. Software locks are easy to circumvent and I’d prefer that temptation isn’t there altogether.
• My main activity is obviously reading. I have a 6' Kindle and I like it but I also want to write down things. I want to be able to handle ePUBs and as a bonus maybe comic formats (cbz/ cbr).
• I also want the ability to listen to audiobooks (preferrably over bluetooth). This is not mandatory, more like a nice-to-have.
• I want to be able to take notes and have those notes OCR’ed into digital files.
• I want to be able to edit PDFs, write on PDFs and sign PDFs. As such I want to have easy ways to get PDFs on and off the device using existing tools like online storage/email/etc.
• I do have a large Kindle connection so reading it off the Kindle app (or natively, Amazon devices) is a must.
• An illuminated display with temperature control for night reading would be a bonus.

Given the above, let’s have a look!

Remarkable 2

It’s impossible not to start with the elephant in the room. While not the first note-taking eInk device, it’s probably the most well known and for good reason. It’s still the best experience. It’s light, it feels amazing, the pen is perfect.

Its main downside is that everything useful is subscription based. There’s no easy way to get files off storage and edit it in-place.

Disclosure: the Remarkable 2 is my wife’s current device.

Pros:

• lightweight
• perfect look and feel
• templating for note-taking
• good OCR

Cons:

• everything useful is subscription based
• can’t listen to audiobooks
• can’t read Kindle
• to sign a document, I need to send it by email, download it, edit it, save it and then send it back
• no backlight

Kindle Scribe

I’ll make no secret, Scribe is my current device. The writing experience is close to the Remarkable 2 (while OCR seems better) and I also love the pen. It doesn’t have much integration with anything (at least right now) but the basics are covered.

Being able to sign documents from external sources is also awkward but less awkward than in the case of Onyx devices. I still need to send a doc to my Kindle address but making the doc available is automatic and once I’ve edited it and can click to send it back (no need to save it specifically and the go to a different app to send it).

Pros:

• Kindle reading (and generally eBook reading) experience is second to none
• backlight with temperature control is amazing
• great writing experience
• great OCR capabilities
• can read any format I’m interested in and can listen to audiobooks via bluetooth
• Pro pen has tilt sensitivity

Cons:

• note-taking is quite basic
• doesn’t integrate with cloud storage providers
• generally limited possibilities to expand functionalities (at least with Remarkable 2 you can pay to get to do more) though it hasn’t bothered me too much

Onyx Boox

I’m throwing the Onyx ecosystem here because I’ve owned 2 devices in the past and I still have an Air 2 10' that sits here (because I broke the pen). I do this because I feel that the writing experience doesn’t vary much between current devices (sure, it’s different if you ever had one of the first ones).

It’s Android on eInk table and that’s both a pro and a con. The obvious “pro” is that you can install apps from Play Store. Anything goes though obviously not everything will work well on an eInk screen. The main con is that this puts a load on the system as Android is resource-hungry. These devices need a few gigs of RAM and decent CPUs to work (the Scribe has 1Gb of RAM for example).

Also, the fact that you can install apps doesn’t mean that your life will be much easier. For example I found that it’s quite a pain to sign a PDF that I get on mail (nevermind WhatsApp). I need to download it on the device specifically (I can’t just click download from Gmail for example, I need to save to a user folder). After editing, I need to save an edited copy somewhere then go to the Google app and attach it to an email to send it to myself. There’s no way to edit and save in-place on something like Google Drive.

Pros:

• has Android — so access to loads of apps
• basic note-taking is quite good, the actual writing experience may vary (on the Air 2, the most recent Onyx device I have, it’s nowhere near Scribe or Remarkable)
• OCR is good, but mileage may vary
• can do anything, given that it can install Kindle app or various audiobook players
• some devices have backlight and others have it with temperature control

Cons:

• Android is quite slow overall
• support is very very limited — don’t expect to be able to upgrade the underlying Android version (maybe one version for top-of-the-line devices)
• the fact that you can install Kindle app doesn’t mean your experience will be great. Kindle is one of the apps that works reasonably well on Onyx devices but it’s still slow and feels clunky. Kindle books have Scribe versions that are optimised for eInk but the Kindle app won’t use those versions on Onyx and the result may not be great
• you need to tinker a lot to discover which apps work well and which don’t

Not eInk: Apple iPad Air 5

Why? Because I have one and …. why not?

Ok, it’s not really up to par given my requirements but … I do like it. Its main reason of being in my bag is that it plays well in the Apple ecosystem which I use. The writing experience is also one of the best there is and the pen is definitely premium.

But it’s not a reading device, not for night time anyway (and it’s not particularly easy on the eyes during the day either, but still better than a phone and more practical for this than a laptop).

I’m mentioning it here (without doing a pros/cons) because it’s the only device that does reasonable OCR with my chinese handwriting as well as because I do hope that eInk table makers will invest more time in making their own usable integrations that work natively. For example, the worst offender is Onyx because they think they can just throw Android on a device and some basic apps they made to work well and everyone’s happy (spoiler: I won’t be happy until there will be a usable eBook reader that can do Kindle) forgetting that not every publisher in Play Store will make an eInk compatible version.

Sure, Amazon will do their own thing on their device but the fact that Remarkable puts the most useful features behind a subscription that you need to consider on top of an already expensive device leaves the Scribe as the eInk which is good enough (for now).