I've dabbled with taking handwritten notes before, usually using some tablet with a pen. It's something I'd do when on the road and wanted something I could easily hold in one hand. When ReMarkable gave me the Paper Pro for review, it changed everything.

In the month that I've used it, I've started taking handwritten notes at my desk at home. It's delightful. And that switch from typed notes to handwritten came organically, meaning I didn't force myself to do it more just because I'm testing a product.

There are a lot of benefits to it over a tablet, such as the fact that it feels completely natural, like writing with a pencil on a piece of paper. Moreover, it's much lighter than a tablet, which obviously has beefier internals because the product is meant to do other things. This product is meant to do one thing, but do it well.

The biggest drawback is that it doesn't integrate with other note-taking services, so if you're invested in OneNote, you're not anymore. The shocking thing was that I ended up completely willing to make this change.

ReMarkable provided XDA with a sample of the Paper Pro for review. It did not have any input on the contents of this article.

ReMarkable Paper Pro pricing and availability

The ReMarkable Paper Pro is available now, starting at $579, but you're going to need to spend more than that. For that price, it comes with the Marker, or you can get the Marker Plus for $50 more. The latter has an eraser on one end, and it's worth it.

And then you'll want a cover. The Folio cover is $89 extra as a bundle, or the Type Folio (it has a keyboard) is $229.

One thing that's pretty neat is that if you buy it from ReMarkable, you can return it within 100 days, as part of its satisfaction guarantee. It's a pretty cool idea, considering that this product isn't cheap, and it's different enough from other things on the market that you might be hesitant to buy one. So if you don't like it, you can send it back for a full refund.

If the color display isn't valuable to you, you can always check out the ReMarkable 2, which starts at $399.

I really expected to hate it, but I don't

Hey, want to buy a $600 device that only takes notes and doesn't work with the services you use?

I've always liked the idea of a note-taking device like this, and it's certainly not the only one that exists. Lenovo made the Smart Paper, which was oddly never sold in the US. And of course, Amazon has the Kindle Scribe. But with a Kindle, you can also read books on it. With a color E Ink display, was the ReMarkable Paper Pro going to make me realize my dream of having a device with great battery life that I can use to read comic books and take notes? Well, no, not even close.

The Paper Pro does support PDF and EPUB formats, so you could read something on it if you wanted to, but ultimately, this is a note-taking device. It's expensive, and it doesn't integrate with whichever note-taking service you're currently using. It does integrate with OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox, but that's strictly to import files.

When ReMarkable handed me the device, I fully expected to be impressed by the hardware and the experience provided, but thought that it would in no way be a product I'd want to incorporate into my work flow.

Boy, was I wrong. One of the fun things about reviewing products is trying to use new features in day-to-day life. That feature on that device that sounds ridiculous, and probably is? Yes, I've attempted to integrate that into how I work. So naturally, I took this product everywhere with me, and I used it for everything I could.

Then, it went from being something I had to use to being something I wanted to use. When Microsoft introduced the Slim Pen 2 with its Surface products, it added haptics to the pen to make it feel more like writing on paper. The ReMarkable Paper Pro actually does feel like writing on paper, with a pencil. It's incredible, and everything about it just feels natural.

The ReMarkable Paper Pro organically became something I want to use all the time.

I use it at home, if I have a thought about something I want to bring up in a meeting while sitting on the couch. I use it on the road, taking notes in presentations. I even use it in meetings, at my computer, where I've always typed notes in OneNote.

I'm just raving at this point, but imagine that. You, like me, probably have a note-taking service that you use that you're very invested in. It has years of your notes, and it's the platform you're familiar with. When you have a relationship with a product like that, it's really tough to let go. Here I am, testing a product, and I just organically gravitated away from that service.

The software is simple, but immersive

It's also weirdly buggy with certain things

The software on the device is really simple. Swiping down from the top brings you to a main screen with what's essentially a pretty file structure. You'll see folders, notebooks, and individual notes. Swiping down from the top-right gets you to a few quick settings. It takes a little getting used to, since there's no obvious way to go back to the home screen from a note page, but once you get it, it's fine.

Using it to take notes

Using the Paper Pro to take notes is a delightful experience. When you're in a page, there's a slim toolbar along the left side. At the top, is a circular icon that you can tap to hide the sidebar, leaving only that button in case you want to bring it back.

Then there are buttons for pen selection and highlighter selection, also allowing you to choose one of nine colors (six for highlighters, for whatever reason). Then, there are buttons for adding standard text, erasing, and for selecting.

Note that ReMarkable sells a keyboard cover, so you don't necessarily have to use the on-screen keyboard for adding printed text. Also, I didn't use the eraser button at all, because ReMarkable included the Marker Plus, which has an eraser on the back. It's $50 extra, but I highly recommend it. It's much more seamless to just be able to scribble out notes to erase them.

It's a seamless, distraction-free, note-taking experience.

On the bottom of the sidebar, there are buttons for exiting the page to go to the notebook (not the home page, which you need to swipe from the top for), add tags to the page, create layers, share, and change some additional settings.

And that's it. That's the whole UI. This thing is designed to be a note-taker, and not get in your way. Unlike the OneNote app, there's no directory of notebooks taking up a portion of the screen real estate.

The desktop app

ReMarkable has apps available for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. There's a strange sign-in process where instead of just signing in through the app, it directs you to a webpage to sign in, and then you get a code to copy into it. I mostly used the desktop app, which is totally different from the tablet experience.

There's a navigation bar along the left side for 'My files', and then filters for notebooks, PDFs, ebooks, favorites, and tags. I really didn't use this for note-taking very much, but more for referencing notes I took on the Paper Pro.

One thing that the desktop app is great for is importing files. There are a variety of ways to get PDF and EPUB files onto a ReMarkable device, including a wired connection and via cloud storage integration, but dropping them into the desktop app is the easiest.

Certain things need work

The biggest issue that I've found is that the ReMarkable Paper Pro can't connect to public Wi-Fi, or more specifically, any Wi-Fi network that requires launching a browser window for a sign-in process. This is a big pain point if you're taking the device on-the-go, as I did. I used it to take notes during Valnet's Quarterly Business Review. For the record, it was the perfect device for that, allowing me a distraction-free experience where I could take notes and still pay attention to the presentations.

Moreover, it's going to tell you that you're connected, but it's not syncing at all. You can go into Settings to check if it's syncing and it will tell you there's an error, although oddly, it'll still tell you there's an error when you connect to a proper network. It seems like sometimes, trying to connect to public Wi-Fi just breaks syncing until you reboot the device.

The Paper Pro locks when you close the folio cover, and you need to use a PIN to unlock it, which is a poor experience. The ReMarkable Paper Pro would benefit greatly from a fingerprint sensor in the power button or some sort of facial recognition, just to make it seamless to grab it and start writing.

Is a color E Ink display worth the extra cost?

I'd probably go with a ReMarkable Paper 2, but that's me

Before we, as a society, started typing notes, we wrote with pens on paper. We did not, however, tend to carry multiple pens in multiple colors, unless it was that one multicolor pen that we all fondly remember. You know what pen I'm talking about.

Using colors when taking notes doesn't come naturally, so would I miss it if this product didn't have a color E Ink display? Maybe. But I wouldn't pay a $180 premium for it.

You should treat this like you should treat any tech product. Know how you're going to use it before spending the extra money.

Color E Ink is worth the money, if you're using it.

You won't be using different colors when taking meeting notes. You likely will use them if you're annotating PDFs, or marking up any kind of document. And aside from different color inking, you'll likely want to view colors in imported documents, which can come in PDF or EPUB formats.

Remember, the ReMarkable Paper Pro is primarily a note-taking device. Everything about it is built for that. While you can definitely import color documents and read them, you're likely using it for handwritten notes the vast majority of the time.

Also, the Paper Pro comes in at 1.16 pounds, and while that's comfortable to carry, the ReMarkable 2 is 0.88 pounds, a full quarter-pound lighter. It's more compact too.

Clearly, there are pros and cons to each. I love the idea of a color E Ink device, but if you're going to spend the extra money, do it with purpose.

PDF editing is is just so seamless

It's something I need in my life

As I've mentioned, you can import any PDF or EPUB file onto the ReMarkable Paper Pro, and you can just write on them. I'm so used to having to bring documents into Adobe Acrobat and use different software to edit PDFs that just drawing on one like any other document feels like a breath of fresh air. Even in Microsoft Edge, you have to go out of your way to press an edit button.

You can add pages too, something I'd use to add pages of notes to the tail end of a PDF file. And of course, I'd circle and highlight things. Note that the highlighter automatically snaps to the text, although you can turn that off if you don't want it for some reason.

There's not much else to say since after you import a PDF or EPUB, it essentially acts like any other note page. I just thought it was calling out because the ReMarkable Paper Pro isn't just a device that acts like a blank notebook. You can mark up all kinds of documents, and even use it as an ereader if you're buying books from a service that's kind enough to not lock things down behind DRM (looking at you Amazon).

Should you buy the ReMarkable Paper Pro?

You should buy the ReMarkable Paper Pro if:

• You tend to take handwritten notes on paper
• You have a use for color E Ink
• You read books from a service that offers DRM-free downloads

You should NOT buy the ReMarkable Paper Pro if:

• You aren't willing to use ReMarkable's note-taking service
• You don't have a need for color E Ink
• You need third-party app support

The ReMarkable Paper Pro is a fantastic product. I really didn't think that this thing would just become a part of my note-taking routine, but it has and I'm all-in. The main issue with it is that it's very expensive, with $579 as a starting point. At that price, make sure you can make use of the color display, because if it's not useful, the ReMarkable 2 seems to be better in every way.

And then, of course, there's app support. You have to use ReMarkable's service, which is great because it's a really immersive experience. But if you want something that just does more, Boox sells color E Ink tablets that run Android, and give you everything that the Google Play Store has to offer. When choosing between those two things, remember that ReMarkable makes the more specialized device; it's going to be better at what it does. The other isn't going to be as good at it, but it does more.