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Longtime readers will remember that I’m on an impossible search for the perfect color e-Ink reader, mostly for reading comic books and magazines. So what I’m looking for is a large (larger than 12 inches) device to display color e-Ink.
As noted in my review of Boox Note Air 3c (10 inches), I was not impressed with the muted/faded colors. That’s because the color technology, called Kaleido 3, is limited to 4,000 colors and sits on top of the black and white layer. The result is a much darker image. You don’t get true black and white or do you get true colors, it just looks awful, in my opinion.
The black and white is so bad that I ended up buying the Amazon Kindle Scribe (10 inches) to read manga. While the Scribe is just fine for black and white, I still yearn for colors, especially because I buy so much comic books through their Kindle store. I just end up using my iPad Pro (12.8 inches) to read my color comics.
Now enter the reMarkable Paper Pro, which was just announced. This large 11.8” color display uses Gallery 3. As I previously mentioned, Gallery 3 is the superior color e-Ink display, but unfortunately, it’s very slow to refresh. If implemented correctly, as reMarkable seemed to have done, we can get true, bright colors in the eInk display.
There are some concerns, of course. First of all, the price is close to $600, which, admittedly at that price, you can get a really nice iPad.
My next concern is that reMarkable’s software is closed and does not allow the Kindle app… so you are going to have to sideload your own comic books. I buy my comics, but with the reMarkable, would I have to resort to pirate DRM-free files just to read comics?
There is another concern, reMarkable has a subscription built into their software for backup. I don’t want to pay for a longterm subscription to anything, so that’s a little annoying. Although I found out that you can use the reMarkable without a subscription (you just have to manually back up your files yourself).
I feel perhaps the software is going to be my biggest complaint about the device. The price, it is what it is. I’ve looked at other color e-ink in the same size, and that price looks normal.
I’m probably not going to buy this, but I am tempted. Perhaps if I read or see reviews of how comic books looks on the device (particularly the performance). If it takes literally a minute to display one page of a comic book, then this is a deal breaker for me… and I’ll just stick to my iPad for consuming comics.
As noted in my review of Boox Note Air 3c (10 inches), I was not impressed with the muted/faded colors. That’s because the color technology, called Kaleido 3, is limited to 4,000 colors and sits on top of the black and white layer. The result is a much darker image. You don’t get true black and white or do you get true colors, it just looks awful, in my opinion.
The black and white is so bad that I ended up buying the Amazon Kindle Scribe (10 inches) to read manga. While the Scribe is just fine for black and white, I still yearn for colors, especially because I buy so much comic books through their Kindle store. I just end up using my iPad Pro (12.8 inches) to read my color comics.
Now enter the reMarkable Paper Pro, which was just announced. This large 11.8” color display uses Gallery 3. As I previously mentioned, Gallery 3 is the superior color e-Ink display, but unfortunately, it’s very slow to refresh. If implemented correctly, as reMarkable seemed to have done, we can get true, bright colors in the eInk display.
There are some concerns, of course. First of all, the price is close to $600, which, admittedly at that price, you can get a really nice iPad.
My next concern is that reMarkable’s software is closed and does not allow the Kindle app… so you are going to have to sideload your own comic books. I buy my comics, but with the reMarkable, would I have to resort to pirate DRM-free files just to read comics?
There is another concern, reMarkable has a subscription built into their software for backup. I don’t want to pay for a longterm subscription to anything, so that’s a little annoying. Although I found out that you can use the reMarkable without a subscription (you just have to manually back up your files yourself).
I feel perhaps the software is going to be my biggest complaint about the device. The price, it is what it is. I’ve looked at other color e-ink in the same size, and that price looks normal.
I’m probably not going to buy this, but I am tempted. Perhaps if I read or see reviews of how comic books looks on the device (particularly the performance). If it takes literally a minute to display one page of a comic book, then this is a deal breaker for me… and I’ll just stick to my iPad for consuming comics.
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