ReMarkable Paper Pro

Still troubled by lag, but this is a premium ePaper tablet that benefits from both a backlight and colours

- ALEX WAWRO

Many tablets aim to dazzle with their shiny designs, but the ReMarkable Paper Pro has a different goal: it wants to replicate the feeling of writing and sketching on paper. This isn’t the company’s first tablet to attempt the feat, but the Paper Pro is its first device to do so with a colour screen.

The screen in question is ReMarkable’s new Canvas Color display, based on E Ink’s Gallery 3 technology. It’s an 11.8in panel with a reasonably sharp density of 229ppi, and it supports a variety of digital brushes in nine main colours, which you can use to annotate documents, colour in diagrams or add bright highlights to reference works in PDF or EPUB format. It’s an idea that really appeals to me; I’ve always loved doodling in the margins of documents and drawing silly figures in my own notes, and the Paper Pro does a great job of recreating that feeling.

There are several reasons why it feels so good to use. The screen and stylus are textured to feel as much like paper and pen as possible, and when you’re writing or drawing on the tablet there’s a gap of less than 1mm between the tip of the ReMarkable Marker and the digital “ink” that appears on the display, so you really feel like you’re in direct contact with the surface. The stylus’ 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity further add to the sense of tactility.