I've had the reMarkable for almost a year now, here are some of my thoughts on the device. I'm a scientist and mostly use the reMarkable for work, so typically note taking, math calculations and reading and annotating pdfs. Hopefully this will be useful for people deciding whether to buy the device.

The good:

• Like most people I find the writing experience to be quite good. I wouldn't say it necessarily feels exactly as paper, but it's good enough that I replaced almost all of my paper use with the reMarkable. Having all of my notes organized and always with me is a great improvement over paper.

• The display is quite good so reading pdfs (typically scientific papers for me) works well for me.

• The UI is not perfect, but it works well for the things that reMarkable can do.

• The reMarkable application for PC is useful, though I would appreciate a native Linux version.

The bad:

• Software features are very limited and even basic features are missing. There is still no copy and paste. They finally at least added copying whole pages, but not everyone has this update yet. There are no bookmarks in pdfs, links in pdfs don't work, no side by side view,...

• Navigating pdfs is very slow.

• Annotating pdfs works well, but works exactly like on paper so the only thing that's possible to do is write over the pdf. I often need to write a more detailed comment in the pdf and that is just not possible. It would be great if we could have something like a pop-up comment for example. At this point, if I review a paper for example, I will go over the paper in remarkable and make some quick notes and then go over the paper on the computer again and take proper notes. This is of course not ideal.

• Battery life is not great, this has nowhere near the battery life of an ebook reader, and charging is quite slow.

• It is not possible to attach the marker to the tablet. This is a big problem because this makes it much easier to forget the marker at home and then the tablet is useless.

• Having to exchange the tips on the marker is annoying, especially since the only place where you can buy them is the reMarkable eshop. If the company goes under (which is quite possible) we will not be able to use the original marker anymore. Also, the marker itself is really overpriced, considering that it's just a piece of plastic, that I'm sure costs almost nothing to make.

• The tablet itself is quite expensive. I understand that this is a small company and a new product, so the price may be justified, but at the very least I would expect to get more than one marker with the purchase.

• I find the size to be ok, but I would much more prefer a larger screen. For me, around A4 size would be perfect.

Overall, my feelings are quite mixed. I use the device and I have replaced almost all my paper use with the reMarkable, but it has so many issues that at this point I would be quite reluctant to recommend it to someone. The concept is great and the writing itself is good, but overall there's a lot missing. The main issues are software related and they do update the software, but the software development is very slow and at this point I'm not that optimistic that the device will ever reach its full potential.

It seems to me that the company tried to make a device that works pretty much exactly like paper and that's why they includes so few features at the beginning. The problem with this approach is that although reMarkable has definitely advantages over paper, it also has a significant disadvantages and without making full use of the digital aspect, it will not be better than paper for most people. Having to charge it sucks and it has happened to me several times that I couldn't take notes because reMarkable was out of battery. Since the charging is slow, you can't fix this by charging for couple minutes. Furthermore, the device is much more expensive than paper and will become obsolete in couple years. For me the advantages, mainly the easy organization of notes, overweight the disadvantages, but not by much at this point, to be honest. On the other hand reMarkable clearly shows that a device that is much better than paper can be made. A device with A4 size (and side by side view), good battery life, fast charging, a slot for attaching the stylus and all the missing software features would be amazing. At this point, it's still good, but probably only useful for relatively small group of people.