E-Ink tablets have always been intriguing to me because I’m a longtime lover of pen and paper. I’ve had probably hundreds of notebooks over the years, serving as repositories for my story ideas, to-do lists, meeting notes, and everything in between. However, I turned away from physical notebooks at a certain point because it was just easier to store everything digitally so I always had my most important information at my fingertips. E-Ink tablets seem to provide the best of both worlds: the tactile satisfaction of regular notebooks with many of the conveniences found in digital tools, plus easy-on-the-eyes E-Ink screens. These devices have come a long way in the past few years, and we’re just starting to see more color E-Ink tablets become more widely available. I tested out several different E Ink tablets to assess their functionality, convenience, and which are the best options using E Ink screens available today.
Editor’s note (September 2024): reMarkable just announced its third-generation E-Ink tablet, the reMarkable Paper Pro, which is available now starting at $579. The new model has a refined design, faster internals, and a color screen. We’ll update this guide after we’ve had the chance to put the Paper Pro through its paces.
Are E Ink tablets worth it?
An E Ink tablet will be a worthwhile purchase for a very select group of people. If you prefer the look and feel of an e-paper display to LCD panels found on traditional tablets, it makes a lot of sense. They’re also good options for those who want a more paper-like writing experience (although you can get that kind of functionality on a regular tablet with the right screen protector) or a more distraction-free device overall.
The final note is key here. Most E Ink tablets don’t run on the same operating systems as regular tablets, so you’re automatically going to be limited in what you can do. Even with those that allow you to download traditional apps like Chrome, Instagram, and Facebook, E Ink tablets are not designed to give you the best casual-browsing experience. This is mostly due to the nature of E Ink displays, which have noticeable refreshes, a lack of color, and lower quality than the panels you’ll find on even the cheapest iPad.
Arguably the biggest reason why you wouldn’t want to go with an iPad (all models of which support stylus input, a plethora of reading apps, etc) is because it’s much easier to get distracted by email, social media, and other Internet-related temptations. An e-reader is also worth considering if this is the case for you, but just know that most standard e-readers do not accept stylus input. If you like to make notes in the margins of books, underline and mark up PDFs and the like, an e-reader won’t cut it.
What to look for in an E Ink tablet
Latency
I discovered four main things that can really make or break your experience with an E Ink tablet during my testing; first is the writing experience. How good it is will depend a lot on the display’s refresh rate (does it refresh after every time you put pen to “paper,” so to speak?) and the stylus’ latency. Most had little to no latency, but some were worse than others. Finally, you should double-check before buying that your preferred E Ink tablet comes with a stylus.
Reading
The second thing to consider is the reading experience. How much will you be reading books, documents, and other things on this tablet? While you can find E Ink tablets in all different sizes, most of them tend to be larger than your standard e-reader because it makes writing much easier. Having a larger display isn’t a bad thing, but it might make holding it for long periods slightly more uncomfortable. (Most e-readers are roughly the size of a paperback book, giving you a similar feeling to analog reading).
The supported file types will also make a big difference. It’s hard to make a blanket statement here because this varies so much among E Ink tablets. The TL;DR is that you’ll have a much better reading experience if you go with one made by a company that already has a history in e-book sales (i.e. Amazon or Kobo). All of the titles you bought via the Kindle or Kobo store should automatically be available to you on your Kindle or Kobo E Ink tablet. With Kindle titles, specifically, since they are protected by DRM, it’s not necessarily the best idea to try to bring those titles over to a third-party device. Unless the tablet supports reading apps like Amazon’s Kindle or the Kobo app, you’ll be limited to supported file types, like ePUB, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, PNG, and others.
Search functionality
Third, most E Ink tablets have some search features, but they can vary widely between models. You’ll want to consider how important it is for you to be able to search through all your handwritten notes and markups. I noticed that Amazon’s and Kobo’s E Ink tablets made it easy to refer back to notes made in books and files because they automatically save on which pages you took notes, made highlights, and more. Searching is less standardized on E Ink tablets that have different supported file types, but their features can be quite powerful in their own right. For example, a few devices I tested supported text search in handwritten notes along with handwriting recognition, the latter of which allows you to translate your scribbles into typed text.
Sharing and connectivity
The final factor to consider is sharing and connectivity. Yes, we established that E Ink tablets can be great distraction-free devices, but most manufacturers understand that your notes and doodles aren’t created in a vacuum. You’ll likely want to access them elsewhere, and that requires some form of connectivity. All of the E Ink tablets I tried were Wi-Fi devices, and some supported cloud syncing, companion mobile apps and the ability to export notes via email so you can access them elsewhere. None of them, however, integrate directly with a digital note-taking system like Evernote or OneNote, so these devices will always be somewhat supplementary if you use apps like that, too. Ultimately, you should think about what you will want to do with the documents you’ll interact with on your E Ink tablet after the tablet portion is done.
reMarkable
Screen size: 10.3-inch | Battery life: Two weeks | Network connectivity: Wi-Fi | Capacity: 8GB | Included stylus: No, extra cost | Supported file types: PDF, EPUB
The latest reMarkable tablet isn’t topping our list because it’s the most full-featured or even most interesting writing tablet we tested. Rather, it provides the best mix of features people will find useful in an e-paper device like this. We’ll get into them all, but first, it’s worth mentioning build quality. The reMarkable 2 weighs less than one pound and is one of the sleekest E Ink tablets we tried. It has a 10.3-inch monochrome digital paper display that’s surrounded by beige-colored bezels, with the chunkiest portion at the bottom edge where you’d naturally grip it. There’s a slim silver bezel on the left side, which attaches to accessories like the folio case and the new Type Folio keyboard. Hats off to reMarkable for making an E Ink tablet that feels right at home with all of your other fancy gadgets.
Let’s start with the writing and reading experiences on the reMarkable 2, both of which are great. From the get-go, scribbling, doodling, and writing was a breeze. We tested out the Marker Plus, which has a built-in eraser, but both it and the standard Marker are tilt- and pressure-sensitive pens, requiring no batteries or charging. I observed basically no lag between my pressing down onto the reMarkable 2’s screen and lines showing up. The latency was so low that it felt the closest to actual pen-and-paper. But I will say that this is not unique among our top picks in this guide – almost all
