reMarkable tablet boosts E Ink to speedy new heights

That’s the biggest Kindle I’ve ever seen!

The reMarkable is not a Kindle, you chump, but it is cut from the same cloth: E Ink. To be precise, this 10.3in tablet uses an advanced form of E Ink that its creators have dubbed the CANVAS display.

It’s got a much lower latency than regular E Ink screens (55ms to be precise), which means you can sketch and write on it without any major input lag. Regular E Ink is so sluggish that it feels dreadful to draw and make notes on; like a British sprinter up against, say, the iPad Pro‘s Usain Bolt, it’s lagging way behind what’s acceptable.

But CANVAS changes the game?

That’s what its creators are claiming. They say the 1872 x 1404 screen solves the traditional “slow ink” problem with its high-precision, low-latency design, and that its slightly textured surface even feels like paper, so when you’re doodling your latest musings you’ll feel just like you’re doing it on a crisp piece of reliable old A4.

Well, why not just use a sheet of paper then? It’s not like there’s a shortage, and it’s dirt cheap.

A sheet of paper doesn’t have 8GB of internal storage or the ability to store all your jottings in the cloud immediately, ready to be viewed on any web-connected device, does it? Or the ability to display content from elsewhere: feed the reMarkable a PDF or ePUB document and not only can you read it – on an easy-on-the-eyes glare-free E Ink screen, no less – but you can also make notes directly on top of it, which can then be shared with other people.

In fact, your annotations and drawings can be made to appear on another device, like your phone or laptop, in real-time as you make them. Just like magic!

Sounds like the perfect way to “nextify” my street caricature business, and really take it to the next level. How do I get one?

Unfortunately, the reMarkable is not hitting the market until the summer of 2017. However, you can now pre-order one for US$375 (around £300 at the time of writing), which the makers say is a reduction on whatever the actual retail price will be.