1. writing movement-to-pixel latency (should be around 5ms)

2. writing experience (tilting support, pressure levels, anti-aliasing, ...)

3. speed of apps on the device

4. shareability of annotations

5. "stroke-recognition" of diagrams, text, math formula's, etc

6. mashing of touch & pencil gestures

7. apps on the platform

I'd argue that only the Surface 4 solves (1) & (2) completely, with the competition between 75% and 90%. Speed (3) is a solved problem for mobile CPU/GPU/LED/OLED hardware, but e-paper is not close to 50%. (4) is also still quite young, since the "write on digital paper" thing is not even being used by enthusiasts (only some rarae niches show consistent use). (5) is mostly solved for handwriting recognition, and good progress is made on diagrams and math formula's. But it's young, and certainly not yet a commodity. (6) seems quite solved, as most algorithms to distinct between pencils and hand/finger touches work quite well. (7) is not yet solved, there are no good apps. Some exist, but they have "handwriting" as a feature, but not as a core feature.

Color may come in as 8th, but is for most digital authoring not that important. It would certainly increase the potential market for a good e-paper device, but would come last on above list.

In the past 15 years, progress on e-paper display technology has been slow but steady. Is the latency problem solved yet? Or are we still around 100ms?

I'm hoping this will become a form-factor/product/class of its own.

Currently, I'm using a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 because it was the only computer I could find which:

- had a Wacom EMR stylus

- high resolution and large/expansive screen

- full OS support

(replacing a Samsung Galaxy Book 12, which I really wish Samsung had stuck with)

I need to have a stylus so that I can draw/annotate/write, and I prefer a tablet form-factor (but will accept a convertible/foldable if need be) --- the thing which kills me is the keyboard is completely disabled when the screen is folded back --- it would be nice for the keys along one (or both) edges of the keyboard to be usable as programmable/modified keys for when one is drawing.

Such a device with Wacom EMR will be an insta-buy for me.

It's really nice to be able to go from taking a note on my phone or Kindle Scribe, to drawing/annotating on my Galaxy Book.

I like the pen and paper sensation, the fact that my handwriting is exactly the same as on paper, the ability to erase, rewrite, cut and paste.

I don't like the flaky sync but love seeing my drawings as PDFs. The LiveView function almost doesn't work but a third party app allows me to display the tablet on the desktop for Zoom meetings.

Arxiv PDFs are easy to read only if you crop or zoom, which is a bit unfortunate. I would have loved integration with Pocket, Dropbox, Arxiv and other sources. There's no TTS option, which is also unfortunate, because I find TTS doubles my focus when reading technical text.

But I'm honestly kind of amazed that something like this isn't already widely available at a reasonable price... I don't feel like my needs are that atypical and it's just the dream product to me.

Maybe this is it, maybe not. What I want to do: read things, highlight, scribble notes, diagrams, outlines, sync, search, etc. Basically I want something that completely replaces paper coming out of a printer. It seems like the younger people maybe are more adapted to digital documents, but I have very strong spatial memory for paper and can find things I've written or read in paper very quickly.

Surface Pro has this, but is overkill frankly. iPad, kindle, other tablets have not been sufficiently usable to actually replace a printed or blank sheet of paper. This device may fit that use case, but it inhabits a priced point that's worse than Surface Pro. For some reason I'm waiting for something in the $200-300 price range to show up--things that are more expensive I feel like I have to protect and coddle. So, yes something like iOS definitely could work there. There are even some interesting eink devices that go after the paper replacement route. But they are also too expensive compared to Surface Pro.

Maybe this will be a big enough kick in the butt for Google to start supporting pen input in ChromeOS or Android (there are Android tablets that have pen input, but IIRC that support is plastered on top by manufacturers increasing support and integration costs significantly, so software updates don't happen).

I want the experience of paper, most importantly of which is the e-ink screen and feel of writing. I do not want another LCD/LED screen device.

The biggest points for me are

    * E-Ink (or similar screen)
    * Very low lag when writing (Remarkable 2 is at ~21ms which is incredible)
    * Long Battery (Cause it's E-Ink...)
    * Fast Refresh Rate - The kindle refresh rate when flipping through pages is so slow. It's very frustrating to navigate on for non indexed pages.
    * Enhance any supported capability with digital notes (books, emails, pdfs etc). Anything the device supports should become an extended surface for hand written notes and markup from any other device or access method (web, phone etc).

They already have with iPad. But an e-ink device is very much not meant as an iPad. It really is digital paper (a common term, not trying to say I came up with it) but in a preserving way.

It's a near-perfect reader and digital notepad and that's what I use it for.

The software however is bad. Did I say bad? It's laggy, it's supposedly Android but not really. Lots of apps only work semi-well if they use colors or greyscale. It feels like using a tablet device from a decade ago.

In the end, I'm still rather happy, but it's hard to justify the price point.

I'm reading books in my dead time, like the daily commute, and I don't have the luxury to use a notebook. I like marking important paragraphs, or add notes on stuff that was previously defined in former chapters, or add question marks reminding me to do further research online.

And yes, the device has to have a big screen with good resolution, and that screen has to be readable in sunlight. And my problem with E-Ink is that it doesn't come in color (making them useless for reading some topics, like design/photography stuff for example).

Of course, I will be very happy when such technical limitations are removed. And I'll also be very happy that such reading devices are more green, and my reading habits aren't the reason for cutting down forests :)

* The writing experience is top notch. It feels like pen and paper. I recently had the chance to try Onyx Boox Max 2 (very briefly), and it's nowhere close to the RM as far as the tactile feeling goes. This is the main selling point of the RM, and it's very good.

* It's an open-source Linux-based device but not entirely. The actual UI application isn't open source. But as others have said here, it has pretty good hacking potential, and it's definitely more open than most commercial devices. The company's support of open-source was another reason for me to buy it.

* The on-tablet software started out really bad but has improved. The first version had a bug that dramatically reduced battery life. It took a few more updates to get essential features like inserting a blank page in the middle of a notebook.

* The off-tablet software is bad. There's a file manager webapp with remarkably poor UX, the cloud sync API isn't particularly convenient for automation, and so on.

* As a reader, it's mediocre at best. PDFs formatted for large screens look good, but rendering is slow, navigation is poor, etc. I would absolutely not replace my Kindle with the RM.

To summarize, I think the RM is a very good device if you treat it as a digital paper replacement. That's what it is for me, and I'm happy. But if you want a good e-book reader, or any advanced software at all, this isn't the right device.

It has replaced all my loose paper notes. It synchronizes handwritten notes with Evernote, so I can search across all my devices. I use it to take notes while on the phone or during web conference calls. I also use it to write notes while reading Kindle, though Kindle doesn't work in split-screen mode yet. My other uses are Pocket, Duolingo, Toodledo (to-do list), but I could do all of those on my phone. I am dying for a decent Project Management app that works on a tablet with the S-Pen.

Before that I had a Nook Color running Cyanogenmod, but I never used it except to test apps. Pocket wasn't a compelling enough use case; the S-Pen is what made a tablet compelling for me.