E-Readers For Drawing and Note-Taking
When it comes to writing and drawing I want to present to you my currently ongoing research into e-readers/e-paper/tablets that offer a good note-taking experience and whether drawing on these is viable. Having owned a tablet with a stylus a decade ago found the experience to be impractical in daily life and I want to see what has changed since. E-readers are becoming more alike traditional tablets but with a twist of having paper-like technology. Are the specifications of these tablet inspired e-readers good on paper? Let’s find out.
My initial worries from the start are:
- Display responsiveness
- Software integration and usefulness of the stylus
- Detail of writing and drawings
- Sharing capabilities
- Accessible shortcuts
- Screen size
- Value of device versus a tried and tested iPad-like tablet
I want to be reassured that these modern devices (that cost hundreds of pounds or dollars) are usable alternatives to paper or even tablets.
Writing vs Drawing on Electronic Paper Tablets
I think back to the days of having grown up with an etch a sketch. Several hours of fun were had drawing in one long, unbroken line. I think my creative limits with these would be pencil art (which previously allowed me to pass art in school). Also, many of us have terrible handwriting from years of not practising, so I wonder if these devices can be used easily without having to type?
Of the prominent companies in this market, four were reviewed by me for their low power, paper-like displays with styluses:
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reMarkable 2
reMarkable is a brand focussed on replacing paper in the offices. The reMarkable 2 sells for £379 in the UK.
Marketed features of note:
- Has pressure sensitivity for using the stylus
- Transparently designed in Norway
- Can annotate and highlight documents
- Easy to share and receive documents
- Handwriting to text
- Screen sharing
- Looks professional in the office
Tablet Pro shows off how excellent it can be if you have drawing skills:
Some delay is apparent in this product when used for drawing, so this could be more of a backup drawing device for when you have to travel light. There is no backlight feature, but the device is remarkably thin at 4.7 mm (thinnest device of all listed here).
The thing I like most about this tablet is that the side-bar is fixed in place for easy access and I am amazed at how perfectly laid-out the sidebar features are done across e-books or documents.
In terms of writing notes, it is also excellent for a quiet office:
2/5 for drawing (some delay issues) and 4/5 for note-taking
BOOX Note Air3 C
The Note Air3 C is a colour tablet sold in the US at $499.99 and also the EU at €549.99. It supports 4,096 “hues” which is good for these devices at this point in time but far more basic than the typical professional artist’s colour palette.
Main features:
- Monochrome plus colour display
- Handwriting to text
- Translate text and OCR
- Install other applications from Google Play Store (including 3rd-party cloud-saving applications)
- Split-screen windows for side-by-side documents or note-taking
- Pressure sensitivity — “4096 degrees of pressure”
- Good for coloured comic book or document reading
- Backlight & night-mode
- Low latency writing on BOOX’s applications
- A good 300 PPI for monochrome sharpness
Now the colour features are certainly a bonus above most other monochrome-only e-reader type tablets. There is some image ghosting which would interfere with drawing — something that I have not known about until this video review (3:05):
Brad Colbow also states at around 4:05 that the note-taking application (of the Note Air 3 C) is “light-years” better than the reMarkable or Kindle scribe.
3rd party applications are not optimised on this device and don’t give the same delay-free experience as first-party applications that come with the Note.
4/5 for drawing (because some ghosting and erasing problems) and 4/5 for note-taking.
Kobo Elipsa 2E
Kobo currently list three stylus-compatible devices made for note-taking:
- Kobo Sage — £259.99
- Kobo Elipsa — £299.99
- Kobo Elipsa 2E. — £349.99
The most expensive Kobo of these three stylus-compatible devices would still make this the most affordable of this article’s lot and I certainly noticed that Kobo were really selling the note-taking features more with the Elipsa 2E. One thing of note is the thickness of 7.5mm which gives it more dimensional depth than the others.
It really does sell the note-taking and annotations well in this featured marketing video:
Another great thing is how in-depth the articles are about how to do things on the Kobo, like switch between basic and advanced note-taking. These functional modes gives the advanced user more powers in designing objects and note-takers the ability to convert and export handwriting to discrete text — although this is quickly becoming a standard feature thus far.
Features:
- Sharing documents using cloud services
- Handwriting to text
- Backlight & night-mode
- Pressure sensitivity
- Excellent built-in software processing tools for note-taking, shapes, and mathematics (See this video)
- Low latency drawing
To me the Kobo Elipsa 2E appears to be a direct competitor to the reMarkable 2 for note-taking and each having a similar PPI (227PPI vs 226PPI respectively). It brings with it a very competent set of note-taking and drawing features with a eye-catching price-point for this market.
Oddly I can’t find any artist’s experience in drawing on this device, so my judgement on this matter is reserved for now. It does look as capable as the others, but there are no artistic masterpieces to be found yet.
The only tangible downside to me is that the stylus requires a battery and may be expensive to replace.
Drawing ???/5 Note-taking 5/5
Supernote Nomad (A6X2)
Similar to the BOOX this runs on Android (specifically Android 11) which may add some familiarity under the surface, but no Play store is installed on the Supernote (reported as “working on” by goodereader.com in 2022) but the 2024 roadmap might enable side-loading applications.
Features:
- Tagging tools using keywords and stars for organisation; PDF annotations, highlighting and digest
- A good 300 PPI for sharpness
- Tactile writing (textured surface)
- Handwriting recognition
- Navigation gestures (software and hardware)
- Password protect files
- Screen-mirroring
- 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity
- E-mail and calendar
My impressions of the Supernote are mixed. It is more similar to the Elipsa 2E and reMarkable for note-taking, but it has the Android capabilities of the BOOX. The software is actually driven by users’ feedback and suggestions so you may be able to request and report something specific without going through marketing teams — a very transparent way of operating. Also, the Nomad is described as repairable which may reduce the likelihood of having to replace the whole device and effectively continue to reduce paper usage.
The screen’s surface on this device has technology made by Wacom and the selection of styluses makes it excellent for those seeking a tactile device. It will also require external lighting because there is no backlight, but this is justified on the main product’s page as enabling a thinner device with a closer-to-the-paper feel with the stylus.
It strikes me as a versatile device with generous offline file-transfer support, so reliance on the cloud to share notes with other devices is not mandatory, despite giving access to Google Drive and other cloud-syncing services.
The device has a 7.8" screen for €355,81 and is nearly €400 once shipping is applied. The Supernote A6X2 has a smaller screen than the others which all lie around ten inches, so the experience will be vastly different. This may lead buyers away based on a cost comparison to alternatives. People may also want a good note taking device for PDF documents; relying on larger screens to render entire pages clearly or using the white space in the margins for note-taking.
The drawbacks of the device may be the lack of reasons to use it for note-taking, given a choice. Some simple features do tick boxes initially but are only up to standard far after release, leading to damning reactions by its users from my research. One clear example seen in multiple areas, Word note-taking allows conversion to text from handwriting but it’s unclear what has been improved since:
The handwriting recognition feature was initially only available in Word documents. It’s easy to use with good recognition accuracy and speed. For users who believe the pen is mightier than the keyboard, it comes really handy and delivers a solid writing experience.
My impression about the range of Supernote devices indicates a lack of cohesiveness with software features when compared to similar devices. A comparison between the Supernote Nomad A6X2 vs Remarkable 2 in Kit’s video (19:11) supports my view as he mentions having a weaker “flow state” operating the Supernote, suggesting the user is generally having to think about specific actions more than other devices.
Finally, there are many artists using this device to create spectacularly monochrome spectacles, albeit most are found on forums. This video below shows numerous features usually found in advanced drawing software.
Drawing 5/5 Note-taking 3.5/5 (Needs work)
My Thoughts if I Could Only Have One
Considering I would like to take better notes digitally, practice handwriting, and would like to study PDF files, I would rank each device as follows:
- Kobo Elipsa 2E
- reMarkable 2
- BOOX Note Air3 C
- Supernote Nomad (A6X2)
I feel like I get the most value between Kobo and reMarkable and the least on the Android devices. The BOOX has no deal-breaking flaws in my eyes; it’s quick and powerful, but I wouldn’t make optimal use of its particular selling points in my daily note-taking.
Researching the Supernote
The Supernote falls short for me because of transparency; the partially customer-led software roadmap is not giving me much confidence in the development of current and potential features. Much of my research about the Supernote and its development history is sourced in discussion boards which are hard to reach for the typical consumer and are currently and easily outdated. Also the website has a plethora of marketing and technical information interlaced together which is difficult to sift through to collate some of the few clear selling points.
Reading PDFs on a 7.8" display would be challenging also, but the larger successor to the A5 Supernote could be released this year and would make use of the current Nomad’s motherboard to solve supply chain pressures. This is only just after the release of A6X2 from November or December 2023, meaning both of these new devices will be competing side-by-side against other newly launched e-paper and stylus products in 2024.
Lastly, I think if the Supernote website was more proactive with providing the necessary and updated information to be more accessible to their potential customers, I would be less hesitant to try them.
We value our existing users more than potential customers; we work with our users to design and improve our products; we provide long-term software updates for the old devices rather than launching new devices frequently to eliminate the old ones, and we do our best to provide the best customer service possible.
Source: About Us — Ratta Supernote
