I have an iPad Pro 12.9” and also got a Boox Note Air as I was getting ready to begin a postdoc position in academia. For me what was important was two main things: 1. reading PDFs and annotating them heavily, plus adding additional pages of notes. (My research is math heavy so it’s nice to be able to fill in steps that the academic paper or text may have skipped.) 2. Having plenty of area on the screen so that I can take my own notes, performs calculations. Also relevant to both of these is that it should be easy to access my annotated PDFs and notes. During my PhD I would often have thick wads of calculations that I would run out of room for and would eventually either forget about or feel they were not worth keeping around. The point of a new expensive tablet was to help keep notes and work that I spent and time and effort to generate. I was very interested in the e-ink screen for two major reasons: I. Better on the eyes. II. Better writing experience. Having used both of my devices for a month or so now, I must admit that the iPad doesn’t bother my eyes very much when you turn on the True Tone and increase the color warmth. Now, the e-ink definitely feels a little better, but I’m looking at the iPad all day and I don’t particularly feel it’s too tiring. I have an ESR paper like screen protector on my iPad and that makes it honestly not bad to do work on. It’s not a delight but you get used to it quickly. The boox note air had a garbage writing experience until I put on a manually cut ESR paper like screen protector, but once I did that it was great. The latency on the boox product is a little annoying, especially since the iPad is near flawless. However, you can also use stylus pens and nibs with the boox devices that make it really awesome to write with. Ultimately my iPad has turned out to be the device I turn to much more often and I’m likely to try and sell the boox note air, or else it will just be a very expensive e-reader. The thing for me is just the functionality of the iPad. I can really find a note taking app that fits what I need. With these e-ink devices the pen functionality really works best on their native apps. Using one note or something on a boox device is possible but you wouldn’t wanna do it, the writing experience is terrible. With the iPad I read my PDFs and pinch zoom in, well, a pinch, then zoom out, change documents, etc. Although it is possible with e-ink devices too, the ability to really mark up your notes in different colors is terrific. I never used much color in my notes when it was just pencil and paper but I’ve come to really enjoy it on the iPad - something that is not available on e-ink. Also, while you can also select parts of your notes and move, copy, manipulate, etc., on e-ink, it’s always just kind of slow. The experience is just smoother on the iPad. When I wanna add something to an earlier part of the notes I just select the part I wanna move down and add my additional comments. Almost at the end, the iPad Pro is a pro device, meaning it’s for professionals. I don’t keep any media apps on it and I don’t allow any notifications, nor do I keep any native apple apps that might distract me on my home page. It is a perfectly distract free environment - if that’s what you want. Finally, I think ultimately the trend in e-ink devices crucially rests on how good it is for your eyes, because you can make the writing experience on iPad good enough. On this note, I’m not entirely convinced the LED is bad for you with the proper precautions. Have a great day! Selman.
Really helpful comment since you tried both devices for pdf annotating! But it’s from 2 years ago, I wonder what you would think of the much faster Boox Note Air 3(C) and Tab Ultra (C) devices that are out now.
For me it's about reading stamina. I read stuff way faster on my kindle vs my iPad Pro 11 inch. Technically iPad is a better device, but my productivity impacts since my work already involves 10+ hours of screen time and an e-ink device feels like a much needed break. Waiting for a day when 13+ e ink devices become affordable, without paying too much on import duty and taxes.
I'm really glad to see some coverage of this use case. As an academic, exporting annotated pdfs is way more important than most of the reading functions. There's two different cases for pdf annotating in my work day, one is the published journal article format you have here, the other is scribbling comments and editorial marks on manuscripts that get sent back to the student. (I think most non-professor people do that second task in a word processor, but for reasons I won't get into, a freehand marked-up pdf is far better). I bring this up because of my recent, bitterly disappointing, experience trying to do these tasks with a Ratta Supernote (realizing I'm commenting off topic here, but). 1) The annotated pdfs look great on the supernote, but that is in their on-tablet native format. They have to be exported to pdf to be sent back to the collaborator/student, and then those super-elegant pen marks on the device are turned into heavily pixelated garbage. Having a document that looks great on the device, but exports off the device as an ugly mess is really disappointing. I would very much like to see the quality of the exported document included as a review criterion. 2) The Supernote can be connected to a PC by a USB cable, but it won't recognize all usb hardware. For example, my Thinkpad X395 (my primary work computer) cannot be used to connect to the Supernote, but my T450 can, so getting pdfs onto the Supernote usually involves a second laptob and a usb thumbdrive, which is really irritating. I think someone who uses a device primarily for reading would find these hurdles to be fairly trivial, but I think academics probably want to send off their scribbled-on pdfs as soon as they are done scribbling. 3) Wifi connectivity details matter. An alternative to usb is to get pdfs onto or off the device using wifi (the Supernote connects to a websitein China that is usually on-line, but sometimes not). The hitch here is that the Supernote cannot connect to wifi protected with PEAP. I'm guessing that most people use these devices over home wifi that just requires a password, but people working with institutional wifi where a username and password pair are required to access wifi will not have internet connectivity. Coverage of the range of supported wifi would be greatly appreciated. 4) I could go through the many aspects of the Supernote design that infuriate me as a left handed user. The hardware is just built, ground-up, for operation by a right handed user... Thanks again for this, I'm clearly in the market for a better alternative to the Supernote...
Pete - thanks for checking out the video - we just discuss all kinds of tech and I am just trying to help. I have the Supernote A6X but it hasn't made it into my day to day workflow. More coming though with these devices. Hard to find that one that does everything... Thanks
Hey Pete, thank you so much for your thoughts about Supernote. This is very helpful. I am looking for a device to read academic papers and I am more and more inclined to buy Quaderno. Looks like a new Sony could be a good option too but it does not seem to be on the market yet. The third one in my ranking based entirely on youtube reviews is Onyx Books 13.3 devices. Papyr seems not to highlight text properly. What do you think?
@@ty_derevo well, I don't know about those options (and I don't highlight, just make notes in the margins, etc), but I was so unhappy with the supernote that I bought a remarkable2 to replace it. The remarkable2 isn't perfect, but I think it'll do.
Another good video thanks. A couple of things viewers might miss to make reading easier on the Remarkable 2 which I have found useful. Firstly, (obviously?) you can turn off the menu on the left margin, just click the circle with the dot in it at the top to toggle. Secondly, when reading pdfs you can adjust the view for all pages to get rid of margins/headers/footers. In a pdf click on the bottom most icon and then click on 'adjust view'. You can then crop in to where the text is on most pages, choose a page that uses the most screen top and bottom. Using these two tips you can maximise screen real estate to the point the text is close in size to a printed A4 page with margins.
I've heard people say that the reMarkable would have been good for them had it only been 13". Until now I've sort of brushed that off as unnecessarily finicky. 10" surely ought to be enough, I thought. Partly because I digest smaller format textbooks, and use B5 size paper notebooks. But I think I've finally understood the advantages of the bigger size. In the end, wherever you go, A4 is the size standard for printers. Any medium smaller will not display the document correctly. Therefore, every screen _smaller_ than A4 will inevitably be varying degrees of inadequate for the vast majority of documents out there. In the case of 12pt printouts, sightly inadequate. As for legal documents and academic papers, very inadequate. It's often not so much a matter of _your eyes_ not being comfortable reading the pdf text on an e-paper device, but rather that the pdf itself was specifically designed _not_ to be read at that size. Further, zoom is nice to have, but it starts becoming tedious to feel you _have_ to zoom in order to read most of the time. I think I would rather a paper tablet read the dominant print format natively, and save zooming for when something extraordinary needs to take place that you would have difficulty doing even on its physical counterpart. 10" quickly turned out to not display the most common online prints in a comfortably readable way. To me, that meant that even after upgrading from a Kindle, PDF reading is still something I seldom do because it's painful. On another note, another, arguably more important, aspect of reading PDFs is navigation. I wrote about this earlier, but to me the most valuable function of a pdf reader is its search. However, I believe how the machine lets you flip through pages and navigate indexes and the Table of Contents is equally important. I've found this to also be difficult to do on the reMarkable, and I'm curious the see how page refresh and menus work on the other devices. While intently reading you tend to only do very specific things over and over again. This is optimal. If you need to tap back and forth between different menus to activate, open and scroll malproportioned lists for expended periods of time, you quickly lose interest. Not because the e-paper itself needs a little patience, but because it's asking for more than necessary instead of mitigating its limitations for ease of use.
That being said, I did purchase the reMarkable 2 to replace my reMarkable 1, which I've used daily. In lieu of my lack of judgement as a poor student, I do believe I've gained a novel tool to accomplish a very narrow albeit imperative set of tasks.
@@yohanneshaile9473 Given the complaint that the reMarkable tablets are too expensive, the Lumi is just outrageously so. I can't flesh out $900 on a paper tablet. $500 is already too much. Besides, in my honest opinion e-paper is inherently something if a trade-off. One of the reasons I bought the reMarkable in the first place was so that I wouldn't walk into the trap of thinking I was going to be able to use a smart device for more than one thing. You buy an iPad thinking you're finally gonna be able to do it all, but in the end you just sit and watch RUclips anyway, so why bother. In the end there are really only two reasons to get an iPad: the Apple ecosystem and core audio (music). For me, the obvious reason to get a reMarkable was to take notes. And that I have. I don't see the obvious reason to get a Boot Lumi. Like the iPad, it claims to do it all*, but there is no distinct advantage to any one feature, except that obviously it's an e-paper device. But I don't need another smart device. I just need something to write on, and reMarkable does it better and cheaper. The reading experience is another deal altogether. But personally it's really a minor detail as compared to pen input. No e-paper device currently actually practically reads PDF as comfortably as a computer anyway. To be completely honest, however, the whole e-paper trend is largely a fad to the great advantage of _actually_ visually impaired people. No one else actually needs these devices, and buying into the Boox series for $900 simply isn't worth it for any ordinary person. We're years behind any actual breakthrough. I still bring old-fashioned paper, and it far outperforms digital, unfortunately... The reMarkable is really just a fun toy.
Thanks a lot man, your side by side pdf text comparison cleared it all, I had already watched a dozen of videos but none of them were so clear. Thanks a lot..... 13.3 inch lumi is clear winner for me
I’ve bought the lumi, tried it, returned it and bought a 12” M1 iPad Pro. Spending nearly 1K on an e-paper tablet is in my opinion only the right choice if you’re rich *and* already own an iPad…
You are on the top of the game… love your positive energy…. Cant wait for note air.. I know, is coming, could you do me a big favor… try the Lamy pen on the note air.. You will make my day… you are the best!!!!!!!!
I think the biggest decision point is integration with at least one 3rd party file management such as drive, Dropbox so documents can be synced between devices.
I am thinking about the same things!!! Are there any e-reader that does it?? I would love to be able to read pdf from my google drive and directly edit on it.
he is very gentle and explains everything without criticizing other product and didnt even distroy other product s image he simply explained why his product is better well done love from winnipeg canada and from india 🇨🇦🇮🇳
I usually don't comment on YT videos but this time I had to say it: I love your reviews JB; always honest and to the point! Hope your channel grows even more, keep up the good work!
Ya, was about to comment. My Max3 can pinch zoom. I complained to them that sometimes you trigger it by mistake when taking notes, maybe others also complained, so they had an option to enable or disable it
Hey Coach. Great video. Could you maybe do a video comparing file management between devices? Moving PDFs from computer to device seems very different between Remarkable and Boox devices especially. Which do you find easier to manage your academic papers?
I alwqys use the remarkable's crop page feature to remove the margins, and that makes the text significantly larger, usually eliminating the need to zoom in
@@youngc0930 well, it should be the same as in the remarkable 1. Basically by pressing the crop button a box selection will appear representing the screen, and you should try to fit your text as best as possible inside that box by dragging the box corners. After you press ok the screen will display only the content inside the box. You could accidentally cut off text, so be careful, and do this on a page that is full of text to be sure everything is included. I find this very useful and do it for every single pdf
@@martinapunto8560 there is no way to modify pdf's using only the device. You need to upload them in the correct orientation. Not very happy about that but I keep praying to the software gods and hoping for the best. But again, I waited for more than 6 months for copy paste functionality so yeah.
Hi, great video! Exactly wat I was looking for as I am about to start my PhD! Could the remarkable2 be used horizontally to annotate pdfs? Thanks a lot ☺️
Thanks a lot for the detailed video on reading papers using the larger screened devices. Most reviewers just ignore this important application of the larger screens.
Yeah, first time I hear someone talking about this! Before people make a decision to buy one of these for academic reading, remember: most PDFs, academic journals and textbooks are big pages, A4 size, which fits perfectly in a 13 inch display. If you get anything smaller than that (like the Remarkable), you will have to constantly adjust the page, zoom in and out... I have the Onyx Boox Note with 10 inches. Onyx does have a function to split the page in half in landscape mode to better fit big pages, you can also split a page in 4 sections, you just set it once and the next pages will all be automatically split, you'll just have to swipe to progress with the reading. But some pages have a lot of pictures and graphs which will be cut, so you will eventually have to zoom in and out and manually adjust... When you have to read hundreds of pages, it's just a bit annoying, but works anyway... if you are on a smaller budget, 10 inches is the way to go. But I want to splurge one day and upgrade to a 13-inch Onyx Boox.
Hey thanks for the helpful comment. Quick question if you don't mind. Is it possible to install Microsoft OneDrive app on the Onyx? I don't know if you've tried this but I'm trying to find a reading device where I can just access the pdfs already stored on my onedrive, read them on the ereader, do some highlights, and then when I return to my PC they'll have the highlights in there.
Thank you for this one! Big like! Reading academic journals is one thing I do a lot. If pinch and zoom function works on Onyx Max Lumi, this device seems definitely the best for this. The front light and the more versatility/functionality of this device are clear advantages.
THANK YOU for putting this video together! It's been so hard to figure out which ereaders would work for journal articles, it looks like all of these work very well!
They open as another note so it is actually like a split screen two devices it’s not one note or one PDF.... Think of it as having two screens.... So the note we just export as that note
FYI on RM you can crop the page view to remove the margins around the main text. It makes the text bigger/more readable. I do this for textbooks but it could also be done for academic journals. It means you don't get a margin for any notes but I usually underline or write notes in the central area.
Jamie have you used the latest version of the Qauderno? Fujitsu Quaderno A4 2nd Gen? Any thoughts. What is the latency like for notes? Thanks in advance.
I am sorry I have not grabbed that yet - my main driver for large e-ink is the Onyx Boox Tab X, which is pricey but works well. I will see if I can grab one though thanks for asking. I am not sure if VOYA at MYDEEPGUIDE has one you may check his channel.
Thank you so much! Super helpful :) The only thing is that as a student, Remarkable is probably a more affordable product which can work well enough for academic reading/note taking.
Max Lumi can adjust the text density (ability to make thin fonts more heavy and easier to read). I do not know about the other tablets. In this video the text looks thin, so I personally would adjust the font density.
One of the important questions would be for large PDFs with many pages how quickly does it load on each device... How fast is it to navigate page by page or section by section or using a contents page etc...
I want a unit that transcribes as well. Boox has this feature. Please provide a sample. Do any other brands provide transcription or work with Trint software?
For me the unlimited canvas of the Papyr is the most essential feature as the margins in academic papers are usually way too small to take proper notes on the pdf itself. Quite annoying that the other producers don't have this feature. In which format is the file saved in the Papyr tablet?
Hola! it will be awsome to compare wich is the best color one for reading papers especially in bioscencies field. because colors is real important for us. thank oyu for the videos it really shine an idea forme. my mother as an profesor of psychology uses the Boox Air note 2
I preordered Remarkable2 but I ended up cancelling it when I learned it was lacking software dev (no split screen and no bluetooth keyboard input). I was really enthusiastic about it ! It's nice to see other options I didn't know of, thanks for bringing the comparison to light ! :-) I'm putting much hope in these techs but I'm waiting a more advanced development stage where all basics are put inside one product. Oh and I find the flickering of the e-ink quite exhausting (pinching, zooming and moving around the pdf) on the video, I assume it can be exhausting for the eye (if I get one of these I'd be constantly reading so I'm not looking forward for migraines!)
Did they get rid of the "Adjust View"-function on the reMarkable 2? On reMarkable 1 you could "crop" PDFs such that the annoying white borders went away giving maximum screen real estate (and you can hide the toolbar, too).
I think it really comes down to what you need the gizmo to do and what you are willing to pay for it. I personally love the e-ink on my Kindle and have been looking for a e-ink note taker and reader for academic papers for a while... but in the end of the day, I tend to find them too expensive, laggy or limited compared to either just continue working with paper notebooks and printouts of PDFs. Also those 13 inch devices are huge! I don't have any other Apple products but plenty of Android devices so getting an iPad Pro would be somewhat awkward. For others in my position, I can suggest a cheap alternative: the Acer Chromebook Tab 10 (which you can find for about $200-$250 or even less every now and then). The Squid Android app is amazingly responsive for note-taking (Nebo is ok too and has great handwriting recognition) and Paperpile has a really nice PDF reader and annotator that integrates well with Google Drive / Docs. I was not sure the PDF experience would be good enough but because the screen resolution is so high (2048x1536 pixels), I have no problems reading an A4 PDF scaled down to a 10 inch display. The included slot-in pen is small but ok for note-taking, the screen is fine, battery life is good (also when suspended). It is also possible to work in split-screen mode. Most reviews of this device is from 2018 and seem kind of out-dated. This device appears to have improved a lot since its release. It is certainly not as good or advanced as an iPad Pro for artists, and app selection for note-taking is much more basic, but I find that this does pretty much all that I need a device like this to do and it is cheap and sturdy enough to carry around. EDIT: Forgot to say, but thanks for a great video!
Amazing review. Thank you. Would you be able to show how the graphs with multiple colored lines are displayed on these different readers. I think it's pretty important.
I’d like to know which 13 inch eReader has the best handwriting to text conversion… Which is the best experience? I have the boox max Lumi 2 and although it’s getting a bit better over time with updates, the experience in general is horrible … You need to do a review video on ereader tablets and their handwriting/text conversion capabilities
One of my main use cases for these devices is annotating slide packs ( a PDF document where every page is a full page slide ), not being able to add pages on the fly is a real pain (with the RM), is there another way to acoumplish this on the RM without having to pre-format the pdfs to add blank pages, and not writing ontop of the slide ? The ideal scenareo would be to be able to split screen and add some white space under the slide to write on, but im guessing that isnt possible?
The Papyr you can but it goes to the end of the document - they are only on the first upgrade and i know they are working on this. I will keep you posted on this thanks for asking
Would like to have blank page feature and pinch to zoom on rM2. But maybe you'll try this workaround (beware I'am batch 8 and have no of these devices in real atm). Put your pdf in a separate folder together with the notebook only for that and use, I think it was swipe down from top to go out from the pdf into the folder and select your nb and do notes. Same way back to pdf. rM2 will remember where you was in the pdf and in the note. Always write the pdf page as a title on your notepage. That's it. Hope you understand what I mean.
@@riccardoatwork5291 Yes it is tough you need something bigger - I think you have to go with the larger BOOX I am all in on the reMarkable - but I have the Tab X it is Expensive but it is a great device.
Coach can you please do a video on which of these e ink devices are best for taking notes: max lumi 2, super note A5x and quardano. I really need to make a choice on which to use as a university student.
PDF is a hard topic. Also read is a different story than work with a pdf. My PDF's tend to be sometimes hitting the 3000page count or more. So a good search and index is very important. At the end(sadly no experience with iPad but I will use one soon) I will do pdf work only on a MacOS device. At work we only have windows which I don't like but fight since ever with. The UI on an e-ink together with the slowiness and the missing SW-features will not make me happy. Dreaming: An e-ink iPad would be perfect or even a proper 27" e-ink monitor.
Remarkable demonstration on confusing devices, big respect, and any videos/idea on: 1) Which tablet or reader/writer that can support projectors for presenting something? 2) Which one is a general-purpose device, for *reading/writing/editing a block or paragraph of pdf text/copy-pasting to word doc/*? It should be cheaper possibly.
I need to read a lot of investment articles online incl. ePapers (FT, WSJ, etc). Which reader do you recommend? A tablet is the best option but they have pled screens and radiates light into my face.
Dimitar I think you have to look at the Onyx Lumi - right now still the best for LARGE articles etc... expensive, but it has the light, and does a good job as a technical reader. The old one is fine or the new Lumi 2. If you want a large lit reader.
@@morningcoach thanks man. I love your videos. Straight to the point and insightful. I researched online and the Lumi 2 does really seem like the real deal. One thing that bugs me though is that it has the E Ink Mobius display but not the E Ink Carta (like the Note Air 2). How much of a disadvantage do you think that is?
Well done comparisons. Can definitely see where the 13 inch devices make for a better reading experience. Interest that the Remarkable will be getting split screen capability. This will help keep them competitive. It is amazing how many features are in the Boox products. It seems they are leading the pack in being able to do the most.
thanks, can u pls kindly tell me, which device has the dictionary function, if I read ebook or pdf, if new word is there any dictionary to look up right away like apple do? thanks
Here's my list of criteria for an e reader for journal articles and textbooks: > Multitasking (side by side on the onyx, workbenches on the digital paper 1, etc) > Highlighting freedom (text bound is a negative, automated referencing is a positive) > Intra-pdf navigation (going from the reference table on appendix page whatever back to the homework problem, going from the second page to the fifth page and back of an article, easily flipping between three or more un-indexed pages of my 60+ page lab notebook while I'm working in a fast paced setting) > How well do LaTeX math equations and chemistry equations and drawings show up > Auto zoom onto columns, or crop-zoom > Can it get to sci hub on its own, and can I drop files onto it without making it use battery power for internet > How much of a burden is the pen (can I lose it easily? Internal storage? Does it have its own battery?) If I remember any others I'll edit them in, but this is generally how I do side by side comparison for my next notebook
I am looking for a device to take notes, read eBooks or even read aloud function, important apps like google, LinkedIn etc should also work. Can anyone help me with some advice? iPad Pro I do not like becouse of the reflective surface and it does not feel like an eBook-Reader. Thanks a lot, Joseph
A great problem I always face is actually the resolution. Smaller text like the subscripts in the formulas become unreadable but are very important for the understanding. Constantly zooming in is not an option for efficient reading. Do these devices (except for the remarkable obviously) have a high enough resolution to clearly render the subscripts in the formulas. It's not really possible to judge this from the video.
Hello, thank you for your reviews, I enjoy them greatly even when you're not reviewing a device I consider buying :) I'm very interested in Onyx BOOX Lumi and how it handles documents on a somehow deeper, practical level. Could you test these features out? - How are the in-document notes exported - as a .pdf with highligts and markings, or as a separate file? Can you make a bunch of notes and highlights, then export the document and see how it looks in a conventional PDF reader? I own an Inkpad 3 which only exports highlights as a text file. It's problematic, because when you read them later - they lack context and a highlighted fragment can't start or end on a number or a symbole. You can't even highlight text which is broken into columns unless the highlighted fragment is at least one column long! I wonder if it's more practical in the Lumi. - Does it have a copy and paste function (I mean, without the keyboard)? Extra helpful if you just want to gather chosen quotes in one place. My Inkpad 3 doesn't have that and it's kind of frustrating. Mreover, does it have a snapshot feature, where you can copy illustrations and just whichever part of the document you see fit? - Does it have a convenient file browsing solution? Can you sort the documents into folders as you will? Does it have a tag system, where you can also browse by author, topic, date and some such? Thanks for answering my questions :)
I'm hoping for any one of these to be on a large black friday discount... overall I'm not buying the Papyr or the ReMarkable, I'm torn between BOOX and Quaderno
I think the biggest issues for reading on the remarkable is that it's hard to fit a full page of the journal. Moving around the page in order to read the whole thing gets REALLY annoying. I wouldn't be focusing on zooming, and focus more on page-turning, navigation etc. My second issue with the remarkable is that it requires good light in order to read - especially if the PDF has grey text. Tried the kobo elipsa but the battery life on that is trash and I don't like the active pen. Looks like a boox lumi 2 is in my future.
I would love to see a use case shootout. How does each device compare for sharing documents, editing and sending, Academic journals, Education and other use cases Maybe have one Live session where we all contribute use cases and then another session that grates each device for each use case. I think the hardest part about selecting a device is knowing what each is best for and your the only channel that focuses on use cases
I use Onyx BOOX Note 2 mainly for reading academic papers. I noticed two problems: (i) I like that I can do hand-written annotation on native pdf and sync the whole library between google drive and the device (like iPad to iCloud), but the whole syncing process is still slower and less intuitive than that of an iPad (ii) I tend to jot down hand-written notes at the margin of academic papers, but there is hand-writing distortion near the edges of the screen (so in some regions really hard to write clearly). But I know these two problems are very common in e-ink devices (even worse in many other devices). Do you think there are better products that actually solve the two problems?
Is it possible to copy the text selected to a .txt or the page that we have drawn export to a format? what are the OS of these ebooks? Thanks. It's a helpful channgel for this topic
It's so sad how the reMarkable is light-years behind regarding their OS compared to other devices. They have a formidable hardware and I understand that the primary focus of the company is to make a note taking device, but, I've been doing some research and I see droves of people walking away/canceling pre-orders from reMarkable. They have to understand that reading and navigating with ease are inherent from physical texts, e-ink technology was made specifically to deal with texts(from the consumer standing point, text formats are irrelevant, the tech should work with all of them), if they are developing devices with said technology they need to step up their game software wise. Edit. And yes, like a lot of people in the comments section, I'm waiting to see a full review on the Note Air, which looks promising and most definitely will get my money instead of the rM2 if they don't update their software.
reMarkable has now been updated with pinch zoom and scrolling around a page using two fingers (one finger still switches pages). Sometimes it does only pick up one finger or I forget to use two and then it jumps back to 100% and moves back or forward a page. But the pinch zoom is much nicer than the older experience seen in the video. I primarily use the reMarkable for writing notes, rather than reading -- probably 90% new documents, 10% annotating PDFs.
Wait, there isn't pinch & zoom on the Lumi? I took that for granted. In fact, I thought Onyx was the only brand that supported that, doesn't support crop and fit either? this is quite disappointing, that was one of the main reasons I chose it :( Here Voja on the Max 3 doing it: ruclips.net/video/SEHFkqHtu_g/видео.html
Juan No there is you have to turn it on that’s one of the problems I have with the Lumi it’s a gray device it’s just a complicated device I honestly don’t have time to sit down and learn it my iPad does what it does and for what I need but it is an amazing device you’ll love it
Thank you I’m getting back into it. I’m gonna get a lot of the devices and start rocking again. I appreciate you supporting the channel and giving me the motivation.
I saw a video on RUclips where people had trouble with writing on the Onyx Note Air. Specifically, the stylus was still writing even while it was lifted off the screen! Could you see if you have that issue on the Note Air or even the Max Lumi? I have that Issue with the Max 3 using a stylus I bought to replace the stock stylus. The replacement stylus is unusable because it writes on the screen before the stylus hits the screen. The stock stylus does not do that, but I cannot tolerate the crappy writing feel.
Great video! Thanks. I have a couple of questions. How easily can you highlight on each device? I had an Boox tablet once, but the palm rejection was terrible; so I couldn't write anything. Could you show writing a few sentences with the palm resting on the tablet to see how well the palm rejection works?
I think it is to small for that and way back on there list. Pinch to zoom would be nicer with an function to add a blank page for notes in the pdf and swipe back and forth workflow.
Can you have a layer for notes on the rM2, with the layer function. Such that you can take notes over the top of the text that would then become a separate document?
Great video comparing some really awesome products!! Quick que: How does the reading experience look on Max Lumi if you install Adobe reader? Can you still take handwritten notes with that app? Would love to know. Thank you for bringing great repertoire of knowledge so that we can make better informed decisions. We owe you so much 😅
Hi, thanks for the video! I just received my remarkable and I can't turn my pdfs in landscape mode to read them horizontally. Could yoh please tell me how we can do that? Thanks ☺️
Right now, I would not pick one over the other. They do not accomplish what we need as researchers. They each do about 40% of what we need. If you could combine them all into one, then it might work, but the software really needs work. We need reflow, zoom into one column, and have it scroll to the next column, and have it take about 3/4 screen in landscape, and have the notes flow with the document, not in a separate program. We need notes connected to the document, have them indexed, and be able to print or share them along with the software. It would really be nice if they consulted with researches, doctors, etc on what they needed instead of just being me too hardware and so so software. And for students, all of them would really suck. Better stick to hard copies of books, be able to highlight them, and then write notes on the pages. For doctors, be able to pull up the patients pdfs, but marking them up and adding new notes, better to stick with a notebook. Log in, and pull the documents, and then write the new notes. For researchers, be able to pull the pdfs, but making notes that are usable, meh! For academics teaching students and showing what they are looking at on pages and what is important, the Papyr, but for personal use, meh! For reading pdfs on the couch or chair late at night, the Max Lumi, but marking them up, Meh? For reading a general interest book, the Kobo. That is the problem most of these people are hardware people, not software, and they do not know what the end user could really use. The Kobo reader at least tries to emulate the user that reads books in the smaller popular format, but not for the student.
It is so crazy - the market is about 450 million. I am just starting to learn as 1 video took off. People get really religious about what they bought. It is why I always say the iPad just is so superior. It is a weird niche market that I am learning about over the last few months. Interesting journey for sure, but as someone who is very busy I just use my iPad most of the time, the RM for notes, and the Papyr for some collaboration. Again great points... Going to be interesting with the devices and the evolution. Is the market share big enough that is my question.... it is interesting that is for sure.
Hi Steven, I'm an academic, I've got the Boox Max 3 and it's great. I'm still learning my routine etc for how to accomplish my research. You can search all you want in PDFs, take notes specific to that PDF in a specific note, annotate which shows if you press on it where you annotated, as well as actually write on the PDF like it's paper. I've not tried to share, or use the notes & PDF on other devices to know how universal it saves it, but it's been a damn good tablet so far. I've not been justified buying just a typical iPad or Android tablet, but this I have because it replaces my paper and printer. I can't wait for Software 3.0😁
I think the Lumi would be the best bet. With a front light and the ability to also open academic textbooks that are epub in addition to PDF gives the Lumi an edge. Also with open Android the ability to have multiple PDF readers other than just the native one is great. I will be interested to see what My Deep Guide comes back with in his reading review.
JB, thank you for your really helpful review. Would you mind, what is the Lumi's contrast like when the light is completely turned off in comparison to the other devices? I've opted for the Note Air (for price and a handier size),which is already being prepared for shipping, yay ;-)
For me, annotating/highlighting in different colors is very important... Kind of frustrating that the only device that seems to fit that need is the nova 3 color, which is just really small at 7.8".
Love your videos. I have the RM2, but struggling with the form factor, I simply too much used to A4 notebooks. I have used Wacom Bamboo FolioA4 as well and had to upgrade to A4 from the A5 version. This has to do with my handwriting being hard to read and A4 turns it more readable somehow. I also can somehow better concentrate working with A4 documents and get a better "helicopter view" of the context of the notes. Also I would like to occasionally read patent documents, similar to your journals in format, and that is hard on RM2, the text is simply too small and zoom function is not really usable. So by not really being a fan of "active"pens, seems the Lumi is the only option... Will probably end up buying Lumi for Office work and business trips and stick to RM2 to other note taking activities or consider leaving the RM2 to my son for his work at the uni...
Radovan - it happens - I get it, these devices are so personal some work and some don't. I have a 43 inch e-ink device coming next week so all these devices are going to seem small LOL - the RM2 is still great just not for you :)
Great new video, I have a question for you could u tell me the best way of Charging Onyx devices. Like what is the safest cord and charging block, I don't want to burn the battery life on the device so if there is anything that is safe and will keep my battery life healthy on the onyx Lumi plz let me know. thanks
Yeah you are great Coach. Great positive energy and really helping me choose between them. I can't get over the frontlight from Max Lumi. I live in England and we have lots of clouds and bad lighting situation I find myself every day in. I feel like the frontlight is going to sell it to me.
I'm trying to make Mendeley work, which is something normally used to keep track of your references. The library on the boox isn't great and calibre doesn't do pdf, so I need something searchable, with pc synchronisation, pdf drag and drop etc. It's working poorly so far, but part of that is novelty and part of that is the mediocre programme. The point is that a more powerful open/android device like the Lumi could make that work really well if the software held up. The other devices can't do it at all, the older onyx devices are too slow. Another usecase interesting for the next video discussing it's place in your work flow is typesetting via external monitor. If you use LaTeX a pop-out preview of your document is great. Texstudio allows that. Lastly, even if the ipad is a more enjoyable device, the black & white reduces procrastination.
But it should as ZotFile just watches a sync folder, you don't actually need to run zotero on the tablet (AFAIK there is no native iOS/android Zotero client anyway)
Great video coach!!!! It is very exciting to see how tech evolves, there is a trade-off in everything. As a heavy reader of academic stuff, I wait the day in which e-ink devices have the smoothness of current tablets because I am figuring out that even the experience of reading in an e-ink device is way better than in a tablet, however, the responsiveness is quite annoying at least for me, and this is a why I am still using the iPad to read even if the experience is not an e-ink, what are your perspectives about the future of this market?
iPad still is I feel an amazing machine- the issue is all these devices are good and getting better. Next weeks note air is going to be interesting!!!!
Exactly the video I’m looking for! Thanks, coach! Actually I’m curious about the service life /battery life for these E-readers ( or called digital paper), cause it not cheap and I don’t wanna just use it for one year and need to replace it. And old BOOX users can give a comment about that?
Finally! Someone who talks about this topic! Thank you very much!
I have an iPad Pro 12.9” and also got a Boox Note Air as I was getting ready to begin a postdoc position in academia. For me what was important was two main things: 1. reading PDFs and annotating them heavily, plus adding additional pages of notes. (My research is math heavy so it’s nice to be able to fill in steps that the academic paper or text may have skipped.) 2. Having plenty of area on the screen so that I can take my own notes, performs calculations. Also relevant to both of these is that it should be easy to access my annotated PDFs and notes. During my PhD I would often have thick wads of calculations that I would run out of room for and would eventually either forget about or feel they were not worth keeping around. The point of a new expensive tablet was to help keep notes and work that I spent and time and effort to generate.
I was very interested in the e-ink screen for two major reasons: I. Better on the eyes. II. Better writing experience. Having used both of my devices for a month or so now, I must admit that the iPad doesn’t bother my eyes very much when you turn on the True Tone and increase the color warmth. Now, the e-ink definitely feels a little better, but I’m looking at the iPad all day and I don’t particularly feel it’s too tiring. I have an ESR paper like screen protector on my iPad and that makes it honestly not bad to do work on. It’s not a delight but you get used to it quickly. The boox note air had a garbage writing experience until I put on a manually cut ESR paper like screen protector, but once I did that it was great. The latency on the boox product is a little annoying, especially since the iPad is near flawless. However, you can also use stylus pens and nibs with the boox devices that make it really awesome to write with.
Ultimately my iPad has turned out to be the device I turn to much more often and I’m likely to try and sell the boox note air, or else it will just be a very expensive e-reader. The thing for me is just the functionality of the iPad. I can really find a note taking app that fits what I need. With these e-ink devices the pen functionality really works best on their native apps. Using one note or something on a boox device is possible but you wouldn’t wanna do it, the writing experience is terrible. With the iPad I read my PDFs and pinch zoom in, well, a pinch, then zoom out, change documents, etc. Although it is possible with e-ink devices too, the ability to really mark up your notes in different colors is terrific. I never used much color in my notes when it was just pencil and paper but I’ve come to really enjoy it on the iPad - something that is not available on e-ink. Also, while you can also select parts of your notes and move, copy, manipulate, etc., on e-ink, it’s always just kind of slow. The experience is just smoother on the iPad. When I wanna add something to an earlier part of the notes I just select the part I wanna move down and add my additional comments.
Almost at the end, the iPad Pro is a pro device, meaning it’s for professionals. I don’t keep any media apps on it and I don’t allow any notifications, nor do I keep any native apple apps that might distract me on my home page. It is a perfectly distract free environment - if that’s what you want.
Finally, I think ultimately the trend in e-ink devices crucially rests on how good it is for your eyes, because you can make the writing experience on iPad good enough. On this note, I’m not entirely convinced the LED is bad for you with the proper precautions.
Have a great day!
Selman.
Really helpful comment since you tried both devices for pdf annotating! But it’s from 2 years ago, I wonder what you would think of the much faster Boox Note Air 3(C) and Tab Ultra (C) devices that are out now.
For me it's about reading stamina. I read stuff way faster on my kindle vs my iPad Pro 11 inch. Technically iPad is a better device, but my productivity impacts since my work already involves 10+ hours of screen time and an e-ink device feels like a much needed break. Waiting for a day when 13+ e ink devices become affordable, without paying too much on import duty and taxes.
I'm really glad to see some coverage of this use case. As an academic, exporting annotated pdfs is way more important than most of the reading functions. There's two different cases for pdf annotating in my work day, one is the published journal article format you have here, the other is scribbling comments and editorial marks on manuscripts that get sent back to the student. (I think most non-professor people do that second task in a word processor, but for reasons I won't get into, a freehand marked-up pdf is far better).
I bring this up because of my recent, bitterly disappointing, experience trying to do these tasks with a Ratta Supernote (realizing I'm commenting off topic here, but).
1) The annotated pdfs look great on the supernote, but that is in their on-tablet native format. They have to be exported to pdf to be sent back to the collaborator/student, and then those super-elegant pen marks on the device are turned into heavily pixelated garbage. Having a document that looks great on the device, but exports off the device as an ugly mess is really disappointing. I would very much like to see the quality of the exported document included as a review criterion.
2) The Supernote can be connected to a PC by a USB cable, but it won't recognize all usb hardware. For example, my Thinkpad X395 (my primary work computer) cannot be used to connect to the Supernote, but my T450 can, so getting pdfs onto the Supernote usually involves a second laptob and a usb thumbdrive, which is really irritating. I think someone who uses a device primarily for reading would find these hurdles to be fairly trivial, but I think academics probably want to send off their scribbled-on pdfs as soon as they are done scribbling.
3) Wifi connectivity details matter. An alternative to usb is to get pdfs onto or off the device using wifi (the Supernote connects to a websitein China that is usually on-line, but sometimes not). The hitch here is that the Supernote cannot connect to wifi protected with PEAP. I'm guessing that most people use these devices over home wifi that just requires a password, but people working with institutional wifi where a username and password pair are required to access wifi will not have internet connectivity. Coverage of the range of supported wifi would be greatly appreciated.
4) I could go through the many aspects of the Supernote design that infuriate me as a left handed user. The hardware is just built, ground-up, for operation by a right handed user...
Thanks again for this, I'm clearly in the market for a better alternative to the Supernote...
Pete - thanks for checking out the video - we just discuss all kinds of tech and I am just trying to help. I have the Supernote A6X but it hasn't made it into my day to day workflow. More coming though with these devices. Hard to find that one that does everything... Thanks
Hey Pete, thank you so much for your thoughts about Supernote. This is very helpful. I am looking for a device to read academic papers and I am more and more inclined to buy Quaderno. Looks like a new Sony could be a good option too but it does not seem to be on the market yet. The third one in my ranking based entirely on youtube reviews is Onyx Books 13.3 devices. Papyr seems not to highlight text properly. What do you think?
@@ty_derevo well, I don't know about those options (and I don't highlight, just make notes in the margins, etc), but I was so unhappy with the supernote that I bought a remarkable2 to replace it. The remarkable2 isn't perfect, but I think it'll do.
Another good video thanks. A couple of things viewers might miss to make reading easier on the Remarkable 2 which I have found useful. Firstly, (obviously?) you can turn off the menu on the left margin, just click the circle with the dot in it at the top to toggle. Secondly, when reading pdfs you can adjust the view for all pages to get rid of margins/headers/footers. In a pdf click on the bottom most icon and then click on 'adjust view'. You can then crop in to where the text is on most pages, choose a page that uses the most screen top and bottom. Using these two tips you can maximise screen real estate to the point the text is close in size to a printed A4 page with margins.
1:00 onyx Omni book max lumni, 3:50 remarkable 2, 8:00 quirklogic papyr & quaderno
I've heard people say that the reMarkable would have been good for them had it only been 13". Until now I've sort of brushed that off as unnecessarily finicky. 10" surely ought to be enough, I thought. Partly because I digest smaller format textbooks, and use B5 size paper notebooks. But I think I've finally understood the advantages of the bigger size.
In the end, wherever you go, A4 is the size standard for printers. Any medium smaller will not display the document correctly. Therefore, every screen _smaller_ than A4 will inevitably be varying degrees of inadequate for the vast majority of documents out there. In the case of 12pt printouts, sightly inadequate. As for legal documents and academic papers, very inadequate. It's often not so much a matter of _your eyes_ not being comfortable reading the pdf text on an e-paper device, but rather that the pdf itself was specifically designed _not_ to be read at that size. Further, zoom is nice to have, but it starts becoming tedious to feel you _have_ to zoom in order to read most of the time. I think I would rather a paper tablet read the dominant print format natively, and save zooming for when something extraordinary needs to take place that you would have difficulty doing even on its physical counterpart.
10" quickly turned out to not display the most common online prints in a comfortably readable way. To me, that meant that even after upgrading from a Kindle, PDF reading is still something I seldom do because it's painful.
On another note, another, arguably more important, aspect of reading PDFs is navigation. I wrote about this earlier, but to me the most valuable function of a pdf reader is its search. However, I believe how the machine lets you flip through pages and navigate indexes and the Table of Contents is equally important. I've found this to also be difficult to do on the reMarkable, and I'm curious the see how page refresh and menus work on the other devices. While intently reading you tend to only do very specific things over and over again. This is optimal. If you need to tap back and forth between different menus to activate, open and scroll malproportioned lists for expended periods of time, you quickly lose interest. Not because the e-paper itself needs a little patience, but because it's asking for more than necessary instead of mitigating its limitations for ease of use.
That being said, I did purchase the reMarkable 2 to replace my reMarkable 1, which I've used daily. In lieu of my lack of judgement as a poor student, I do believe I've gained a novel tool to accomplish a very narrow albeit imperative set of tasks.
@@___xyz___Given your issues, why didn't you just buy the Boox Lumi?
@@yohanneshaile9473 Given the complaint that the reMarkable tablets are too expensive, the Lumi is just outrageously so. I can't flesh out $900 on a paper tablet. $500 is already too much. Besides, in my honest opinion e-paper is inherently something if a trade-off. One of the reasons I bought the reMarkable in the first place was so that I wouldn't walk into the trap of thinking I was going to be able to use a smart device for more than one thing. You buy an iPad thinking you're finally gonna be able to do it all, but in the end you just sit and watch RUclips anyway, so why bother. In the end there are really only two reasons to get an iPad: the Apple ecosystem and core audio (music). For me, the obvious reason to get a reMarkable was to take notes. And that I have. I don't see the obvious reason to get a Boot Lumi. Like the iPad, it claims to do it all*, but there is no distinct advantage to any one feature, except that obviously it's an e-paper device. But I don't need another smart device. I just need something to write on, and reMarkable does it better and cheaper.
The reading experience is another deal altogether. But personally it's really a minor detail as compared to pen input. No e-paper device currently actually practically reads PDF as comfortably as a computer anyway.
To be completely honest, however, the whole e-paper trend is largely a fad to the great advantage of _actually_ visually impaired people. No one else actually needs these devices, and buying into the Boox series for $900 simply isn't worth it for any ordinary person. We're years behind any actual breakthrough. I still bring old-fashioned paper, and it far outperforms digital, unfortunately... The reMarkable is really just a fun toy.
@@___xyz___ Thank you. Your comments are very thoughtful. I researched a bit on this topic and your insights are some of the best.
Thanks a lot man, your side by side pdf text comparison cleared it all, I had already watched a dozen of videos but none of them were so clear. Thanks a lot..... 13.3 inch lumi is clear winner for me
I’ve bought the lumi, tried it, returned it and bought a 12” M1 iPad Pro. Spending nearly 1K on an e-paper tablet is in my opinion only the right choice if you’re rich *and* already own an iPad…
You are on the top of the game… love your positive energy…. Cant wait for note air.. I know, is coming, could you do me a big favor… try the Lamy pen on the note air.. You will make my day… you are the best!!!!!!!!
Thank you very much I will I’ll give it a shot I appreciate the kind comment
I think the biggest decision point is integration with at least one 3rd party file management such as drive, Dropbox so documents can be synced between devices.
I guess I'm kinda randomly asking but do anybody know a good site to stream newly released tv shows online ?
I am thinking about the same things!!! Are there any e-reader that does it?? I would love to be able to read pdf from my google drive and directly edit on it.
@@StillWaterRD Remarkable now does have integration with the Google Drive
@@angiolg2 Cool! But Remarkable 2 only has 10.3 inch? Do you if there is any 13.3 inch that has it? Thank you!
@@angiolg2 you have to pay the monthly fee forever to have it. Quite disappointing. Boox is android so welcome any android app.
he is very gentle and explains everything without criticizing other product and didnt even distroy other product s image he simply explained why his product is better well done love from winnipeg canada and from india 🇨🇦🇮🇳
I usually don't comment on YT videos but this time I had to say it: I love your reviews JB; always honest and to the point!
Hope your channel grows even more, keep up the good work!
Coach, on the Max Lumi, you can “enable” Pinch-to-zoom under the setting.
Thank u!!!!!!!!!!! I thought so 💪💪👊🏼👊🏼👊🏼👊🏼👊🏼
Ya, was about to comment. My Max3 can pinch zoom. I complained to them that sometimes you trigger it by mistake when taking notes, maybe others also complained, so they had an option to enable or disable it
Fisher Grubb That’s awesome thank you
Hey Coach. Great video. Could you maybe do a video comparing file management between devices? Moving PDFs from computer to device seems very different between Remarkable and Boox devices especially. Which do you find easier to manage your academic papers?
I alwqys use the remarkable's crop page feature to remove the margins, and that makes the text significantly larger, usually eliminating the need to zoom in
I can’t use this feature in remarkable 2, still not figure out how to use it lol
@@youngc0930 well, it should be the same as in the remarkable 1. Basically by pressing the crop button a box selection will appear representing the screen, and you should try to fit your text as best as possible inside that box by dragging the box corners. After you press ok the screen will display only the content inside the box. You could accidentally cut off text, so be careful, and do this on a page that is full of text to be sure everything is included. I find this very useful and do it for every single pdf
@@kovacsgyorgy5043 Thanks bro! I can use it now. It is indeed very useful.
Hi, do you know how to turn pdfs horizontally?
@@martinapunto8560 there is no way to modify pdf's using only the device. You need to upload them in the correct orientation. Not very happy about that but I keep praying to the software gods and hoping for the best. But again, I waited for more than 6 months for copy paste functionality so yeah.
Hi, great video! Exactly wat I was looking for as I am about to start my PhD!
Could the remarkable2 be used horizontally to annotate pdfs? Thanks a lot ☺️
No :(
Thanks a lot for the detailed video on reading papers using the larger screened devices. Most reviewers just ignore this important application of the larger screens.
Yeah, first time I hear someone talking about this! Before people make a decision to buy one of these for academic reading, remember: most PDFs, academic journals and textbooks are big pages, A4 size, which fits perfectly in a 13 inch display. If you get anything smaller than that (like the Remarkable), you will have to constantly adjust the page, zoom in and out... I have the Onyx Boox Note with 10 inches. Onyx does have a function to split the page in half in landscape mode to better fit big pages, you can also split a page in 4 sections, you just set it once and the next pages will all be automatically split, you'll just have to swipe to progress with the reading. But some pages have a lot of pictures and graphs which will be cut, so you will eventually have to zoom in and out and manually adjust... When you have to read hundreds of pages, it's just a bit annoying, but works anyway... if you are on a smaller budget, 10 inches is the way to go. But I want to splurge one day and upgrade to a 13-inch Onyx Boox.
Hey thanks for the helpful comment. Quick question if you don't mind. Is it possible to install Microsoft OneDrive app on the Onyx?
I don't know if you've tried this but I'm trying to find a reading device where I can just access the pdfs already stored on my onedrive, read them on the ereader, do some highlights, and then when I return to my PC they'll have the highlights in there.
Thank you for this one! Big like! Reading academic journals is one thing I do a lot. If pinch and zoom function works on Onyx Max Lumi, this device seems definitely the best for this. The front light and the more versatility/functionality of this device are clear advantages.
THANK YOU for putting this video together! It's been so hard to figure out which ereaders would work for journal articles, it looks like all of these work very well!
The larger devices definitely are appealing when reading journals. How do the notes export from the max lumi and quaderno from split screen?
They open as another note so it is actually like a split screen two devices it’s not one note or one PDF.... Think of it as having two screens.... So the note we just export as that note
@@morningcoach I think he meant how would the notes the transferred from the lumi/quaderno to an external PC
FYI on RM you can crop the page view to remove the margins around the main text. It makes the text bigger/more readable. I do this for textbooks but it could also be done for academic journals. It means you don't get a margin for any notes but I usually underline or write notes in the central area.
Do you know how to turn the pdfs horizontally?
@@martinapunto8560 you can't unfortunately. The only thing you can do is put the toolbar in landscape mode so the toolbar is at the side.
@@j45393 thank you for responding! Such a stupid choice on their part :(
Jamie have you used the latest version of the Qauderno? Fujitsu Quaderno A4 2nd Gen? Any thoughts. What is the latency like for notes? Thanks in advance.
I am sorry I have not grabbed that yet - my main driver for large e-ink is the Onyx Boox Tab X, which is pricey but works well. I will see if I can grab one though thanks for asking. I am not sure if VOYA at MYDEEPGUIDE has one you may check his channel.
Thank you so much! Super helpful :) The only thing is that as a student, Remarkable is probably a more affordable product which can work well enough for academic reading/note taking.
Max Lumi can adjust the text density (ability to make thin fonts more heavy and easier to read). I do not know about the other tablets. In this video the text looks thin, so I personally would adjust the font density.
One of the important questions would be for large PDFs with many pages how quickly does it load on each device... How fast is it to navigate page by page or section by section or using a contents page etc...
I want a unit that transcribes as well. Boox has this feature. Please provide a sample. Do any other brands provide transcription or work with Trint software?
For me the unlimited canvas of the Papyr is the most essential feature as the margins in academic papers are usually way too small to take proper notes on the pdf itself. Quite annoying that the other producers don't have this feature. In which format is the file saved in the Papyr tablet?
Hola! it will be awsome to compare wich is the best color one for reading papers especially in bioscencies field. because colors is real important for us. thank oyu for the videos it really shine an idea forme. my mother as an profesor of psychology uses the Boox Air note 2
Sounds good! I will get on that!
I preordered Remarkable2 but I ended up cancelling it when I learned it was lacking software dev (no split screen and no bluetooth keyboard input). I was really enthusiastic about it ! It's nice to see other options I didn't know of, thanks for bringing the comparison to light ! :-)
I'm putting much hope in these techs but I'm waiting a more advanced development stage where all basics are put inside one product.
Oh and I find the flickering of the e-ink quite exhausting (pinching, zooming and moving around the pdf) on the video, I assume it can be exhausting for the eye (if I get one of these I'd be constantly reading so I'm not looking forward for migraines!)
Did they get rid of the "Adjust View"-function on the reMarkable 2? On reMarkable 1 you could "crop" PDFs such that the annoying white borders went away giving maximum screen real estate (and you can hide the toolbar, too).
It's still there in reMarkable 2. A nice feature.
Admittedly, the Onyx looks stunning.
Does anyone know about how good you can actually connect the edited textes and notes with your computer and Zotero? Thanks a lot!
I think it really comes down to what you need the gizmo to do and what you are willing to pay for it. I personally love the e-ink on my Kindle and have been looking for a e-ink note taker and reader for academic papers for a while... but in the end of the day, I tend to find them too expensive, laggy or limited compared to either just continue working with paper notebooks and printouts of PDFs. Also those 13 inch devices are huge!
I don't have any other Apple products but plenty of Android devices so getting an iPad Pro would be somewhat awkward. For others in my position, I can suggest a cheap alternative: the Acer Chromebook Tab 10 (which you can find for about $200-$250 or even less every now and then). The Squid Android app is amazingly responsive for note-taking (Nebo is ok too and has great handwriting recognition) and Paperpile has a really nice PDF reader and annotator that integrates well with Google Drive / Docs. I was not sure the PDF experience would be good enough but because the screen resolution is so high (2048x1536 pixels), I have no problems reading an A4 PDF scaled down to a 10 inch display. The included slot-in pen is small but ok for note-taking, the screen is fine, battery life is good (also when suspended). It is also possible to work in split-screen mode.
Most reviews of this device is from 2018 and seem kind of out-dated. This device appears to have improved a lot since its release. It is certainly not as good or advanced as an iPad Pro for artists, and app selection for note-taking is much more basic, but I find that this does pretty much all that I need a device like this to do and it is cheap and sturdy enough to carry around.
EDIT: Forgot to say, but thanks for a great video!
Pinch zoom works on reMarkable now. Probably came with an update, if it didn't work before.
You didn't show the cropping feature on the max lumi. You can crop the margins in a pdf and maintain that crop across the entire pdf.
Andrew - that rocks - I missed that! Thanks for letting me know I will check that out. The Lumi is such a really awesome device... thanks
How come the supernote A5x wasn’t added to the comparison here ?
Amazing review. Thank you.
Would you be able to show how the graphs with multiple colored lines are displayed on these different readers. I think it's pretty important.
I will see if I can put one together thank you
I’d like to know which 13 inch eReader has the best handwriting to text conversion… Which is the best experience? I have the boox max Lumi 2 and although it’s getting a bit better over time with updates, the experience in general is horrible … You need to do a review video on ereader tablets and their handwriting/text conversion capabilities
One of my main use cases for these devices is annotating slide packs ( a PDF document where every page is a full page slide ), not being able to add pages on the fly is a real pain (with the RM), is there another way to acoumplish this on the RM without having to pre-format the pdfs to add blank pages, and not writing ontop of the slide ? The ideal scenareo would be to be able to split screen and add some white space under the slide to write on, but im guessing that isnt possible?
The Papyr you can but it goes to the end of the document - they are only on the first upgrade and i know they are working on this. I will keep you posted on this thanks for asking
Would like to have blank page feature and pinch to zoom on rM2.
But maybe you'll try this workaround (beware I'am batch 8 and have no of these devices in real atm).
Put your pdf in a separate folder together with the notebook only for that and use, I think it was swipe down from top to go out from the pdf into the folder and select your nb and do notes. Same way back to pdf. rM2 will remember where you was in the pdf and in the note. Always write the pdf page as a title on your notepage. That's it.
Hope you understand what I mean.
I would have been great to know which one YOU would buy...
Also the Lumi looks whiter.. is that because of the light?
Lumi is great but the Tab X is the suggested Boox product now - pretty old video.....
@@morningcoach thanks a lot , I was also considering the Quaderno gen 2 but I think it only reads pdf and I also need to read epubs ..
@@riccardoatwork5291 Yes it is tough you need something bigger - I think you have to go with the larger BOOX I am all in on the reMarkable - but I have the Tab X it is Expensive but it is a great device.
Coach can you please do a video on which of these e ink devices are best for taking notes: max lumi 2, super note A5x and quardano. I really need to make a choice on which to use as a university student.
I will but would lean towards the Max Lumi with what you are looking for up there, really great device at this point.
Amazing. I’ve already preordered the Remarkable 2. Eager to get it. In November. Thanks, Morning Coach. Your energy is infectious.
How do you text search within a PDF document or search for text within all of your document folders?
Thank you for making the video !
Thanks for watching
can you make boox lumi have the same contrast as the qaderno??
7:50 "Sony kind of devices" - what does that mean?
PDF is a hard topic. Also read is a different story than work with a pdf.
My PDF's tend to be sometimes hitting the 3000page count or more. So a good search and index is very important. At the end(sadly no experience with iPad but I will use one soon) I will do pdf work only on a MacOS device. At work we only have windows which I don't like but fight since ever with.
The UI on an e-ink together with the slowiness and the missing SW-features will not make me happy.
Dreaming: An e-ink iPad would be perfect or even a proper 27" e-ink monitor.
Remarkable demonstration on confusing devices, big respect, and any videos/idea on:
1) Which tablet or reader/writer that can support projectors for presenting something?
2) Which one is a general-purpose device, for *reading/writing/editing a block or paragraph of pdf text/copy-pasting to word doc/*?
It should be cheaper possibly.
I need to read a lot of investment articles online incl. ePapers (FT, WSJ, etc). Which reader do you recommend? A tablet is the best option but they have pled screens and radiates light into my face.
Dimitar I think you have to look at the Onyx Lumi - right now still the best for LARGE articles etc... expensive, but it has the light, and does a good job as a technical reader. The old one is fine or the new Lumi 2. If you want a large lit reader.
@@morningcoach thanks man. I love your videos. Straight to the point and insightful.
I researched online and the Lumi 2 does really seem like the real deal. One thing that bugs me though is that it has the E Ink Mobius display but not the E Ink Carta (like the Note Air 2). How much of a disadvantage do you think that is?
@@dimitarbushkalov2380 Thank you - I think a little but for your use probably the best device at this time.
Can you search the pdf on any of the devices? Like if I wanted to find a the pages that say "antenna".
good question.. did you find out an answer?
Well done comparisons. Can definitely see where the 13 inch devices make for a better reading experience. Interest that the Remarkable will be getting split screen capability. This will help keep them competitive. It is amazing how many features are in the Boox products. It seems they are leading the pack in being able to do the most.
thanks, can u pls kindly tell me, which device has the dictionary function, if I read ebook or pdf, if new word is there any dictionary to look up right away like apple do? thanks
Thanks for your channel, I see a great future in this technology
Here's my list of criteria for an e reader for journal articles and textbooks:
> Multitasking (side by side on the onyx, workbenches on the digital paper 1, etc)
> Highlighting freedom (text bound is a negative, automated referencing is a positive)
> Intra-pdf navigation (going from the reference table on appendix page whatever back to the homework problem, going from the second page to the fifth page and back of an article, easily flipping between three or more un-indexed pages of my 60+ page lab notebook while I'm working in a fast paced setting)
> How well do LaTeX math equations and chemistry equations and drawings show up
> Auto zoom onto columns, or crop-zoom
> Can it get to sci hub on its own, and can I drop files onto it without making it use battery power for internet
> How much of a burden is the pen (can I lose it easily? Internal storage? Does it have its own battery?)
If I remember any others I'll edit them in, but this is generally how I do side by side comparison for my next notebook
I am looking for a device to take notes, read eBooks or even read aloud function, important apps like google, LinkedIn etc should also work. Can anyone help me with some advice? iPad Pro I do not like becouse of the reflective surface and it does not feel like an eBook-Reader. Thanks a lot, Joseph
iPad has a nightshift (blue-light reduction function) that can be scheduled to occur automatically, or turned on or off quite easily
A great problem I always face is actually the resolution. Smaller text like the subscripts in the formulas become unreadable but are very important for the understanding. Constantly zooming in is not an option for efficient reading. Do these devices (except for the remarkable obviously) have a high enough resolution to clearly render the subscripts in the formulas. It's not really possible to judge this from the video.
Thanks :)
Max Lumi wins it to me
Hello, thank you for your reviews, I enjoy them greatly even when you're not reviewing a device I consider buying :)
I'm very interested in Onyx BOOX Lumi and how it handles documents on a somehow deeper, practical level. Could you test these features out?
- How are the in-document notes exported - as a .pdf with highligts and markings, or as a separate file? Can you make a bunch of notes and highlights, then export the document and see how it looks in a conventional PDF reader?
I own an Inkpad 3 which only exports highlights as a text file. It's problematic, because when you read them later - they lack context and a highlighted fragment can't start or end on a number or a symbole. You can't even highlight text which is broken into columns unless the highlighted fragment is at least one column long! I wonder if it's more practical in the Lumi.
- Does it have a copy and paste function (I mean, without the keyboard)? Extra helpful if you just want to gather chosen quotes in one place. My Inkpad 3 doesn't have that and it's kind of frustrating.
Mreover, does it have a snapshot feature, where you can copy illustrations and just whichever part of the document you see fit?
- Does it have a convenient file browsing solution? Can you sort the documents into folders as you will? Does it have a tag system, where you can also browse by author, topic, date and some such?
Thanks for answering my questions :)
Which devices to do a bullet journal method? Where can jump front index to my collections?
I'm hoping for any one of these to be on a large black friday discount... overall I'm not buying the Papyr or the ReMarkable, I'm torn between BOOX and Quaderno
JB may you make a video showing Supernote A6X with the same academic pdf?
Yes I will for sure but the A6X is really tiny for that dense of a PDF but got you for sure - thanks for asking :)
I have the onyx boox max3, which I think preceedes the lumi. Mine has pinch and zoom, has to be activated.
I think the biggest issues for reading on the remarkable is that it's hard to fit a full page of the journal. Moving around the page in order to read the whole thing gets REALLY annoying. I wouldn't be focusing on zooming, and focus more on page-turning, navigation etc. My second issue with the remarkable is that it requires good light in order to read - especially if the PDF has grey text. Tried the kobo elipsa but the battery life on that is trash and I don't like the active pen. Looks like a boox lumi 2 is in my future.
on the lumi there is the pinch to zoom. in other review they use it. I think you can use it on "fast render" option
I would love to see a use case shootout. How does each device compare for sharing documents, editing and sending, Academic journals, Education and other use cases Maybe have one Live session where we all contribute use cases and then another session that grates each device for each use case. I think the hardest part about selecting a device is knowing what each is best for and your the only channel that focuses on use cases
Grades, not grates. Forgot my glasses!
Thanks for this insightful comparison. How would you compare the workflow of loading PDF documents from the PC onto the readers?
Niclas thanks for asking they are all very similar with their own software you just drag and drop - I don't see any real advantage with any of them.
I use Onyx BOOX Note 2 mainly for reading academic papers. I noticed two problems: (i) I like that I can do hand-written annotation on native pdf and sync the whole library between google drive and the device (like iPad to iCloud), but the whole syncing process is still slower and less intuitive than that of an iPad (ii) I tend to jot down hand-written notes at the margin of academic papers, but there is hand-writing distortion near the edges of the screen (so in some regions really hard to write clearly).
But I know these two problems are very common in e-ink devices (even worse in many other devices). Do you think there are better products that actually solve the two problems?
Interested to know the same!!
Is it possible to copy the text selected to a .txt or the page that we have drawn export to a format? what are the OS of these ebooks? Thanks. It's a helpful channgel for this topic
It's so sad how the reMarkable is light-years behind regarding their OS compared to other devices. They have a formidable hardware and I understand that the primary focus of the company is to make a note taking device, but, I've been doing some research and I see droves of people walking away/canceling pre-orders from reMarkable. They have to understand that reading and navigating with ease are inherent from physical texts, e-ink technology was made specifically to deal with texts(from the consumer standing point, text formats are irrelevant, the tech should work with all of them), if they are developing devices with said technology they need to step up their game software wise.
Edit.
And yes, like a lot of people in the comments section, I'm waiting to see a full review on the Note Air, which looks promising and most definitely will get my money instead of the rM2 if they don't update their software.
reMarkable has now been updated with pinch zoom and scrolling around a page using two fingers (one finger still switches pages).
Sometimes it does only pick up one finger or I forget to use two and then it jumps back to 100% and moves back or forward a page.
But the pinch zoom is much nicer than the older experience seen in the video.
I primarily use the reMarkable for writing notes, rather than reading -- probably 90% new documents, 10% annotating PDFs.
Wait, there isn't pinch & zoom on the Lumi? I took that for granted. In fact, I thought Onyx was the only brand that supported that, doesn't support crop and fit either? this is quite disappointing, that was one of the main reasons I chose it :(
Here Voja on the Max 3 doing it:
ruclips.net/video/SEHFkqHtu_g/видео.html
Juan No there is you have to turn it on that’s one of the problems I have with the Lumi it’s a gray device it’s just a complicated device I honestly don’t have time to sit down and learn it my iPad does what it does and for what I need but it is an amazing device you’ll love it
Please make a new video with the latest eink readers!
Thank you I’m getting back into it. I’m gonna get a lot of the devices and start rocking again. I appreciate you supporting the channel and giving me the motivation.
I saw a video on RUclips where people had trouble with writing on the Onyx Note Air. Specifically, the stylus was still writing even while it was lifted off the screen! Could you see if you have that issue on the Note Air or even the Max Lumi?
I have that Issue with the Max 3 using a stylus I bought to replace the stock stylus. The replacement stylus is unusable because it writes on the screen before the stylus hits the screen. The stock stylus does not do that, but I cannot tolerate the crappy writing feel.
And only BOOX support DJVU file format. Many rare technical books are saved in this format.
AWESOME Comment!!!
you can convert djvu to PDF....djvu is a good format better than pdf.
Great video! Thanks. I have a couple of questions.
How easily can you highlight on each device?
I had an Boox tablet once, but the palm rejection was terrible; so I couldn't write anything. Could you show writing a few sentences with the palm resting on the tablet to see how well the palm rejection works?
I hope the RM2 will also evolve towards a split screen option soon with a software update... 🤞🏻
I think it is to small for that and way back on there list.
Pinch to zoom would be nicer with an function to add a blank page for notes in the pdf and swipe back and forth workflow.
Can you have a layer for notes on the rM2, with the layer function. Such that you can take notes over the top of the text that would then become a separate document?
Some people also say that it is not powerful enough for that :/
@@guymcpumkinface1793 I think if they want to do they could. Maybe they would have less runtime and that is a conflict.
@@lazyman1011 maybe they could... But I think people should be aware that this is not a feature that is likely to apear on the device!
Great video comparing some really awesome products!!
Quick que: How does the reading experience look on Max Lumi if you install Adobe reader? Can you still take handwritten notes with that app? Would love to know.
Thank you for bringing great repertoire of knowledge so that we can make better informed decisions. We owe you so much 😅
Hi, thanks for the video! I just received my remarkable and I can't turn my pdfs in landscape mode to read them horizontally. Could yoh please tell me how we can do that?
Thanks ☺️
Right now, I would not pick one over the other. They do not accomplish what we need as researchers. They each do about 40% of what we need. If you could combine them all into one, then it might work, but the software really needs work. We need reflow, zoom into one column, and have it scroll to the next column, and have it take about 3/4 screen in landscape, and have the notes flow with the document, not in a separate program. We need notes connected to the document, have them indexed, and be able to print or share them along with the software. It would really be nice if they consulted with researches, doctors, etc on what they needed instead of just being me too hardware and so so software.
And for students, all of them would really suck. Better stick to hard copies of books, be able to highlight them, and then write notes on the pages.
For doctors, be able to pull up the patients pdfs, but marking them up and adding new notes, better to stick with a notebook. Log in, and pull the documents, and then write the new notes.
For researchers, be able to pull the pdfs, but making notes that are usable, meh!
For academics teaching students and showing what they are looking at on pages and what is important, the Papyr, but for personal use, meh!
For reading pdfs on the couch or chair late at night, the Max Lumi, but marking them up, Meh?
For reading a general interest book, the Kobo.
That is the problem most of these people are hardware people, not software, and they do not know what the end user could really use. The Kobo reader at least tries to emulate the user that reads books in the smaller popular format, but not for the student.
It is so crazy - the market is about 450 million. I am just starting to learn as 1 video took off. People get really religious about what they bought. It is why I always say the iPad just is so superior. It is a weird niche market that I am learning about over the last few months. Interesting journey for sure, but as someone who is very busy I just use my iPad most of the time, the RM for notes, and the Papyr for some collaboration. Again great points... Going to be interesting with the devices and the evolution. Is the market share big enough that is my question.... it is interesting that is for sure.
Hi Steven, I'm an academic, I've got the Boox Max 3 and it's great.
I'm still learning my routine etc for how to accomplish my research. You can search all you want in PDFs, take notes specific to that PDF in a specific note, annotate which shows if you press on it where you annotated, as well as actually write on the PDF like it's paper.
I've not tried to share, or use the notes & PDF on other devices to know how universal it saves it, but it's been a damn good tablet so far.
I've not been justified buying just a typical iPad or Android tablet, but this I have because it replaces my paper and printer.
I can't wait for Software 3.0😁
Why are these things so hard to find? I can't seem to find one to buy from a major retailer (not Ebay).
I think because most of them are built in Asia
I think the Lumi would be the best bet. With a front light and the ability to also open academic textbooks that are epub in addition to PDF gives the Lumi an edge. Also with open Android the ability to have multiple PDF readers other than just the native one is great. I will be interested to see what My Deep Guide comes back with in his reading review.
For sure - I know Voya is getting his normal deep videos rocking thanks 👍👍
JB, thank you for your really helpful review. Would you mind, what is the Lumi's contrast like when the light is completely turned off in comparison to the other devices? I've opted for the Note Air (for price and a handier size),which is already being prepared for shipping, yay ;-)
JB, that the cool thing. We can get the overview from your videos and then get as much detail as anyone could want from Voya.
Paul and Rebecca Wherry Exactly that’s why I love Voya he’s amazing and makes my life easier - he’s great!!!
Anja N. It’s a great question they’re all real real similar except a reMarkable 2 is really sharp but it’s smaller
Great video. I wonder why it is not sufficient to just type a note though?
Thank you coach. I think to be fair, Remarkable does have a feature of selecting the area where you want to zoom by drawing. Good video nevertheless!
I think sony's and remarkable are looking great.
A Max Lumi 2 review?
I dont know what I want to choose...
Do you know when will be the release date of the papyr 2???
We will have a Beta at some point but I think closer to year end. - hardware is ready. I will have one of the first ones so will let you know for sure
will the font's get bigger if you remove the menu on the left?
Good question I don't think so but will test thanks for asking (No not that I could do just tested it) Thanks
@@morningcoach ref: remarkable 2
@@JC-dp5iu Sorry I tried the LUMI - no on the RM2 either the menu leaves but no increased font ability I can find like a ereader - great question.
For me, annotating/highlighting in different colors is very important... Kind of frustrating that the only device that seems to fit that need is the nova 3 color, which is just really small at 7.8".
As a hardcore android customization guy, I’m kind of like max lumi more than Papyr/quaderno.
Love your videos. I have the RM2, but struggling with the form factor, I simply too much used to A4 notebooks. I have used Wacom Bamboo FolioA4 as well and had to upgrade to A4 from the A5 version. This has to do with my handwriting being hard to read and A4 turns it more readable somehow. I also can somehow better concentrate working with A4 documents and get a better "helicopter view" of the context of the notes.
Also I would like to occasionally read patent documents, similar to your journals in format, and that is hard on RM2, the text is simply too small and zoom function is not really usable. So by not really being a fan of "active"pens, seems the Lumi is the only option... Will probably end up buying Lumi for Office work and business trips and stick to RM2 to other note taking activities or consider leaving the RM2 to my son for his work at the uni...
Radovan - it happens - I get it, these devices are so personal some work and some don't. I have a 43 inch e-ink device coming next week so all these devices are going to seem small LOL - the RM2 is still great just not for you :)
Great new video, I have a question for you could u tell me the best way of Charging Onyx devices. Like what is the safest cord and charging block, I don't want to burn the battery life on the device so if there is anything that is safe and will keep my battery life healthy on the onyx Lumi plz let me know. thanks
Thank you for showing us this comparison!
Yeah you are great Coach. Great positive energy and really helping me choose between them. I can't get over the frontlight from Max Lumi. I live in England and we have lots of clouds and bad lighting situation I find myself every day in. I feel like the frontlight is going to sell it to me.
you can install diff. app on onyx, alot there support pin zoom function. e.g. moonreader
It is not only about reading, but about taking notes and the possibility to highlight / underline text. That would be interesting to see...
I have a remarkable 2 on pre order but this is neat too.
I'm trying to make Mendeley work, which is something normally used to keep track of your references. The library on the boox isn't great and calibre doesn't do pdf, so I need something searchable, with pc synchronisation, pdf drag and drop etc. It's working poorly so far, but part of that is novelty and part of that is the mediocre programme. The point is that a more powerful open/android device like the Lumi could make that work really well if the software held up. The other devices can't do it at all, the older onyx devices are too slow.
Another usecase interesting for the next video discussing it's place in your work flow is typesetting via external monitor. If you use LaTeX a pop-out preview of your document is great. Texstudio allows that.
Lastly, even if the ipad is a more enjoyable device, the black & white reduces procrastination.
so does mendeley not work? that would be a dealbreaker for me
I'd use Zotero + ZotFile. Switched from Mendeley and never looked back
@@kirkpsmith does Zotero work on the Lumi? if it does that would be awesome!
@@jontoronto9539 remind me to let you know tomorrow! Will be picking it up and it's the first order of business
But it should as ZotFile just watches a sync folder, you don't actually need to run zotero on the tablet (AFAIK there is no native iOS/android Zotero client anyway)
Front light. I like the Papyr, but need the front light personally.
Great video coach!!!! It is very exciting to see how tech evolves, there is a trade-off in everything. As a heavy reader of academic stuff, I wait the day in which e-ink devices have the smoothness of current tablets because I am figuring out that even the experience of reading in an e-ink device is way better than in a tablet, however, the responsiveness is quite annoying at least for me, and this is a why I am still using the iPad to read even if the experience is not an e-ink, what are your perspectives about the future of this market?
iPad still is I feel an amazing machine- the issue is all these devices are good and getting better. Next weeks note air is going to be interesting!!!!
Exactly the video I’m looking for! Thanks, coach!
Actually I’m curious about the service life /battery life for these E-readers ( or called digital paper), cause it not cheap and I don’t wanna just use it for one year and need to replace it. And old BOOX users can give a comment about that?
Another great video Coach! Is the ppi better on the Max lumi vs papyr?
So do you think that Remarkable 2 is not good to use it as an eBook reader?