# Remarkable 2, Great Hardware, Lack-luster Software Created: 2023_07_25 11:21 Tags: [[Technology]] [[Remarkable 2]] [[PKM]] ![[Remarkable_2.png]] When the Remarkable 2 first came out, I was one of the first ones in line for it. You are telling me I could get an E-Ink tablet that I can even SSH into? With an existing ecosystem of tooling on top where you can even run [Koreader on it](https://koreader.rocks/)? That is remarkable (sorry had to), I've got to have it! With time, as with any new thing, reality set-in. ## Great Hardware They talk about this a lot in their marketing, & I think it is done for a great reason. Their hardware is absolutely gorgeous, super-thin, quality materials. What is there not to love? The writing experience is unlike any other tablet, this thing could easily substitute a piece of paper with the feel that it has. This is just an E-Ink thing, but the battery life is just spectacular to me. ## Lack-Luster Software The software is the portion that gets on my nerves, though. I get it, they are maybe going for a different target market than me. But the software is overly simple, sure you can sell it as distraction-free but to me, it is simply not refined. ### Exporting Books & Highlights One example that has been annoying me for ages is trying to get the highlights that I have made from the books & PDFs that I've read on it. On-device, the highlighting function works super-well by snapping to the text. But first, your only option to export from the Remarkable apps is via PDF. Fine, that is supposed to be a portable format & should work just about anywhere. Annoying that I gave you an EPUB, and you gave me back a PDF but fine, I just want to get my highlights out & put it into my [[PKM System]]. They give back a PDF, with colored highlights over the text, which works fine when going to view it, but is difficult and annoying when trying to _extract_ the text from it. I spent a couple of hours trying to get someone else's python extraction program to run on a particular book I wanted the highlights of. I'm not a python developer, so the tooling ecosystem was just very strange to me & the project was a few years old, so it took some work to get it to even run on my system. After a few hours of looking into this I gave up, it is an annoying workaround to have to make when PDFs already support annotations in the format. Remarkable just is not exporting those highlights as annotations, which makes the colored blocks have no association to the underlying text. ### A sinkhole of information I've found it difficult to extract notes that I do write on the remarkable into any sort of structured format. While that is part of the appeal of its design, acting as a replacement for paper, I've found myself wanting more from it. My handwriting is awful, like absolute chicken scratch. While Remarkable can extract handwriting, I've found it not able to do that reliably for my handwriting, which is no fault of the Remarkable as even I have difficulty with it at times. Given that I can't trust the export of handwriting, the only other option would be to extract images or PDF exports of entire notebooks. This is not ideal because the format makes it very difficult to extract anything from it, you can't search it, you have to rewrite any insight you may have had. I think that the Remarkable is a great tool for thought. But I was trying to use it for a daily journal which I could review with some frequency. Only being able to see one page at a time, while great for focus, is limiting when trying to review notes. On top of a clunky system for navigation where you always seem to find yourself doing a ton of swipes to try to get the page you want because of how many steps it takes to actually get to a specific page. ## Conclusion I think that the Remarkable 2 is a beautifully crafted device, but is limited by its opinionated workflow and focus at all costs software. I've lately been using it as just an E-Reader, which may be a bastardization of what they wanted it to be, but I do love the bigger form-factor than my original Kindle Paperwhite. Read more about how I've [[Remarkable 2 with Koreader|set that up here]].