I’d been putting it off for two years. Every few months I’d open the reMarkable website, read the same specs, close the tab. Too expensive. Too niche. Too much of a “maybe I’ll actually write more” self-deception purchase.

Then I bought one anyway.

The thing nobody tells you

It doesn’t feel like a tablet. It doesn’t feel like paper either. It feels like writing on a matte photograph — which sounds weird but is actually the closest thing I’ve found to the drag of a pencil on a Moleskine. The latency is low enough that your brain stops noticing it after about twenty minutes.

What I didn’t expect: it makes me write more slowly. Not in a bad way. More like the way you slow down when you’re writing a letter by hand to someone who matters.

After seven days

I’ve filled about fourteen pages. That’s more handwriting than I’ve done in the past six months combined. Whether that’s the novelty effect or something that sticks, I genuinely don’t know yet.

The software is deliberately limited, which is either a feature or a bug depending on how much you want to do with your notes after writing them. I mostly don’t — I write to think, not to archive — so for now it suits me fine.

One annoyance: the pen clips to the side magnetically, and mine has already fallen off twice in a bag. Small thing, but worth knowing.

Would I buy it again

Ask me in a month. Right now, yes, probably.