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Can a smaller e-ink tablet replace your notebooks? The reMarkable Move tries [1]

['Séamus Bellamy']

Date: 2025-09-03

In tech, some things are inevitable. Hardware gets faster, not slower. Small things will get big. Big things, in the name of pocketability, get small. The latter is where reMarkable's latest offering, the Paper Pro Move, lands. It's a 7.3-inch color e-ink writing tablet that's small enough to stuff in a jacket pocket, or in my case, the six-litre bag I use for my EDC. I'm a long-time reMarkable tablet user — I've been with them since they plopped out their first piece of hardware. My current daily driver is a reMarkable Paper Pro. After using the Move for the past week and change, I've got some pretty solid opinions on this thing. TLDR: I mostly love it, but there are things about it that I temporarily hate. I say temporary, as reMarkable's software team has always been on top of their software updates. A bug that needs to be squashed seldom lasts for very long.

Hardware

The Move shares the same design language as its embiggened brother, the Paper Pro. Its edges are made of polished, beveled aluminum, reminiscent of the edges of a 1950s kitchen table. Its textured backplate makes it easy to hold on to when it's not magnetically attached to its case (reMarkable sent me a fancy black leather one to take for a spin). Rubber feet on the backplate keep it from sliding around when the tablet is placed on a flat surface. At 8.11 ounces, it's comfortable to hold for long periods of time. It has similar dimensions and the heft of an old-school reporter's memopad. You can choose from one of two styluses for this thing. Both magnetically attach to the side of the Move when not in use. In the case of reMarkable's Marker Plus, attaching it to the tablet also charges it. The tablet on its own will set you back around $500. But the price stacks up quickly. You'll want to use a cover with it, which can run as much as $200. And that Marker Plus? Just about another $100 for that. This, however, is in line with the cost of first-party accessories for other premium tablets, like the iPad. While these prices might be steep, they're not unheard of.

The star of this device's show is, of course, its display. If you're used to using an Amazon Kindle or Kobo, you'll immediately notice that text just isn't as sharp as what you may be used to. That's OK: those devices are optimized specifically for reading. This includes the Kindle Scribe, which, while it can be used to take notes, is less responsive and less refined as a note-taking device than what's offered here or by a company like Boox. The reMarkable's display is perfectly legible. I've used the Move for hours, without eyestrain. The text in PDFs and ePubs files shows up just fine. Users can adjust the contrast and front light intensity to their liking. And, while colored eInk technology is still a work in progress, the display in this thing proved vibrant enough to make notes taken in multiple colors feel more organized and comic books I read look like they'd been printed on pulp.

My only concern about its build is light bleed. With its front light turned up, it's obvious that the Move's display extends beyond the top part of the bezel that surrounds it. You can see the light glowing underneath it. In a dimly lit room, it can be distracting. I've asked reMarkable's PR about this to see if it's a quirk in early release devices or part of the final product's design. When I get an answer, I'll add it to this review.

Writing

The Move is meant for writing, so let's talk about that. I've been reviewing tablets since the release of the first iPad. It'd be conservative to say that I've laid hands on at least 300 of the things — you wouldn't believe the number of Android slabs you have pushed on you at trade shows. The key reason that I've given up on iPads and Android tablets is that my mind works with paper. Writing on most tablets feels like using a Sharpie on glass. I hate it. And, even with a Paperlike screen protector or knockoff slapped on it, I still find too many notifications and apps to distract me from what I should be doing. ReMarkable set out to create an amazing digital writing experience. They succeeded.

Scribbling on the Move's screen feels like working on paper: the texture of the display and even the sound of the stylus moving over the display's surface scream of using a pen on high-quality paper stock. There is so little pen-to-screen latency that it's hardly worth mentioning. Over the years, Remarkable's software gnomes have added a number of tools for writers to work with to the tablet's interface: lines designed to ape the look of a ballpoint pen, fountain pen, highlighter, pencil, and paintbrush are all included in the mix. Last year, being able to write, draw, and highlight in color became a thing. Most things that you do on paper can be accomplished with the Move. It also does tricks that a book of Midori paper can't match. ReMarkable's OCR tech is surprisingly competent. I found that it was routinely able to understand my handwriting and convert it to text with minimal corrections required. That said, the tablet must be connected to the Internet for this to work.

Overall, when creating new notes with the Move, I found it a joy to use. reMarkable has obviously put in the work to make it so.

Reading

A couple of years ago, the company added the ability to read ePub files to its bag of tricks. It's an electronic ink device: why not use it as an e-reader? I've never felt comfortable with large e-readers like the Kindle Scribe or the Onyx Boox Note Air3. They're awkward to use in bed and even more so when you want to whip out something to read while you wait for a friend to show up for a coffee date. The Move is damn near perfect in size for reading. That reMarkable has recently added some rudimentary page customization features to their devices' e-reader functionality makes it that much better. There are currently over 600 books for me to read on the same device I've been taking everywhere to make notes. I love it.

What I don't love is that, should you own two differently sized reMarkable tablets, things can get messy. Let's say you uploaded Cory Doctorow's latest book to reMarkable's desktop app and that app sends it to your Paper Pro and your Paper Pro Move, in that order. At the time I wrote this review, the Pub file would be formatted for the larger Paper Pro when it was downloaded to both tablets. If you want to read it on your Move, you'll have to take the time to resize and reflow all of the text in the book. That's not a huge issue, but it is definitely irritating. The only way I was able to find around this was to remove all of the books I'd previously uploaded for my Paper Pro from reMarkable's cloud storage, disassociate my Paper Pro from my account, and then upload the books I wanted to read to the cloud again. Doing this made the books display on the Move perfectly. No doubt this software issue will be addressed soon. I also found it vexing that content created on the near A4-sized Paper Pro Tablet appeared so small on the Move. It can be easily resized to improve legibility and allow you to write in the document at a comfortable size. But every time you flip a page, you'll wind up resizing things again. It makes the smaller Move tablet less capable as an editing or writing tool for those who like the idea of having a larger tablet to use at their desk.

Wishlist

There's not much I would change about the Move. It quickly fit into my workflow with precious little friction. That said, I would love it if it could be used with a portable Bluetooth keyboard for some distraction-free typing. This ability is one of the things I love most about my Paper Pro and the reMarkable 2 before it. A keyboard turns these tablets into a productivity dynamo, no matter what writing or editing task you have laid out before you.

Who's this thing for?

Who should buy the reMarkable Move is a question I've been asking myself for close to a week. On its own, it's a brilliant, pocketable note-taking and reading solution. All your ebook, read-it-later, and writing needs in a tablet that runs for weeks on a single charge. For those looking for a companion to their laptop or to replace the paper notebooks that clutter up their lives, it's an elegant, useful tool that I can't recommend highly enough. But for the time being, I don't feel comfortable telling owners of older reMarkable tablets to pick one up — not if they plan on using the slab they currently own along with the Move. The syncing issues that I've seen when there are two devices involved are just troublesome enough to make trying to get work done on either tablet a vexing proposition.

However, as I've mentioned throughout this review, I have tremendous trust in reMarkable's dedication to its users and the resolve it has shown in improving the quality of life for its tablet owners through frequent software updates. Give it a month or maybe two. I'm betting these early digital hiccups will be resolved. Once that happens, it will be a no-brainer to pick up a Move for anyone who prefers scribbling to typing.

Previously:

• reMarkable tablet: A software update makes this forgotten gadget incredibly useful

• I've been using my $120 Amazon 10' Fire HD Tablet for 5 months and love it

• How I rooted my Amazon Android tablet

• New iPad features blur the line between tablet and laptop computing

• Daylight DC-1 tablet taken for a spin

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/09/03/can-a-smaller-e-ink-tablet-replace-your-notebooks-the-remarkable-move-tries.html

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