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Sick of colorful and distracting screens when all you want to do is focus on reading, writing, or note-taking? Then the $399 ReMarkable 2 — which goes on sale today, for shipment in June — may be for you.

The first ReMarkable launched in 2017, and was widely judged a nice first step on the road to e-ink tablets. Think of it as basically a larger Kindle you can write on. Our initial review praised its "nearly perfect pencil-on-paper experience and excellent battery life," but dinged it for its price ($599, later dropped to $499), its weight (almost as much as an iPad) and a set of buttons at the bottom that were easy to press accidentally while writing.

The original ReMarkable had a bunch of software upgrades over the past two years — upgrades that almost turned it into a new tablet. Having tested the upgraded version in the last week, I can confirm that new features like handwriting recognition and cut-and-paste work well, and the cloud sync of files is flawless.

Alas, there's still a slightly noticeable lag of 40 milliseconds between the stylus (known as a "marker") touching the screen and ink appearing. It doesn't sound like much, but you notice it after a while.

Overall, ReMarkable 1.0 wasn't the perfect writing device I envisioned years ago, but it came pretty darn close.

Now here comes the ReMarkable 2. Which, according to its specs, shaves the depth of the original from 6.7mm (0.26 in.) down to 4.7mm (0.19 in.), making it the thinnest tablet you can find anywhere. Despite having less space to do so, the marker now magnetically attaches to the side of the tablet.

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Best of all, the Norwegian company that makes the tablet also claims to have redesigned the hardware in order to get the marker lag down to 20 milliseconds. That's the same as the lag on the Apple Pencil and iPad Pro — or at least it was until Apple's latest, second-generation Pencil and new iPad OS halved it again, down to 9 milliseconds.

Nevertheless, at $929 and up, a Pencil and a Pro is a far pricier proposition than the $399 ReMarkable 2, with marker included. Obviously, the two tablets aren't comparable in any other respect. The only app options available on either ReMarkable are reading/note-taking (you can upload any PDF or EPUB document, then write on it) and straight-up writing/drawing. E-ink is monochrome by its very nature. The iPad and its ilk are all about the pretty colors.

But where do pretty colors get us? Into a world of distraction, that's where. Down a rabbit hole of checking Facebook, or playing casual games, rather than being as productive as we might like. Anyone who's ever owned an e-ink Kindle knows that black ink on a blank screen can settle the mind, allowing you to focus on your book for longer without straining your eyes so much.

The same could hold true for that report you've been meaning to mark up, or that diary or novel you've been meaning to start. (Keyboards are nice, but research suggests that writing by hand is a far better way to induce graphomania).

SEE ALSO:Apple may be working on a 14.1-inch MacBook Pro and a new iPad mini

Here's what else we know about the ReMarkable 2 compared to its predecessor. The processor is faster. It has double the RAM. And more importantly, the buttons on the bottom of the screen — the ones that were too easy to lean on with your wrist — have disappeared.

You can now charge it with USB-C rather than micro-USB. It is unfortunately a little heavier (405g versus 350g), but the benefit should be evident in battery life: ReMarkable claims around 2 weeks between charges on the second model, versus 3-4 days on the ReMarkable 1.0.

We'll be testing that claim just as soon as review units are available. In the meantime, though, it looks like this supremely slim tablet just took a giant leap down the e-ink road.

TopicsInnovations

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