reMarkable Paper Pro review: six months with the colour e-paper tablet I didn't plan to keep

The writing feel is why this product exists, so I'll start there. reMarkable uses a textured glass that gives the nib a slight grip, and the result is the closest I've come to fountain pen on cartridge paper. There's a faint sound and a little friction, which I find satisfying. A friend who tried it called it "scratchy," so it is a matter of taste, and I'd try one in a shop if you can.

Latency is the other half of writing feel, and here reMarkable has always been strong. The quoted figure is about 12 milliseconds. In normal note-taking the ink keeps up with my hand and I stopped noticing any lag within a day. I write meeting notes, book notes, shopping lists and long journal entries on it, and for mono handwriting it simply feels right.

The Marker Plus is the pen to get. It's the same nib as the basic Marker but adds an eraser on the top, so you flip it over to rub out, exactly like a pencil. After six months I can't imagine using the version without it. The nibs are a consumable and do wear down; I've changed mine once. The pen charges by snapping magnetically to the side of the tablet, so it's always topped up and always where I left it.

The headline feature is colour, and this is where expectations need managing. The Paper Pro uses a Gallery 3 colour E Ink panel that reMarkable calls "Canvas Color." It shows around 20,000 colours at 229 PPI, which is lovely for an e-paper screen and still nothing like an LCD. Colours are muted, the way printed newspaper colour is muted, and the screen is a touch darker and greyer than a pure black-and-white e-reader because of how the colour filter works.

In daily use I treat colour as an organising tool rather than an art medium. I colour-code my planner, highlight PDFs in three or four shades, and sketch simple diagrams and book maps. For that it's brilliant. The catch is how colour is drawn: when you write in colour it first appears in grey and then the colour fills in a beat later, with a quick refresh flash. Once you know it's coming it fades into the background, but it isn't the seamless paper experience the mono writing is. There are only six pen colours in the notes app, which felt limiting at first and now feels like enough.

If you're an illustrator hoping to replace a drawing tablet, this isn't it, and I'd steer you to an iPad. For writers and note-takers who want a bit of colour for structure, it's genuinely helpful.

As the resident bookworm, this was my big test. The 11.8-inch screen is large enough to read an A4 PDF at close to full size, which my old reMarkable 2 never managed comfortably, and annotating study PDFs and ARCs on it has become my favourite use. The reading app is basic. It opens PDFs and ePubs, lets you annotate, and not much more. ePub reflow when you change font size is slow, and I suspect it's converting to PDF behind the scenes.

The frontlight is the quiet hero. This is the first reMarkable with one, and it means I read in bed without a lamp. It isn't perfect: there are only about five brightness steps and you can see a little light bleed at the edges if you look for it. I stopped looking for it after the first week. One honest limit for readers: there's no Kindle app and no audiobook support, so this doesn't replace a Kindle for novels. It replaces the stack of printouts and notebooks next to the Kindle.

reMarkable advertises "up to two weeks," and that number is real only if you read and write lightly with the light off. My experience, with the frontlight on and a few hours of note-taking most days, is closer to three or four days per charge. Heavy colour use drains it faster, because colour needs more screen refreshes. It's not bad, and USB-C tops it up quickly, but if you're coming from a Kindle that lasts a month, adjust your expectations. One frustration worth flagging: the battery isn't user-replaceable, and neither is the pen's, which sits oddly with a device meant to last for years.

reMarkable's software is deliberately minimal. You get a note-taking app and a reader, organised into folders, with handwriting-to-text conversion that's surprisingly accurate. There's no app store, no Android, no web browser, no Kindle. That's the point for distraction-free fans like me, and a dealbreaker if you wanted a do-everything tablet.

Then there's reMarkable Connect. The tablet works fully offline without it, but Connect (after a 50-day free trial) unlocks the things most people end up wanting: unlimited cloud sync, viewing and editing your notes in the phone and desktop apps, handwriting search, and conversion features like turning notes into a Word doc or sending them to Slack. Without a subscription, only notebooks you've touched in roughly the last 50 days sync to the apps. I pay for it, and I resent paying for it, which I think is the fair summary. Budget for it as part of the price.

The sticker price understates things. The Paper Pro comes with the basic Marker. The Marker Plus I recommend costs more, and so does everything that follows: a Book Folio to protect it (the metal back scratches), or the Type Folio keyboard if you want to type, plus a year of Connect. Add it all up and the total sits well above the starting price, so use the Check price button to see where things stand today. That's the real number to weigh, and it's why my recommendation comes with a condition: buy it if you'll write on it most days. As an occasional notebook it's an expensive one.

If the 11.8-inch feels large, reMarkable also sells the Paper Pro Move, a 7.3-inch pocketable version with the same colour screen and light. I've handled one, and it's lovely for quick notes on the go, closer to a reporter's pad. For long reading and ideation the full-size Paper Pro is the better desk device. If portability is your priority, read my separate Paper Pro Move review.

The Marker Plus is essential; the eraser earns its extra cost. A folio is sensible because the bare aluminium back picks up marks, and the Book Folio is lighter than the keyboard Type Folio. The Type Folio turns the tablet into a distraction-free typewriter, and it's well made, though only the letter keys are backlit. I used it for a month, then went back to handwriting, which tells you something about how I use the device. Keep a spare pack of nibs; they wear.