ReMarkable Paper Pure review: The best digital notebook money can buy? (aff)

In the world of digital notebooks, there aren't many contenders for the crown. But the brand that seems to pull off greatness with the most consistency is ReMarkable.

Here's a company that values simplicity over outright performance, and user experience over complexity. Ordinarily, I like my gadgets to come with as many bells and whistles as possible, but I use a digital notepad every day, and I've often only ever wanted it to perform the same role a pen and paper would do.

Of course, there are always going to be things a digital notepad can do that your little flip pad can't. And you'd hope so given the price difference. You can annotate documents, effortlessly highlight and erase parts of the page, you can turn your handwriting into plain text and you can integrate it with other digital devices for seamless file-swapping.

But, fundamentally, most of the time, you just want your digital notepad to let you jot things down and give you an experience as close to putting pen to paper as possible.

And this is where ReMarkable's tech really does excel. Take away the bells and whistles, decide against the paid Connect subscription, and you have one of the best digital notepads out there.

There's now a new version, too. ReMarkable has just launched a 10.3" tablet that gives you the purest notepad experience yet. And it's called the Paper Pure.

The Paper Pure carries over the usual e-ink monochrome display, the simple interface, and the compact, lightweight form factor. It also has the same pen-to-paper feel, and it's still the most authentic of any digital notepad.

There are some more integrations available now, which include calendars, Slack, and cloud storage. These require a subscription, but they're seriously impressive.

As a note-taking device, though, it's hard to emphasise just how good the feel of a ReMarkable tablet is. There are a lot of good note-takers out there, but this really is as good as it gets.

There's enough resistance from the display to make handwriting feel natural, while the near-instant response means your notes appear exactly when you'd expect them to.

Battery life is excellent too. Unlike a conventional tablet that needs charging every couple of days, the Paper Pure can keep going for weeks. It's light enough to carry around without becoming a burden, and its minimalist design is undeniably attractive.

But there is the problem. For all its minimalism, it's surprisingly expensive. At around £359, you're spending serious money on something that, at its core, replaces a notebook and a stack of printed documents. Yes, there are some smart integrations, but they're largely stuck behind a subscription, and while the hardware is brilliant in itself, it's still a lot of money to find.

There's also the matter of what's missing. The lack of a backlight will bother some more than others, and it does ensure battery life remains impressive, but you're paying premium tablet money for what in essence feels like an unapologetically basic device.

But in my opinion, this simplicity really does add to the appeal. By creating the Paper Pure ReMarkable has created a rather beautiful, distraction-free digital notepad you can whip out of a bag at a moment's notice and start working on.

If you genuinely love writing things down, if you spend your days in meetings, annotating PDFs or sketching out ideas, if you're still struggling to cut the apron strings of that ring-bound notepad, this is absolutely the tool for the job.

It isn't revolutionary. It doesn't have flashy AI tricks or a spec sheet designed to impress your mates down the pub. What it does have is focus. And in this day and age that counts for a lot.