Which digital notepad is the best? Lenovo vs. reMarkable vs. Kobo Roundup
In the past, when calculators were made of wood and computer cases were made of yellow plastic, people sometimes wrote things down. With an analog stylus from which pieces of graphite broke off, or one where colored ink ended up on paper, just like with a 2D printer. It was a time when you weren’t constantly distracted by notifications and videos playing in an untraceable tab somewhere.
That lack of distraction was not the only advantage of paper, because at the time you could make some scribbles in the margins, make drawings if you were bored during a meeting, or actually make useful sketches, for example, to develop an idea.
That paper wasn’t so bad after all and with the arrival of screens with electronic ink, digital versions of the notepads also appeared. For this article, I worked with three of those devices. To start with, the Lenovo Smart Paper, which was released last summer, and also the Kobo Elipsa 2E, which has been in stores for a little longer. They have to compete against the reMarkable 2, a digital notepad that has been around for a few years but is still very popular. Including a pen and cover, the Lenovo costs five hundred euros; the Kobo costs 450 euros. With the remarkable, it depends on which cover and pen you choose, but that easily amounts to five hundred euros. Slightly more expensive than a notepad and a few pens, but which of the three best emulates the ancient sheet of paper and writing utensils?
Specification and Software
The three notepads appear to be similar because they all use the same E Ink screen with a diagonal of 10.3 inches and a resolution of 1872x1404 pixels. This results in a pixel density of 227ppi. That’s very sharp. A laptop with 2560x1600 pixels on a 13.3" screen, such as a MacBook Air, has nearly the same pixel density.
The screens are similar, but the devices are not the same. At first glance, the reMarkable appears to be the oldest of the three. It has a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and ‘only’ 1GB Lpddr3 memory, whereas laptops and tablets now use Lppdr5. Only in quotes because specifications don’t matter much with these types of devices as long as they work smoothly. The reMarkable is powered by a lightweight operating system that performs admirably on its limited hardware.
Kobo Elipsa 2E
The Kobo Elipsa 2E appears to be an e-reader first and note-taking second. The interface advertises Kobo’s bookstore broadly. You can make notes in PDFs, e-books, on a blank sheet of paper, or on one of the many templates. Exporting notes is easy unless they are in e-books. The included stylus has a fairly thick tip, so the writing does not seem to feel very precise.
Positives
Very suitable for e-books
Export notes in many file formats
Negatives
Clumsy pen
Difficult to export notes from e-books
Plastic housing feels cheap
See Price KOBO Elipsa 2E on Amazon.com
The Elipsa 2E is Kobo’s follow-up to the Elipsa, which debuted in 2021. The review’s subtitle at the time was “Great e-reader with writing aspirations.” When you power on the new Elipsa 2E, you’ll notice that this also applies to this new variant. Anyone who has used regular’ Kobo e-reader will recognize that when you turn it on, you will see a screen with the book you are currently working on, other books on the e-reader, and some books that are currently in use. Kobo recommends that you buy, and they would prefer that you subscribe to Kobo Plus, the service that allows you to read ‘unlimited’ books. That word is in quotes because not all books available for purchase on Kobo are also included in the subscription. For example, I was interested in Tommy Wieringa’s new book, which was released less than a month ago, but it is (for the time being) only available for purchase and cannot be read with Kobo Plus. There are many more books available in the Kobo store that are not included in the Plus offer.
Why have I only discussed books thus far, when this article is about digital notebooks? This is because Kobo’s primary focus is clearly on books. When you put the Elipsa to sleep, the home screen displays the cover of your most recently read book. Except for the ‘My Notepads’ button at the bottom of the main screen, the software is nearly identical to that found on regular Kobo e-readers. As a result, the Elipsa has the appearance of an e-reader with note-taking capabilities.
Exterior
The Elipsa 2E has the same shape as the original Kobo Elipsa from the outside. The only difference is that the back now has a diagonal line pattern. The outside is typical of Kobo e-readers, which are always made of plastic. The Elipsa does not have the appearance of a $400 device. Although it is larger, the materials are identical to Kobo’s cheapest e-reader, which costs one hundred euros.
The Elipsa 2E, like the Lenovo Smart Paper, has an asymmetrical design. This allows you to keep the thick edge in one hand while making a note with the other. It makes no difference whether you are left or right-handed because the screen can be rotated in any orientation.
The pen, the Kobo Stylus 2, is obviously not included with the cheaper e-readers, and the Stylus 2 is an improved version of the pen that came with the first-generation Elipsa. It no longer requires a AAAA battery, but it does have one, and the Stylus 2 can be charged via USB. Instead of two buttons, there is only one on the side of the new stylus, and you can ‘erase’ something by using the back of the pen.
Although it does not work well, you can magnetically attach the new pen to the Elipsa’s housing. To begin, I had to figure out where to place the pen because the entire e-reader appeared to be magnetic. In the end, four locations proved to be the most effective: the two short sides, the front, the wide edge, and the back, over the Kobo logo. All of those spots have one thing in common: they don’t securely hold the pen. A gentle bump is all it takes for the stylus to detach from the e-reader. The solution is to either transport the stylus separately or buy the SleepCover. It has a pen holder and, of course, the cover protects the screen, but you must be willing to spend an additional fifty euros because Kobo does not include it.
See Price KOBO Elipsa 2E on Amazon.com
Lenovo Smart Paper
The first thing you notice about the Smart Paper is that it has the appearance and feel of a high-end product. I’ve had a Kobo e-reader since 2017, and it’s a cheap-feeling, bulky device in comparison to the Smart Paper. The Lenovo is entirely made of metal and comes in two shades of gray. There is a shiny edge across the edge that, thankfully, does not reflect enough light to be bothersome when using the notepad.
Positives
Sideload Android apps
Includes stylus and case
Negatives
Not practical for left-handed people
Pricey cloud storage
No annotations in e-books
Software is not always made for e-ink screen
The design is asymmetrical, with a thick screen edge on the screen’s left side. On that side, there is also a recess in the housing where the supplied stylus is magnetically held. This is a good layout if you are right-handed. You can use your left hand to hold the notepad while taking notes or operating the device with your right. Lefties have bad luck. The Smart Paper can be set to left-handed, but this only affects handwriting recognition. Unfortunately, you can’t use the Smart Paper upside down, so the thick edge is on the right and you can write on the left.
It’s also worth noting that the Smart Paper runs Android. If you look at the settings, for example, you will notice this. The options in that menu are very familiar to Android users. Furthermore, Lenovo has pre-installed several apps, including WPS Office and Firefox, that are clearly aimed at Android smartphones and tablets. Firefox, for example, offers to run in dark mode upon first launch, which does nothing on an e-ink screen.
The ability of Android apps to run on the Smart Paper is both an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that apps can be sideloaded. Lenovo has not pre-installed the Play Store, but it is simple to install apk files on the Smart Paper, allowing you to do much more with the Lenovo than the reMarkable and the Kobo.
However, almost all Android apps are designed for LCD or OLED screens and contain animations that do not look good on an e-ink screen. And there are still some issues that have yet to be resolved. You can, for example, display a clock on the lock screen so that you always know what time it is. Because the screen is refreshed once per minute, the Smart Paper warns that it may reduce battery life. Unfortunately, the device appears to do this even when the cover is closed, draining the battery even though the tablet recognizes that the screen is not visible.
ReMarkable 2
The reMarkable 2 is an excellent note-taking tablet. The software is simple to use, works quickly, and exporting notes via the desktop application or email is simple. The tablet is also thin and well-finished. The price of 350 euros appears to be reasonable, but there is no stylus or protective case included, and if you buy them from reMarkable, the price quickly rises. The most significant shortcoming of the reMarkable 2 is the lack of screen lighting. Because of this, as well as the time required to adjust e-book fonts, it is an adequate notebook but not a practical e-reader.
Positives
Beautifully finished
Simple, effective software
Exporting notes is easy
Negatives
No screen lighting
Customizing e-books takes time
Pricey accessories
The tablet has a metal chassis, but the entire back is made of glass, similar to the glass used to make touchpads on laptops. The reMarkable has four rubber feet on the back so you can lay it flat on the table without damaging it. The reMarkable, like the other two notebooks, has an asymmetrical design, with a metal edge on the left side when held in portrait mode. The screen cannot be rotated so that the edge is on the right, but it can be set so that you are left-handed. The menu bar, which also allows you to select different virtual pins, then moves from the left to the right side of the screen.
The reMarkable is quite ‘bare’ in comparison to the Lenovo and the Kobo. When you turn it on, you notice it. You’ll be presented with a menu containing all of the files on the reMarkable, and that’s pretty much it. You can organize those files into folders, tag them, and mark certain files as favorites, and that’s all there is to it. There is no bookstore, as there is on the Kobo, and no apps, as there is on the Lenovo; you will have to make do with this.
The remarkable costs 350 euros, making it the cheapest of the three tablets reviewed here, but it comes with no stylus. For 80 euros, you can order the Marker, a simple stylus that magnetically attaches to the reMarkable. Our review sample included the Marker Plus, which costs €130 and has a ‘eraser’ on the back of the stylus. A sleeve would then cost 70 euros. A cover that folds open like a book will cost you 100 euros. However, there is a plastic version available; a leather version costs 160 euros. You can add a keyboard to the cover for an additional 200 euros. In short, it will quickly overtake reMarkable.
Buy reMarkable from Amazon.com
Which one is best for Reading Ebooks?
All three electronic notepads feature an e-ink screen that is ideal for reading books. Even though all three devices have essentially the same screen, there are significant differences when it comes to reading e-books and taking notes.
Lenovo
As mentioned earlier in this article, the Lenovo Smart Paper is an Android tablet with an E Ink screen. In theory, you can install any e-book reading software on it, as long as you can find the right APK file somewhere and are willing to risk installing it on the Smart Paper. Because an app store is not pre-installed, installing through that method is not possible. Most tweakers will not have a problem with this; you can easily copy an APK to the tablet via USB.
If you enjoy reading books, it is also recommended that you install another app, as Lenovo has made the inexplicable decision to include the eBooks.com app. The manufacturer makes it nice and easy by using an existing app, but Lenovo forgot that the app was designed for smartphones and tablets with an LCD or OLED screen. When you turn a page, an LCD or OLED screen displays an animation of a page turning. The Smart Paper’s E Ink screen’s refresh rate is too slow to show that, so you see half of the next page first, then the entire page. Furthermore, elements of the interface do not appear to scale well with the resolution of Lenovo’s tablet, making them appear unsharp.
Because you’re using a third-party app, you can’t use the Lenovo Smart Paper to take notes in e-books, at least not with the included stylus. The virtual keyboard is the only way to take notes.
ReMarkable
The reMarkable also allows you to read e-books, but it does not appear to be entirely designed for that purpose. Adding e-books to the reMarkable application is simple with drag-and-drop, but you can only select DRM-free EPUB files. When you look into the application’s cache, you’ll see why this is the case. Although the reMarkable cannot read EPUB files, each book you add is first converted to PDF. This decision may have been made because the PDF format allows for more flexibility in making notes in documents. That works great: you can write and draw on the reMarkable on every page of your e-book, and you can even add extra pages to expand on those notes.
However, if all you want to do is read a book, the PDF format is less useful. For example, changing the font or line spacing in your e-book will cause the tablet to regenerate the PDF, which will take a long time. For quite some time. Changing the font on an EPUB with 630 pages took no less than 3 minutes in a test. I got 53 and 55 seconds in the two other tests I did later with the stopwatch. Anyway, 50 seconds or 3 minutes: neither is really acceptable when you want to read a book, especially since most e-books require you to first switch between font sizes and line spacing before you can begin reading.
Another disadvantage when starting to read is the lack of a backlight. Nowadays, all e-readers have this feature, and while the reMarkable is not primarily intended as an e-reader, backlighting is useful in a variety of situations. After all, you don’t always sit in a well-lit conference room.
Kobo
It’s no surprise that the Kobo Elipsa 2E is the best e-book reader of the three. Kobo has been manufacturing e-readers for many years and also operates a large e-book store. As previously stated in this article, the Kobo Elipsa’s interface is nearly identical to that of Kobo’s regular e-readers. E-books can be purchased in the store, but they can also be transferred to the Elipsa using a computer and a USB cable.
Once you get used to the large format, reading on the Elipsa is a pleasure. Fonts, font size, line spacing, and other settings can be changed in an instant. The Kobo also has variable color temperature backlighting, so you can see a pleasant warm light in the evening before going to sleep. If you buy an e-book from Kobo’s store, the Elipsa also displays useful statistics, such as how long it anticipates you will be working on a chapter or the rest of the book.
On the Kobo, you can also take notes in e-books. You can select and highlight text with your finger and, if necessary, type a note on it. This is also possible with regular Kobo e-readers, but with the Elipsa, you can use the stylus to make that selection by pressing and holding the side button. You can also use the pen to draw on the book’s pages. The main disadvantage of the Kobo is that there is no official way to export the notes afterward. You can easily find them on the device itself via a kind of table of contents, but exporting is not possible, as with the reMarkable.
Conclusion
All three have the same E Ink screen, but after some time with them, it becomes clear that the Lenovo Smart Paper, Kobo Elipsa 2E, and reMarkable 2 are very different devices. As a result, picking one of the three as the winner is difficult because they may be appealing to different users.
The software is the main reason I’m not sold on the Lenovo Smart Paper. Some of the included apps are not designed for e-ink displays. Aside from the strange animations, you can’t take notes in e-books, for example, if you use the included app. Notes on the tablet can only be exported in PDF, or in PNG if you use the somewhat shaky desktop app of Lenovo’s fairly expensive cloud service. On the other hand, sideloading Android apps on the Smart Paper is simple, and this can be a solution for tweakers who want a little more freedom.
The Kobo Elipsa 2E’s software is much simpler, and everything demonstrates that Kobo also manufactures e-readers and has an electronic bookstore. If you enjoy reading and want to take notes on the go, the Kobo is an intriguing option. It has the smallest stylus of the three, and notes in e-books cannot be exported, but that is not a problem with notes you create yourself, and you can save them in a variety of file formats. The Elipsa 2E feels a little cheap for a device that costs 400 euros.
The reMarkable 2 is, in my opinion, the best notebook. The software only allows you to take notes, which is also one of the device’s strengths. The interface is solely dedicated to the creation and management of documents and notes. Exporting works fine via the cloud functionality, though it’s a shame that unlimited use requires a subscription. Because changing fonts or line spacing can take a long time and there is no backlight on the screen, the reMarkable is not recommended for book readers. It had to look like real paper, but it didn’t have to be as realistic.
