Two flagship digital notebooks with color e-paper technology are the Remarkable Paper Pro, which came out in late 2024, and the Fujitsu Quaderno A4C. These products were designed to be distraction-free and are primarily used for taking notes, drawing freehand, and editing PDF files. Each one has a few tricks up its sleeves. However, the question remains: What is the best product?
Remarkable Paper Pro
The remarkable Paper Pro features an 11.8-inch e-paper display with Canvas Color 3.0, based on E INK Gallery 3 and employs electrophoretic technology. The white and white colour content resolution is 2160 x 1620 with 229 PPI. Other paper tablets put a filter on a black-and-white display to produce colours. On reMarkable Paper Pro, coloured ink particles inside the display move around to render what users write and read. The natural colours evoke the feeling of a printed newspaper page. Compared to LCDs or LED screens on laptops and smartphones, the Canvas Color display doesn’t use bright, flickering lights to produce colours. The low-glare display reflects natural light for a more comfortable reading experience. In dim lighting conditions, a new adjustable reading light softly illuminates the display, making it possible to read and work for hours without eye strain.
Remarkable is the second company to use Gallery 3 on a commercial product. However, reMarkable is the largest and has the potential to go truly mainstream. How did the company manage to make Gallery 3 work? reMarkable told me in a written statement, “In the Gallery 3 platform, E Ink gave us the right ingredients for making a unique colour display. Using that display paper technology as a foundation, our teams have redesigned every part of reMarkable’s signature paper-like writing experience, from the Marker tip to the textured display surface to how reMarkable OS, our custom operating system, behaves. The result is the Canvas Color display, a custom display stack that delivers an even better writing experience than reMarkable 2. Out of the box, Gallery 3 promises “an update time of 30 ms.” On reMarkable 2, it’s 21 ms. On reMarkable Paper Pro, it’s as low as 12 ms.”
Underneath the hood is a 1.8 GHz quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, 2 GB LPDDR4 RAM, and 64GB of internal storage. The device has a USB-C port for charging and transferring documents. Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz are available, primarily for accessing cloud services and fetching firmware updates. It is powered by a giant 5,030 mAh battery. The dimensions are 274.1 x 196.6 x 5.1 mm (10.8 x 7.8 x 0.24 inches) and approximately 525 g (1.16 lb).
There are two styluses to choose from when you buy the new reMarkable Paper Pro. The stock one comes for free, is grey, and weighs 14g. It has a magnet to attach to the side of the tablet. The Marker Plus features a built-in eraser and finely textured black finish. Just flip it over and erase it like a regular pencil. It also has tilt recognition for shading, which few styluses can support and weighs 18.4g. This one costs more, but it is heavily recommended. Each stylus you order comes with around six replacement nibs and a tool. There are three new cases: leather, mosaic weave, and polymer weaver, each with different colours.
Fujitsu Quaderno A4C
The Fujitsu Quaderno A4 Color features a flexible 13.3-inch Kaleido 3 e-paper display with a black and white resolution of 1650 x 2200 and 207 PPI. It can display 4096 colors and has a color resolution of 103 PPI. The screen has a capacitive touch panel compatible with finger input and is electromagnetic induction digitizer-compatible. The device’s body is white alongside the bezel and a dark grey on the back. The screen is slightly sunken and does not have a layer of glass protecting it, making the colors shine.
A dark grey stylus, with an eraser button on top and a highlight button on the side, is included for free with your purchase. The stylus magnetically attaches to the side of the Quaderno. It has 4096 degrees of pressure sensitivity, which provides lighter or thicker lines the harder you press. Eight colors are available for writing and drawing. This dramatically improves visual organization, learning effectiveness, and convenience in business and music scenes. Bookmark your most important PDF documents or notes on the home screen.
The Quaderno has 32GB of internal storage, holding 10,000 PDF files. It also has Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, Bluetooth 5.1, and a USB-C port for transferring files from your PC or Mac. There are two weeks of battery life of constant usage. The device measures 222.8mm x 301.1mm x 5.7mm and weighs 368g.
- Eight colors are available for writing and drawing. This greatly improves visual organization, learning effectiveness, and convenience in business and music scenes.
- The “Favourites” feature allows you to mark frequently used notes as favourites for quick access.
- With support for BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), the range of available Bluetooth foot pedals has been greatly expanded.
What one is better?
Both of these devices support English, but Remarkable supports more languages. The Remarkable has EPUB support, but Fujitsu only supports PDF. The Fujitsu is more secure, since it can be used in corporate environments better.
The Quaderno performs faster and is more responsive, but the Remarkable PDF engine is better. Fujitsu can display 4096 different colors, while the Remarkable can display 20,000. Sometimes, the Remarkable can be slow and sluggish.
The Remarkable has better retail viability. You can buy it online and in dozens of retail stores worldwide, including Amazon. The Fujitsu is only available in Japan, and is sold out for a couple of months. It should eventually be available through Amazon.jp and 3rd party resellers such as Good e-Reader.
In the end, the Fujitsu makes the most sense if you are a musician or corporate user. The device is much more responsive. If you want something easier to buy with world-class drawing tools, the Remarkable is better.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
