A lot of comments talk aboue being disappointed and all, but id rather pay for cloud services than have my data sold to merchants and marketeers.

Meanwhile, I have syncthing and gocryptfs installed on my remarkable 2 and have blocked all telemetry domains with the hosts file. If i wanted to, I could even disable xochotl completely (however you spell it).

This is all good and shows that they respect their customers. We should praise this! Of course theyre not perfect--from what I understand the display driver is a big blob so its unlikely that well ever have a totally free OS running, but its way better than any of the chinese spy tablets that fill up the eink tablet space or American spy tablets sold by our favorite advertisement companies directly to our children's schools.

I've been entertaining either a Remarkable2 or a Boox Note Air, but with remote-work over the last year it's been much less compelling.

Plus here in Australia we pay a significant premium for these types of devices - f.e. they're advertising the remarkable2 with Connect for USD$299 - but for Australians it's AU$499 (~ US$366).

On top of the death by a thousand cuts that is yet another subscription service, the AU version of that page indicates a subscription price of AUD$12.99 / month - compared to the USD$7.99 / month. USD$7.99 is around AUD$10.89.

The AU page's FAQ retains the ".. bought your reMarkable before 12.10.21 .." qualifier, and I think that translates to 2021-12-10, which sounds like an encouragement to buy before December to get this offer grandfathered in, but 12.10.21 (if assuming dd.mm.yy) would make more sense given today is 2021-10-13. (This is why we have unambiguous, international standards.)

Not sure how to feel about this. I will say that at least, as someone who already owns a reMarkable 2 who had access to these features already, I'll still have access to them:

> If you bought your reMarkable before 12.10.21, we want to give you full access to Connect. If you have a reMarkable account, go to my.reMarkable.com and approve our new terms and conditions to get Connect.

On the "Connect" section of my account:

> As one of our valued early customers, you have full free access to Connect. This is our way to thank you for believing in us from the start. Your free plan includes all launch features, such as Google Drive and Dropbox integration and Screen Share.

I don't use these features right now, but it'll be interesting to see how the plans expand in the future. As a recent-ish owner of the device, the update cadence has felt pretty good and the new features have been relatively impressive, but I hope we don't see more features eventually get locked behind monthly plans.

Not even the 'Google Drive and Dropbox integration' is free, but instead is on the highest plan.

So to make up for the under powering and non-upgradeable storage space on that tiny 8 GB reMarkable 2 tablet, they cleverly introduce a subscription plan only for you to get more storage space.

I had high hopes about Remarkable and hoped it will improve its shortfalls after criticising them [0], but a subscription for even basic 'Google Drive and Dropbox integration' seems like a complete turn off compared with the PineNote.

Not surprising that we now know why the device storage was so low after all. Maybe they don't have any plans of increasing the internal space you will likely be paying for their plan AND potentially the cloud storage of your choice if you run out of space.

No thanks and no deal.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28190987

Here's a video that brings more perspective from My Deep Guide who reviews quite a whole lot of e-ink devices (timestamped for relevant part): https://youtu.be/K79MPnPq4_M?t=508

The thing that stood out for me is the way they push for a subscription as you purchase your device. The Marker Plus used to be $99, but they inflated the price to be $129 so that if you choose the Connect plan, it "slashes" the price back to $99 - how it originally cost before, according to the video.

I was days away from ordering a Remarkable 2, despite the high price.

I could see it being amazing, with screen-share, in diagraming and sharing visually with webex/zoom colleagues.

Now it looks like I'll need to pay them $7.99/month for the privilege ? Instant hell-no.

It's a great time to get off their cloud using libre third-party tools.

https://github.com/rehackable/awesome-remarkable#gui-clients

Oh, wow. I had never heard of this device before, and looking at their website was an emotional rollercoaster. I went from “wow, I need this”, to “oh dear lord, absolutely not” several times, the whole connect thing, pricing around accessories, and lack of “formal” support for many cloud storage options leave me unimpressed.

Their website makes a real spammy impression, and really doesn’t inspire confidence. I need to keep paying their subscription to have handwriting conversion - one of the key reasons I would buy this? What if they go out of business? I lose device functionality? What about iCloud or OneDrive integration? I need to use Chrome for some functionality?

Nothing about this leaves a good taste in my mouth. It’s a real shame since I had my wallet ready, the device as such looks awesome, but the only hardware I want on a subscription is a new car.

This is extremely disappointing. I've just left a complaint on this issue. They've clearly taken steps to avoid pulling the rug out from under preexisting users, but this practice is overall so scummy for such an expensive, single-purpose product that it is converting me from an evangelist of the product to a protester. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this product to anyone anymore. I should've listened to my instincts about lock-in when I saw that everything passed through a proprietary cloud.

This is disappointing. My wife has one and loves it, and I was about to buy one my own. Now I don't know if I want to, knowing I'll get one intentionally crippled in comparison.

The price hike on the Marker Plus to incentivize the subscription is a nasty choice too.

Comment aside, I'd love to buy a Remarkable, but I'm not going to do so. The reason is that: "by default remarkable doesn't come with a marker". How can that even be possible? And I'm not sure if it's possible to use something else as a marker. The marker is just 59 euros. Of course I'd also like the cover, such an expensive device without a minimum protection is not a good idea. The cover costs 119 euros. That's a total of 178 euros for a device that costs 399. So that almost amounts to 45% of the cost of the device. Can anyone explain me why such a rip off? Even if I had a ton of money I wouldn't buy...

I wish the Google drive integration was available in the lite plan.

The jump in features between lite and is huge: Handwriting (yeah good luck with mein), screen share, are all advanced features.

I am too cheap to pay $8 per month for it.

As more, and more and more software / products moves to the subscription model I have become extremely selective. $5 here $3 there $15 for that one etc it all ads up quick

This feels like a huge boon for the PineNote team, given that their launch is just around the corner.

If you are as upset as I am, I recommend you hit 'contact us' and voice your opinion. Let the company know they are making a mistake: https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us?return_to=%2Fhc%2Fre...

what's remarkable (sorry) is that I'm a customer but heard about this only here on HN...

I'm not opposed to subscriptions but the terms here feel draconian. If you lose your reMarkable, your cloud backups give you access only to the files you used in the last 50 days? Am I reading this right?

Wow...I hope the hacking community can re-implement some of these features.

I really can't believe they're doing this, the writing recognition sucks already, now they want new users to pay for it?

I am speechless.

I am not happy with this move. Before this step the Remarkable was an easy recommendation, but syncing a few gigabytes of files for every customer that paid you $600 dollars without an extra subscription seems reasonable. Hell, have me pay for the S3 storage I’m using, anything. But to start paying $8 per month just to access basic functionality feels silly to me.

I love the device, but recommending it without the grandfathered benefits feels like a ripoff to me (even if I never use them).

A bit annoying given that it's a pretty pricey device, but I only use the cloud stuff for transferring pdfs from my computer to the tablet, and I guess as some nominal backup of my notes on the device. There are other ways to achieve both. I'd still strongly recommend the tablet, it's amazing as a paper replacement.

I always enjoy seeing Norwegian companies making headlines on HN.

I have a remarkable (1) tablet. It sits on my shelf, Haven’t even charged it in over a year.

On the other hand, my iPad and Apple Pencil get used constantly. I run “write” by stylus labs. That combo of hardware and software provides the workflow I hoped the remarkable would (but didn’t). — True the remarkable is “more open” than the iPad… but not open enough to let me install software that matters to me.

So it’s just more ewaste.

Damn. Was on the fence about this tablet for my masters. But I guess they took away any reservations I have. Anyone know any reasonable alternative?

Every time I use an eInk device the novelty wears off quickly and I wish I just had an ipad.

I love my RM2. I don't have a problem w Remarkable wanting to charge for opt-in, value-add services. TLDR the hardware's great, the software's mediocre but steadily improving -- and extremely hackable -- and I'll continue to use and recommend it.

Screen share requires you to share everything you write with Remarkable? I'd expect to be able to do that over USB, and all the data stays local

Having a subscription is fine.

Having a garbage free tier is not.

Basic things you can't do in free tier: - export your documents (email is the only high quality export, today, going through the app exports PNGs at half resolution) - have a warranty on your device (the ToS was changed to give warranty only to Connect customers)

Sure. Let's say you can sell handwriting conversion and screenshare. Maybe. But ugh, they combined so many dick moves in 1... I doubt they'll get enough new customers anytime soon.

I no longer recommend the platform, have told everyone considering to get one the news and my thoughts. They agree and immediately started looking at competitors.

I understand the need to increase revenue, but to have basic functionally behind a paywall… no thanks. I will stick to standard tablets.

remarkable tactics, instantly a premium device becomes more premium