I was, once more, looking for an e-ink device with notetaking capabilities. I want to use it for:

- reading bigger epubs/pdfs that don’t fit on my small tolino ereader
- being able to annotate in these
- read the (very) occasional comic
- take notes (duh)
- an easy user experience

So I don’t think the requirements are that high. But I’m also a sucker for things that look nice and make me want to pick them up. This is where the Remarkable hits all the marks. I had a couple of others and they are just not as sexy. But they do so much more.
And there are many things that annoy me about the RM. It always seems a hassle to get data to and from the device. I have most of my media in my owncloud, so there is always another device involved to get things on the RM. Also, I’m a bit of a nutter when it comes to privacy, so I do not fully trust their cloud thingy. So that would mean no text recognition and always use the browserbased USB-transfer, which seem to be quite unstable. Bigger files seem to get stuck more often than not. But this experience got better with the latest beta.
Also, I’m not sure if the size is right for me, it seems a bit large to take along.

So I looked at the competition and thought I found the perfect thing in the Onyx Tab Mini C. (I know, privacy concerns and a chinese product don’t make sense either…). Just the right size for me needs at 7.8", even has a colour display, which is great for comics and photography books and all the comfort that comes with Android.
BUT: It’s ugly, the writing experience seems to be rather bad and the battery life? Seems like I can just as well get an Ipad, since with the colour e-ink, there is no more weeks of battery life :(

So, should I keep the RM? The price was really OK at 350 EUR (I got just the device and got a cheap cover and a nice Staedtler Pen). What would be an alternative at around 8" with good battery life, a good writing experience and a good look as well? Colour would be nice, but I’m not ready to trade it for terrible battery life. The Onyx Nova Air C seems to have better battery live than the the newer Tab Mini C, but it’s an early generation Colour E-ink and the reviews were rather meh. The Nova Air 2 might have been something for my needs, but it’s more expensive than the RM, if you can find it at all. So yeah, I’m open to ideas.