I’ve got my two tablets – the Microsoft Surface 4 Pro and the reMarkable.
Even the names begin to give away their characteristics.
It all began with a sore shoulder. Those of you who read this know why the shoulder is sore, and several kilos of books and binders in my backpack made the shoulder ache big-time. A tablet would allow me to carry ebooks and store my notes in electronic form rather than paper.
So I bought the Surface. Really nice to use – except writing on it was glitchy, more so sequentially after each update from Microsoft Update. Slick, fast, lightweight, powerful. But glitchy sometimes.
After a year or so, I found an ad for reMarkable, a tablet that uses e-ink. It’s a cross between an e-reader and a limited version of a tablet. It does have limits, but I can stare at it for hours without my eyes popping out of my head. The surface of it, as suggested in their ads, actually does feel for the most part like I’m writing on paper.
Keep in mind that I’d tested these in the classroom, coffee shop, home, inside, outside, in the dark, in sunlight, under pressure, at my leisure – in every imaginable scenario.
I recently loaded up AutoCAD, Revit, AutoCAD Civil 3D, and Inventor on the Surface. They work well, but the Surface is somewhat under-powered for this. Pretty good though. An acceptable second to the HP ZBook 15 that the school provides. I also put ebooks on the reMarkable and used it as a textbook e-reader. It’s a little slow to flip from page to page, but it’s not slow when it comes to writing.
So I created a couple of videos.
12/14/2017 6:30 PM 167495387 tablet ease-of-use test Microsoft Surface 4 Pro 20171214_182812.mp4 12/14/2017 6:26 PM 103571641 tablet ease-of-use test reMarkable 20171214_182504.mp4
Have a look and see a comparison. I cast no judgment on each one since they’re clearly different machines. I thought I’d sell one of them once I decided. But I see now that they’re both designed for very different tasks. I guess I’m keeping them both.