[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":285},["ShallowReactive",2],{"\u002Fblog\u002Fbefore-you-buy-a-remarkable":3,"\u002Fblog\u002Fbefore-you-buy-a-remarkable-around":283},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"date":269,"description":270,"draft":271,"extension":272,"image":273,"imageAlt":274,"level":275,"meta":276,"navigation":277,"ogImage":278,"path":279,"seo":280,"stem":281,"__hash__":282},"posts\u002Fblog\u002Fbefore-you-buy-a-remarkable.md","Before you buy a reMarkable",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":255},"minimark",[9,13,16,21,24,27,35,38,42,49,55,61,67,73,76,79,83,86,89,92,95,99,102,105,109,112,115,119,122,125,129,132,136,229,232,236,239,242,246],[10,11,12],"p",{},"Somewhere in your browser history is a reMarkable. Or a Kindle Scribe, or a Supernote, or a Boox. You have watched the videos. The pen looks right, the screen looks like paper from a metre away, and the promise is exact: keep writing by hand, and have it all be digital too.",[10,14,15],{},"If you are still deciding, this is for you. Not to talk you out of it, but to name what you would be paying for, and to show you the cheaper way to the half of it you probably want.",[17,18,20],"h2",{"id":19},"what-you-actually-want","What you actually want",[10,22,23],{},"Ask why the tablet appeals and it is rarely the tablet. It is two things.",[10,25,26],{},"You want to keep writing by hand. Not out of nostalgia. It is where the thinking happens for you, and the typed note never held anything.",[10,28,29,30,34],{},"And you want your notes to stop being a dead end. The whiteboard photo taken before it was wiped. The recording of the call. The file someone sent afterwards. The link. All of it lives on a phone or a laptop, and the page that needs it cannot hold it. So you write ",[31,32,33],"em",{},"see photo"," and hope, or you give up on paper altogether.",[10,36,37],{},"The tablet answers the second problem by removing the first. Your handwriting becomes pixels, and pixels can carry anything. That is a real answer. It is also a large one.",[17,39,41],{"id":40},"what-the-tablet-asks-in-return","What the tablet asks in return",[10,43,44,48],{},[45,46,47],"strong",{},"A price."," The device, the pen, the folio, and a subscription for the parts that make it useful. Somewhere between a good phone and a laptop, for a thing that does one job.",[10,50,51,54],{},[45,52,53],{},"A new notebook."," It replaces every notebook you own with one that has a battery, a firmware version and a login. The stack of used ones on the shelf does not come with you.",[10,56,57,60],{},[45,58,59],{},"A new pen."," It is a very good stylus. It is still a stylus, with nibs to replace and a feel you get used to rather than one you chose.",[10,62,63,66],{},[45,64,65],{},"A screen where paper was."," The best of them are close. They are still screens: a refresh, a small lag, greys standing in for ink. Part of what makes paper work for you, that it is simply there and asks nothing, survives the move. Part of it does not.",[10,68,69,72],{},[45,70,71],{},"Its own world."," Your notes live in the maker's app and the maker's cloud, in the maker's format. Leaving means exporting PDFs.",[10,74,75],{},"For some people every one of those is worth it. If you want your handwriting itself to be searchable, turned into text, backed up as pages, or you fill notebooks faster than you can keep them, the tablet is the right tool and you should buy it.",[10,77,78],{},"But if what you wanted was the second thing, a way for a page to hold what does not fit on it, you are about to change everything to fix one problem.",[17,80,82],{"id":81},"the-other-way-round","The other way round",[10,84,85],{},"Warq keeps the paper and brings the digital things to it.",[10,87,88],{},"Your notebook and your pen stay exactly as they are. When a note needs something digital, you write four letters next to it. That is a code the app gives you, short enough to write in the time it takes to write a word.",[10,90,91],{},"Then, in the app, you attach whatever the note needs to those four letters: a photo, a recording, a file, a link, a longer typed note. Later, you point your phone's camera at the page. It reads the letters and opens what you attached. If you would rather, you type them.",[10,93,94],{},"That is the whole mechanism. Nothing about how you write changes. Nothing about which notebook, or which pen, or where you keep them. The digital half arrives without asking the paper half to leave.",[17,96,98],{"id":97},"what-it-costs","What it costs",[10,100,101],{},"Nothing to buy. Your notebook, your pen, the phone in your pocket.",[10,103,104],{},"The app has a free plan, and the paid one is about how much you can store, not which features you get. There is no hardware and there will never be hardware. The four letters are the device.",[17,106,108],{"id":107},"quick-to-capture","Quick to capture",[10,110,111],{},"Writing the code takes as long as writing a word, and it works with no signal, because the codes are made on your phone rather than fetched from somewhere. Attaching takes a share sheet: from the camera, from the camera roll, from any app that can share, or from inside Warq itself. A recording starts with one press and attaches when it stops.",[10,113,114],{},"Nothing has to be filed. The code is written where the note is, so the attachment is already in the right place. It is next to the sentence that needed it.",[17,116,118],{"id":117},"quick-to-find","Quick to find",[10,120,121],{},"Point the camera at the page, or type the four letters. That is the search.",[10,123,124],{},"This is the part the tablets cannot copy, because it comes from the paper rather than from the software. You already know how to find a note in your own notebook. You remember roughly when, and roughly where on the page. Finding the attachment is finding the note, and you were always good at that.",[17,126,128],{"id":127},"from-any-device","From any device",[10,130,131],{},"The notebook stays on the desk. What is attached to it follows you: on the phone today, and coming to everything you use. Sign in somewhere else and the same four letters open the same things.",[17,133,135],{"id":134},"side-by-side","Side by side",[137,138,139,154],"table",{},[140,141,142],"thead",{},[143,144,145,148,151],"tr",{},[146,147],"th",{},[146,149,150],{},"A tablet",[146,152,153],{},"Warq",[155,156,157,169,180,189,200,211,220],"tbody",{},[143,158,159,163,166],{},[160,161,162],"td",{},"What you buy",[160,164,165],{},"The device, the pen, a subscription",[160,167,168],{},"Nothing",[143,170,171,174,177],{},[160,172,173],{},"Your notebook",[160,175,176],{},"Replaced",[160,178,179],{},"Kept",[143,181,182,185,187],{},[160,183,184],{},"Your pen",[160,186,176],{},[160,188,179],{},[143,190,191,194,197],{},[160,192,193],{},"Where the notes live",[160,195,196],{},"The maker's cloud",[160,198,199],{},"The page",[143,201,202,205,208],{},[160,203,204],{},"Handwriting searchable",[160,206,207],{},"Yes",[160,209,210],{},"No",[143,212,213,216,218],{},[160,214,215],{},"Attachments on a page",[160,217,207],{},[160,219,207],{},[143,221,222,225,227],{},[160,223,224],{},"Works with no battery",[160,226,210],{},[160,228,207],{},[10,230,231],{},"The last row is not a joke. The notebook does not need charging, and neither do the four letters.",[17,233,235],{"id":234},"who-this-is-for","Who this is for",[10,237,238],{},"It is for the crossover: people who tried digital notes, came back to paper, and now want the digital part without giving the paper up again. If that is you, the tablet is a bigger change than you were looking for, and it solves a problem you did not have.",[10,240,241],{},"If you have never liked writing by hand, none of this applies. Buy the thing you will use.",[17,243,245],{"id":244},"where-to-start","Where to start",[10,247,248,249,254],{},"Warq opens to the waiting list first. Join it below, and read ",[250,251,253],"a",{"href":252},"\u002F","why we built it"," if you want the longer version of the argument above.",{"title":256,"searchDepth":257,"depth":257,"links":258},"",2,[259,260,261,262,263,264,265,266,267,268],{"id":19,"depth":257,"text":20},{"id":40,"depth":257,"text":41},{"id":81,"depth":257,"text":82},{"id":97,"depth":257,"text":98},{"id":107,"depth":257,"text":108},{"id":117,"depth":257,"text":118},{"id":127,"depth":257,"text":128},{"id":134,"depth":257,"text":135},{"id":234,"depth":257,"text":235},{"id":244,"depth":257,"text":245},"2026-09-28","The tablets promise paper without the paper. There is a cheaper way to get the half of digital you actually want, and you already own most of it.",false,"md","\u002Fblog\u002Ftablet-or-warq.png","reMarkable versus Warq. An ink drawing of an e-ink tablet with its stylus, beside a spiral notebook where a hand writes WARQ in red, a phone lying next to it","paper",{},true,"\u002Fblog\u002Ftablet-or-warq.jpg","\u002Fblog\u002Fbefore-you-buy-a-remarkable",{"title":5,"description":270},"blog\u002Fbefore-you-buy-a-remarkable","uWq5e9-1S13s2B_UH4nyyvfHlpzd3catsCMHhJldKmc",[284,284],null,1790607913489]