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I’ve reviewed enough digital notebooks over the past year that my wife has started rolling her eyes at me every time I have to sign for a package, and of that expansive lot, the reMarkable Paper Pro and its newer, smaller sibling, the reMarkable Paper Pro Move are among the most impressive.
I just wish the screens on these two premium e-ink productivity devices were a little more forgiving to my middle-aged eyes—and thanks to a software update earlier this year, they can be.
Dim by design
In my reviews of both the Paper Pro and the Paper Pro Move, I noted that their integrated front lights are too dim to be very useful. (In contrast to the backlight on an LED tablet, e-ink devices are illuminated by a lighting layer sandwiched between the outer glass and the inner display that reflects down.) Though reMarkable doesn’t publicize the number, at full strength the front light illuminates to around 3 to 4 nits, according to testers on Reddit. In contrast, the front lights on the competing Kindle Scribe and Boox Note Air 4C can get much brighter—up to 94 nits. (For reference, the screen of my M1 MacBook Air laptop peaks at 400 nits.)
According to a statement I received from reMarkable, however, it turns out this was an intentional decision—a limitation baked into the design of the product.
“The light is designed primarily to gently illuminate the page when ambient light is low—for example, in a dark conference room or at night—without compromising battery life or the natural paper-like experience,” reMarkable said in an emailed response to questions. “During development, we tested extensively across brightness levels and environments, and we intentionally capped the maximum brightness to strike the right balance between visibility, comfort, and battery consumption.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness—reduced eye strain and longer battery life are certainly among the chief advantages e-ink offers over a traditional tablet—but I think things got taken a bit far. Consistently during my testing, I found both reMarkable tablets to be too dark to read easily unless I was in a room with a good deal of natural light or a nearby lamp. Adjusting the front light to max made almost no difference. Even in a totally dark room, I still found myself squinting or bringing the device close to my face to read smaller print.
A recent software update gives you more options
Credit: Joel Cunningham
It seems I wasn’t the only one disappointed in the feature. A year ago, shortly after the Paper Pro’s release, Redditors were sharing tips for altering the code of the operating system to remove software-based lighting limits. The volume of user feedback ultimately prompted the company to rethink its design decision, sort of: While the previous limits remain, a software update earlier this year (after my review of the Paper Pro was published) introduced a new setting to boost brightness.
“After launch, we heard from some users who wanted the option for more brightness in certain situations,” reMarkable said. “In response, we added the [Extra bright] toggle in the display settings, which allows users to increase maximum brightness beyond the default range. This lets people choose what feels right for them while preserving our original design intent.”
To try it out, open Settings menu on your reMarkable Paper Pro or Paper Pro Move and tap Display, then tap the slider to turn on Extra bright. (You’ll see a warning that doing so “will drain the battery faster than normal.”)
The reMarkable Paper Pro Move with Extra Bright mode enabled, compared to a Kindle Scribe at max brightness.
Credit: Joel Cunningham
The effect isn’t nearly as dramatic as I expected—as you can see above, it’s still much darker than a Kindle Scribe at max brightness—but it does improve legibility at least somewhat under the conditions described above. The photo at the top of this article is a side-by-side comparison showing how bright the devices can get with and without the new option enabled, and you can see it in action in this video from YouTube user @howtotechstuff.
As the company noted, a brighter light will indeed drain the battery faster. According to @howtotechstuff’s video, in testing, his battery drain went from 4% an hour to 8% an hour under similar usage conditions. Honestly, that’s a pretty big hit for such a moderate increase in brightness, but it may be worth it if it makes the device more useable for you.
Is a front light even necessary on a digital notebook?
While I still find more utility in the brighter lighting of other devices I’ve tested, it’s worth noting that a number of e-ink notebooks I’ve written about—including the 13.3-inch Boox Note Max, the Viwoods AiPaper, and my personal favorite, the Supernote Manta—forgo front lighting entirely.
Adding lighting to an e-ink device is always a tradeoff (though not nearly as much as adding color)—inserting a light layer into the display stack can impact both clarity and the distance between the outer screen and the inner e-ink display, and writing digitally feels more like pen and paper when that distance is as small as possible. Lightless devices can also be thinner, though that’s a much less important factor if you ask me; beyond a certain point, too-thin e-ink tablets can get pretty fragile.
If the Paper Pro and Paper Pro Move didn’t include a front light at all, they would still be great devices. That one is there, but too dim for many users, only makes it kind of annoying—but this relatively new setting helps.
