ReMarkable vs Penultimate

I love my device, the cuff around the pen tip broke the first time I dropped it though, which really affected how it works, but I still use it. Could use a little extra durability there. Other than that, this device has been great. A few suggestions are that this app is multifunctional so that you can edit your documents from it with a stylus on your phone, and also that you can add templates to extra pages in pdfs. Other than that, I hope to use a color version in the future.

- Chase Tuttle

This is exactly the minimalist app I would expect. If you read into what the creators of reMarkable tablets were aiming for you will note that this fits that goal quite well. They wanted primarily a note taking platform and this app is assumed at an easy way to access those notes. Yes there are many features that would be nice to have, but I am quite happy with what this is. They focused hard on making a wonderful tool for reading notes taken on the tablet with a dash of other features.

- Ethan Leisinger

High potential, but not there yet This app has potential, but still misses the mark. A few things that would turn this app fr good to great for me include: - being able to upload pdfs from within the app. I can open up a pdf in other apps and then share to the Remarkable app, where the pdf ends up just being uploaded to the root directory, where I have then move files later. It would be helpful if you could navigate to any folder and then click “Upload” and search for a pdf on your phones file manager to upload to that specific directory - using less storage space. I’m not sure but I feel like when you download the app it syncs all the files onto your phone. It would be great if it only synced “thumbnails” and gave us the option fully sync files, either all or selectively as needed - faster syncing. It’s terribly slow but I’ve had several instances where it took a few minutes to sync files either way (phone to remarkable or vice versa) - allowing screen sharing. It would be awesome if the screen sharing feature for desktop was added to mobile I’d probably use the app much more with these added functionality, instead of how I use it now, which is primarily just to see what I’ve written on my Remarkable when it’s not with me.

- urazack

Penultimate, used in conjunction with Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro 9.7, is hard to beat. It literally looks like i am using a sheet of paper and a pen to take notes in a notebook. I wish that it had sub folders for the notebooks as this would greatly help organize my thoughts when writing novels. Right now, I am using penultimate to create a children's book for my son. Using Procreate, Pencil, and the Smart Keyboard, it is the most seamless creating tool i have ever used. Granted, I haven't used this app with any other stylus. I have used other note taking apps with other styli and I have to say that Apple Pencil is the best ever. So maybe it is the pencil that makes this app so great. I have not yet felt the need to try any other note taking app because Penultimate satisfies most of my needs. Four stars because it meets those needs. I'm not feeling pressed to buy anything. Highly recommend in conjunction with pencil.

- rmo5008

I use this app every morning for journaling and note taking for 4 months now. As a whole The app works pretty well, especially with the Apple Pen. There are a couple very annoying features though that brought me to write this review. 1. When I pop between apps by swiping up in the iPad (like readings I am going through), when I come back to this app it will sometimes put me back 2-3 pages in my notes from where I left off. This happens about 60% of the time and really gets annoying when you have to keep popping back and forth. 2. You can’t rearrange anything for better organization. Or at least I haven’t found a way and have looked for a long while. What I mean is, you can create folders to house similar documents but you can’t rearrange the order of the folders so that the most commonly used or similar topics would be grouped by each other. They just become scattered without any rhyme or reason. Also heaven forbid you spend an hour taking notes on something in the wrong folder/location, which I have done a couple times now. And that is unfortunately now where those documents live. There is no way of moving it to the correct folder, which in my opinion is almost a deal breaker for a note taking app. If this is possible it is not easily found in the app.

- Billy76856

It's good but I keep finding things I wish it did I use penultimate to take notes for my classes on my iPad Pro. It's nice to just be able to write, not type notes. But it's not perfect. The two major things I wish it did was zoom in on pictures. I often times insert screen shots from PowerPoint or online and when I go back to review my notes I am always trying to use two fingers to zoom in on the picture which is just a feature the app does not do. I also wish it allowed me to arrange my notes in whatever order I want. I have my app organized so that each class gets its own 'noteboook' but when I open the notebook I don't get organize the 'sub notebooks' in my own order, the app automatically organizes them in order of most recently opened. My other big compliment and this one is really annoying! When I double tap my home button to switch between apps to say take a screen shot and then go back to penultimate the app opens at a page 2-3 pages above where I left it. This is probably the most disruptive feature the app is lacking to note taking in class. Maybe Evernote can make this happen in the next update. I really hope so! This app has so much potential and with a little more care it could be perfect

- kbearOSU