reMarkable Notepad, What It Does And What It Costs

The reMarkable notepad is three devices now, not one. The Paper Pure is the black and white one at $399, the Paper Pro Move is the small colour one at $449, and the Paper Pro is the big colour one at $629, all with a Marker in the box. The reMarkable 2, which most of the reviews and Reddit threads are about, is marked "Discontinued" on reMarkable's own product page.

There's no mandatory monthly fee. There's an optional one called Connect, $3.99 a month after a 50 day trial, and the sentence that matters about it is the vendor's. "Without a Connect subscription, only files used and synced in the last 50 days will continue to be stored in the cloud." Your notes stay on the device either way. The cloud copy is what expires.

I haven't used one, and the reviews ranking for this search were written by people who have, so if you want to know how the pen feels, read them. What they don't do is put the prices, the subscription terms, the file formats and the three-year cost on one page, so that's this. Everything below was read from remarkable.com on 15 September 2026.

The Line-Up Today

Release dates are from Wikipedia's entry; every other cell is from reMarkable's store or spec pages. The battery rows carry the vendor's own conditions because the numbers are meaningless without them, and reMarkable, to its credit, publishes the conditions.

Two things on that table are easy to miss. The Pure is the cheapest of the three and also the newest, which is not the usual direction for a hardware line. And the Pro Move's screen is 16:9, a phone shape, where the other two are 4:3, a paper shape. The vendor's own comparison page calls the Move "our most portable paper tablet," and I'd read that as the honest label for a device you carry rather than one you write pages on.

What Connect Is, And What Happens Without It

reMarkable's FAQ defines it in one sentence, as a subscription that "gives you access to handwriting search, unlimited cloud storage and sync," integrations with other tools, and what it calls AI-powered tools. Everyone gets a 50 day trial when they pair a device, and the page says that applies to existing users without a subscription too. Cancel any time.

The interesting half is the other sentence, quoted above, plus its second clause. "You also won't have access to note-taking in the reMarkable mobile and desktop apps or the reMarkable Protection Plan."

So without Connect, the device works exactly as before, and three things change around it.

The cloud becomes a rolling window. A file you haven't opened and synced in 50 days drops out of the cloud copy. It stays on the tablet. Your old notes aren't deleted, they're just no longer mirrored, and if the tablet is lost, so are they.

The apps become viewers. The FAQ on the Pro page says the mobile and desktop apps let you "view, organize, and import files," and that taking and editing notes in the apps needs Connect. Reading your notes on a phone is free. Writing on the phone is not.

And handwriting search goes. Handwriting conversion, the one-tap turn-this-page-into-text feature, isn't marked as Connect-only on the Pure's feature page, which lists it plainly with "over 30 languages supported." Searching inside handwritten pages is, in the vendor's words, "with our Connect subscription." The AI layer that organises annotations "into reflections and next steps" is Connect as well.

Connect also lets one account run up to five devices, per the same FAQ, which matters to nobody buying their first one.

My reading is that Connect is priced for the person who wants the tablet to behave like a synced notes app. If you want a notepad, the thing the search term actually says, the free tier is the product and the 50 day rule is the price of not paying.

In As PDF, Out As PDF

The spec table on all three devices says the same thing. "Document support: PDF, EPUB (importing); PDF, PNG, SVG (exporting)."

That's the fence, and it's a real one. You can send a page or a document by email as a PDF, a PNG or an SVG. You can't export a Markdown file, a Word document or a plain text file of the page. The route to text is handwriting conversion, which turns a page into typed text you can "edit and send on," and the FAQ's own advice about the on-screen keyboard is that it's for "quick edits to converted text" and not "for writing longer texts."

What that means in practice depends on where your notes end up. If they end up as PDFs in a folder, or as pages you reread on the device, the fence never touches you. If you want handwritten notes to become a searchable text archive somewhere else, the workflow is convert, then send, page by page, and the search on the device itself needs Connect.

Import is the same shape. PDF and EPUB, plus Word documents and web articles through the Read on reMarkable extension for Chrome and Microsoft Office, plus files copied in from Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox. That's the list on the spec pages. reMarkable's support site has an article on transferring files over a USB cable, and it wouldn't load for me on either route I tried, so I can't tell you what it allows. The handwritten note taking app piece covers the software route where conversion lands in an editable document, which is a different set of tradeoffs on a device that also shows you your email.

Three Years Of Ownership, Added Up

Nobody on the results page does this arithmetic, so here it is with the store prices from today and Connect at $3.99 a month held constant.

Thirty six months of Connect is $143.64. Against the Pure that's 36% on top of the device. Against the Pro it's 23%. So the subscription is a bigger decision for the person buying the cheap one, which is the person most likely to be choosing a reMarkable over a paper notebook on cost.

What's not in that table. Marker tips at $19 a pack, which the box includes six of and which wear down because the screen is textured on purpose. A Type Folio at $229 if you want to type on the Pro. Tax. And any price change over three years, which the next section suggests is not hypothetical. The tablet note-taking cost piece did the accessory arithmetic in July, when the Pro was the only current device, and the Type Folio's share of the device price hasn't improved.

The Price Has Moved

Gizmodo's Paper Pro review, published 8 February 2025, quotes a starting price of $530 and $580 with the Marker Plus. reMarkable's store today says from $629.

I can't tell you why from the vendor's pages, because they don't say, and I'm not going to guess at tariffs or currency. What I can say is that a review from early 2025 understates the current price by roughly a hundred dollars, and that any review you read for this device should be checked against the store page on the day you buy. The 50 day return window on webshop purchases, "free returns and a full refund within 50 days after your delivery date," is the safety net if the review you trusted turns out to describe a different price or a different feel.

The same review gave the Pro 3 out of 5 and its complaint was speed. "Everything takes too long" beyond writing, in its words, with lag on colour selection and a manual file loading process it found cumbersome. That's a hands-on finding I can't confirm or dispute. I mention it because it's the one criticism that recurs in the ranking reviews and it's not about the pen.

Who It Suits, As A Judgment

I'd separate two buyers.

The first writes by hand, keeps the notes as pages, and wants nothing else on the screen. For them the free tier is the whole product, the Pure at $399 is the sensible entry, and the 50 day cloud rule is a non-event because the notes live on the tablet. The only real question is whether $399 for the absence of notifications is worth it against a paper notebook, and that's the argument in the best note taking device decision, where the reMarkable sits against an iPad and paper.

The second wants handwriting to become searchable text on a laptop. For them the device costs the table price plus Connect, the export fence matters, and the honest comparison is an iPad with the Apple Pencil apps that convert handwriting inside an editable document. The reMarkable can do the job. It's just not the cheapest way to do that job.

My concern with the second buyer is the 50 day window specifically. It's a quiet rule. Nothing warns you when a file stops being mirrored, at least not on the pages I read, and the day you find out is the day the tablet goes missing.

Questions People Ask

Is the reMarkable notepad worth it? If a screen that can't show you anything else is the feature you keep failing to create for yourself, yes, and the Pure at $399 makes that a smaller bet than it was. If you want a tablet that also reads email, no, and reMarkable would agree, since "distraction-free software" is on its own feature list.

Is there a monthly fee for the reMarkable notepad? No mandatory one. Connect is $3.99 a month after a 50 day trial, cancellable any time, and without it the cloud keeps only files touched in the last 50 days, the apps become viewers, and the Protection Plan lapses. The device itself keeps working.

Is there something like reMarkable but cheaper? reMarkable's own answer is the Paper Pure, which is $230 less than the Pro and has the longer battery claim. Other brands are the device comparison's job, not this one.

Why has reMarkable 2 been discontinued? The product page says it has and gives no reason. What it does say is that "the Markers, Book Folios, Type Folios and Marker tips for reMarkable 2 will still be available" and that "all our reMarkable 2 users will still receive regular software updates." The Pure's page claims 50% faster, 20% higher contrast and 30% longer battery against the reMarkable 2, which is the vendor's case for the replacement.

Is reMarkable 2 still worth it in 2026? You can't buy one new from reMarkable. The store has a refurbished section with the standard warranty, and the discontinuation page promises updates, so a used one isn't orphaned. New Markers for it can't be used on the current devices, per the compatibility FAQ, so the accessories don't carry over if you upgrade later.

Can I use reMarkable without a subscription? Yes, and the two sentences from the FAQ are the whole answer. Files used in the last 50 days stay in the cloud, and note-taking in the apps and the Protection Plan need Connect. Handwriting conversion still works on the device. Handwriting search doesn't.

Is there a reMarkable 3? Not on reMarkable's pages. The current line is Pure, Pro Move and Pro, and the naming moved away from numbers with the Pro in 2024.

What I'd Do

Buy the Pure if the point is the notepad, take the 50 day Connect trial because it's automatic, and in week six decide whether you opened the apps to write or only to read. If only to read, let Connect lapse and treat the tablet as the archive.

Before it lapses, email yourself a PDF of anything you'd mind losing, because the cloud copy of an untouched file stops after 50 days and the device is the only other place it exists.

And check the store price against whichever review sold you, on the day. The price moved by about a hundred dollars between one review and this fetch, and the 50 day return is there for exactly that.