supernote nomad: my initial thoughts
an e-ink tablet replacement for paper notebooks
Hello everyone!
You may be wondering why I delved into e-ink tablets since I’m a stationery addict and fountain pen lover. The fact is that for my day job 1) paper planners worked okay but were not perfect, 2) I prefer using a bullet journal but absolutely hate setting up weeklies, and 3) my eyes desperately needed a system that did not require me to stare at yet another LED screen. So the idea of an e-ink tablet that was similar to pen and paper and allowed me to make my own page templates was very appealing.
While researching the tablets online, I looked at the Kindle Scribe (this was okay, but I didn’t want a device that was an e-reader first), the ReMarkable 2 (it was expensive and didn’t seem like it could do much), and the Boox tablets (this felt like it did too much, which meant the battery would die way to fast). Then after months of research, Instagram finally did its thing with a targeted ad, and I discovered the Ratta Supernote Nomad. (By the way to be very clear, this is not sponsored. I bought the Supernote Nomad myself.)
What caught my eye first for the Supernote Nomad was the pen. It’s a 0.7 ceramic tip, and looks like a felt tip pen. Personally, I’ve never seen a stylus like that, and it looked like it could write very precisely. And it does! Writing with the ceramic tip pen on the Supernote’s FeelWrite 2 Film that covers the screen feels like pen on paper. It’s amazing! Admittedly, it’s nothing like writing with fountain pen, but I think it’s better than writing on an iPad.
Other features that I really love about the Supernote Nomad and the brand:
You can create your own custom page templates, and they do have a pretty impressive pre-installed collection of templates.(Examples: weekly layout, 5 mm grid, 5 mm dot grid, college ruled, etc.)
You can link pages to each other, which makes switching between weekly and daily logs a breeze.
You can also create headers for pages and make a Table of Contents.
You can expand the internal memory of the Supernote Nomad with a microSD card up to 1 TB.
You can also use a USB-C flash drive to backup data and/or move files. (Note: It can be connected to some cloud storage options like Google Drive as well.)
The device is modular and allows the user to replace the battery.
And they’re pretty transparent with an active Reddit page for discussions and a Trello page for software updates.
There’s, of course, many more features that I haven’t discussed here. This list is not all inclusive. It’s just the stuff that really caught my eye when deciding to purchase the device.
The Supernote Nomad isn’t for everything. The screen has a writing area that’s approximately A6 size. I personally think that it’s too small for reading PDFs and for heavy note taking or commonplacing. In my 2025 planner and journal line-up, I plan on using the Supernote Nomad for weekly logs, daily logs, and meeting notes at the office, but I’ll keep a separate A5 notebook for reading notes and commonplacing.
Ratta Supernote is working on the successor to their A5X device that’s supposed to come out late this year or early next year, but I doubt I’d buy one. I do think it’d be cool to keep my work commonplace book in the Supernote using the handwriting to text feature, especially since that’s the commonplace book I reference the most. (All my notes on scientific journal articles come in handy.) But I truly don’t make enough money to justify two e-ink tablets.
The Supernote Nomad starts at $299 USD. So I can only imagine how much the A5X successor will cost. Although, I should note that since the user can replace the battery in these devices, I think the user can really extend the longevity of the device.
So what do you guys think? Have you ever used an e-ink device yourself? I think the most common e-ink device out there is the e-reader. I’d love to hear what you think!
🩷, Amy
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Hey there! Stumbled across your article when I was researching e-ink note takers :)
How is the Nomad when reading scientific articles? Do you find yourself having to zoom in frequenty?
I love gadgets! I don’t always need them though. I’ve always been tempted with something like this but still on the fence. For now, I use an IPad Pro, my IPhone, a physical calendar for work and various journals/notebooks. 😊😊😊