Remarkable

I love my ReMarkable and that's partly because I use it a lot for notes

You say you take notes occasionally - I do wonder, given notes is its primary purpose, whether you would feel you got enough value for the price you pay

I use the Staedtler noris digital jumbo with my rm2 (I also have the rm pen without the eraser) and you'll be 100% good without their official pen. The noris works flawlessly.

I found myself taking more notes than I was used to, mainly at first because I enjoy playing around with it and because I don't like wasting paper for a few lines and throw it away weeks after; it's a cool product and I like how their interface is laid-out, I could see a great usecase for studying. I wouldn't like moving around again with a 20 pounds backpack and anything that could make it lighter is a win.

Organizing your notes depends on how you're using it, but it's easy to move files around and create folders. You can set tags on notes too, which combined with folders will make it easy for you to find your notes quickly. If you have your class book as a PDF, you could store it into your rm2 and add notes directly onto it too.

Battery life shouldn't be an issue either.

I can be easily distracted and the fact that this device is for notes only keeps me focused. I could've taken an Android tablet or something else, but being able to watch videos or play games would leave me doing anything but taking notes.

The mobile and desktop apps are cool too, I don't pay their subscription and I'm fine with it. I can use the apps to get my files or move them around or just open them, it syncs fast but you should take a minute to see if their cloud fits your needs. You could say you're not using any of it, it still works by USB, or if you like to tinker things around, you could host your own rm cloud, but be aware this is a community project and not supported by the official brand and not always compatible with the latest update.

I’m also a grad student and i love love love it!! My reason for buying it were for note taking and annotating/reading all my required reading and it’s honestly the best investment I could’ve made. Many of my classmates have an iPad or similar tablet, and although that is also nice, I enjoy that it isn’t backlit (for the sake of my eyes). I also have adhd and it’s perfect for me to have everything in one place so I don’t loose anything, while not having the option to also other distracting apps. Obviously I don’t know your field of study, so maybe it’s not as functional for you as for me, but I would recommend it as a fellow grad student!

The Remarkable is a wonderful replacement and upgrade for paper notebooks.

Do you use lots of notebooks throughout your studies?

If so, the Remarkable will let you consolidate them to one pretty easy to use device that feels quite close to paper. You then get some added benefits like copy and paste, quick erase, and the ability to browse and export your notes on the computer or mobile. The only thing lacking compared to a regular notebooks is easy color (it does have greyscale, and red and blue that can be seen on the computer).

It is NOT an iPad replacement. So it can't do fancy apps, lots of images, video etc. It's a paper notebook on steroids.

The Noris is great. Love it.

It will be easier for you to be organized, but the tablet won’t do the work for you. :)

It’s your job to classify your notes correctly of course.

The main advantage of the RM is that all your notes are available on your tablet, also you can reorganize pages in a notebook, or move pages from notebook to notebook. So that helps stay organized, definitely.

It has a 100 day return period, so you can really try it out, work with it for almost a semester, and decide then.

Third party sleeves on Amazon are also great to protect it while saving some money.

Had mine since June or so, I use it daily for work to record my to-do's, my working notes, notes from the two dozen or so projects I've been involved with since I bought this thing, all of my department and cross department meetings notes and more. Then I started putting my personal lists and journals and notes on it as well. For me it was a total game changer.

Before, I was trying to write everything down quickly and then figure out how to either reference it later or store it digitally somehow. This usually either meant recreating the notes on the computer or stopping to take pictures of the notes to awkwardly file with typed notes. This thing has stopped all of that craziness, given me one place to write everything down and given me several places I can reference it all from via the app on my phone or various computers without a second step. I don't think I've written on a piece of paper, minus a birthday card here or there, since I got it.

All that aside, it just feels good to write on. I use the Marker Plus with mine so I can't speak to other pens, but I imagine it's the soft nib that really does it. The experience is so paper-like it really does blow my mind in a "its magical" sort of way. In fact, I've gotten so used to writing on it that writing with an ink pen feels off to me now.

So if you have the use case to use it, I'd say it's completely worth it, especially comparing other devices. If you are looking for bells, whistles, and web browsers, this ain't it. If you're looking for something of quality you can sit down and write on day in and day out and to be able to organize your notebooks into groups and folders and that is worth something in itself to you, this is the device in my opinion.

I like mine quite a bit, my only wish is after I convert to text I could do a search on the device itself.

I use mine at work and I work in IT. Finishing up a large phone project. I would love to be able to search for the last 4 of a phone number on that device.