The short answer: a reMarkable tablet. Not an iPad. Not a Kindle. Not a notebook app. After 8 years of constant travel — Patagonia, Atacama, Austrian Alps, Mont Blanc, South America, Europe, the US West Coast — I have 3,635 pages of notes and dozens of books on the same first-generation reMarkable I bought at a beta store in San Francisco. Nothing replaced it. Nothing came close.
The iPad is a distraction machine. You open it to read and within four minutes you are checking email. The Kindle is excellent for reading but useless for notes. The reMarkable does one thing: lets you read and write on something that feels like paper, with zero notification surface area. When you travel constantly, removing friction from thinking is worth more than adding features.
"When I am driving with my bicycle somewhere or running somewhere, to always have a book with me for a good read — which is totally crucial. I love physical books and I do read physical books whenever I'm at home. But when I'm travelling it's just so much lighter to have just a reMarkable with you. This gives a lot of independence."
Four months in Argentina. Two Hoka running shoes, a Dynafit vest, a Garmin watch — and a reMarkable. No physical books. Dozens of titles always accessible. For travellers who move fast and think constantly, a library that weighs 400 grams is a practical advantage, not a luxury.
"It's always actually next to my bed whenever I have some thoughts, so I can put them down — because that's important to get rid of everything in your head to clear up space."
This is the use case nobody talks about. The 3am thought that wakes you up. Picking up your phone to write it down activates everything — notifications, light, reflexes. The reMarkable sits next to the bed as a thinking surface. You write. You put it down. Your brain clears. You sleep.
At the Aiguille du Midi station — the highest cable car in the world, above the clouds — I was reading on the reMarkable on the wooden terrace. Sun breaking through. The book: "Listening to Life." No WiFi. No distractions. Just altitude and focus. That is the product's promise in one image.
I have read and taken notes at the edge of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field during the four-day Circuito Huemul expedition. The reMarkable came with me. It survived everything. I bought the Paper Pro when it launched — returned it because the glass screen cannot take the same punishment. I went back to the original. Eight years later, the first version is still the daily device.
Reading on the road without carrying books. Sketching out ideas when typing is too slow. Keeping personal OKRs offline and always accessible. Writing thoughts at 3am without triggering a phone. All handwritten, all searchable, all on a device that feels like holding a notebook but weighs less than one.
"You'll probably never see me without it."See reMarkable →