Technology is a necessary evil. I don’t think that’s a hot take.
There’s just too much tied into it—work, communication, planning—that fully disconnecting isn’t really realistic. And if I’m being honest, I’ve said for years that I run to disconnect… but that’s only partially true.
I’ll go out for a run, leave feeling like I’ve cleared my head, and then within an hour I’m back on my phone—checking Strava, looking at other people’s runs, sorting through photos, thinking about posts. What started as a break from technology somehow loops right back into it.
So while I like the idea of going completely off-grid, what I’ve found is that I’m really looking for something in the middle. Not no technology—just better technology.
That’s what got me interested in the reMarkable Paper Pro Move.
What I Was Looking For (and Why This Caught My Attention)
Before even using it, I knew what problem I was trying to solve. I’ve always been someone who writes things down. I carry a small notebook around, I’ve got sticky notes in my car, on my desk, random scraps of paper with half-formed ideas. It works… until it doesn’t.
Stuff gets lost. Notes stay isolated. Good ideas don’t come back around.
At the same time, I didn’t want to replace that system with my phone or a traditional tablet. That just opens the door to everything else—email, notifications, distractions. What appealed to me about the reMarkable was that it strips all of that away. It’s a digital writing device, but that’s basically all it is. No social media. No inbox. No rabbit holes.
Just writing.
First Impressions: The Feel Actually Matters
I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about it once I actually had it in hand. If the writing experience felt off—even slightly—I knew I’d go right back to pen and paper.
After using it, I’ll say this: it’s not exactly the same as paper, but it’s close enough that I stopped thinking about it pretty quickly. There’s a slight resistance when you write that makes it feel natural, not like you’re sliding on glass.
That mattered more than anything else. Because once that part clicked, I actually wanted to use it—and that’s what makes something like this stick. The pen even has a built-in eraser – making it feeling more normalized than I expected it to.
The “Move” Factor: Why Size Changes Things
One thing that surprised me was how much I ended up valuing the smaller, more portable setup. The Move version is slimmer, narrower, and just easier to carry around. I’ve thrown it in a gym bag, kept it nearby in the car, and it doesn’t feel like I’m committing to carrying around another full-sized device.
That’s important, because if it’s not accessible, I’m not using it.
This feels much closer to replacing that “tiny notebook” I’ve always had on me—just without the downside of losing it or forgetting where I wrote something.
How I’ve Been Using It (From a Running Perspective)
The most obvious use for me has been training notes. I started using it to track daily runs—nothing overly complicated. Distance, general effort, maybe a few notes on how I felt, what the day looked like leading into the run, things like that. Basically the same thing I’d jot down in a notebook.
But the difference shows up after the fact.
At the end of each day, everything is saved and organized without me having to think about it. At the end of the week, I can take those handwritten notes and convert them into text and push them over to my computer.
And this is where it gets interesting.
The Weekly Workflow: Where This Actually Becomes Useful
When I was just using paper, everything lived and died in that notebook. If I wanted to analyze my training, it was all on me—reading back through pages, trying to connect dots, relying on memory and interpretation. There’s value in that, but it’s limited.
With this, I’ve been able to take a full week of handwritten notes—my own thoughts, context, observations—and convert them into a digital format that can actually be used. From there, I can plug that information into different tools, look for trends, compare weeks, even start layering in more data-driven analysis.
That’s something I’ve never really been able to do effectively with paper alone. It turns a training log from something passive into something actionable. And importantly, it still starts with writing—so I’m not losing that part of the process that I enjoy.
More Than Just Running
While I’ve been using it a lot for training, it hasn’t been limited to that. I’ve taken notes in meetings. Jotted down ideas for articles. Random thoughts that would’ve otherwise ended up on a sticky note somewhere.
The biggest difference is that now all of those things actually come back to me. I don’t lose them. I don’t forget where I wrote them down. And I can access them later without digging through piles of paper.
The Trade-Off
There’s no way around it—this isn’t cheap. And I don’t think it’s meant to replace a $5 notebook. If that system works perfectly for someone, there’s no real reason to change it.
For me, the value has been in how it connects different parts of what I’m already doing – and expands it out more functionally so that there is purpose to my note taking – aside from just getting things out of my head but dying in a messy clump ultimately.
It keeps the simplicity of writing things down, but removes a lot of the friction that comes after—organization, retrieval, and actually using those notes in a meaningful way.
Final Thoughts
I didn’t go into this expecting it to change how I approach running or work. But it has made an impace and really cleaned things up.
It’s given me a way to keep the parts of technology that are useful—organization, storage, flexibility—without pulling me back into the parts that tend to distract from why I run in the first place.
For me, that balance has been hard to find.
reMarkable Paper Pro Move $449
Features:
Size and weight
Display
Processor
Storage and RAM
- 2 GB LPDDR4x RAM
- 64 GB internal storage
Battery