Why “Just Use a Tablet” Completely Misses the Point
A big part of what I do online is reviewing tech, especially E-Ink devices such as the reMarkable and the Kindle Scribe for example. I make no apologies for that. Those reviews have helped build my audience—particularly over at my YouTube channel—and the future is bright for this technology. It wasn’t so long ago that colour E-Ink was just a pipe dream.
Despite the growing influence of E-Ink, there is one comment some folks insisting of leaving, that appears again and again on these kind of reviews, usually from someone who’s stumbled onto one of my E-Ink videos, probably while trying to find a review of an iPad, and that comment is this: “Just use a tablet.”
There are variations of this comment and they are usually said with the confidence of someone who hasn’t actually tried the thing they’re dismissing. As if that single sentence should convince every E-Ink user to ditch their reMarkable, their Boox tablet or their Scribe and replace it with an iPad or a Galaxy Tab. As if tech worked with playground logic — “my device can beat up your device”.
The reality is that these devices aren’t rivals. They sit in different categories, serve different purposes and create different rhythms of use.
What E-Ink Is Designed to Do
At its core, E-Ink is built for focus. It isn’t trying to replace your iPad (insert your own preferred tablet here).
E-Ink devices aren’t designed to juggle thirty apps or fire off a flood of notifications. They’re designed to do one or two things exceedingly well: reading and writing. That narrower scope is the entire appeal.
No glare. No harsh backlight. Battery life that lasts for days, weeks or even months. Tech that doesn’t tap you on the shoulder every five minutes. In a world overloaded with pings and pop-ups, E-Ink’s quietness is a strength.
Tablets (the OLED and LCD kind), meanwhile, are brilliant in a different way. My iPad Pro is fast, colourful, powerful and capable of running almost everything I need. I wrote the script for the video that inspired this article on it, filmed the related video on my iPhone and edited the whole thing on the iPad.
So I’m not saying iPads and the like aren’t impressive tools, most definitely not. But power doesn’t automatically make a device the right choice for every task.
But … “Just Get a Tablet!”
This unsolicited advice ignores the large group of people who want something calmer, quieter and far less busy. A device that doesn’t try to drag you into multitasking every three minutes.
It’s like telling a cyclist, “Why didn’t you get a motorbike? It’s faster.” But we know that it’s not the same thing. A bicycle offers a different experience. A slower pace. A different intention. The motorbike does indeed get you there quicker, and you will probably look pretty cool while doing it, but they’re not substitutes by any stretch.
The same logic applies to writing. People still buy paper notebooks even though laptops exist. Nobody, while you are shopping for notebooks in WHSmith (sorry, TG Jones) looks over your shoulder and says, “You know you can type that on a laptop?” because everyone understands that handwriting creates a different type of thinking.
Yes on an E-Ink device, the screens are slower. Yes, colour is muted. And yes, even video playback technically exists (in the same sense that instant coffee exists. You can do it, but you won’t necessarily enjoy it).
But these things only matter if you try to make E-Ink behave like a tablet. If your goal is long-form reading, focused writing, studying, annotating calmly or simply thinking without being dragged into distractions, E-Ink is the right tool immediately.
And people aren’t buying E-Ink devices to save money either. Some of them cost more than the tablets they’re being compared to. What they’re choosing is a reading and writing experience that sits closer to paper than pixels.
Let’s be real. If you want fast stylus performance, colour accuracy, full-fat PDF tools, drawing, photo editing or anything app-heavy, buy an iPad. You’ll be happier. Pretending an E-Ink tablet can secretly do all that is wishful thinking.
But that doesn’t make E-Ink pointless. Quite the opposite.
Why Both Belong in Your Life
Your iPad is the Swiss Army knife of tech: powerful, flexible, able to do almost anything.
Your E-Ink tablet is the notebook: quiet, simple and ideal for a small number of tasks.
I own two iPads — a Pro and a Mini. Neither comes upstairs with me at night. Not just because they aren’t waterproof, which is handy if you like reading in the bath, but because I don’t want a bright glowing slab full of apps when I’m trying to unwind. A Kindle does that far better.
This is where E-Ink shines. It creates a calmer space. A quieter head. A slower pace that suits reading and writing in a way tablets, for all their strengths, simply don’t match.
So the next time someone confidently tells me, “Just use a tablet,” I’m not going to argue. I’ll point them to this article (I invite you to do the same) and hopefully give them a little food for thought.
Tech doesn’t always need to be brighter, louder or more powerful. Sometimes the right tool is the one that helps you think without distraction. And in a world that’s always awake, that’s a strong case for choosing E-Ink.
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