Evan X. Merz

For all my life I've enjoyed writing notes by hand. I liked taking notes in school, and I like taking notes at work. It helps me remember what we talk about, and gives me a reference point when coming back to something after a break.

However, I have a collection of literally hundreds of notebooks in my attic. I have every notebook I've written since university, and a few from high school.

I don't know exactly why I keep them. I only ever revisit them for two reasons. When I'm updating my resume I sometimes review them to remember what I was doing in a particular year. And occasionally I like to pull out a piece of music that I wrote years ago and dust it off on the piano.

But I don't like waste.

And I was struggling with another issue, too: I was too addicted to streaming services. My Galaxy tablet made it too easy to watch Netflix, and the reading experience was terrible.

So when I heard about the Supernote Nomad, I decided to take the plunge. At this point I've owned it for around three months, and I want to share my thoughts about it with the internet.

Features of the Supernote Nomad

I was drawn to the Supernote Nomad for a few specific reasons.

1. Size. It's about the size of the small notebooks that I prefer to use. It's small enough that I can easily carry it in one hand with my laptop while I have a coffee in my other hand.
2. Doodling. The Supernote tablets are among a number of recent tablets that allow the user to write notes out by hand. They also allow me to doodle in the margins, which is my favorite activity in long, boring meetings.
3. Export. The Supernote Nomad offers the ability to export not only to pdf, but also to image formats. Weirdly I couldn't find this feature on the Amazon Kindle Scribe.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

After using it for a few months, I can verify that my reasons for choosing it were justified. The drawing and note-taking experience is generally very similar to writing with a pen. The tablet allows me to export to image formats and share them to Dropbox very easily. And the size is nicely compact as well.

But the size isn't quite perfect. I like to write on lined paper, and the smallest lines offered by the system only allow for 17 lines of text to be written on one page. So I could fit much more text on one page if the lines were just a little closer together.

The battery life is great. Like similar e-ink tablets, the battery lasts long enough that I forget to charge it. I typically charge once a week.

The reading experience is also great. It's very similar to the old Kindle e-ink tablets that I loved reading on before Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire, and generally spoiled the experience by trying to do too many things.

One thing that I don't like so much is that the display does that e-ink thing where it needs to be refreshed every few pages. The prior pages sort of remain lightly on the screen in the background, and this can build up and become distracting until you swipe to refresh the screen.

Another small nitpick is that the pen sometimes seems to write when it isn't touching the screen. This requires the user to re-calibrate the pen, which is easy enough, but sort of annoying.

And my final complaint is that the carrying case is entirely necessary. The device shouldn't be sold without it. I first bought it alone and figured that I would get a third party case, but this makes the experience of turning it off and on rather awkward. The normal way to turn it off and on is to use magnets in the first party case. This essentially makes it function like any other notebook. So if you're considering buying one, just know that you should factor in the cost of the first party case.

Otherwise I'm very happy with it. I'm not going to give it a numerical score, but I will simply say that I'm glad I decided to purchase it.

I like slow tech

The thing I like most about the Supernote Nomad is that the design pushes me into things I want to do with tech, rather than the things that exist to give me cheap hits of dopamine. The Supernote Nomad basically allows me to read a book, take notes, or do some sketching. There's no streaming services or videogames. There's no web browser or social media. There's no text messaging.

It's slow tech that is designed for humans.

The Supernote Nomad is a human friendly device in a way that standard tablets just aren't.

I hope that larger tech companies take notice of the Supernote tablets. I want to see more devices that work at human speed rather than as fast as possible. I want to see more devices that feel comfortable and well designed.

So if you're looking for a piece of tech that feels like it isn't forcing you to be constantly connected and constantly consuming, then I encourage you to consider it.