The first thing to get out of the way about the reMarkable Paper Pro Move is that it is not a device to read e-books on. It is not an alternative to a Kindle or a Kobo, with no access to an official book store. Instead, it’s the latest E Ink note-taking tablet from the market-leading reMarkable, a Norwegian firm specialising in making digital devices feel like writing on paper, and throwing in clever digital perks to tempt you to ditch your old pen and pad.

“Paper is not going away but we should not be satisfied with the state of paper today,” reMarkable CEO Phil Hess told me. He said note taking should still happen with a pen where possible, and referred to laptop note-taking on a keyboard as “a rigid user experience” that can also distract, with apps and the internet at your fingertips.

There are no apps or internet browser on the Paper Pro Move. Hess said the size was decided on after user feedback about portability.

“It’s technology big enough to capture ideas while staying in the moment, but it’s small enough to not demand any attention.”

I spoke with several reMarkable executives about the Paper Pro Move, and they are all equally passionate about digital notetaking.

The advantages are certainly clear – you never run out of paper or ink, you can carry thousands of pages around with you, can categorise everything, and it’s all backed up to the cloud so you won’t lose your scribbles forever even if you lose the device.

The downsides? As much as the Paper Pro Move succeeds in being the most paper-like feeling digital stylus and pad I’ve ever used, it doesn’t truly recreate the feeling of putting pen to paper, and it won’t be much use if it runs out of battery when you’re out and about.

And as much as you can create folders and different notebooks, it’s often hard to find a specific note without having pages to flick through.

This, their smallest notepad yet, is a delightful and intriguing rethink, shrinking down last year’s £569 reMarkable Paper Pro to the size of a reporter’s notebook (which naturally appeals to me, a journalist). Having also tested the older reMarkable 2, the new Move is my favourite of the three, though it’s still mighty pricey at £399.99.

But while testing it, I experience little sparks of joy in its form, function and feeling that I don’t often get when reviewing tech products these days. It’s niche, and not for everybody, but reMarkable is doing a fine job of catering to its small potential audience. If you really want to load EPUB files onto it you can, but without a native or supported e-book store on the device, it’s not really for that, and the software is not optimised for it. This is a writing device first and foremost.

The smaller screen is best suited to quick note-taking when reading, thinking or in meetings. But for sketchers, mind-mappers and big, messy scrawlers, this will feel too small. It took me a few days to get used to it, as the screen is narrower than the paper notebook I’ve been using recently.

The Paper Pro Move is certainly very versatile. Like its larger cousins, it has a touch screen for finger input, but writing all happens with the included Marker (£399 package) or Marker Plus (£439 package for a pen with eraser on the end). You get replacement tips as they naturally wear down over time, and eventually you may need to buy more.

You build up notebooks in a traditional folder system. I have folders for work and personal use, as well as a dumping ‘archive’ folder where I shove everything I’m done with. Once you get into it, it makes sense to name folders for different projects, thoughts or specific meetings. It can make finding things easier. I’ve split all my work notes into months and weeks, with topics if relevant.

Writing feels great thanks to a carefully selected textured front glass to drag the nib of the Marker. The attention to detail when creating this texture was evident and impressive, with many different versions tested.

I’ve also tried and tested E Ink writing tablets from Amazon, Kobo and Boox, and none feel as good to write on as the Paper Pro Move.

“There is a single sheet of paper on top, there is nothing else. There are no bells and whistles or LEDs or anything,” Mats Herding, reMarkable’s chief design officer told me, then pointing to the tablet’s edges, which are bevelled to mimic a stack of paper but also there for one-handed grip.

The addition of the frontlight to such a small device for use in low light also brought engineering headaches in getting a solution thin enough to not detract from the feeling of writing without distraction.

“We are kind of obsessive about the writing experience and that comprises a lot of things, one of those is the distance of the pen tip to the ink,” Herding said. “On your actual notepad there is no distance, so you expect that from a writing device.”

The Move is very premium, and feels great to hold and use.

But you’ll need to pay for a subscription, something I find a little galling given the high hardware cost. reMarkable Connect costs £2.99 per month and includes full encrypted cloud backup of your notes rather than just the last 50 days, full access to the mobile and desktop apps and three years of extra protection for hardware defects.

It’s a cheaper subscription than most we pay for these days, but it irks having to fork out straight away simply to use all the features when you’ve just spent four hundred pounds. Also disappointing is battery life. If you want to use the frontlight and keep the screen on, this will last about a week before it needs charging via USB-C. Other E Ink devices can last months, but to be fair, the Paper Pro Move has much more functionality than the average e-reader.

There are many software additions, such as the Read on reMarkable Chrome extension that superbly sends articles to your device to read later, stripping out all web ads, leaving you with clean copy to read. A dream!

A new online portal called reMarkable Methods lets you upload more advanced templates for writing on such as yearlong calendars, daily to-do lists and bullet journals.

reMarkable is historically quite good at software updates, often pushing out new features, some of which you’ll only get with Connect. One of these is the new handwriting search, which does what it says and can be handy to find certain notes if you have a stack of digital notebooks and don’t know where you wrote something down.

But the system struggles with bad handwriting. Understandably so, but unless you write very legibly, this won’t work consistently.

More accessible and useful are options the colour display brings, such as the use of highlighters in different colours, or the ability to send a page of notes directly to yourself in Slack, handy when you want to share with colleagues. You can also send via email or present your notes with a screen share option.

Converting notes to text also works well, but again, make sure you’re writing clearly.

Despite the attraction of new flashy features and techy integrations, the reMarkable Paper Pro Move is best when you forget about all that and simply use it as a notepad. I had the best experience with the device when it allowed all that noise to fall away and I was able to make deep and thoughtful notes on a topic because of what the hardware presented – endless paper with a great writing feel, and the ability to look over notes afterwards and organise them as part of a wider project.

I personally only got that through the smaller size of the device, where I found the enormous screen of other reMarkable tablets too daunting to fill with my ideas. If you want to sit down with a device like this and write for hours, you’re going to want the larger version, but I think the Paper Pro Move is still the best size reMarkable for most people.

As long as you don’t mind that despite the portable design it won’t double as an e-reader, the reMarkable Paper Pro Move proves the most compelling digital notebook yet from the company.

Buy the reMarkable Paper Pro Move from reMarkable