I’m a big fan of E Ink, the screen technology made famous by the Amazon Kindle. Over the years, I’ve delved into the niche world of E Ink devices, finding everything from dumbphones to photo frames, but I think I’ve come across one of my favourite uses of E Ink ever from an unlikely company.

Alongside e-readers like the Kindle and Kobo, a relatively new category of E Ink device is the digital notebook. Popularised by the Kindle Scribe and reMarkable range of tablets, these large-screen slates offer a digital canvas on which to take notes using a stylus.

This lets you create scores of near-infinite notebooks and carry them around with you at all times, just like you would have hundreds of books on a Kindle. Amazon cottoned on to this and made the Kindle Scribe, a 10-inch Kindle with an included pen to scribble in e-books and create your own notes.

It’s good having both functions in one device, but I find the size simply too big to cart around daily, and it’s comically large to read a book on.

I’ve also tested several reMarkable tablets, E Ink notebooks from the Norwegian company of the same name, that don’t double up as e-readers. The £399 reMarkable Paper Pro Move appealed to me with its smaller size when I reviewed it last year, but its narrow screen meant I didn’t write on it consistently.

Enter the $299 Supernote Nomad, a lesser-known E Ink tablet from Chinese firm Ratta, which I have been testing for a couple of months. It has hit the exact sweet spot for my digital notetaking needs, with the perfect screen size, excellent stylus, good battery life and even e-book integration.

reMarkable does a great job of making its screens feel like you’re writing on paper, but it always irks me that you have to buy replacement nibs for the pens, as the material wears down like a pencil’s graphite, albeit slower. It’s the same on the Scribe.

While the Supernote Nomad doesn’t quite feel as good to write on, it’s very close, and the huge advantage is that compatible pens don’t wear down and you never need to replace the nibs. This is thanks to the (deep breath) “FeelWrite 2 Soft Self-Recovery Film and Ceramic NeverReplace Nib”. FeelWrite technology is from Wacom, the firm famous for its digitiser input systems in the creative industry.

The simple fact that I don’t have to carry around spare nibs has made me use the Supernote Nomad more than any other E Ink notebook.

The Nomad is also fully user repairable, a rarity in the entire consumer electronics industry in 2026. You can unclip the back plate and replace the battery and other components easily. It also has an SD card slot to expand the storage, and Ratta asserts that it wants the user to “truly own your device”, a rare opinion in today’s world of monthly subscriptions and cloud storage lock-in.

The Nomad has a 7.8-inch screen, which I found the ideal size for taking notes in meetings and for daily tasks and to-do lists. The 300ppi resolution is as good as modern e-readers, and the software is pleasingly simple – create a notebook and off you go.

Swiping down on the touch-sensitive bezel – changeable depending on which hand you write with, which also shifts the notebook’s toolbar to the other side of the screen – and you get a quick menu to create notes and view files, alongside optional extra apps.

This includes an email app and calendar that can sync with Google or Outlook, and, amazingly, the official Kindle app.

Although I am a Kobo convert these days, the fact that the Nomad supports Kindle natively makes it an absolutely legitimate Kindle Scribe replacement. For a cheaper price, you get a repairable E Ink device that isn’t too large, and has a better writing experience for your notes. It’s win-win.

The caveat here is you can’t annotate or markup Kindle e-books on the Nomad, something I did not miss. I want an e-reader that is, separately, a notebook. If you also want to scribble in your books, this device is not for you.

I found there was a bit of a learning curve to get used to Nomad’s confusing software. There are advanced features I have not used, but for my use case of compiling weekly and monthly work notes, and the occasional personal journaling, it has been a great pick-up and go option.

The downside is it does not have a frontlight, so you can’t make notes in the dark. That doesn’t bother me so much, but a light would have been a great addition for the Kindle app to make this an e-reader for all hours of the day.

I also found the battery life a little erratic – although we are still talking in days, not hours. There are settings to put the Nomad to sleep automatically, as well as run more power efficiently when it knows you’ve stopped writing, but overall I could rely on the thing for about two weeks of power before needing to plug in – and it’s more if you turn the Wi-Fi off.

You can opt to backup to Supernote’s own cloud service, or Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive. I like how Supernote’s services are optional, giving you control over where your data is saved.

The software is customisable, and Supernote lets very interested customers view its company’s software roadmap of new tools it is working on.

The tablet itself is a good deal at $299, but you need to pay at least $59 for a compatible pen, and I would also recommend the folio case, which is at least a further $49. That’s $407 all up, which is £300 at the time of writing.

The latest Kindle Scribe is £379.99 for the tablet and pen, but with no case and only 16GB storage. The entire Supernote Nomad bundle is cheaper, and you get 32GB. The catch? Shipping and import tax to the UK bumps the price to $543.70, which is £400. But that price is still comparable to the Amazon and reMarkable alternatives.

If you are looking for an all-in-one digital notebook to also read Kindle books on, the Supernote Nomad is the perfect size and repairable with an everlasting pen, and it’s cheaper than the Amazon alternative. You just have to be OK with the absence of a frontlight.

Buy the Supernote Nomad