This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
THE COMPARISON
Quick Answer
If you want a focused digital note-taking device, the reMarkable Paper Pro Move at £399 is the right buy. The iPad is too distracting (every app you also use for everything else is one tap away). The LAMY x Neo.Lab at around £90 has too many small frictions (the pen needs constant charging, handwriting conversion is unreliable). I bought all three over two years. The reMarkable is the only one I still use daily.
Side-by-Side Verdict
- iPad (£329+): Excellent tablet, terrible dedicated notebook. Too many distractions.
- LAMY x Neo.Lab (£90): Lovely concept, awkward in practice. Pen charging kills the habit.
- reMarkable Paper Pro Move (£399): The right answer. Distraction-free, two-week battery, Marker needs no charging.
I want to save you some money and some mild frustration. Over the past couple of years I have bought three different things trying to find a digital note-taking setup that actually works for me. An iPad. A LAMY x Neo.Lab Convergence kit. And finally a reMarkable Paper Pro Move.
Two of them were mistakes. One of them I use every single day. Here is the honest story of how I got there so you can skip straight to the right answer.
First: The iPad
The iPad is the obvious first choice when you decide you want to take notes digitally. Everyone has one or knows someone who does. The Apple Pencil looks great. There are seventeen thousand apps for note-taking. It seems like the sensible, versatile option because it does everything.
That is also exactly the problem. It does everything. You sit down to write some notes and forty minutes later you have checked your email, gone down a rabbit hole on Instagram, watched something on YouTube, added seventeen things to an Amazon basket, and forgotten what you were supposed to be writing.
I did not enjoy using the iPad for notes. The screen is bright and busy. The apps have notifications. The whole device is optimised for consumption rather than thinking. For some people that balance works fine. For me it meant the notes app was always competing with everything else the iPad could do, and everything else always won.
The iPad is an excellent iPad. It is a terrible dedicated notebook.
Note: you can clean every app off it, and add a paparlike screen cover, but at a certain point, it started to feel like I was taking away everything it was good for, trying to turn into something it wasn’t.
Second: The LAMY x Neo.Lab
So I looked for something more focused and found the LAMY x Neo.Lab . Smart-looking box, proper physical notebook with dot grid pages, a LAMY pen with digitising built in. About €100 on Amazon. Not cheap but significantly less than a reMarkable. It looked like the sensible middle ground — the tactile experience of writing on actual paper with your notes synced digitally.
I was so excited when it arrived. Genuinely. Look at that box. It is a lovely box.
And then I actually used it.
The pen needs charging
The LAMY pen is a USI stylus that needs to be charged via the USB cable in the box. This sounds minor. It is not minor in practice. I kept forgetting to charge it. You pick it up to write something, the pen is dead, the moment is gone. For a device that is supposed to replace a notebook — a thing that famously never needs charging — having to remember to charge the pen introduces exactly the kind of friction that kills a habit. And you’d think this issue would translate to the reMarkable, but it just didn’t. I treated it more like a tablet an the battery life is so good.
Switching between colours was annoying
The Neo.Lab app lets you write in different colours. To switch you tap through options on screen or on the pen. It sounds fine. In use it just felt awkward — this fiddly tippy-tapping between colours that interrupted the flow of writing every single time. Writing on paper should feel fluid and uninterrupted. This did not.
The handwriting to text was rubbish
The whole point of digitising your handwriting is that it becomes searchable and shareable. The conversion on the Neo.Lab was not good enough to be reliable. I have messy handwriting but it is not that messy. The results were inconsistent enough that I could not trust them, which meant I was checking and correcting rather than just using the feature.
The whole thing just felt awkward
I am not sure I can be more specific than this and I think it is actually the most honest thing I can say. The iPad had too much going on. The LAMY had too much friction. Neither felt natural to pick up and use. Every time I wanted to write something there was a small barrier — charging, tapping, syncing, correcting — between the thought and the page. That barrier is enough to mean you do not bother.
Third: The reMarkable Paper Pro Move
I eventually gave in and bought the reMarkable Paper Pro Move. It is £399. That is more expensive than both of the previous things combined. I resisted it for a while specifically because of the price.
It is the only one I actually use.
No apps. No notifications. No charging the pen before you can use it (the standard Marker does not need charging at all). No bright flickering screen. You pick it up and you write. That is it. The writing feels like paper because the E Ink display has genuine texture and resistance. The handwriting to text conversion actually works. The battery lasts two weeks. It does not do anything except let you write and read and think, and it turns out that is exactly what I needed it to do.
I use it every day for content planning, to-do lists, reading documents and meeting notes. I have not touched the iPad for notes since. The LAMY kit is in a drawer.
The Honest Comparison
| iPad | LAMY x Neo.Lab | reMarkable Paper Pro Move | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | £329+ | ~£90 | £399 |
| Pen needs charging? | Yes (Apple Pencil) | Yes — constantly | No (standard Marker) |
| Distractions | Endless | Minimal | None |
| Writing feels natural? | Glass screen, not really | Real paper, yes | E Ink texture, yes |
| Handwriting to text | Good (with right app) | Unreliable | Excellent |
| Battery life | ~10 hours | Varies (pen is the issue) | 2 weeks |
| Do I still use it? | Not for notes | It’s in a drawer | Every single day |
So Should You Buy the Cheaper Option?
If you are standing where I was standing — looking at the reMarkable price and thinking “surely I can find something that does the same thing for less” — here is my honest answer.
Maybe. The LAMY x Neo.Lab is not a bad product in absolute terms. If you specifically want to write on real paper and just have the notes synced digitally, and you are disciplined about charging the pen, it might work for you. The notebook itself is lovely. The concept is sound.
But if what you actually want is something you will pick up every day without thinking about it, something that gets out of the way and lets you write, something that does not give you an excuse not to use it — the reMarkable is the one. I spent about £190 finding that out the long way. You do not have to.
The reMarkable Paper Pro Move starts at £399 from Amazon or direct from reMarkable with a 50-day return window. For my full review of what it is actually like to live with day to day, read the reMarkable Paper Pro Move review here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the LAMY x Neo.Lab worth it?
It depends on your use case. If you want to write on real paper with digital sync and you are prepared to manage the pen charging, it has merit. If you want something frictionless that you will actually reach for every day, the reMarkable is more reliable. At around £90 it is considerably cheaper, but in my experience the friction meant I stopped using it.
Can you use an iPad instead of a reMarkable?
Technically yes, and with the right app (GoodNotes or Notability) it is a capable note-taking device. The difference is that an iPad is also the device you use for everything else, which makes it very hard to use it as a focused writing tool. If you already have an iPad and want to try it for notes first before spending £399, that is a reasonable approach. Just be honest with yourself about whether the distractions will be a problem.
What is the cheapest way to get into digital note-taking?
If budget is the priority, the LAMY x Neo.Lab at around £90 is a genuine entry point. The Kindle Scribe is another option at a lower price point than the reMarkable, though it is primarily an e-reader with note-taking added rather than the other way around. If you can stretch to the reMarkable, though, the difference in daily usability is significant enough that I would rather save up and buy the right thing once.
Which is best for ADHD or focus issues?
The reMarkable, by some distance. The lack of apps, notifications and second screens means there is nothing else competing for attention. Many people with focus difficulties find that an iPad makes things worse rather than better because every app you also use for everything else is a tap away. A device that does only one thing is often the right tool for someone who finds it hard to stay on task.
