This week’s Top 5 with Chance Brown features a review of the most simple, most ridiculously helpful piece of tech I own.
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Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Top 5 show. My name is Chance Brown, and I am blessed to be your host. I am excited about today's episode. But before we get into that, if this is your first time watching the show and listening to the show, thanks for stopping by and giving us a chance. We designed this show to give you five actionable takeaways that you can go and put in your business that will help it grow and prosper. So today, we're going to be doing something of a new type of episode. We rolled out a new episode last time when we did a book review. This time, I'm going to do a product review.
So what I'm going to try to do here is not sell you on what I'm trying to use, just show you how it works and tell you my thoughts on it, because it is a game changer for me. So let's get started. The product that I am going to be reviewing today is a product called the Remarkable. That's a little R, little E, capital M. I like to call it the Remarkable Remarkable. If you're not familiar with Remarkable and you're watching this on YouTube, you can see on the website, it looks like this. It looks like a little tablet, a digital tablet. It comes with a marker, pencil, and it is, I'm going to tell you, kind of silly in its lack of sophistication, but it has quickly become my favorite and most used piece of technology that I own.
Now, I'm going to preface everything that I'm about to say by telling you this. I am not a tech guru. I am not somebody who is probably using this piece of technology at its full capacity. There's a lot more you can do, like flipping articles from the web, downloading PDFs and e-books. There's a lot of things that you can do here. I don't do that. I use this strictly as a notebook. Now, sometimes I do share the notes, so I'll convert them from my handwriting into text, and I'll share them through Google Drive or Dropbox with people on my team. So I do like that about it, the connectivity piece of it, but it's just a great piece of technology.
And I have yet to meet somebody who has purchased a remarkable and didn't love it. That's the crazy thing. Yeah. I am a certified member of the Apple cult. I've got the watch. I've got the phone. I've got AirPods. I'm recording this on my Mac. My MacBook is over here on my table. I've got iPads. I've got it all. Apple TV. We've got it all, right? But I will tell you that I have stopped using my iPad entirely. I can't remember the last time I actually used it. The only thing I use it for anymore is to sidecar as a second monitor to my MacBook if I'm traveling and I need a second monitor.
That's it. Otherwise, I carry this thing around, and that is all. It's all I need. So at first sight, when you look at it, you're going to be like, really? This is it? It's a digital notepad. It almost reminds me of what a Palm Pilot was from back in the late 90s and early 2000s, except it's bigger and thinner and obviously a little more technologically advanced given 25 years of tech advancements. But if you're like me, I'm of an age where I like to joke with people that I like to carry a notepad and an iPad. But I really don't carry the iPad anymore because of this notepad. It's so simple and so easy that you can use it for anything.
Like I said, you can download PDFs. You can download e-books. You can turn your handwriting to text. You can send it out to Google Drive or Dropbox or other services like that. It just is what it is. The crazy thing about it, and I think one of the things that I like the most, is that when you write on it, it feels like you're writing on paper. There is a tactile difference between writing on the Remarkable and writing on your iPad, where you're writing on that smooth screen. This has a little bit of a textured screen. I have heard people say that you can buy an overlay for your iPad that allows it to feel the same way.
Man, I'll tell you what. This is the best thing that I've ever invested in technology-wise, and it's so simple. I create notebooks, so I've got a personal notebook. I've got a notebook for this blog and podcast. I've got a notebook for my business. If you're a Realtor, you could create notebooks for each client and take notes in it. You could then have that correspond to a Google Drive or a Dropbox folder or whatever technology that you use that you want to sync that with. My wife and I have lists of restaurants that we want to try. We have places that we want to travel. It's just hard to explain the simplicity of this device and how, because of that simplicity, how life-changing it is.
I used to have a desk covered in yellow pads and notebooks everywhere, had one in my backpack, had one in the truck, had one in everywhere that I go. No more. I just have the one. So if nothing else, it's reduced that clutter, which is also great. So the last really great thing that I'll talk about on this is, and I don't know how they do it. Maybe it's just because it is so simple and low-tech. I charged my Remarkable as of the recording of this. I charged it three weeks ago, and I still have 30% of my power left. And I use this thing on almost a daily basis. The battery lasts a ridiculously long time. So what are the negatives of the Remarkable?
If you're looking for it to be something that it's not, then there's a negative. If you're looking for it to be a place where you can play games or be an iPad, it's not an iPad. It just isn't. It's a notebook. So the two things that really are, if I'm getting very, very nitpicky, like really nitpicky, that are negatives. Number one, it doesn't have a backlight. So if you're in a dark environment, I was at a conference a few weeks ago, and it was very dark in the conference. And so writing on the Remarkable was difficult. Would having a backlight have distracted my neighbors? Maybe. Part of my feedback at the conference was turn the lights up a little bit so we can take notes. But I get that.
It is what it is. More often than not, I'm not writing on this thing in the dark, so it doesn't matter. The second thing is, and if you're watching this on the video, you'll see what I'm talking about, the pin is magnetic. It sticks to the side of the unit. That's great until you start putting it into a backpack or you walk around and you hit it on something and it falls off. And the pin isn't particularly cheap. You can buy cheaper versions if you do a little bit of research on Amazon. But I like the actual Remarkable marker. I think it feels good. It's weighted right. It's got the eraser on the back end. I just like it. And so I went out and I bought a little elastic strap that goes around my Remarkable's case that I can open at the top.
I can take my pin. Put it in there. And now I don't lose it. So those are your two negatives. No backlight. And the pin gets knocked off easily if you're not careful with it. But you can, like I said, buy a holder. If you go to my blog at chancebrown.com and look at the post on here, you will find two things. Number one, a link to this pin holder that you can buy. And then also a link that if you wanted to purchase a Remarkable, you can click on that link and save 40 bucks. So there you go. Hope that you find the Remarkable helpful. I hope that you find it a useful tool.
Like I said, I have yet to meet somebody who bought it and didn't love it. And so might as well save yourself 40 bucks on it. Head over to chancebrown.com. While you're there, if you want to subscribe to the blog, guess what? You get it delivered right into your inbox every time I write something. Just like you subscribe to this podcast, hopefully, right? So, hey, thanks for taking the time to listen. I hope this is a tool that you can use as we come across more things like this. We will continue to add to it. I hope you have a great day and we will see you next time on Top 5. Take care.
