Way back in the mists of time (December 2021 to be exact), the very generous people at Supernote sent me an A5X e-ink notebook to try out. You can read the full review of the Supernote A5X here, but the short version is this: I loved it, and I’ve been using it all of the time ever since. It’s been my go-to notebook for roughing out pages for comic scripts and for taking notes in meetings for the last couple of years.
The Supernote Nomad is the brand new 2024 version of the original Supernote and, in December 2023, I was lucky enough to receive one. As yet, the Nomad only comes in an A6X size, with a 7.8-inch screen, so it is smaller than the A5X (which has a 10.3-inch screen).
Before we go any further, let’s talk a little bit about what the device actually is, shall we?
What is the Supernote Nomad?
The Supernote Nomad is a portable, lightweight electronic notebook. It has a black and white e-ink screen which you can write or draw directly onto using a range of stylus pens (I’ve previously reviewed the Lamy Al-Star pen for use with the A5X, and it’s still my go-to pen for use with the Nomad as well). These notes and drawings can be saved, edited, and exported in a range of different file types including Word Docs. In-built handwriting recognition software can convert your handwritten notes to text. The handwriting recognition works even if your device is not connected to the internet.
You can also type directly into the device using an on-screen keyboard, or via a Bluetooth third-party external keyboard.
Files can also be imported onto the device for reading and editing, and the Supernote Nomad comes with the Amazon Kindle app for e-reading.
You can also access and edit your calendar and send and receive emails from the device over WiFi.
There’s lots more to it, and plenty of differences between this new improved version of the Supernote and the previous models, but those are the basics.
So, let’s unbox the Nomad and see what we’ve got, shall we?
What’s in the box?
The box is divided into three compartments (as you can see in my little unboxing GIF to the right here):
- Pen – I got the Heart of Metal 2 in Samurai (alloy plated) – which is a lovely, shiny, all-black option. It looks and feels like a high-end luxury fixed-nib pen.
- Folio case – I got the white vegan leather folio case. A pair of magnets allow for quick and easy (but very secure) attachment and detachment of the Nomad from the case. This is a nice improvement on the way the original Supernote slotted into its case, which was a little more awkward. The pen-loop is slightly larger too, which means it can accommodate larger pens like the Al-Star, which its predecessor could not. Tiny tweaks, but they make all the difference.
- Supernote Nomad – In the box, alongside the notebook itself, you get a super simple Quick Start guide, a USB cable (USB-C to USB-A), and a screwdriver(!).
Let’s take a look at the device itself then.
Tech Specs
So, I’m going to cut and paste from the Supernote product page here, but add in a few of my own little notes and qualifiers, just to make everything a bit clearer.
Dimensions
L: 191.85 mm, W: 139.2 mm, H: 6.8 mm
Weight
266 g
Display
7.8-inch Glass EPD (ePaper display), 300 PPI, 1404 × 1872
Screen Protector
FeelWrite 2 Self-Recovery Soft Film for Natural Writing – Whilst this technically is a screen protector, it’s worth noting that it’s a non-removable, non-replaceable, permanent covering.
Memory
4 GB RAM
Storage
32 GB (The system takes up some space)
Support Micro SD Card (Up to 2 TB, recommended format NTFS) – There is no external slot for this, which is where the screwdriver comes in!
Processor
RK3566 Quad-Core 1.8 GHz
Battery
2700 mAh
Connectivity
USB-C 2.0, support Charger/Earphone/OTG – OTG stands for On The Go and OTG adaptors can be used to connect a thumb drive or external drive to the device. Earphones??? We’ll get to that later.
Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz + 5 GHz, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 5.0
OS
Pre-installed: Chauvet — A specialized designed Android 11-based system for those who write
Document Format
Note (.note), PDF, EPUB, Word, Text (.txt), PNG, JPG, Comic book archive (.cbz), FictionBook2 (.fb2) and OpenXPS (.xps), and integrate with Kindle app which supports MOBI and other formats.
The battery and motherboard of the Supernote Nomad are modular and designed to be user-replaceable, potentially extending the life of the device far beyond its predecessors and competitors. Again, this is where your screwdriver comes in.
In the near future, Supernote plans to release a Linux-based alternative operating system for the Nomad, which will allow further user customisation and modification. This, I assume, is where the option of connecting headphones/earphones to the Nomad will start to make sense. Currently, using the Chauvet OS, there is no way to use the device for audio or video playback of any kind.
Externally the Nomad has a USB-C port and an on/off button. Everything else is done on-screen, or utilising the little touch slide-bars at the left and right of the screen.
Drawing on an e-ink notebook
Atelier is, in the developer’s own words, “a drawing app specifically designed for mangakas, comic artists, illustrators, and creative designers, providing them with a platform to effortlessly create quick drawings and sketches during the concept phase“.
Previously, drawings made in Note mode could utilise up to four separate layers, plus a background layer chosen either from a template library (lined, grid, dot, squared, etc), or created as a custom layer. Three different pen settings, each with adjustable line thickness and four levels of greyscale. These could then be exported as PNG, PDF, TXT, or DOCX files.
With Atelier you get five layers which can be merged/flattened down as you go. There are seven pencil settings, five ink pen settings, three marker settings (including a pressure-sensitive one), and two spray can settings. You have sixteen levels of greyscale. Files can be exported as PNGs only, but PSD export options are coming in future updates.
I’m a writer, not an artist, so I’ve dropped in a video here by illustrator Mateusz Urbanowicz talking about his experience using Atelier. As you can see, there’s a lot to love about the app, but there’s also a sense that this is very much version 1.0 of Atelier. Given my past experiences with how much is added and refined with each new Chauvet update, I feel like Atelier is almost certainly only going to get better and better.
Writing and editing with a pen
Supernote has its own dedicated Cloud storage which is free to sign up for and use with your Supernote device. You can also choose to connect Dropbox, or Google Drive as alternatives (One Drive is soon to be added as an option), meaning you can drag and drop documents from your desktop into (and out of) folders to synch them with your Nomad.
Just as with the A5X, when reading a PDF on the Nomad you have all the usual options of creating bookmarks etc, but you can also annotate the document with your pen. Those annotations can be found and viewed on their own, sorted and logged by page number. You can then export an annotated version of that PDF (even choosing red or blue as more noticeable alternate colours for the annotations when you do so). This is so simple, yet so very useful. Proofreading, annotating and marking a document just as you would on a print-out, and then being able to save and/or export that version.
Word Docs can be altered and corrected easily using some simple and neat pen shortcuts: cross out a word with your pen to delete it, draw a line between two words to insert a linebreak, and so on. Handwriting directly into a Word Doc works surprisingly well. The handwriting recognition on Supernote devices is significantly better than on any other e-ink notebook I’ve tried.
Notes also have some cool new options to help you organise your ideas on your Nomad. You can link any part of a Note to another location in that, or any other of your Notes on your device. Made some notes about something you wanted to look up later, and now you have that research? You can link that information directly to the original note so that you’re not scrambling around looking for it when the time comes. Add a heading to pages of your Notes and you get an autogenerated table of contents, helping you to find things more easily. Similarly, you can add keywords making your Notes all the more searchable at a glance.
Screen rotation
Unlike its predecessor, the Nomad‘s display can be rotated, meaning that left and right-handed people can use the device just as easily. Crucially, this also means that the Nomad can (sometimes) be used in landscape as well as portrait orientation.
Although it might seem minor, this was a feature which particularly interested me. What ultimately discouraged me from using the A5X as an ultra-light word processor more than I have been doing was the fact that I had to type on it in a portrait format. However, while notes, sketches, PDFs, and e-books can be rotated on screen, it turns out that typing into a Word Doc is still only possible in portrait. I admit that this was a bit of a disappointment for me, although the smaller form factor of the Nomad in comparison to the ASX makes it less of a problem.
I’m optimistic that word processing in landscape format might be a feature which will be added in future Chauvet updates. Something I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by with Supernote devices is how much each new update improves usability and adds new features, going far beyond the typical mere bug fixes. To a degree that I have genuinely never experienced with any other devices, each OS update leaves you feeling like you’ve just upgraded to the latest, highest-spec version of the device. All this, I should add, is without any kind of subscription fee.
Details of new and upcoming updates are posted on www.reddit.com/r/Supernote regularly.
Word processor and mini office
With the A5X, I mainly used the device as a literal electronic notebook. I roughed out several Graphic Novel’s worth of pages by hand on it. I took notes by hand in meetings and turned those into Word Docs as and when needed. Mostly, I used it for making the kind of notes which I wasn’t necessarily going to come back to, which I know was definitely not making the most of the device or its capabilities.
For reading and proofreading it’s always been fantastic for going over research PDFs – so much easier on the eye than reading on a computer screen, and saving me from printing out literally hundreds of pages.
However, as I mentioned above, I never quite started using the A5X as I’d intended because on some level I was always waiting for that allusive landscape word processing update to drop. With the arrival of the Nomad I’ve realised that was pretty silly of me, and the smaller form factor of the new A6X-sized device pretty much does away with my reservations in any case.
The Nomad‘s Calendar can synch with your existing Google or Outlook calendars. Its Mail application has had no problem handling my custom domain email address. It also has the advantage of being able to send handwritten or drawn emails just as easily as typed ones (which is great for layouts).
Pairing a Bluetooth keyboard is no problem at all, and working in a Word Doc feels completely natural and easy. One thing I would point out is that, as things currently stand, you can’t pair a mouse of any description with the Nomad, so any navigation of the doc you can’t do with your keyboard has to be done with your pen. I’ve been using the Shaco Pro from Redragon with my Nomad, because it has a handy little stand which fits the device perfectly.
Final thoughts
Carry a notebook around with you all the time? The Nomad replaces that and backs up all your notes and sketches for you. It can also convert your handwritten notes to DOCX files, and more.
Use your phone for your calendar and email? The Nomad does that but in a much less frustrating and eye-straining way.
Read and review documents all the time? The Nomad means that you don’t have to print off reems and reems of paper copies. Reading on the e-ink screen is so much nicer than squinting at your phone, or burning your retinas with a computer screen, and you can edit and annotate documents by hand on the go.
Work on a laptop, or maybe something like a Freewrite or even an AlphaSmart while you’re out and about? The Nomad offers the same seamless “distraction-free” word processing experience as any of those (and, let’s face it, you can always use your phone to Google anything, or to listen to music anyway).
I’ve barely scraped the surface of what the Nomad can do here. I haven’t even mentioned the Supernote Partner app, the capability to mirror and broadcast your screen in Zoom and Google Meet, and I’ve probably missed loads of other things too. The Nomad really feels like it’s something that so many people – especially in creative and academic circles – would be absolutely falling over themselves to get hold of. I am really looking forward to putting mine to good use.
The Supernote Nomad is available from supernote.com from $299 USD,
or for EU customers from supernote.eu from €438 EURO