More than the usual number of tablets have been coming in for the past few months, but none have been like the recently launched Repaper, an interesting product made by the French company Iskn.
Repaper isn’t your usual Android tablet and nor is it anything like the ubiquitous iPad. Rather, it’s a specialised single-purpose device meant for creative people. In India, it’s been made available by New Delhi-based Sevendegrees and Faber-Castell India, and can be found online, including on Flipkart.
Repaper is a graphics tablet meant to never let go of the paper and pencil feel of drawing. It consists of a rectangular digital slate, a stylus pen and a pencil with a special innovative ring around them. To this, you can add your own device such as a laptop or tablet or PC. The ring, placed around a Castell 9000 (2B) co-branded Iskn graphite pencil, is what turns it into a digital input device. You can use your own as well — as long as you take great care not to lose the little ring, without which the magic just won’t take place.
You need to plug in and switch on the tablet using its power button. A blue light blinks showing it’s ready to connect to your second screen, which could be a laptop or tablet. You need to get the Repaper app on that device.
On the tablet, you place a sheet of paper. Our review unit came with a set of high quality paper in the appropriate size. The paper is made to stay in place with a set of clips that are provided with the tablet.
Paper-like
In the app, as you connect, you get the option of importing drawings or drawing afresh. On the app screen, you will see a bunch of tools such as a pencil, pen, calligraphy pen etc. Choose one and go back to the Repaper tablet, picking up the stylus pen or pencil. Now you can go ahead and draw — or write — on a piece of paper clipped to the slate. As you do so, the drawing appears in the app on the second screen. You can even draw on the Repaper without paper and watch the image appear on the second screen. A 3D model of the pencil shows on the second screen, echoing your movement.
On the second screen, you can take several actions such as changing the orientation from portrait to landscape and vice versa. You can select options within each tool such as setting the thickness of a pencil, The size on the second screen may not appear the same as you’re seeing on the paper on the tablet, so you may need to adjust the size and type of pencil to use. You can change colours and do some shading and colouring. Again, you may not find the second screen looking exactly like your drawing on paper but there are lots of customisations and you can even work with layers. The art work will save digitally and you can then share it with whoever you want to from your other device.
It’s undoubtedly a bit tricky moving back and forth between the Repaper tablet and the second device and you could just use a regular Android tablet or iPad with the Apple Pencil, but you won’t get the feel of actual paper. You don’t actually have to connect it to another device if you don’t want to and it will still save the art work. It also has its own battery so you can take it around and draw wherever you want to.
Repaper costs ₹22,000 and is in a category all by itself. Head to iskn.co for more details.