She can try an rM at Best Buy if you live in the States. rM is also plenty Apple compatible, since it has both iPhone and Mac apps. But it sounds like maybe she just wants an iPad?

I bought my first e-ink tablet, a remarkable, to read academic PDFs and was disappointed by the software and by the low contrast of the screen. (I fell in love with the rM as a digital notepad, something I didn’t know I wanted until I had one, but that’s another story.)

Later I got a ten inch Boox and it’s an amazing PDF reader. It has a frontlight so the contrast is boosted, and the “article mode” (google Boox article mode for a short video) makes multicolumn PDFs so easy to read. (Unicolumn still need to be read in landscape mode.). I wouldn’t trade it for a larger model because the article mode is so good and I like the portability and handling of the ten inch model.

I think the price of the tablet is reasonable but echo that the accessories are too expensive.

If I were making a competing product it would have a lot of rM’s build quality but would include a frontlight, improved PDF handling software (like Boox), and improved note organization software (like Supernote).

Boox sells e ink devices that can access the internet, use Android apps (is Zotero on Android?), have front lights, and have excellent PDF reading software. Remarkable’s tactile writing experience is a skootch better, but it’s not a great reader and it doesn’t have a ton of internet access — more of a digital notebook.

I mean, I have an rM and a SN. They’re both nice, but the rM shines in its connectivity (great sync, cloud, mobile/desktop apps, type folio) and the SN shines in being able to navigate massive notes easily through their “titles”/table of contents function. Remarkable has tags but it’s just not nearly as useful.

You really want a Supernote — this is precisely the area where the SN shines. Maybe check out r/adoptsupernote