I cannot compare it to a modern iPad. I have not tried one. I imagine an iPad has better features, color, responsiveness, integrations etc.

But I didn't want better. I wanted to write. With a reMarkable2, you turn it on and write, it doesn't do anything else. It is nice to look at, nice to hold, and nice to write on.

If you have a could subscription. It does have OCR but I am not sure it works well with math. I haven't tried it in a while. I don't publish, I just use it as a notepad. Math still seems best done by hand. I don't need to hunt for symbols, I just write them down, same as Euler, and Gauss did.

The main benefits over paper are endless scrolling pages so you can work a problem to its end, and staying organized.

The drawbacks are poor scrolling if you need to look at prior work, smaller than paper screen size, and lack of export options.

Also, while you can make straight lines by holding your stylus down, there isn't a way to make a circle, so diagrams are limited by my own limited artistic ability. I 3d printed my own compass to use. But it is never around when I need it.