To be clear, if you already own a Remarkable you get the Connect service for free. If you buy one today and subscribe to the full service, you get $100 off. If you buy one today and decide you don’t want to use the service, there are free workarounds for everything except the handwriting conversion (which requires costs on their side to use MyScript’s API calls).
I got an RM2 a year ago and it’s the only device that can convert my bad handwriting to text. Trust me, I’ve tried everything out there, even MyScript’s own application Nebo doesn’t do as well as RM’s.