Mark

Mark II is a $159 physical bookmark for readers who want to capture passages and thoughts from print books without pulling out a phone. The device ships in two parts: a bookmark that stays inside the book and a separate highlighter unit with a built-in scanner for saving quotes and a voice recorder for capturing ideas in the moment. Everything stays off until the reader chooses to save something, the device works offline, and a companion app organizes each highlight by book and each voice note by theme so it can be searched and revisited when writing later. The product positions itself as an AI bookmark that helps you remember readings. The launch follows a viral debut last year for the original Mark, a metallic bookmark "inspired by Bauhaus design" that tracked reading and summarized sessions through a connected app . Mark II is the team's response to a year of user feedback, swapping AI summary features for tools that keep the reader in control of what gets captured. The company has now raised $1M and is taking pre-orders, with shipping to North America planned for Q3 2026. Mark is built by co-founders Eason Tang and Henry Yin , USC students behind Mark Engineering , operating out of Los Angeles. The launch matters because it tests whether a single-purpose, screen-free reading device can find an audience among people who want to engage deeply with books rather than rely on AI to summarize them for them, a counter-positioning that runs against the broader trend of generative reading tools.