In the context of control and estimation under information constraints, restoration entropy measures the minimal required data rate above which the state of a system can be estimated so that the estimation quality does not degrade over time and, conversely, can be improved. The remote observer here is assumed to receive its data through a communication channel of finite bit-rate capacity. In this paper, we provide a new characterization of the restoration entropy which does not require to compute any temporal limit, i.e., an asymptotic quantity. Our new formula is based on the idea of finding a specific Riemannian metric on the state space which makes the metric-dependent upper estimate of the restoration entropy as tight as one wishes.