Pen which records what you write

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. When you buy a smart pen, you're actually getting a pen, a notebook, and an accompanying app. An infrared camera near the pen's point tracks your writing strokes.

As you write in the notebook, dotted grids plot the pen's movements. You then use a Bluetooth connection or USB port to transfer the files to your computer. You won't be able to use your favorite paper notebooks, which is a bummer for those of us with serious notebook feelings.

The pens do also require ink refills eventually. The pen will still write, but it won't digitize anything. You should be able to find whatever size and style of notebook you need, like spiral-bound college-ruled ones, as well as planners.

The Neo Studio app available on iPhone and Android is nice, with an easy-to-navigate notebook system and the ability to search for pages by page number or date. You can change the color of the ink and thickness of the lines right on the page as you go, or you can switch them up later and edit the colors of what you've written.

Notes can be viewed, played back, exported, and organized into new folders. Notes with associated audio appear in green. Emulating the on-page experience, clicking on a word will prompt the audio, and a real-time playback of your notetaking. These interactive notes are dubbed "Pencasts.

Exporting digitized notes and audio Whether you want to share your notes with a classmate, upload them to your cloud account, or save them on your computer, Livescribe lets you export audio recordings, Pencasts, or just the written notes with its desktop software.

To export notes, Ctrl-click to select all the notes you want to export. Then, right-click your selection and choose "Send X Pages to Finally, you'll choose to export the notes as.

Pencast a special PDF format ,. If you want quick access to the idependent audio recording, go to the "Audio" tab at the top. You'll follow the same process to export those audio files. This is great for sharing long lectures with friends. Now that you know the basics of the Echo Smartpen, check out these little-known tips and tricks for making the most of this remarkable pen.

Where was this when I was in college? If you need to memorize terms, you can create an audible study sheet using the Echo Smartpen. First, write out all the terms you need to study on a single sheet. When paired, your content transfers quickly and seamlessly, but absent pairing, your work is still saved to internal memory for future editing or sharing.

You can even capture a video of every stroke. The Livescribe Aegir Smartpen lets you do more with your notes and sketches than merely putting pen to paper — though you can do that, too. The Aegir lets you record everything you write, draw, or hear and digitizes it automatically from the special Livescribe paper you use it with.

This system lets you search for and access handwritten notes from your iOS or Android device or desktop Windows or Mac computers and share resulting documents as text, PDF, image, or Word docs. Tags help keep your notes organized. The related Imagink app, which gives you all sorts of pencils, felt-tips, and airbrushes, assists with your creations.

This reusable notebook — which works seamlessly with the Pilot Frixion Pen — offers an environmentally friendly way to jot down notes and doodles and transmit them to Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, Box, OneNote, Slack, iCloud, and even email via the free Rocketbook app for iOS and Android. Just wipe the page dotted grid notebook clean with a damp cloth. It takes about 15 seconds for ink from any Pilot Frixion pen, marker, or highlighter to dry for it to bond to the Rocketbook pages.

It comes in eight vibrant colors. The companion app — for both iOS and Android — transfers your notebook scribbles to your device, digitizing your analog notes and allowing you to notate, share, search, edit, and organize your notes. The special magnetic technology of the Repaper Ring means you can slip it onto a pencil of your choice and draw directly onto paper that you secure to the A5-sized tablet space.

We were impressed with how well the pressure sensitivity worked, allowing us to control how thick and thin we wanted our lines to be. Both the Repaper Tablet itself and the free Repaper Studio app have clean, simple designs that make them intuitive to use for both adults and kids.

The app is also compatible with many other software programs, such as Adobe Photoshop or Gimp for more extensive editing. As an added bonus, the Repaper Tablet also works well with Microsoft Whiteboard and Google Jamboard, so it makes live broadcasting and giving online presentations on Zoom or Teams super simple.

Smart pens are also better than dictaphones or voice recorders for a lot of people as writing down notes actually helps some people to learn and retain information better than just hearing it spoken aloud. While there are many great features that make smart pens worth owning, they do also have a few downsides that are worth considering.

Finally, smart pens are usually a lot heavier than normal pens, which makes them uncomfortable to write with over long periods of time.

This means they feel weird to write with, when compared to traditional pens. The short answer here is: yes. On a basic level, smart pens not only allow students to take notes more effectively and to suggest changes when transferring to digital, but the voice recording function also allows people to recap their notes at a later stage, and make any corrections they need. According to a study done at Raynooth University in Ireland, almost all students with learning disabilities managed to show improvement after periods of using smart pens vs regular pens.

While there's undoubtedly a vested interest, LiveScribe list their smart pens as being able to help students with dyslexia on their website, and many others promote the virtues of this smarter, and multifaceted, form of note taking.

The smart pens we tested digitize handwritten notes and drawings and send them wirelessly to mobile apps on a phone or tablet. If you prefer sketching or taking notes on mobile devices by touching a pen directly to the touchscreen surface instead of to a conventional notepad, a stylus is the best option. Here are some of our favorite styluses for mobile devices.

Apple Pencil 2nd Generation. The Apple Pencil syncs and transmits positioning data to your iPad via a Bluetooth signal. This might seem like a needlessly complicated way to make sure it only works on Apple devices, but in reality this system allows for much more sensitive data collection.

When you draw on the pressure-sensitive screen with the side of the tip, it creates wide strokes perfect for shading. Adonit makes a huge range of styluses that work with a much broader range of devices than the Apple Pencil, so this might be your best bet if you have an older device.

It offers palm rejection, pressure sensitivity and tilt support, which makes it ideal for artists who want to draw in normal, comfortable positions without worrying about their hand leaving marks on their drawing. Luke is a veteran tech journalist with decades of experience covering everything from TVs, power tools, science and health tech to VPNs, space, gaming and cars. You may recognize him from appearances on plenty of news channels or have read his words which have been published in most tech titles over the years.

In his spare time of which he has little as a father of two Luke likes yoga, surfing, meditation, DIY and consuming all the books, comics and movies he can find. Jump to: Best smart pens Smart Pen Advice.