Livescribe 3 Smartpen Pro Edition for Android & iOS Tablets and Smartphones

I have used the Livescribe 3 for a few days and here are my thoughts:Design:The looks more like a normal pen than previous versions. People don't realise that I'm writing with a smartpen until I mention, some just thinking that I am using some luxury pen given its size and shape. The materials could be better though: it feels like it is made of cheap plastic and I would appreciate if they upgraded the materials so it felt more solid. I do not feel like I could subject it to the same abuse that premium pen would take without breaking it.The pen is very comfortable to use, the size not being an issue. I am left-handed and have no problems writing with it. Also it doesn't matter how you hold the pen (camera above nib or under) as it seems to read the paper always successfully. The only slight change I had to make to my writing is to ensure that I always lift the nib clearly off the paper to move to a new position to start a new word, otherwise it may end up capturing a line in between the words. Otherwise my writing style has remained unchanged.Functionality:The pen itself hasn't missed a beat. Ever stroke is accurately captured and rendered on screen. The pen can work tethered to the device and you can see your text appear with little lag or what I find more useful, I can take pen and paper to a meeting, do extensive note-taking and when back to my desk I just have to open the app I want to use to keep the notes and it takes care of the rest. All data gets sync'ed seamlessly. Also the commands embedded in the paper are useful. The only time I need my device with me is if I want to record voice as well, but given that I'm not capturing lectures that is not such a big thing for me and most of the time I really only care about the written notes.Software:For now this is a bit lacking. The pen is compatible with Livescribe's own app for iOS (Livescribe+) and Noteshelf. I have tried both and neither offers a complete solution:Livescribe+ supports all the pen's features, incl. voice, but it does not offer any editing functionality for the digital notes. Also all the export and sync functions rely on PDF or PNG files.Noteshelf on the other hand supports extensive editing of the digital notes but does not support the voice recordings offered by the pen and for some reason, although native Noteshelf notebooks can be sync'ed to Evernote, Livescribe notebooks within the app don't offer the same feature.Also the fact that you can only synchronise notes with one application, never with both, is a bother. I started using the journal that I received with the pen with Livescribe+ and then switched to Noteshelf and the pages synchronised to one app appear blank on the other and vice-versa. I whish there was a way to force synchronisation of notes with both so I could, whilst evaluating what app fits my workflow better, have my notes in both.Paper:There is a wide range of paper available for the pen. The journal that comes with it is quite nice, A5-size. I have also bought a set of 4 A4 notebooks that come numbered 1-4, 80 pages each. I find that the cost of the Livescribe dot Paper is about 50% higher than regular paper, but given that the cost is not that high I think it is good value for money. There are flip-pads, A5 notebooks and even sticky notes available for the pen so I think it can fulfill pretty much any needs in that area.The micro-dots on the paper are unobtrusive but they do make the paper look slightly darker. Nothing upsetting.Conclusion:I have tried solutions from Wacom and Adonit for note taking with the iPad and ditched both. For a left-handed person that rubs the hand on the paper/screen when writing, these solutions just don't work. Palm rejection for me is a gimmick at best and don't allow me to write naturally. The Livescribe solution on the other hand relies on good old fashioned paper and because of that, it works perfectly. It gives me the flexibility of carrying only my notebook with me into a meeting, I can search the pages quickly to look up notes from previous meetings and so on without annoying other people whilst I try to make my gadgets work and when I get back to my desk I can sync it all seamlessly to my device.The software needs lots of improvement though to better allow me to access my notes from a computer, store my data in a cloud storage (iCloud, Dropbox, Evernote, whatever) and sync across multiple devices. They have released a firmware recently that promises to add support to a number of features to be enabled in upcoming releases of Livescribe+ but do not specify what these features are so there is hope that they will revamp over the next few months.

I was unsure as to whether I was doing the right think when I took the plunge and bought this item, mainly because the reviews portrayed two extremely opposing views. I decided that this was a 'marmite' product, in the sense that you either love it or hate it, and that I needed to make my own mind up about it.Over the weekend, I took my Livescribe away with me to do some writing on the train. I read somewhere that the ink is pretty faint, but I didn't feel as though it lacked in any way. The pen was easy to write with and comfy to grip, being neither too big or small. It is fairly light, but not so light that it feels cheap and poorly made. The leather portfolio notebook this bundle comes with was of a decent size and thickness, but not too big to easily carry on a train. It also feels of good quality, which is important I think. I was impressed with the battery life of the actual pen, as I must have written for hours and only managed to use up 4% of its power.When I took it home again and synced it up to my iPad mini, it transferred my data in chunks. I was then able to convert each broken down section into text that became highlightable, editable etc. I found that roughly 85% of the converted text was accurate, which I have to admit was a bit of a relief due to having read some poor reviews. I will say however, that for those of you who are looking for something even more accurate, my handwriting can be vastly improved. I am a techie, and therefore have done most of my writing on a laptop for a long long time! I'm convinced I can write better, for more accurate results.Overall, I feel happy with the product and will continue to use it well into the future.

I was really unsure about this product from all the mixed reviews, but I figured I'd take a risk, and Amazon is usually good in terms of returns. To start, I feel it is an expensive gadget, it is overpriced for what it does, but I'm willing to live with that. I do not have neat handwriting but it picked up all of mine straight away - almost perfect translation as well. The pen/ink is far better quality than I had expected from some of the reviews. I love the autosend feature, so the notes automatically go straight to my Evernote account (and with this Pro Edition you get a years subscription with Evernote)Something I had never appreciated is that the pen auto detects the actual pages and puts them in a group, e.g. the Pro Edition comes with a portfolio A5 journal, and when you write on a page it can detect which page in the portfolio and groups all the journal pages together which is useful.The portfolio (as someone else commented) is tricky to write in, especially the left hand pages, but other than that it is good quality.It is cool that you can just print the pages needed on normal A4 paper, as you can download them from the Livescribe website. However, it appears a little complicated in terms of your printer settings - as the batch of paper I have printed isn't quite right so it doesn't detect all the writing on the page, so I'll need to look at printer settings again.