Livescribe LivePen Starter Set | Sync Real Ink and Paper Notes to Phone, Web, Tablet, Desktop, Laptop | Record Audio Synced to Notes | Includes Smart Pen and A5 Journal Notebooks (4-Pack) | APNX-70103

I was an early adopter of the Remarkable tablet, wanting to have my notes in digital format for storing, sharing and searching. After nearly 5 years, my Remarkable is getting a bit beaten up and glitchy and I was considering upgrading to the new Remarkable pro when this caught my eye. Why go through the compromises of writing on something that "feels like paper" when, um, you can just write on paper? Plus, a price of 50 bucks for the pen and a few notebooks seemed like a much easier pill to swallow than close to $600 (plus tax) for new pro-version tablet. This works surprisingly well - of course there is no lag in writing on the (real) paper and there are no weird artifacts on the screen like my old Remarkable had - although my phone captures and transcribes my output in chunks. The APP is a bit limited but works well for my notetaking and sharing needs. Pairing the pen and my iphone was painless. The handwriting to text transcription is really really good - it does a way better than other alternatives - including taking a photo of handwritten content and using normal OCR technology. Sharing content via pdfs or straight text is pretty simple as well. Even in the short time I have had the product I have noticed the APP being updated in store regularly with some functionality coming out (for example the ability to share wasn't there when I first used the APP). I'd like to see a bigger range of compatible notebooks, right now there are just a spiral letter and A5 notebooks - a casebound notebook and a calendar / planner would be pretty cool.

The setup was a struggle. It took a long while and multiple tries to get it to connect to my phone and the app the first time. Now, it connects perfectly each time. It picks up my writing perfectly, and the transcription is amazing, especially considering I have the worst handwriting of all time. I like that I can share the transcript or the photo of the note. I wish I could share them together to a journal or notes app, though, not separately. I do wish I could use the app as a microphone and use the recording and playback features of the notebook like the echo pen. Those buttons in the notebooks do nothing as of now. When I ordered this starter pack, the pen was missing, but Livescribe's support sent me one quick, so that was awesome. It doesn't seem like the parent company is putting many resources into the LivePen, so I hope it keeps improving, but for now, it does what I need it to, so it was worth the purchase!

I have been eagerly anticipating a new pen from Livescribe as I have a lot of old Livescribe Smart notebooks. I already own three pens, each of which started off well but ended up being disappointing, mainly due to the bad user experience of the Livescribe app (freezes, doesnt sync data and doesnt work 75% of the time) When I saw a new pen from Livescribe, I immediately purchased it, mentally preparing myself to be disappointed. However, this new Livescribe Livepen is working great so far. They have released a new app called Livepen, which has very limited functionality, but at least it connects and transfers the pen data well so far - fingers crossed. Updating June 2025 - the latest updates are really nice, reliable and I have experienced no sync issues

Ok, maybe it was user error but I consider myself to be VERY technology proficient. Have just about every tablet, iPhone, smart speaker, etc. and was excited to try out this product. It did not work properly. The writing that was being transcribed to my electronic device (my iPhone) was non-sensical and was of no use. I wrote an entire page of notes thinking it would start to properly transcribe and it never did transcribe the words properly. I put it down and thought I will try again the next day because frankly I really wanted the product to work. I tried again the next day and the pen was no longer connected to the notepad that came with the pen. I had to reconnect the pen and it would not reconnect. After 10-minutes of trying I gave up and returned the product for a full refund. I decided I will just stick with my iPad note taking or scanning notes from a note pad until the technology improves.

Update -- Dropped a star The application has become very slow as the number of pages has increased. Although I liked the idea of storing images in one location, the app makes it very slow to get to a later page. It loads the entire notebook on every invocation. That means that I have to wait up to five minutes to get to page 125 to load. The app should maintain a local cache somewhere. End of update It works well most of the time and it’s helpful to have my notes on the phone to review later. The text in the notes is detailed enough for the ocr to work properly. The ocr is decent. The pen has s comfortable to use and its ink is string even after 50+ pages of detailed notes. However the refresh is spotty at best. The lag time for the notes to get to the phone from the pen is not a constant. Sometimes I don’t see the notes for days- let alone real time! In many instances I have not seen some notes appear at all but that is rare. I don’t know if this marketed as a drawing tablet bcs it’s not useful as one. It is only black and white - no shades.