Livescribe Pulse Smartpen 2GB

Livescribe's Pulse Smartpen isn't your ordinary digital pen. It combines the essence of a pen, voice recorder, and note-taking mingled with audio playback into one amazing gadget.

This isn't the first text digitizing input device we've seen, but it is definitely the most advanced. The Pulse has a built-in OLED display that's about 2 inches long and displays one line of text. It also has a speaker and a 2.5mm headphone jack (earbuds come with the device). Despite all these features, the Pulse is only slightly thicker than your average ball-point pen. Where most digital pens focus merely on capturing handwritten notes and saving them as digital text, Livescribe's Pulse records sounds (yours or a speaker's, for that matter) through its integrated stereo microphones. These audio notes tie in to your written notes, at any given point of time, to enable a much more comprehensive "note-taking" experience. The Pulse also lets you view handwritten notes on your PC.

The Pulse requires special notebooks and ink cartridges. One notebook and three ink cartridges come packaged with the pen. The notebook paper has a tiny dotted pattern that provides a reference grid for the pen. An infrared receiver in the tip of the pen recognizes unique dot patterns on sections of paper; this allows the pen to "jump" to specific moments in your note-taking history and play back audio or voice notes recorded at that time.

The IR/dotted-paper combo also helps navigate the pen's menus and adjust its settings. Additional navigation controls are placed at the bottom of every page: audio controls, playback speed settings, bookmark selectors, a menu-navigation interface (which lets you select recordings for playback on the pen), and record/pause/play buttons. Using printed patterns in the notebook to control the pen's features takes a bit of learning, but figuring it out is easy after about 5 to 10 minutes of use. Following that, all you have to do is write. To record voice notes or lecture audio while you write, you tap the printed 'record' button at the bottom of your sheet of paper. When you're done recording, you tap 'stop'. The Pulse records audio with surprising clarity and directional precision; the pen's on-board microphones performed well in our tests.

Audio playback involves tapping on written notes in your notebook—you can hear the audio that was recorded at the exact moment you wrote those notes. It's an extremely useful feature for shorthand notes and interviews, where you might not remember (or be able to decipher) what you or the other person really meant when you wrote your conversation down.

Another nifty feature becomes available when you've plugged the pen into your computer via the included USB dock. The bundled Livescribe Desktop software, which you install on your Windows machine (but not a Mac), offers an easy-to-use interface for managing your written notes and audio recordings. Once you plug your pen into its USB cradle and connect it to your PC, you can see a page-by-page archive of your notes. From there you can use the desktop app to listen to and manage your voice recordings and upload snapshots of your handwritten notes to Livescribe's online service, where you can share them and access them remotely.