The enticing feel of paper can never be matched by a blank screen on a tablet or smartphone. The very sensation of putting pen to paper and hearing that soft scratch as one writes or the satisfying feel of a page-flip are difficult to let go of as we rush headlong into a world where everything has gone digital.

And yet, text has to be eventually digitised to be useful today. You can’t hand-write an email with regular pen and paper. Or scribble notes and ideas without the fear of losing them and the option of sharing them. William Penn, elite sellers of writing equipment, decided to put Penn to paper, so to speak, and came up with a smart pen that works only with special Moleskine notebooks. The smart pen concept is not new and has been done and dusted by many companies. But this one is for people who still love their Moleskines and need to bridge the gap to digital text.

What you get in the ‘Smart Writing Set’ now available in Willian Penn stores or online, is one of the special notebooks, a smart pen, and a charger and extra refill. The set is by no means cheap, at ₹20,995 (or ₹1,000 cheaper at stores). You also have to factor in the recurring cost of buying more notebooks in the future — those cost in the region of ₹2,000. The refills for the pen are regular ballpoint pen metal cartridges, so at least that’s not a major cost. Considering you could run through those Moleskine notebooks rather quickly if you’re a prolific writer, you’ll need to keep that wallet open.

But of course, you could also opt to use the set for special writing — such as just your repository for ideas or for your diary or best seller. At least, you don’t totally leave behind the joy of handwriting.

The smart pen is regular for the writing part. But otherwise, it connects to your smartphone or tablet when you press the Bluetooth pairing button. You need to download the smart writing app that supports this product. Once that’s done, every time you pick up your pen to write, a digital counterpart to your notebook starts recording and storing all your doodles, ideas and sketches. If you write something, you’ll find the digital notebook will convert it to regular digital text — which you can then store online including on Google Drive. Of course, you can create many such digital notebooks and label them and since the text is digitised, you can search them as well.

The pen charges via a regular phone type charger and takes about 80 minutes to top up. If you happen to not be connected to your digital device, there is some amount of memory on the pen as well so you don’t lose data. The digital notebook within the app also voice records if you tap it to do so — the pen has a mic built in. The idea is that it will be useful for those who take notes at meetings and lectures and transcribe them and don’t want to miss anything.

The smart writing app, which is available both on Android and iOS, gives you a selection of pen and highlighter. There are no brushes, crayons or any other writing or drawing tools and couldn’t have been because the Smart Pen itself has only one type of nib or point. There’s a choice of basic ink colours to use, however.

Put together, the smart writing set is an elegant solution, but a specific type of paper in special Moleskine notebooks is hard wired to work with the pen and you can’t use regular paper or even standard Moleskines.

Price: ₹19,995 in offline stores

Pros: Elegant combination for those who love the Moleskine feel and handwriting, easy to use, convenient because of the connection with a phone or tablet, converts to text, transcribes

Cons: Expensive, recurring cost of notebooks

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