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The smart pen creates digital, searchable versions of your handwritten notes and sketches.

A widely circulated study in 2014 showed that taking notes by hand helps the note taker to memorize the material more easily and understand it more deeply. This is useful information whether you are in a classroom or conference room. But now is 2021, and we all hope to be able to search our notes like on the Internet. Some productivity applications include options that provide digital note-taking. In addition, there are smart notebooks that allow you to take notes and sketches.

But students, workers, and artists may prefer smart pens, which allow you to take notes and draw in the old-fashioned way, and then digitize your work for access on a tablet or smartphone through an app. Some even record audio so that you can play back key moments to refresh your memory. These features make these pens useful assistants for students with learning disabilities.

The smart pen captures your handwritten content and converts it into digital form. They do this in several ways: some require special paper or a tablet, provide a grid that acts as a GPS for your pen, so it can convert the path of the pen into a mark that you can read as a language . Others work through your smartphone's camera and ask you to take a picture of your page to capture information. Some also store information on the pen itself for later transmission to a device or cloud. Many transfer data via Bluetooth, but some need to plug in a USB cable for connection and transfer.

The Good Housekeeping Institute focuses on a range of smart products, from smart speakers to smart water bottles. For all products, our experts will evaluate their ease of use, structure and durability, as well as the type of value they provide to users. Especially for smart pens, we studied the ergonomics of their grip, the fluency of writing, whether there are smudges, and the additional functions they provide (such as recording). Our team of engineers and technical experts reviewed many of the smart pens on this list, paying particular attention to the ease of operation, battery life, and seamless synchronization with computers, tablets, and/or mobile phones for each pen.

Our recommendations include the most acclaimed pens in the past and some of the products recently released by our favorite brands. For newer units that we haven't seen yet, we reviewed the specifications and features to make selections. Here are the best smart pens you can buy in 2021:

Our experts love the traditional style of this pen-just open the pen cover and open it to accurately convert the handwriting into digital, searchable notes. The Symphony Smartpen is only available for Livescribe microdot paper, which enables the high-speed infrared camera in the pen tip to capture your writing strokes and store them in the pen’s internal memory, or transfer them in real time via Bluetooth to the free Livescribe app. The paper has a variety of notebook styles to choose from: spiral bound notebooks, hardcover diaries, notepads and notes. The app also records audio synchronized with your notes, so you can click anywhere in the note to replay the exact moment in the file. The pen can recognize 27 languages ​​and has a battery life of up to 90 days. Symphony comes with an extra ink cartridge, a pocket-sized starter notebook, and a USB cable for direct file transfer. The Livescribe mobile app is compatible with iOS and Android, and the desktop version is available for iOS and Windows.

This economical, reusable notebook is suitable for any pen in Pilot Pen's Frixion series. After testing in our media and technology laboratory, the series received the Good Housekeeping Seal. The design of these pages feels like paper, but they are made of polyester composite material that can bond with ink in a few seconds and then wipe it clean with a damp towel, so you can reuse your pages and notebooks. Handwritten or hand-drawn, then use the free Rocketbook app (for iOS and Android) to scan the page to find emails or text messages, or send to cloud services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, box, OneNote, Slack, or iCloud. The app can transcribe notes into typed text and create searchable versions of your handwriting. Notebooks have letter and administrative sizes and grid or horizontal pages. The pen and notebook are equipped with a microfiber cloth to wipe the screen clean. 

This pen is actually a stylus, and if you use a Windows device, it allows you to get up and running immediately: no pairing is required; just click on the Windows Ink workspace. The nib is designed to respond to more than 4,000 pressure levels, making you feel like writing naturally, and accurately capture your strokes on the device screen. When the stylus is in pen mode, you can write, draw and erase, and pull out the template menu. Bamboo Ink is also compatible with Wacom Active ES protocol and Microsoft Pen Protocol (MPP) devices. It is powered by AAAA batteries and is estimated to last for 15 months under standard usage.

Neo Smartpen N2 translates your text with a camera that captures more than 120 frames per second. This pen is only suitable for N-Code Digital Paper notebooks, which can help the camera capture the position of each stroke and more than 250 levels of pressure. Special paper is sold separately, but it is available in a variety of styles, including spiral-bound university notebooks, laboratory notebooks, and planners, which can be synchronized with your calendar. The N2 smart pen is paired with the free Neo Studio app (for iOS and Android), which allows you to record audio and is compatible with Evernote, Google Drive Manager, OneNote and Creative Cloud. Some applications only create pdf or jpg files, but Neo Studio also supports gif and mp4, which is great for sharing on social media. The pen has a built-in storage function, so you can use it offline, and it will save 90 megabytes of data until you connect to the app for transfer. Neo uses standard D1 nibs, so you can replace it with other compatible D1 refills. 

iPad users will find that the second-generation Apple Pencil makes their tablet more flexible. This stylus tool is compatible with iPad Pro and iPad Air, allowing you to write, sketch, navigate and mark up PDF documents on the screen. Like a mouse, the Apple Pencil 2nd generation supports double-clicking, so you can change tools without putting down the pencil. It detects pressure and angle, so you can change strokes just like using a standard pencil or marker. The pencil is designed with a flat edge and can be magnetically attached to the iPad for charging and automatic pairing. Fun bonus: you can personalize the pencil by adding short engravings with numbers, letters and even emojis. 

Moleskine has designed a smart pen that can be used with the digital version of its beloved laptop, which is loved by fans, who like to sketch and write diaries. Microdots, N-coded paper can help the pen's infrared camera to track your strokes for real-time reproduction in the free Moleskine Notes application, which can be downloaded from the App Store and Google Play. The device also records audio and synchronizes with Google Drive and Evernote so you can store and search PDFs. The pen comes with a USB cable for charging and a small entry diary. It includes a nib refill, but can accept any D1 refill. 

This smart pen runs through the camera to track writing and drawing on the NEWYES notebook, and perform real-time translation on the matching NEWYES Note app (for Android and iOS). The app has a playback option, you can redraw your text and sketches, and you can link it to the recording to fully view your notes. The app also creates searchable and editable text, and allows you to share files to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, and email. The set includes an A5 size laptop, a USB charging cable and 3 refills.

What is the difference between a smart pen and a stylus? The stylus is only paired with the parent device to write or draw on the responsive screen. It has no ink and cannot be used on paper. Smart pens have ink and can be used on plain paper or special notebooks (some can be wiped clean and used repeatedly). You are writing with a pen as usual.

Is the pen comfortable? Most smart pens are designed according to the scale of ordinary pens, and they feel the same. But you want to make sure you feel comfortable with your choice so that you can actually use it. It is also important to make sure that your pen allows you to use pressure that you think is natural. Some pens can adjust hundreds of levels of pressure to accurately capture bold and fine strokes.

How compatible is it? Find a smart pen compatible with your operating system (Apple, Android, Windows). Also make sure that the pen is compatible with your preferred language: some are limited to English; others can track and transcribe multiple languages. And, if possible, find the pen that best recognizes your handwriting: some pens transcribe your handwriting more accurately than others.

Will it record audio? Some pens can record audio directly, or record audio by pairing with a mobile app that uses the phone’s microphone, and then allow you to embed the recording in your notes. You can tap a word in the note to jump to that part of the audio file.

What is storage capacity? Check the storage capacity of the pen itself; many people will store information until you move to an app or cloud storage. Some are large in capacity, but if the pen also records audio, please know that most of the memory will be dedicated to these files.

What is the method of synchronization? Some pens still require you to take a photo of your notes, while others collect the information you jot down wirelessly (usually via Bluetooth) or via wire (such as USB) synchronization. Check if you are interested can easily be sent to multiple cloud platforms (such as Evernote or Dropbox)? If so, does it allow you to create settings for the location of the files (for example, drawing to Dropbox, notes to Google Drive)?