Customer Reviews

Livescribe 4 GB Echo Smartpen

5 star:		(101)
4 star:		(44)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(31)

 

 

I am a great believer in Livescribe's smartpens. The first offering three years ago Livescribe 2 GB Pulse Smartpen has worked perfectly ever since. It is not exactly svelte, but it had the capacity to record 200 hours of audio and has proved to be an extremely reliable and useful tool for a busy litigation practice.

The Echo is a refinement of the original Pulse. It is slimmer, and doesn't quite look like one of those metal cigar containers. It has twice the memory of my original smartpen. The price has come down over the years significantly making an investment in a smartpen even more attractive.

I use my pen to record initial client interviews as well as depositions. I am able using the Livescribe Desktop software to export a recording to a CD and send it to a client to hear. However the best feature is its "point and play" technology which allows me to listen selectively to a recording on my pen by touching a word in my notes. The audio immediately syncs to the part of the conversation and has a five second "skip back/skip forward" feature to account for slow writers like me. I can also listen later to my notes and add additional points of interest.

Audio fidelity is amazingly good. The pen has settings for different environments like lectures or office meetings. Even if you just use the default settings you will be pleased with the output.

Besides being thinner, the new Echo no longer requires a cradle, and attaches directly to a USB port on your Mac (that's me) or PC.This eliminates one more gadget I need to lug around in my briefcase.

Livescribe's special paper should not intimidate any prospective purchaser. First it is possible to print your own paper. Livescribe suggests that this requires a laser printer, but I have actually done it with an injet. You have to test in any event whether your printer is compatible which is how I learned some inkjet printers will work.

However users will find Livescribe notebooks to be very reasonably priced. I buy Livescribe ANA-00018 Single Lined 100 Page 5-8 Notebook - 4 Pack which makes the cost per notebook very comparable to ordinary spiral notebooks. Clearly Livescribe is refusing to adopt the model of printer manufacturers who make most of their money on supplies.

There are applications available for the Echo including a text recognition app that offers a 30 day free trial. However my handwriting is usually indecipherable even to me so I have never tried it. However the idea is great.

In the universe of Livescribe pens this is probably the one which should command your most serious consideration. 4GB is an an enormous amount of data and recording. I have never come close to filling 2GBs although I do remove recording from the pen from time to time while maintaining the audio on my Livescribe Desktop.

Livescribe has perfected a product that, as a tool for lawyers, for students, for physicians, and salesmen, as well a host of others was nearly perfect.

Amazing! is the first reaction to this device. Here are the things it can do, and generally well.

1. Write like a regular pen.
2. Record voice or sound like any digital recorder.
3. Link the written notes to the recorded sound. So if tap on a written word it will play the sound recorded at the time that word was written.
4. Upload handwritten notes and voice to computer.
5. Share your written notes and audio (Pencasts).

The sound quality is fairly good. There are lot of add on apps available like games, language translation, piano etc. which I have not used so far except MyScript, which does not work very well. It comes with two fine black ink cartridges, no medium, and I wish there was one included. The writing was faint with fine tip and it was scratchy to write. So I had to order an extra pack of five Livescribe ARA-000007 4 Medium Blue and 1 Fine Red Ink Cartridge cartridges. Sometimes the writing is faint on the computer even with medium tipped blue cartridges.

PROBLEMS

1. BUGGY MAC LIVESCRIBE DESKTOP SOFTWARE: Echo pen does not come with any software, you have to download that from the web site. LiveScribe Desktop for Mac software is very sluggish and glitchy. You will be watching the spinning wheel for a while (3:48 minutes) when it starts, it will keep on asking you for email address and password and not let you use the program until you do. And if you are not connected to the Internet, the LiveScribe won't stop spinning until you connect the Echo pen. Windows software is actually better, faster and does not hang up like that. After you connect the pen, it takes a while for the notes to show up. Although you can archive the notes from one pen to one computer, there is no way to transfer notes to multiple computers because archiving the notes removes them from the pen. The first time I connected the pen, it updated the firmware automatically.

2. DIFFICULT TO PRINT CUSTOM PAPER: Another problem is that you have to buy notebooks and paper from LiveScribe. As far as I can make out, they do not sell A4 size paper. You can print the paper on some Postscript color laser printers. I could not print the paper on Dell 5100cn color laser printer, either with Dell Postscript driver or with Adobe generic Postscript driver but I was successful in printing the paper on Brother MFC-9840CDW Color Laser Multifunction Center with Wireless Interface and Duplex - but only from the Mac LiveScribe. It took a long time - 2 hours - to print 25 pages! Interestingly, the custom notebooks could be printed only in Mac Livescribe, not from the Windows version. The file was 200MB. You have to print one full notebook of 25 pages at time and you cannot print partial notebooks, say pages 1-10. And you can only print total 100 pages (4 Notebooks with 25 pages each). So if you want to use more than hundred pages, you have to archive a notebook before you can do that. That limits active pages to 100 at a time! This is the biggest drawback I found for my purpose because I need to have hundreds of active records at a time where I can write information on multiple days. The same limitation also applies to their notebooks. Despite using 1200 dpi resolution for printing, the quality of writing was still poor when it showed up on the computer. So I ended up using Livescribe Single Subject Spiral Notebook ANA-00017, 4-Pack, Nos. 1-4 which have A4 size paper, but punched.

3. NO EASY WAY TO BACKUP: The data transferred to the computer is saved in one of those obscure and hidden Windows & Mac folders that are hard to find for non techies and will not back up unless you do global backup like Windows Backup or Mac Time Machine. You cannot save your data in custom folders. Even though, I had everything backed up, I could not restore the the data when my hard drive died and lost all archived notes. Three technical support reps from LiveScribe could not restore it. First two said they will call back and let me know but never did. The last technical support rep did get back to me in Email and said they could not restore my backed up data. After losing lot of data (300 A4 pages), I now save all notes as PDF files in my custom data folders and also upload to Evernote. I do not record lot of audio and so far the free Evernote account has been sufficient. Integration of Windows LiveScribe with Evernote works well.

4. POOR HANDWRITING RECOGNITION ADD ON MyScript: My main purpose in buying this pen was to convert handwritten notes to computer text. For that I had to buy a thirty buck add on called MyScript for LiveScribe which does not work so well. Even with clear cursive writing it does not recognize many words and has particular difficulty with technical words, so you have to add each word one by one into the dictionary, and cannot import your Microsoft Word or Pages dictionary. Very tedious process. But it has Auto Replacement, which works like Microsoft Word Autocorrect, e.g. if you write 3m, you can program it to expand to 3 months. That is the work around to poor handwriting recognition.

5. ANNOYING UNTETHERED CAP: Like every one else, I found the loose cap very irritating, it can be easily lost. Are you supposed to keep putting and removing the cap all day long? It is not clear to me why they couldn't make a retractable pen or why the cap cannot be held in place on the back of the pen or tethered with a small cord. There is no clip on the pen to clip it to your pocket either. You will find this very annoying.

6. NO AUTO ON & OFF: If you forget to turn the pen on by pressing the on/off button, the pen will not record anything. I cannot understand why the pen does not have auto on, it should turn on as soon as you start writing on the paper. The on off button should be behind the ink cartridge, so it turns on just by the process of starting to write. Or may be they can fix this with a firmware upgrade.

Overall, it is great for students to record lectures, attorneys, journalists, conference attendees making notes etc. and you can later on refer to the written notes and /or speech. You can write or record speech or do both and link the two. Those who are going to record a lot of audio should go for 8 Gb; for most users 4 Gb should suffice. If you use LiveScribe notebooks and Windows software it works fairly well. But if you have a Mac, need to print your own custom A4 paper, or need handwriting recognition, then it is a work in progress and needs lot of bugs ironed out before it can become a mainstream product. May be they can have a wi-fi card like Eye-Fi so that notes are automatically transferred to your computer. It sure has the potentiel.

I love my Pulse 4GB. This Echo 8GB is just that much nicer - more comfortable to hold, more memory, better uplink connection than the Pulse's standard cradle, which is a little too easy to knock the pen off from. The Pulse's pro cradle (upright) is very nice, though. The new Mac Desktop update (2.2.1) is a very good one, with a much easier interface for sharing pencasts, pdfs, and AAC files. Like the previous reviewer, I had difficulty at first, but ended up manually downloading and installing the latest software update (my software kept telling me I had the latest, but it was 2.1). It replaced my previous version(keeping all the Pulse files intact), and after the quick install, it began to recognize the Echo without any problem.

The new pen cap is little and fits tight - I suspect it will be lost quickly. It is different than the Pulse caps - smaller, and fits on differently. I don't notice much difference at all in using the Echo vs the Pulse, but I do find it more comfortable and less dorky-looking. I never considered 4GB to be too little storage, but 8GB certainly allows me to record everything at the highest quality without concern. Interestingly, this pen didn't come with the recording headphones - which are nice, but way too dorky to actually use. If you are looking to buy a first Smartpen, you really can't go wrong with either the Pulse or the Echo. If you are a student or an attorney or anyone who needs to recall detailed discussion points, you won't be sorry. The variety of notebooks now is fantastic.

Note: EVERY high school and college student with learning disorders involving processing speeds, slow writing, Asperger's Syndrome, or attentional issues should have and use this product. I suspect this will replace "note takers" eventually, as this is FAR less expensive and more effective (see 2008-09 research study from Rochester Institute of Technology).

I received my pen yesterday and installed the software onto my Mac. I could not even setup my pen because I keep getting the following message on the pen's lcd screen, "Please update your smartpen's software to use this dot paper". Well, when I go to update software it says that I can the most current firmware/software installed. After thinking I received a defective pen and doing lots of research, I found out that there were a lot of reported problems with the latest firmware so the company had to take it down for the time being. As of last night, they said that we should expect to see it back up within the next 48 hours. In the meantime, we are stuck with an extremely expensive inoperable pen that can barely function as a paper weight! I'm extremely frustrated and wish they spent sufficient time testing the latest firmware before bringing it and the pen out to market. If you are looking to purchase this pen, I would hold off for a little bit until the firmware issues have been resolved. Once this issue has been resolved, I will update my review.

UPDATE: So it looks like Livescribe acted fast on the firmware issue. The latest firmware was posted as a manual install option on the forum site a little while ago. It installed properly and is working flawlessly so far! First impression, FANTASTIC! The pen does exactly what it is supposed to do. It syncs the audio to your writing so that when you go back and tap on a word you will hear the audio that transpired at that moment in time. I have yet to test out the audio in a lecture hall setting but general conversations are picked effortlessly. Sound quality is even better when the 3D headset, which was purchased separately, is plugged into the pen. The feel of the pen itself is also terrific. The new rubber grip on the Echo is very soft and comfortable. I thought the pen would be a little too wide for comfort, but in fact I find it to be the perfect size. The fact that the Echo, unlike the Pulse, was made in plastic does great things for its weight. It feels substantial like a good quality pen should without feeling too bulky. The shape of the Echo is also an improvement over its predecessor, as it is designed to sit flat on a desk - a feature that I think a lot of previous Pulse owners would be happy about. I would definitely recommend the Echo over the Pulse pen. It provides a much more comfortable writing experience, which is important when using for extended periods of time, in addition to an anti-roll design feature, a larger hard drive, a new standard micro-usb port, new standard 3.5mm audio jack for utilizing any pair of headphones, and the ability to protect your pen from unauthorized use via password protect. You also no longer need to carry around a charging cradle in order to remove the ink. In fact, the Echo has completely foregone the need for a cradle given its anti-roll design so it doesn't even ship with one. With the Echo, you can easily replace the ink cartridge by pulling it out with your hands- a terrific improvement over the Pulse. I am now a very happy smartpen owner!

The pen worked great for about two months, not enough to even last through a quarter of school. Thought it was absolutely awesome when it was working, just be careful because once you get comfortable with it, something will go wrong. It first started doing weird things, like turning back on a couple seconds after I turned it off. I contacted customer support and they told me to download the new firmware. Seemed easy enough, except now my computer doesn't even detect the pen anymore! I'm not alone on this, if you check out the livescribe forum ([...]) on their website it'll be apparent a lot of people are having this problem. They can't seem to get their firmware updates working. I wish there was a downgrade feature for the firmware. So what started as a possible hardware issue compounded into a software issue and now my laptop acts funny when I'm trying to connect the pen. I just spent ~$200 on a pen that quits working right when finals are coming up and is too useless to even use as a paperweight. Make sure to have a backup if you buy these products, and be wary of firmware updates.

I originally ordered a 4 GB Pulse from [...]. Upon receiving it I immediately noticed that it was really thick and because it was a polished metal type of pen, it was very unstable to hold in my hand. That prompted me to research Smartpens a little more and I elected to buy the 8 GB Echo two weeks ago. The Echo is far superior to the Pulse in terms of comfort and stability.

I'm blown away by the technology advances and this pen is, to me, a cutting edge technology. I'm 55 years old and retired but if I were a student or still working and regularly attending meetings then a device such as this would give me a tremendous edge. The other reviewers have written accurate descriptions of the attributes and flaws of the pen (e.g., the cap could get easily lost). One other thing I think the pen could really use is a clip so it could be held securely in a shirt pocket. My biggest concern with an item like this is that it could be easily lost. For practical purposes, I recommend buying the Livescribe Smartpen Portfolio Livescribe Smartpen Portfolio, as it has a pen holder in it will hold the Livescribe Journal Livescribe ANA-00004 Lined Black 1-2 Journal - 2 Pack or the A-5 spiral notebooks (Available from Brookstone or Livescribe's online store.

Another great accessory if you are going to use it in large meeting rooms or a college lecture hall is the earphones Livescribe AAA-00014 Echo 3D Recording Earbuds, well really they are microphones and they record the event exactly as you hear it but they are smart microphones and they eliminate much of the ambient sound that you don't need or want.

This technology is truly amazing. It's like having a perfect memory. I used it at a doctor's appointment last week. My wife always asks me "What did the doctor have to say" and I usually remember about 25% of the appointment. Well now, she and I both get total recall of what was said and, furthermore, the audible recording synchronizes with the note taking so you can watch your notes being written while listening to what was said at the time you wrote the notes!

It will be interesting to see how this product and competitor's products evolve over the next few years. I am confident the smart pens will end up being owned by a large percentage of the population, much like the iPod and the PC.

One more thing, the paper refills are reasonably priced but you can print your own paper if you have a good color laser printer.

I've had the pen for about a week now and here is my impression of the great product!

Advantages:

1. Can keep track of where you are writing.
It can keep track of where you are writing and also which page you are writing over multiple notebooks without you have to do anything special. I frequently come back and correct something that I have previously written. The other products (DigiMemo and zpen) can't keep track of this automatically and hence they would not have worked for me. The notebooks themselves are inexpensive. I just bought a 3 subject notebook with 300 sides for $8 and I am pretty sure it is going to last me at least a year.

2. Record while writing.
This is great for me since I sometimes discuss my research with other experts. I usually manage to remember all the major points, but having the ability to listen to the conversation again even after many months gives you the ability to listen to the same conversation with new perspectives and ideas.

3. Writing is searchable.
I am a grad student and I tend to write a lot of math equations and diagrams while doing my work and along with these equations I write a few sentences to describe my ideas behind those equations. Echo will allow me to have a searchable electronic copy of my written work since I tend to come back and look at these equations etc after many months. The handwriting recognition software which is in-built in Livescribe desktop only allows you to search. You can export the page image itself as a PDF, but if you also want it transcribed as text (using OCR software), you need to pay and get MyScript. Livescribe gives you a 30 day trial version only.

4. Can use from multiple computers.
I use about 2-3 computers all of which contain important research information. The livescribe desktop allows you to use your pen from multiple computers as long as you register the pen.

Disadvantages:

1. No Auto on.
This is not a big disadvantage per say, but if you forgot to turn your pen on it won't record anything. I have lost a few pages this way, but I guess once you get used to it, this won't be a problem.

2. Recording also records the scratching sound of pen on paper.
This doesn't hinder your ability to hear the main conversation, but it would be nice to not have this problem.


Other Comments:
1. It is reasonably comfortable to hold, although having never used such a thick pen, I am still getting used to it. My hands tend to get tired easily with it. Hopefully these problems go away in due course of time.

2. I tried to print my own notepad from my office printer, but the print size was huge (200MB per page) and it would have taken a lot of time to print, so I jut went and bought the paper. It is possible that I wasn't printing correctly.

3. If you read the "Rant and Raves" in the Livescribe forum, you'll notice that a lot of people are very unhappy with the fact that you can't delete individual pages easily from the desktop software. For some reason people seem to not like the desktop software too much. I find the software adequate for what it is supposed to do.


Overall, I would highly recommend this product!


Update: As mentioned in the comments for this review, single pages can be deleted as long as you have archived the notebook.

I was an early adopter of the Pulse, the first product by Livescribe, after seeing it at the DEMO conference. I convinced at least a dozen people to buy one. One of the (few) problems with the Pulse was it was round, and unlike a regular pen it weighed more on one side than another. That meant it would roll off flat surfaces like desks. Ultimately, my Pulse died from the resulting impacts to the floor.

Given how satisfied I was with the Pulse's ability to capture my notes digitally and the reliability of it's software/hardware I decided to go with the latest model from Livescribe, the 8GB Echo as a replacement, noting that the Echo's new design solved the rolling issues. Sadly, it was a mistake. Here's why:

First, the Echo would not synch with the latest version of the Livescribe desktop. After many long hours troubleshooting, including dealing with a disorganized set of responses from their support organization (telling me to do things that I had already done, or asking me the same questions every time I spoke to them), I figured out the Mac version of the desktop was not upgrading the firmware and that it would not synch with the Mac app. The firmware on my new Echo was clearly buggy, it wouldn't react to the dot paper correctly right out of the box. In an act of desperation, I installed the desktop on Windows and sure enough the firmware upgrade worked and I could actually use the thing. So I kept it...

Now the next problem. Assuming all was good, I started again trusting the Echo to capture my business and personal notes (the Pulse never failed to do so). Now I find after reviewing my notes that two problems exist that didn't with the Pulse notes. Sound captured with notes now has gaps in it, a problem the Pulse never had. Worse yet, many of my notes now have what looks like scribbles all over them, like someone crossed things out. These scribbles do not appear in the paper copies of my notes. This last problem renders my electronic copies of my notes illegible.

The main reason I purchased Livescribe's Pulse and Echo is that I wanted to have a way to capture notes that I normally don't capture via a computer. I don't want to have to fire up a laptop every time I'm trying to make a note, and many of my notes contain drawings that I would prefer to sketch quickly, in context with the text. Finally, I wanted to convert those notes to digital. While I've often scanned notes from my paper journal, that's time consuming and I liked the idea of just synching the pen when at my desk and having a reliable digital backup of all that paper, with the intent I could even throw out the paper when done.

The Pulse worked well. The Echo does not. I'm not sure how others Echo's are working but mine does not. Hopefully the same people don't screw up the Pulse. I may try to sell my Echo via eBay and buy another Pulse. However, I'm tempted to just give up and try another solution. I've lost faith in Livescribe's ability to ship quality products.

I first saw one of these at Cisco Live in Vegas a few weeks ago. I thought it was nifty and then forgot all about it. Then, I saw a rash of blog posts praising the new Echo pens and had to try it.

I am terrible about writing this down in a regular notebook and then never looking at it again. Either that, or it takes forever for me to flip through hundreds of pages looking for something. I recently decided I needed to do something about that so I started using Evernote and Things to become more productive. Still, I was missing something.

When I first received the pen, I was one of the unlucky ones who had the dreaded "Upgrade the pen software" error when trying to use the included dot paper. I talked with support and found out that there was a firmware issue that affected some people. Drat. This didn't seem to be off to a good start.

Fortunately, within a couple days, the new firmware was posted and I was able to get started. So far, no issues at all. I use Mac OS X and the software works great.

My only gripe is the lack of functionality to convert handwritten notes to text. You need to purchase a 3rd party application for that for an extra $30. If that feature was included, I would rate the pen 5 stars in a heartbeat.

Now that I have this, the rest falls on me to do the rest. So far, so good. Part of my post-meeting workflow now is to copy the images into Evernote and add my tasks to Things. So long abandoned papers!

UPDATE: Didn't realize the notes to text software was included. Updated to a solid 5 stars

I will admit, I've given 5 stars for a lesser product. However, for the price, I think I can be a little more critical.
First off, this pen is amazing. I've used this at a lecture hall with about 200 people and a lecture room with about 80 people. Both times, in lecture hall setting, it picked up the speaker's voice pretty good. Not Dolby Digital, 5.1 surround sound of course, but better than the voice recorded I bought for about $60 a couple of years ago. So as a voice recorder, this is a very good deal. It allows you to change microphone sensitivity and environments (like lecture hall or automatic, etc).
As a 'record what you write' device, it also works very, very well. Transfering notes is very easy. The livescribe desktop allows you to convert your notes into a pdf OR allow you to listen to the lecture while your notes begin to appear, so you get to see what you were writing as you were listening to it. Very, very nice.

I find that it's better to review my notes on a computer as opposed to the notebook. Here's the first critical point. One of the features is that you can listen to your notes straight off the pen by just placing your pen anywhere on the notebook. The pen starts playing whatever was recorded at that point. Great concept, but the execution is a little faulty.

The speaker from the pen is average at best. On my computer, I can alter volume settings to get the best quality. On the pen, the output doesn't wow me. I struggle to listen to the notes via the pen, but find it much easier on my computer. So just having the pen, notebook and headphones to review my notes is not ideal. Perhaps if I didn't use this in a lecture hall then the quality would be better. I'm sure in a business meeting/small room setting, the audio directly from the pen would be adequate.

The second small gripe is that it picks up the sound of your pen writing. I'm not an aggressive writer. But sometimes it sounds like I'm trying to maul the paper to death when all I was doing was taking notes. This might be a bit irksome to some of you.

The pen is a little large. It reminds me of those big pencils I used when learning to write letters in kindergarten. Getting cartridge refills can also be trial in your patience. At Amazon, as of this post date, there is a 2 to 4 week wait time on refills. The livescribe website is quicker, but if you buy in bulk, you'll pay more for shipping. Target sells the refills, but they always run out. So hopefully Livescribe will have a better retail presense. With a product like this, I'm sure they will.

The Livescribe Desktop is a little clunky. Initially I didn't see anything wrong with it, but after getting to know the pen better , I've come to realize their desktop is lacking. My biggest gripe about it is that there's too much empty space. There's a menu on the side that holds your notebooks, then the page is displayed in the center. But the "welcome to livescribe desktop" header takes up about 1/5 of the screen. It would be nice if they had a 'full screen' for your page. Instead, they've got zoom in and out with in a scrolling window. It's fine, but if you've got small handwriting, or make small notations on the side like I do, you'll find yourself using the zoom too much. I say, we need a a full screen view!

The notebooks (sold separately) are pretty neat at about $5 each for 200 pages. The inside covers have a scientific and financial calculator that displays the data on your pen as you tap. There's a keyboard I haven't found much use for. You can also check & change your settings, date, check battery life, storage, etc by tapping on the different icons on the inside covers.

I am very satisfied with this pen. After the initial wow factor though there are a few small things I wish were different. Also, it would be great if Livescribe made copy paper. Many times I've had to make copies of powerpoints or notes and it would be great if I could write on those and hear the recording. But perhaps in the future. Still, this is a very nice buy. I'm very happy with it. I'm also not going to lie and say that this little gem can't be improved on. A very solid second outing for Livescribe, though.