Reading through the other reviews for this device, it's clear that many people who purchased one didn't have a clear understanding of what they were buying. I'm not sure if this is due to misleading marketing materials or lack of shopper diligence, but based on the fact that most of the complaints, questions and "limitations" are clearly explained in the owner's manual, I'm guessing the latter.
I highly recommend trying a Boogie Board in person (any model will do) before purchasing the Sync because that will tell you a lot about whether or not you can enjoy writing on the device.
The Sync is just like any other Boogie Board except that it can record and store your pen strokes. This means that you can't erase a line (just like pen & paper) and you can't "load" a note on the device that you previously saved. The Boogie Board isn't a "screen" or display like an iPad or other tablet, which is part of the reason it works so well.
Devices that use a screen for drawing require your pen strokes to go through a number of steps before they show up on the display, which can lead to delays or "lag" between the time you move the pen and when the line shows up. The faster or more complex your movement, the more lag. This makes taking notes fast on most devices impossible, but on the Boogie Board you're "activating" the pixels on the writing surface directly by the pressure of the stylus, so there is no lag or delay.
The precision and detail possible on the Boogie Board exceeds any other device I've used, which includes all iPads, many Android tablets and other more obscure devices. Even with high-end stylus the limitations of the digitizers used in tablets prevents them from coming anywhere close to the kind of fine detail pen and paper are capable of. I won't say that the Sync can match a fine pen, but it's pretty close to the average ballpoint, and much better than the "fat gel pen" that the best tablets can manage.
So in addition to being a nice writing surface, when the page gets full the Sync can save the page to internal memory so you can erase everything and start on a new page. The internal memory can hold something like 2000 pages, so you can go a pretty long time before you need to worry about running out of storage. The battery life is also excellent (going on more than a week since my first charge) so it's feasible that you could go "off the grid" with the Sync for quite awhile before running out of memory or power.
When you're ready to review you notes, the Sync can be attached to any computer via USB and the saved pages can be read like files off a flash drive. If you don't like cables you can use Bluetooth instead, and transfer the files using your operating system's built-in Bluetooth file transfer software, or install the Sync software provided by the vendor to automatically copy the files on to your computer.
The vendor's software has some other cool features that let you use the Sync like a "digital whiteboard", as well as use it like a mouse. There's also mobile apps for iOS and Android that will sync your drawings over Bluetooth and can then push them up to Evernote automatically (you can also email the drawings and export other ways as well).
As others have mentioned the software could use some work and it is somewhat unstable (crashes occasionally). The Evernote synchronization seems hit-or-miss, but I haven't tested it enough to know what the exact cause of that is. The upside of this is that the drawings are stored on the device's memory, so if the software crashes you can just try again without loosing work. In the long run I'd expect the software to improve, but since the files are accessible without the software, there's an opportunity for others to develop better software if the vendor chooses not to improve it.
One other note I'll mention is that the writing surface does seem to be sensitive to cold, in that when it's cold it seems less responsive and drawings have less contrast and require more pressure to show up than when the device is at room temperature (bear in mind that I live in Wisconsin, so when I say "cold" I mean single-digits fahrenheit). When my Sync first arrived it was cold from transport and was hard to see, but after an hour in the house it was warmed to about 65 degrees and worked much better.
The Boogie Board Sync trades the versatility of a general-purpose tablet for a dramatically-improved writing experience, better writing performance, incredible battery life and substantially lower price. If you are looking for a way to achieve the convenience and security of electronic note taking without extremely compromising the writing experience, the Boogie Board Sync might be just what you've been waiting for.
| Standing screen display size | 9.7 Inches |
|---|---|
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 3 days |
