Neolab NWP-F80 LAMY Safari Smartpen
Neolab Tech with Classic LAMY Design
The text in this post is largely my script for the video. If you'd prefer to read my thoughts on the LAMY & Neolab Safari Smartpen then you're in the right place.
However, expanding on the video content, I'll start with a quick list of pros and cons to give you a brief review.
Pros
Simple to use. Just touch the pen on the notepad and it begins recording your writing.
Price. At about £100-150, this is a considerably cheaper option than a tablet such as the Remarkable 2
Battery Life. This can easily last a week of moderate note taking. Clearly this will be different for everyone.
Beautiful. This is a LAMY Safari ballpoint pen. It’s a classic, world famous design which is both comfortable to write with and minimalist and non showy.
Accurate and Precise. When you consider how this works, I was amazed at how accurate and detailed the pen capture is. Check out the video to see me trying to write as small as I can.
Uses standard LAMY refills so you’re not stuck with a dead pen and nothing to put in it.
Works solo. You don’t need the app to capture. It’s all stored on the pen for later transfer.
Transcribing. The accuracy of the transcribing is surprisingly good.
Variety of Notebooks templates. There's something for all types of notetaking.
Notes can be exported in GIF, MP4, PDF, SVG or shared to a URL. All options are covered here.
Cons
Notebooks using the special paper might be a little pricey for some (between £10 and £30)
The app requires you to sign in to your Apple or Google account. Infuriating!
The Neolab Paper Controller is just a flimsy bookmark that gets in the way. I feel there has to be a tidier way of making this work.
Transfer of data from the pen to the app can be a little slow (a minute for 10 pages)
Not possible to merge pages and transcribe. They all exist as single pages in the app.
Slight lag at start-up can cause you to miss the first letter or word. Remember to tap the pen on the page before you start writing to get it up and running.
Who Are Neolab Convergence?
Neolab Convergence is a Korean smartpen manufacturer. They've partnered up with LAMY from Germany to release a product based on the infamous LAMY Safari ballpoint pen. Using genuine replaceable LAMY ballpoint refills, the optics in the nib together with the refill make this look more like a fountain pen at a glance.
Collaborating with a world-renowned pen manufacturer feels like a clever move from Neolab. In today's video, I'll be looking at this latest smartpen release, what it does, and hopefully, give you an idea of whether it's right for you.
Ethics Note
Neolab has sent me this set for review, but this is a non-paid review and, as with all companies I work with, I have made it clear from the start that my review will list both good and bad points, and no content will be scripted or reviewed by Neolab before publishing.
What is a Smartpen?
A smartpen is an optoelectronic device that writes on paper with a layer of virtually invisible 'microdots' printed on it. Neolab calls this 'ncode' technology, and it tells the pen exactly where it is on a page and exactly which page it's on at all times.
Although the pen and paper are just regular pen and paper, a scanner automatically stores every stroke you make. You can either sync this later with a smartphone or computer or capture the data in real-time. Working this way opens up the option of using multiple colours and pen widths while you write. The pen itself doesn't change colour, but the captured result does.
Neolab offers this colour and pen changing option through a physical cardboard bookmark made of the same 'ncode' print, which tells the software which colour you have selected. My only question is, what happens if this rather flimsy bookmark gets lost or damaged? Couldn't a few of these be provided printed on plastic? Or wouldn't that work?
The tech goes a little further, though, as notes can be automatically transcribed into typed text, too, with a 95% success rate according to the manufacturer. Also, using the app while you write allows you to record audio at the same time. This is actually a really nice feature because the audio track and writing become completely synched. You can sit in a detailed lecture and just make bullet points with your smartpen and then listen back to the audio file and move around the file just by tapping on a certain bullet point you have written. It's not rocket science, but it's an elegant idea if you need it.
The Neolab ‘ncode’ Paper Controller allows different colours & pen widths
Do You Need It?
On that point of 'if you need it,' I'm going to jump forward briefly to my personal conclusion because most of this review will be my partner's opinion and experience rather than my own.
I tested this for a day or two, but I'm someone who tends to work from online task managers or makes notes on a keyboard. I really couldn't feel that this is anything but a case of technology for the technology's sake. Don't get me wrong, I use a notebook all the time, but I need just a notebook, or I need to go direct to electronic and use something like a Remarkable 2 as my notebook. This idea of synching my written notes feels unnecessary to me.
However, my partner Kate works in a very different industry from mine. Her job is much more about meetings, contracts and law. She's a regular note-taker, and the idea of this product genuinely excited her. I have never seen her so enthusiastic about one of my review videos. So I gave her the pen and notebook, set up the Neo Studio app on her iPhone and left her to it for a few weeks.
Only you can answer whether you need something like this, but hopefully, this video will help you decide.
Yet Another Login!
The Neo Studio software is essential for this product to work. Without it, you're just writing notes on paper. Rather annoyingly, the first thing the app asks you to do is sign in with either your Google or Apple account. You can't do anything with this product without it. I stress this because, understandably, this will be a deal-breaker for some of you. It's incredibly frustrating and, although it's clearly needed to sync data with those services, it should not be necessary just to use the pen and app.
Neolab Studio
Once I'd managed to get over this, the experience from that point was really quite impressive. You power up the pen, and it's immediately seen by the app. One tap, and you're done. Although you can manually add documents and notes in the app, there's really no need because the second you touch the pen on the page of the notebook, a new note is created with the title linking back to the physical page number. It's neat and simple. The smartpen automatically turns on when it hits the page, but there is a tiny lag before it starts tracking. It's usually no more than half a second so not a big deal. You wouldn't miss anything critical. Kate did point out to me that, on one occasion she missed a whole word due to this delay but that's not the norm.
After a few days of note-taking, you'll have a load of small previews in the app for each page. Tapping on these opens up the whole page in all its glory. You can pinch and zoom to get a closer look and export to five different formats, including an MP4 or GIF animation of your writing. I'm not sure why you would ever need this. Maybe it's for use with an audio recording where the two play together in one exceptionally dull movie of a paper and pen. Next is PDF with its infinite vector zooming capability, then PNG, SVG and finally to a web URL. The web URL publishes to the neostudio.io domain for sharing with a colleague or friend. Again, this URL offers you the ability to watch the note being written. It actually makes for incredibly relaxing viewing. I know that some of you will have security concerns about publishing private information to a Neolab server. I'm afraid I can offer you no reassurance there. Consider your content before publishing would be my advice.
The app also offers the option to sync with Apple or Google cloud. That's not something I tested, but I know it's been a user request for a while, and Neolab came good and added it in.
It's available for iPhone, Android, Windows and iPad, but MacOS is left without a dedicated app at the time of writing.
Editing Your Notes
The ability of the pen to always know precisely where it is really holds this solution together. If you've moved onto another page but realise you now have to add or cross something off a previous page, you just do it physically, and it's reflected perfectly on the digital side. You don't need to close one note and open an old one. The pen immediately knows that you're now working on that old note, and the respective page opens accordingly in the app.
Updating some notes on the iPhone Neolab Studio App
Solo Writing
Another massive strength of the smartpen is that you don't need the app at all to write. The pen stores all your writing data and will then transfer this back to the app next time the two re-connect. Kate saw this massive plus point because if she's in a meeting, the ability to turn up with nothing more than an inconspicuous notepad and pen matters. That's how she works. Messing about on a phone is not an option in these meetings and writing down her thoughts or 'actions' if we're going for business speak is her process. I'm sure many of you can relate to that.
Obsession with Single Pages
The system does, however, have an obsession with single-page notes. There appears to be no way to combine pages, and there is certainly no way to transcribe multiple pages into text. Let's be realistic here. How can you be sure that your notes will fit on one page? Unless this product is literally only designed for basic tasks and shopping lists, it's ridiculous to expect that. Kate can easily cover three pages of notes in a two-hour meeting, so why can these not be merged into one rather than three pages that all have to be transcribed separately and pasted together. Neolab really needs to sort this in a future update because it feels so restrictive as it is.
Transcribing Your Writing
On the topic of transcribing, if you're relatively tidy in the way you make your notes, it does a really sterling job. My notes are all over the place, with extra boxes added later and various doodles on the page. My work also contains a large number of technical terms and bespoke acronyms. The result? A complete mess of random words and letters. But this isn't a fair test. There's no way you could type that kind of note out anyway without further organisation and reformatting.
Kate, on the other hand, writes clean notes with frequent use of bullet points. There are still doodles on the page, but these get ignored, and the software got perfectly acceptable accuracy with just a few errors. She has an odd quirk in her writing where certain letters get merged or barely written at all, yet the software got them all correct. For example, she writes 'for' more like 'fir' and 'milk' like 'millie'. Neither of these posed a problem. Equally, business names that won't be in a dictionary were also transcribed accurately.
Pen Accuracy
The accuracy of the pen itself is second to none. I suppose the way the pen works is almost like a small camera, but the resulting notes on the app look like they could just be a photo of the page in the notebook....it's that accurate. Don't forget, though, that this isn't a photo. You can export it to a PDF if you like and zoom in without any loss in quality. Also, as mentioned, it might contain mixed colours and pen widths.
This level of accuracy is reassuring because one of the first things you consider when hitting this one-page limitation is "how small can I write". The answer. Extremely small. There's enough resolution here to deal with any writing small enough to still be called writing. Let's be honest. You are limited by the pen and paper quality as well as your own accuracy. The famous phrase of garbage in-garbage out still applies.
Battery & Charging
Charging is via a micro-USB port at the end of the pen. The port is completely exposed, which feels odd to me. I'm not sure how you could neatly add a seal here without destroying the sleek style of the pen, but an open port like this is asking for trouble. I'm afraid I'm a pen chewer. That's got to be a bad idea with a USB port! Battery life is shown permanently through an LED on the pen shaft, which changes through green, orange and red to indicate battery life. If not for this tiny LED, I'm pretty sure that most people wouldn't know you were using a smartpen at all. You can also check the charge status in the app and update firmware and other such housekeeping.
I can't say precisely how long the battery lasts but three days into the week, and it's still on green, so it's as good or better than I'd hoped. I guarantee someone in the office might ask you why you're plugging your pen into a USB charger.
Neolab ‘ncode’ Digital Paper
I mentioned at the start that this pen requires special paper. This put me off initially and gave me that "here's a cheap printer, but you have to buy our special golden ink" feeling. Fortunately, the notebooks are not terribly expensive and are of good quality. The book with this set is a black leather look dot grid book with 300 sheets, but Neolab offers various types for different jobs. E.g. you can get a dedicated task notebook or a planner, which will all transfer their attributes accordingly to the app.
LAMY Notebook supplied with the LAMY Safari Smartpen
You can also download the 'ncode' PDF documents and print out your own smartpen paper. The quality of the printer will have to be decent to get the same accuracy from the pen, but the option is there, and I think that's fair. Neolab is not locking you into their products.
I tried printing on a pretty average inkjet printer RESULTS HERE ****
Conclusion
There were numerous times during the last few weeks when I looked at Kate's notes in admiration. They're such a thing of beauty, and they're equally so crucial to her work. It's then when I understand why the option of having them in both paper and digital form immensely appealing to her and probably countless others.
It's not for me but that my failing. This solution works exceptionally well and is a quality product. I've mentioned a few gripes, but the asking price of just over £100 is not one of them.
If notes are important to you and you prefer pen and paper, this is definitely worth a try.