Never Lose Your Notes Again: Neo Smartpen
by Linus - Updated July 2021
Do you love writing your daily notes in a paper notebook but also wish it had some of the features of a digital notes app such as search and share? If so, the Neo Smartpen M1+ might be exactly the thing you're looking for.
The Neo Smartpen M1+ works like a typical ink pen but comes with a built-in camera that helps to digitises your writing so that you'll never lose your important notes again. It bridges the best of physical writing that we have grown to love together with the best of digitalisation, which has made a lot of manual processes much more convenient and intuitive.
How does it work?
The magic lies in harmony across a pen, paper, and an app. The Neo Smartpen M1+ itself has an infrared camera located below the pen tip that helps to capture the pen movement and works with a pressure sensor located at the back of the pen refill. These two sensors work together to understand what you write and how you wrote it.
The Neo Smartpen has to work together with the N Notebooks, which are specially made with Neo Smartpen's proprietary Ncode. If you look closely on every page, you will see these tiny marks on the paper.
These marks are uniquely coded for each page and it works together with the pen to help it identify which notebook you're using, what page number it is, and which part of the paper you're writing on.
This information is recorded and stored inside the pen, which can then be synced with the Neo Notes application that is available on iOS, Android and Windows, allowing you to then store digital records across your devices.
What can it do?
The Neo Smartpen M1+ is filled with features that are bound to benefit your daily productivity. Let's dive right in to show you what it can do.
1. Digitalise Your Handwriting
First of all, it digitalises your physical writing into digital notes. When using the Neo Smartpen, you do not require to have your device with the Neo App to be beside you and synced with the pen. You can simply go about your day and take notes along the way, and the Neo Smartpen will actually record your notes offline, which you can then transfer into your App when you go online.
The pen will be able to store up to 1,000 pages of content in this way.When the pen is synced to the App, every stroke you write will be automatically transferred into the digital copy in real-time. The App will then store all your writing records for you to refer at a later date.
Neo Notes App - Digitalisation
2. Transcribe
The Neo Notes app can easily help you transcribe your handwritten notes into text, which you can then easily share with others or copy/paste it onto mediums you require.
Neo Notes App - Transcription
What's great is that the App also provides for multi-language transcription, allowing you to transcribe notes written in Chinese, Japanese and more. Choose from a list of over 25 languages with more being added over time.
Neo Notes App - Multi-Language Transcription
3. Share Seamlessly
With your digital notes, you can share it easily with others across various platforms in different file formats such as text, PDF, PG, SVG, and even as a Web URL. With this, you no longer have to snap images or scan your notes to share it with others.
Neo Notes App - Sharing
4. Edit Endlessly
In the Neo Notes App, you are given basic editing tools that allow you to highlight text, change the colour of text, change your text brushstroke, and add more notes to the text with your finger or a stylus. An eraser tool is also available for you to delete unnecessary text that you wish to remove from your digital copy, which is really handy in helping you clean your notes up before sharing it with others.
Neo Notes App - Editing
5. Easily Search Your Notes
Since your physical notes can be transcribed to text, the Neo Notes App allows you to search for information and easily retrieve what you need in a snap. You now no longer have to flip through tons of pages to find something you wrote months ago.
Neo Notes App - Search Using Keywords
You can also tag pages with keywords that will be beneficial for organising your notes. When you need to search up these pages, you can easily search for the tag you have organised them in and the application will show all relevant pages.
Neo Notes App - Tag Your Pages
6. Playback & Record
The Neo Notes app also comes with a playback function that allows you to watch how your page came to live as you added notes to the page. You also have access to voice recording, where you can add voice notes to pages for extra information. For this function, you will require the Neo Notes App to be paired with the pen when recording.
Neo Notes App - Playback
All Sorts of Notebooks & Pen Refills
One thing to get used to is that for the Neo Smartpen M1+, you will have to use the specially encoded N Notebooks to achieve all the benefits as mentioned. The good news is, they have created all sorts of notebooks for you to choose from depending on your preferences.
You can choose from regular lined or blank notebooks, yearly planners, and even unique notebooks such as a Daily Action Planner.
If you're concerned about the pen refill, just know that the Neo Smartpen M1+ uses a universal D1-sized refill that you can easily buy from most stationery stores or online shops in different colours and point widths.
The refills are also extremely easy to remove and install. A job that does not require any screws. All you do is grab the pen tip, pull it out, and insert a brand new refill.
If you're looking to get more pen refills, you can do so here.
Is the Neo Smartpen for you?
The Neo Smartpen M1+ syncs the best of the physical and digital world to create an unparalleled writing experience. You can write naturally with pen and paper, and still have all the benefits of digitalisation.
With it, you no longer have to manually scan your physical notes as it is done automatically for you and ready to be shared with others with a few clicks. Easily search and edit your notes, and be assured to know that you'll always have a backup copy. If you write or draw a lot as a professional or a student, we truly believe you will find the Neo Smartpen to boost your productivity and become a staple in your arsenal of work tools.
If you like to find out more on how the Neo Smartpen M1+ can improve your productivity, take a look at our article here.
You can learn more about the Neo Smartpen M1+ here. If you're looking for a more affordable option, you might want to consider the Neo Smartpen Dimo.
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