Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought my first Livescribe Pulse 1GB pen on a retail shelf, back when Best Buy had a Livescribe kiosk in 2007. I was an early adopter. Impulse buy while visiting a Best Buy—saw the technology and went "oh ****, I need that badly, it would help X, Y, and Z so much!" Bought in, used it, and like all Livescribe customers, I've been *struggling* through Livescribe equipment since, because I need the functionality. - Pulse pens: Massive, hard to hold, screens died quickly (owned 3, each died after about 1 year) - Echo pens: Somewhat easier to hold, screens still died, more fragile body (owned 3 of these, too) - Paper: Lots of choices, but also they replace paper formats frequently, meaning you have to keep switching I did not try the Livescribe 3 pen because during that period, they switched to the mobile app and had no desktop support at first (there was lots of anger about this on their user forum, which they quickly killed off entirely and removed from their website to stop the complaining), and that did not work for me. I didn't try the Aegir because the user reviews were flat-out terrible and I was scared off, especially by claims of the writing sensor not working (only half of strokes captured) and claims of horrid battery life (half a day on a charge, just a day or two of standby, etc.) My use case: - I need to write reliably with a pen on paper, a lot - I need an archived digital copy to be saved as a PDF afterward for distribution and storage - I need to be able to do this using a desktop computer - I need to be able to write/capture *without* having to have a mobile device paired and nearby That's it. That's all. The most basic use case. Write-capture-share with a computer. With my sixth Livescribe pen (a 4GB Echo) finally dead once again, I decided it was time to either try one of the newer Livescribe models or head for another solution (something like a fountain pen, regular paper, and a camera phone, page by page). So, after much thought, I ordered a Symphony because its claims seemed designed to fix the big problems users had with Aegir. Here's my experience: - The pen is actually pen sized and shaped, finally, and handles very well - The lid does in fact stay put if you push it on all the way (will snap into place, on both ends) - There is an LED that indicates status (blue = trying to pair, green = on, red/yellow = firmware update) - When you take cap off, pen turns on; when you put cap back on, pen turns off - You can in fact write/capture without pairing with a mobile device, no problem - You can plug via USB into a desktop and sync notes to your desktop - The Livescribe+ app isn't as nice as the old Livescribe desktop app, but it's usable - The app now syncs to cloud storage and will automatically dump PDFs of your pages there as you go - It does support the full set of old Livescribe papers as far as I can tell, even the ones not made any longer I also tried, with some worry about screwing things up, pairing with a mobile phone as well, just to test it out. It works, and better than that, there appears to be no penalty for doing so, i.e. you can sync with two different devices and the data will just be imported to both of them. For regular use, however, I will not be pairing—I will just be using it like a pen and plugging in daily to the desktop computer to sync notes to the app, and (nice touch that's new) have the PDFs of these notes automatically updated in my Dropbox rather than having to manually export to PDF. Do note the following limitation: - Cloud sync does not keep pages in sync on *other* devices, i.e. if I sync on phone, it doesn't update on desktop - To have an updated copy of your pen data on several devices, you must connect/pair to each of them in turn Infuriatingly, NONE of this is spelled out on the Livescribe website, which is why I almost didn't buy the Symphony pen. They don't clearly spell out: - Whether you can turn it off - Whether you can sync the data passively (i.e. write without pairing to capture data and sync later) - Whether you can use the desktop app on a standalone basis, without syncing to mobile - Whether there's an on-pen indicator for pen status, so that you know capture is occurring - etc. We'll see about longevity, but so far: - The pen works just as well as Pulse/Echo in capturing handwriting - It appears to be well-made - It's FAR easier to write with than other Livescribe pens - I don't miss the screen thanks to the LED indicator - It actually has a pen clip and actually fits in a pocket or pen slot in a briefcase/backpack In short, Symphony feels like they *finally* have fixed all the problems and arrived at a smartpen that actually works well, is compatible with many things, and is not a terrible device to write with. Assuming it lasts ok (I have learned not to have super high hopes from Livescribe, but 1-2y will be adequate) it's the best Livescribe pen ever, and probably the best smart pen ever, given the handling and the range of Livescribe paper available. Editorial note: I think Livescribe will continue to suffer by being opaque about things. They're trying to appeal to the luddite-ish "I hate technology, don't tell me about tech, I just want a pen" demographic, and so they won't describe things, won't document things, etc. But like it or not this is a TECH product. It will never be "just a pen" or that easy to use, because it's not just a pen. i.e. it matters that you can *tell* that it's currently capturing because a green LED will be lit; it matters that you can sync directly to a Mac OS application without a phone as an intermediary. They should be clear. Yes, they might lose a couple anti-technology people ("OMG complicated!"), but those people don't seem to be having a good experience anyway, and they'd gain some professionals (like me) that rely on the technology for work and will thus buy in long term. They should be a lot more transparent about specifications, compatibilities, ideal use cases, methods of troubleshooting when things go wrong, etc. I almost didn't buy this pen because their product page literally tells you nothing about how it works, and I couldn't find the information anywhere. It was only due to my longtime buy-in to the Livescribe ecosystem and my decent stock of unused Livescribe paper that I decided to buy. So far, glad I did. As someone that is very familiar with Livescribe and how the system works, this is a very solid upgrade over the Echo pens I've been using-until-breaking for a decade, and is a million miles ahead of the old Pulse pens, which were basically like writing with flagpoles. One key note, related to previous thoughts: Do not buy if you're not technical. Because Livescribe does not provide support. As a company, they *suck* at support. The will tell you nothing, will not help, and will not replace products that break, even under warranty. If you are the sort of person that often needs tech support, you will *hate* this product family. But if you just need a tool to do a job and the price works for you, this is a good product, very fit for purpose. Hopefully this review helps someone. --- UPDATE LIKE A WEEK LATER --- Well, Livescribe's build quality and/or quality control prove to be the same as ever. The pen no longer goes off by itself when I put the cap on. Instead, the pen now stays on unless I shake it and/or rotate the cap a few times after putting it on. The cap has a magnet inside that seems as though it activates a switch inside the pen to switch off when the cap is placed on the pen tip. And of course, that magnetic switch has already started to wear out—and so some fudging and fidgeting is required to shift the magnetic field and/or internal bits of the switch around. *sigh* But with manipulation, I can still get it to go off, so I'll hang on to it—since replacing the pen means fragmenting the data stored in notebooks (old livescribe problem—replace a pen, replace all your notebooks, they have no way around this still to this day). I'll be generous and just remove one star, since in concept the pen is great and it's still their best pen ever, even with this flaw. But BOY is Livescribe a company you love to hate. They just never quite seem to get to "satisfied customer," only to "dependent customers."