Livescribe recommends buying the company's replacement cartridges (an eight-pack costs $9.95 in black or blue), but any cartridge of the same size with carbon-free ink and a leak-protection system may also work. The pen comes with a medium-tip, tungsten-carbide, ballpoint ink-cartridge that will need to be replaced eventually. Pro tip: The cheapest option is to print the paper for free from the company's website. If you want to use sticky notes, the company sells a pack of six 75-sheet pads for $12.95. (Image credit: Jeremy Lips / Tom's Guide)Ī pack of four 60-page vertical-flip notebooks, like the one that comes with the pen, can be purchased from Livescribe for $8.95. The Black Edition comes with a 100-page notepad, and it's compatible with any of Livescribe's pads, notebooks or sticky notes. These dots tell the pen exactly where it is on the page and how far it is from the next dot, which helps with the transcription. Livescribe's smartpen requires proprietary paper called Dot Paper, which is covered in tiny dots that the camera at the bottom of the pen can scan. In just a few taps, you can send your notes to Evernote or OneNote, or email PDFs of your written notes and drawings. Your notes aren't trapped in the Livescribe+ app, though. The Feed is also where you can listen to audio Pencasts that were recorded while you were taking notes.

The app can handle complex or unusual words and names by transcribing each symbol individually, so it had no trouble with city names such as Ketchikan, Alabama Pflugerville, Texas and Aquebogue, New York. Also, several words and numbers (especially fractions) in my pancake recipe needed to be corrected by hand.

I quickly wrote out the alphabet, and the pen turned a lowercase 'k' into an asterisk during transcription.

Livescribe 3 evernote review