Livescribe 4 GB Echo Smartpen

I am a great believer in Livescribe's smartpens. The first offering three years ago Livescribe 2 GB Pulse Smartpen has worked perfectly ever since. It is not exactly svelte, but it had the capacity to record 200 hours of audio and has proved to be an extremely reliable and useful tool for a busy litigation practice.

The Echo is a refinement of the original Pulse. It is slimmer, and doesn't quite look like one of those metal cigar containers. It has twice the memory of my original smartpen. The price has come down over the years significantly making an investment in a smartpen even more attractive.

I use my pen to record initial client interviews as well as depositions. I am able using the Livescribe Desktop software to export a recording to a CD and send it to a client to hear. However the best feature is its "point...Read more

Amazing! is the first reaction to this device. Here are the things it can do, and generally well.

1. Write like a regular pen.

2. Record voice or sound like any digital recorder.

3. Link the written notes to the recorded sound. So if tap on a written word it will play the sound recorded at the time that word was written.

4. Upload handwritten notes and voice to computer.

5. Share your written notes and audio (Pencasts).

The sound quality is fairly good. There are lot of add on apps available like games, language translation, piano etc. which I have not used so far except MyScript, which does not work very well. It comes with two fine black ink cartridges, no medium, and I wish there was one included. The writing was faint with fine tip and it was scratchy to write. So I had to order an extra pack of five...Read more

I love my Pulse 4GB. This Echo 8GB is just that much nicer - more comfortable to hold, more memory, better uplink connection than the Pulse's standard cradle, which is a little too easy to knock the pen off from. The Pulse's pro cradle (upright) is very nice, though. The new Mac Desktop update (2.2.1) is a very good one, with a much easier interface for sharing pencasts, pdfs, and AAC files. Like the previous reviewer, I had difficulty at first, but ended up manually downloading and installing the latest software update (my software kept telling me I had the latest, but it was 2.1). It replaced my previous version(keeping all the Pulse files intact), and after the quick install, it began to recognize the Echo without any problem.

The new pen cap is little and fits tight - I suspect it will be lost quickly. It is different than the Pulse caps - smaller, and fits on differently. I don't notice much difference at all in using the Echo vs the Pulse, but I do find it more...Read more