Reckoner designers have long understood that handwriting and drawing with a pen offer a fluidity and expressiveness that shames stodgy—though efficient—typing and mousing. In the early years of tablets and handheld computers, digital pens or styli were seen as a democratizing way to minimize the need to blazon. They likewise helped reduce the size of gadgets by removing keyboards. And they sought to naturalize note-taking by mimicking the mode it had been washed before the PC came on the scene. But, from the obscure AT&T EO to the notorious Apple Newton, stylus-based devices struggled. Fifty-fifty the Palm personal digital administration, the nearly successful of the lot, never moved far beyond schedule-obsessed enthusiasts.

In the past few years, even so, pen input has non only exceeded the wildest ambitions of those early designs but has become available on a wide range of device types that cater to those who value dissimilar trade-offs along the analog-digital spectrum. Product designers have attacked tasks from both parts of the pen-newspaper symbiosis, yielding smart pens, smart writing surfaces, and hybrids.

Here'southward a await at the dizzying array of bachelor products:

Tablets and smartphones

Pros: Rich color palettes, best software tools, versatile functionality
Cons: Expensive, crave special styli, screens can be hard to read in sunlight

Today, the become-to choice for a natural writing or drawing experience is a tablet such as the iPad, Microsoft Surface, or Galaxy Tab South. Manufacturers are finally coming up with clever ways to go on the pen with the tablet, a challenge they'd often ignored in the past. Samsung simply updated the Tab S, which now cleverly includes the stylus in a well-subconscious place backside a flap on its folio case. Microsoft and Apple tree both support the magnetic attachment of their pens to the exteriors of their tablets; Apple can even charge its Apple Pencil while so docked, while Microsoft'due south Surface Pro X slips a flattened version of the stylus into its keyboard cover.

Samsung Milky way Tab S7 [Photo: courtesy of Samsung]

While the iPad, Surface Pro, and Galaxy Tab S utilise dissimilar operating systems, all offer a rich array of pen-friendly apps for creating notes, sketches, and fine art. These products' powerful processors tin can quickly plow handwritten notes into editable text; some even support apps that let composers describe notes that are turned into sheet music. On the other hand, while Lenovo'southward budget-friendly Chromebook Duet tablet doesn't have a fancy way to adhere its stylus, it's one of the few products using engineering science from the Universal Stylus Initiative, which seeks to institute one stylus standard that works across multiple brands and devices.

Microsoft Surface Duo [Photograph: courtesy of Microsoft]

For pen input devotees looking to digitally recreate more of the pocket-sized memo pad experience than a notebook-sized ane, Samsung's Milky way Note phones accept long featured the best-integrated stylus experience among smartphones. Just they're not the only game in town. LG and, more recently, Motorola offer lower-priced phones with pens. And Microsoft's Android-based, dual-screened Surface Duo supports the aforementioned Surface Pen, sold separately from the $1,400 Android smartphone, equally its tablet siblings.

Digital-paper tablets

Pros: Piece of work well in sunlight, long battery life
Cons: Expensive, monochrome, limited software, proprietary designs

A few, mostly smaller, companies make electronic-ink devices that are designed for creating scribbles or notes with a stylus for reading and marking upwards PDFs. Rather than taking on tablets and smartphones, they're niche devices compared to the Amazon Kindle. Sony was an early market entrant, offer 10″ and 13″ Digital Paper tablets that counted attorneys reviewing long digitized legal documents among their almost agog users, but reports indicate that the visitor has discontinued the products, at least under its own make.

[Photograph: courtesy of MobiScribe]

On the other mitt, ii more contempo products are due for imminent upgrades. the unproblematic and cheap 7″ MobiScribe and the x″ reMarkable. The reMarkable 2 bills itself as "the world'due south thinnest tablet" at 4.7 mm. The product'southward promotional video, complete with a Jony Ive-similar reference to "aluminium," touts its features. These include some borrowed from leading-edge tablets such as converting handwriting notes into editable text, a pencil-like eraser characteristic, and a magnetic accessory attachment, also as battery life and responsiveness improvements compared to its predecessor. The company's obsession with capturing the all-time attributes of paper fifty-fifty extends to replicating the scratching audio of a pencil as its stylus traverses the tablet'south surface. While the MobiScribe Origin may have an unusual name for a second-generation product, the Kindle-sized specialized tablet adds a few features such every bit a forepart light (which the reMarkable 2 lacks), handwriting recognition, and the ability to save notes directly to the deject. More than intriguing, though, is a digital whiteboard characteristic that allows two Origin users to interact in real fourth dimension.

An even more than obscure subcategory is expensive products such equally the Onyx Boox Max. Running Android, information technology allows for the installation of apps such as Amazon's Kindle reader and ones optimized for comics or magazines. Some of these devices also take Bluetooth and can be paired with a keyboard for use with Android-based productivity software; their screens piece of work well fifty-fifty in the brightest sunlight. Nevertheless, Google has stopped supporting Google Play on such devices, so users may have to revert to alternative app stores. The side by side MobiScribe volition accept an app shop of its own.

E-writers

Pros: Tablet and basic styli are inexpensive, sparse form factor, no need to accuse tablet
Cons: No backlight, monochrome. Many don't offer a backup, can be easily erased

Decades before Kickstarter and Indiegogo, many electronic novelties debuted at specialty retailers such equally Brookstone. Such was the case for Boogie Board, a sparse electronic writing slate from Kent Displays that uses a technology called cholesteric LCD to produce murky green writing on a black background. Press a button on the device and the surface instantly erases. With models starting at nether $20, the device was a hit with kids, where information technology became the digital upgrade to the vintage Magic Slate toy sold in dime stores. Subsequently a few failed attempts at tablets that synced to a PC or smartphone (such equally the ominously named Boogie Lath Rip) and despite offering a companion app to capture what was written on the surfaces, the makers of the Boogie Board recently started a Kickstarter campaign for Carbon Copy, a smart stylus that can transport what it is writing or drawing to a companion smartphone app. The pen requires i of the company's slightly pricier Blackboard tablets, which offer the advantage of a translucent surface for tracing and templates as well every bit selective erasing.

Recently, a product like the Boogie Board launched that uses East-Ink'south brandish technology. The thirteen″ Kaite 2 has no battery and tin can be selectively erased. However, the but way to save its creations is with a companion app that takes a photo of the screen.

Livescribe

Pros: Highly portable, affordable, can synchronize audio for notes, most natural digital experience, "pencasts," long battery life
Cons: Requires special "dot newspaper," fixed neb size and colour

Introduced in 2008 after Logitech had discontinued its like "Io" smartpens (which used some of the same technology), the Livescribe Pulse and its sequel, the Repeat, became a hit on college campuses as note-taking tools. Real pens that write on newspaper even so loaded with a microphone, a camera, and even an OLED display that ran apps in their early days, they could tape audio from lectures or meetings and synchronize information technology with the notes through their app or website. (Nowadays, transcription app Otter tin can practise the same with transcribed text.). Livescribe requires the apply of paper that has near-invisible dots embedded into it that aid the pen understand exactly where it is on the folio, for highly accurate digital backups of paper notes and drawings; a range of notebook types and newspaper are available, and you lot can even print your own using an inkjet printer.

[Photo: courtesy of Livescribe]

Facing a limited market and intense competition from the iPad, Livescribe was acquired by Anoto, the company that adult dot paper, in 2022, but it has kept advancing the product. The latest Livescribe pen, the Symphony, is a fraction of the girth of the original Livescribe pen and costs near $110. Information technology lacks the syncing to audio recordings but implements the clever trick of turning the device on and off when you remove and supplant the pen cap, which can extend battery life to up to iii months, ninefold the life of its predecessor.

Rocketbook

Pros: No charging needed, cheap
Cons: Requires use of Airplane pilot Pen's FriXion erasable pen

For ink-and-lurid purists, Rocketbook is the answer to digital devices that tout their environmental reward. Information technology offers a collection of notebooks and a planner that you tin can erase and use over and over by wiping them down with a damp cloth, but which retain the experience of newspaper rather than a whiteboard. (The visitor also offered a model that could be erased en masse via microwave upward to five times.) While FriXion pens aren't ubiquitous, they are reliably available at office supply stores, and if y'all lose one information technology's not a tragedy—unlike losing a pricey Apple tree Pencil or Surface Pen. And while the notebooks toll much more than your standard part-store offering, serious note-takers tin can justify the cost. The erasing process, though, is completely chemic. All of the digital magic happens in the Rocketbook app, which offers some of the main benefits of digital devices, such as converting notes to editable text and sharing them to pop apps.

More to come

Unless you're inclined to write on real paper via a Livescribe pen or the Rocketbook, y'all'll have to bargain with the primal trade-offs separating LCD, OLED, and e-paper displays. LCD and OLED boast brilliant color and keen responsiveness that supports a range of operating systems and apps. Eastward-newspaper provides cracking outdoor readability, thin devices, and long battery life, but displays but grayscale imagery and has boring refresh rates that more often than not prevent total back up for a modernistic OS such as Windows or Android and the great apps they offer.

TCL 10 TABMAX [Photo: TCL]

However, that may be irresolute presently. Afterwards years of false starts, E-Ink, which makes the display engineering science used in the Kindle and ePaper writing devices, has delivered color screens that are being used in some eastward-readers. A 2d generation of the engineering science is set up to debut next year. Meanwhile, TCL, which recently introduced smartphones under its own brand in the U.Due south. to complement the TVs for which it is all-time known, recently showed off a new display technology called Nxtpaper that promises to blend the color and video-handling abilities of LCDs with the light reflectivity and thinness of e-paper. While information technology's too early to say how well either approach will back up digital writing or drawing, both stand for progress toward a digital canvas that offers the best of both worlds.