Product Review: Apen A2 Smart Pen

The apen A2 Smart Pen digitizes your notes and allows you to draw directly from paper to your computer without a drawing tablet as well as stores notes and drawings with a simple to use receiver.

Ease of Use, Performance: 21/25
Look & Feel: 24/25
Features 24/25
How much I enjoy 21/25

Total: 90/100

The apen A2 Smart Pen is a unique way to take notes without the use of a tablet, draw right on computer image as well as take notes and record them without a computer. The apen Smart Pen system uses a pen much like drawing tablets but with an actual ink refill and records drawings and hand writing that uses a receiver to record.

The receiver is a small clip on device that attaches to the top of your paper and records your pen movements as well as sends this to a computer live for tablet drawing and cursor control. The apen A2 Smart Pen comes with the pen, an ink cartridge, receiver, retractable USB cable, pouch and carry tin, a driver and application CD as well as a MyScript Notes Lite CD.

Installation to a computer is easy and includes the pen and receiver drivers, the note taking and transfer application called simply Easy Note Taker. The Note Taker software also includes a clipboard view of the live note taking that you can save, transfer into a word document and other features.

Installation also has a Photo Sketcher program that allows you to draw on just about any image like JPEG or Giff images for taking notes right on a drawing or image. The main use of a Smart Pen is to take notes while away from a computer and this works great either connected to a computer or with just the receiver.

To use the receiver and pen for notes simply clip the receiver to the top of a paper and push the button, the screen will show which of 199 possible notes you are recording. The receiver will save up to 50 full pages of notes is very easy to mange and get to your computer.

To transfer and handle your notes and drawings you simply plug the receiver into your computer using the top USB connection and after a simple connection the program should open up. Note Manager has six preinstalled files but you can create and organize your notes in this program by creating more in a simple file tree structure.

The manager will load and save notes however you want so dealing with a lot is simple and easy, the manager program also has the settings for the pen. You can change the settings for cursor control and the button of the pen, color and speed of the pen for use as a pen or mouse.

The apen Smart Pen can be used just like a tablet or for recording notes and simple writing, you can even replace the ink cartridge with ones you purchase at several office supply stores. If you want to use the Smart Pen as a mouse without the pen ink you can use an empty ink cartridge but you would have to empty one first.

The pen works as a mouse just like a tablet pen does and you can use the side button of the pen just like a mouse button, pen flicks of Windows works as well. You can perform pen flicks for mouse use like drag up and down or back and forward but just using the pen as a mouse works fine as well.

If you have never used a tablet this makes a great introduction but the main use of the apen A2 is a note taking device that works well without a computer. You can literally clip the receiver on and take notes quickly without any fuss and later organize, turn them from handwritten notes to documents and more.

You can take pictures or drawings like presentations and draw right on them on the computerto make notes on drafts of images or presentations. I really like the idea of drawing on the computer like on pages of a presentation or an image and being able to save this for use as a draft.

Once you write your notes on the image you can then save it in the same format or change formats to save it in a compatible one. The manager program works very well and is not complicated at all, all the programs that come with the apen Smart Pen work well and are simple to use.

The MyScript Notes Lite is a handwriting recognition software if you do not have one already that works well and requires very little correcting. I have used it several times and only on odd words like the title to this company did the software not work and just required a little correcting.

I really like the apen Smart Pen and the A2 model that comes with the pen and receiver works well as a basic note taking kit for business use. You can quickly set it up and be storing notes for later use on your computer within minutes, this is a great business or personal recorder for handwritten notes.

I can easily see this as a professional tool for recording notes and later transferring and encoding them into word documents or other electronic forms like PDF's. I highly recommend the apen A2 Smart Pen for a great handwriting device that records without a PC and handles notes and drawings and costs about $100.