Moleskin Notebook Endorsement

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Moleskine's Smart Writing Set is the perfect marriage of old and new tech.

SHOP $280, amazon.com

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How much innovation does the notebook really need? Writing is humanity's single most important invention, and aside from printing, it hasn't really changed for millennia. Does my pen and paper need to be tech-enhanced, or is that just for TED talk productivity nerds? That was where my head was at before testing this Moleskine Smart Set.

After a few months, though... I'm all in. It's changed my life. Besides journaling (which I'm still not sending to the cloud), all my notes have gone digital. I'm reorganizing my notes, color coding them, adding audio to them, and exporting them to my computer.

Never in my life have I been this organized. The Moleskine Smart Set took me from a scatterbrained notes-in-the-margins type and turned me into a digitized Note Taker—all without making me use a tablet. My life, career, and mind are a lot more organized because of it, and your's should be as well.

SHOP $280, amazon.com

Yes, I'm being an asshole by saying it's not that expensive then diving into $280 price tag, but hear me out!

Almost all of that cost is for the Pen+, which is around $200 on its own, $250 with a few refills and its charger. The smart notebooks, planners, and cahiers cost around $30 each, the same as regular Moleskine products. When you're out of ink, the smart pen takes standard D1 mini refills. You can take your pen to any stationary store or most local booksellers, show it to them, and they'll be able to find you the correct refill. Or, Moleskine has a list of suggested refills, all of which you can easily find on Amazon.

So unless—god forbid—you lose that smart Pen+, that price tag is a one-time investment. You're paying $30 for new notebooks, $15 for a box of pen refills. It's cheaper and more tactile than a tablet. Once you start using it, you're going to see what an incredible value that is.

SHOP $280, amazon.com

First and foremost, handwritten notes benefit you in not making you look like an asshole. On a client call, internal meeting, or in an interview, never take notes on your phone, please. Writing with a stylus on a tablet is perfectly fine, but typing out notes in your notes app makes you look unengaged, and it's bad for your memory. Never do it! And with all the studies that show the link between handwriting and memory, why would you want to?

But can't I just take handwritten notes on an iPad or tablet?

Yeah, if that's your line of thinking, this isn't for you. The smart Moleskine is for those of us that just can't do handwritten notes on a device. If I go on a walk in the park, it's going to be too bright to scribble on an iPad. Unless I have one of those indestructible cases, I have to be too careful with a tablet. I have to worry about updates, processors, and degrading batteries. And honestly, I just don't want any more screens in my life.

The Moleskine smart notebooks are just like the real thing, except you get cloud backups. I'm using a real pen, on real paper made of dead trees. The Pen+ uses an infrared camera and coded paper to track your writing, also registering weight and speed to make your digital copies feel as dynamic as the originals. The Pen+ camera and coded paper combo is accurate to the millimeter, and short of soaking it through with liquid, your smart notebook can take a beating and still work like brand new.

SHOP $280, amazon.com

What I was most impressed with was how the digital notes appear in real time. If you have your Moleskine app (free, by the way) opened as you write, you can watch your digital copy being made in front of you. And even better! You can record audio as you take your notes, and it will forever be attached to that page in real time. Another great feature is the mail icon in the top corner of the page. You sync it with your email in the app. Then, you can tap it with your pen, and it instantly sends a full-page copy to that email.

Once you have your handwritten pages and their digital copies, you can maximize your organization by rearranging the order of pages and fully editing pages, from adding colors to moving and fully deleting text blocks. The only thing it can't do that a tablet can is create vectorized images. But like a tablet, you can have multiple notebooks and planners at the same time, and they're all shown separately within your Moleskine app. Currently I'm running with three things—two notebooks, one work and one personal, and a planner. I do all my daily note keeping in the physical realm, and when I need to organize, I open the app and use the digital functions.

That's how I think this Moleskine Smart Set is best used. If you want all your notes and events digital, but don't want the hassle of dealing with a tablet. You can record your entire life on physical pages; then when you actually need or want to, you can go digital. There's no concerns with processing power or battery life or water-resistance. It's the perfect marriage of new tech and old tech. That's what real innovation is all about.

SHOP $280, amazon.com

Luke Guillory is the Associate Commerce Editor at Esquire.

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