The Livescribe 3 smartpen is out and I was so excited to write a review about it; especially since I have been using the Livescribe smartpen ever since its debut. Sadly, I found out my Livescribe battery had died and it is not rechargeable. It feels like I paid $200 for a disposable pen! Don’t get me wrong, I love my Livescribe pen. When you write like I do, its features are incredibly helpful; hearing what I am writing is just amazing! I was so excited to try out the newest edition the line of smartpens; but after my recent experience, I felt it was important to share it with others.
First, let me give you a little background information so you know where I’m coming from. As a Sales and Marketing Rep, I sit in countless meetings. In those meetings I take notes, lots of notes. The problem I have is that my writing is so bad that when it’s time to go back to review my notes, I can’t even understand them. I’ve used tape recorders but that can make people feel uncomfortable. So when I found out about the Livescribe smartpen, I was sold. I have gone to many events such as CES and E3 where I fill up entire Livescribe notebooks with all sorts of notes. It is a dream to have them all filed away nicely with audio recordings to go along with them.
I had to replace my first Livescribe pen because I had lost the charger and at the time felt it would be better just to purchase a new one. I used my new pen quite a bit. I began to realize that my peers were amazing note takers; so I slowly stopped using my smartpen in lieu of their organized and easy to read notes. As luck would have it, my wonderful note taking peers moved on to different projects leaving me with my pen, paper, and a minor case of ADD. That’s when I brought out my Livescribe pen again. I plugged it in to charge it, and brought it to my first meeting without my reliable note takers. To my surprise, my pen wouldn’t turn on. I was so shocked! I began to panic, I’m sure sweat started to show up on my forehead, my ears were as red as a box of Valentine’s Day chocolates. I was able to make it through the meeting which was very productive, but when I looked back at the notes, they did not make a bit of sense. As soon as I got home, I wanted to call Livescribe tech support. I was unable to find a phone number listed anywhere. So I emailed customer support from their web page and explained my situation. Their response was that if the pen sits for an extended period of time, the battery will die and unfortunately you cannot replace it.
So I checked the original box it came in, and did not see anything like that explained in the documents. I would think information like that would be printed in big bold letters somewhere so you can’t miss it. I ended up finding the charger for my original pen and to my dismay, the pen was dead. So now I feel as if I have spent $400 on basically two disposable pens. Now I that batteries cannot last forever, but the pen was just over a year old. It shouldn’t have died so soon. I have reached out to Livescribe’s tech support and they gave me a generic response. The Livescribe PR rep actually contacted me last month to ask me to write about their latest product. I explained my experience with the smartpens to him and he graciously said he would look into accommodating me. It’s been 3 weeks since I last heard from him. So I took it upon myself to write my review anyway. I wanted to share my experience with others because there is a chance many others have gone through the same exact issue.
As I said earlier, the product is great. The smartpen is amazing and the features it offers are incredible, but what you have to keep in mind is that if you don’t keep it fully charged all the time, the battery could just die on you. That will lead to having to purchase a replacement and that can be costly. I will post any updates if I receive any response from the Livescribe team.
-Mike Rothstein
mikegrothstein@gmail.com
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