Livescribe Echo 8GB Review

Attending meetings and taking notes has always been a hassle – for this reviewer at least. You sit there listening and scribbling down the salient points and then someone asks a question. Two or three people then add their opinions. You cross out what you wrote and then it turns out it was correct the first time. Before you know it you have lost the plot. You try and clarify what was decided with the person sat next to you only to discover they are lost as well and meanwhile the speaker has moved onto the next point. In the past I have used dictation machines to record what was said as well as taking written notes. Although this has always been highly effective at avoiding missing important details, it has also been seriously hampered by having to ‘book mark’ sections of the recording and later laboriously trawling through trying to locate the points of interest, and matching them up to the written notes.

Recently, I had to attend a meeting where it was essential to get the details right. I had the opportunity to try a Livescribe Echo smartpen to record my notes, but I also took along a Sony digital dictation machine just for back-up.


The pen itself is quite large but is nicely weighted and feels fairly comfortable in the hand. On the front is an ON/OFF switch, a fairly discrete but clear OLED display and a small microphone and speaker. On the top is a micro USB slot to connect to a computer.


In operation the pen is used just like any other pen. You create a physical copy of the meeting by writing onto the paper – normally you would use a special notepad – and the pen also records the audio of what was said. This would make it a useful novelty by itself, but would not justify the considerable expense of buying the device. What makes this so much more than a novelty is what else it is capable of.

Integrated into the tip of the pen is sensor which in conjunction with the special paper used, is able to determine where, what and when the pen makes contact with the page. It uses this information to create a digital copy of what you write which it stores on the pen’s internal memory. The ‘where’, ‘what’ and ‘when’ is very important because what you write/draw is synchronised with the audio being recorded. When you are reviewing the notes made, simply tapping on a word or drawing on the page will play back the audio from that point in time. I found this really useful. It saved an enormous amount of time in trying to locate exactly what was said at important stages of the meeting. As well as finding sections by tapping on keywords you can create bookmarks, jump between bookmarks and vary the playback speed. The audio had quite a lot of hiss and background noise but picked up the main speaker quite clearly from a distance of around 8 meters in a room of about 20 people.

To be honest I would have been completely happy with that. However, the Livescribe Echo also comes with some desktop software for PC or Mac which enables you to transfer and store your notes and audio recordings in a digital library. The digital images are not only easily readable but they are also searchable. Type in a keyword and the software will highlight where it occurs in the document – at least it will sometimes. My handwriting is not the best and I found this potentially very useful feature somewhat hit and miss in practise. There is an option to purchase a third party OCR application (MyScript) which enables handwriting to text conversion but that was not tested here.

A nice feature of the Livescribe Desktop is the ability to send documents you have created to the computer desktop as a PDF, via e-mail or for example to Evernote or OneNote. You can send text and/or audio which will start playing when you click on a keyword. I particularly liked the facility to reveal the text as the audio is playing back.

I recorded about 6 hours of audio and associated text and there was still plenty of charge left in the battery.

I suppose in any review the reader wants to know whether or a particular piece of kit is really worth buying. Before trying the Echo I was very sceptical that this device was anything more than an expensive gimmick. I certainly would not have bought one. I was wrong. It may not be indispensable but the bottom line is that it is really good at what it does. Now that I have used it I would not want to be without it. The traditional dictation device worked fine but this was much more flexible and did the job so much better. I only wish I’d  had one years ago