The Best Smart Notebooks for Digitizing Paper Notes

 While all smart notebooks let you take notes on paper and digitize them, they go about that process in different ways. Some use special paper that you simply take a picture of with your smartphone to scan, some rely on a smart pen that automatically captures notes or drawings itself, and others use a tablet placed behind a piece of paper that handles the work of digitizing your notes. Each has their own advantages, and they can vary considerably in price, which makes it important to choose the best one for your needs.

How We Chose

To pick these smart notebooks, we researched thousands of online customer reviews, focusing on products that are consistently rated four-out-of-five stars or higher. We also took professional reviews from a range of established sources into account, including SlashGear, PCMag, and TrustedReviews, and relied on our own experience using notebooks from a number of these manufacturers.

1

SIMPLE AND AFFORDABLE

Rocketbook Core

ROCKETBOOKamazon.com

$34.00

Rocketbook’s smart notebooks are among the simplest and most straightforward to use, which also helps to make them some of the most affordable. The Core is the company’s most basic notebook, offering 32 ruled pages that can be erased by simply using a damp cloth—provided you write on them with a Pilot FriXion pen (one is included). You then take a picture of the page with your smartphone to scan it and send your notes directly to various apps, including Google Drive, Evernote, and Slack. 

Like any good notebook, it’s also available in a range of different colors, and in your choice of executive or letter sizes.