Moleskine’s $200 Smart Writing Set digitizes your doodles

Moleskine is introducing a new connected pen and paper tablet duo it’s calling the Smart Writing Set, which take your notes and save them to an app.

The concept is simple, but not new. With a Bluetooth connected pen and a pad full of specially marked paper, your handwritten notes become sketches in an app.

Moleskine’s Pen+ — which looks like a bastard child of the Apple Pencil and a Livescribe — has a small embedded camera that must point directly at the page to register what you’re writing. The pen tip is actual ink, so you’re getting the best of both worlds.

The paper is a grid of dots, and “specially marked” to let the pen know to record what you’re writing.

In the Moleskine Notes app (iOS and Android), you get a host of digital features. You can tag your entries, edit them or share with others. There’s also a transcribe feature that attempts to turn your messy handwriting into legible text, and a recording feature which taps into the microphone so you can keep audio files along with your paper-and-pen notes.

The app also lets you add color to your sketches, if you need to color-code your notes or want to breathe new life into those doodles you did while you were supposed to be taking notes.

While the paper tablet (which has specially rounded edges to look like a digital tablet, thank you very much) will cost a mere $29.99, the set — a Pen+ and tablet — is $199.

We see demand for our paper-based collections grow in double digits year after year, showing the continued relevance of paper in the digital age”, says Arrigo Berni, CEO of Moleskine. “On the other end we are well aware of all the advantages of digital, for editing, curating and sharing. This is why we see analog and digital as a continuum.”

For $200, though? I’m not so sure. If you want to give Moleskine’s Smart Writing Set a shot, click the link below.