We’ve seen many companies try to transform the humble pen into something more digital, but few have been as elegantly successful as Nuwa. The company showed off its smart pen at CES in Las Vegas this week.
The smart pen uses three integrated cameras along with motion and pressure sensitive electronics to record and digitize your ink scribbles. The accompanying app keeps your notes safe and even manages to decipher your handwriting, making the notes searchable too. The pen itself writes on any paper and can make notes in diaries, notebooks, post-its…well, on any paper, really.
We saw the pen in action, and it works fantastically well, writing with speed and ease. Being able to search for “dinner” in the app and see the note reminding yourself where and when you’re having dinner tonight felt like magic.
“Handwriting represents a very personal form of thinking, so it was important that we designed Nuwa Pen so that we only process the ink and do that processing on the device,” said Marc Tuinier, one of the company’s co-founders. “Our end-to-end digital handwriting encryption solution ensures your thoughts are safe the moment you start writing.”
Refreshingly for a hardware startup, the Dutch company doesn’t sell its own cartridges, opting instead to support industry-standard D1 ink cartridges. You can pick up four for $12and they are readily available in most stationery stores and online.
The pen comes with a case that charges the pen in 15 minutes. With a full battery you have about two hours of active writing time – after which it is probably time for a fifteen-minute break.
With the Nuwa Pen app, you can access your notes at any time. If you want to turn your handwritten notes into typed text, the company offers Nuwa Pen+, a subscription for €2.99 per month.
As someone who is permanently glued to my phone and hasn’t touched a pen in a long time except to sign things, I don’t really see myself using this. The price is also interesting; for $280 you can buy the Nuwa pen, or you can go all-digital with one ReMarkable 2 tablet and pen combination. For just $10 more, you get Amazon’s Kindle Scribe, a fully-functioning Kindle that you can write on with a stylus. In other words, the technology is great, but at this price you’ll need to write a lot (or be a big fan of being able to handwrite with a real pen instead of writing on a tablet) to use it. really make sense.
The Nuwa Pen will be available in August 2023 for $279, or can be preordered today for $179. Nuwa will be available in Ebony (black) or Ivory (white).
