The Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you'll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships, so we get a share of the revenue from your purchase.If you've everwished there was a way to have the fail-safe of a physical planner without having to manually upload all the same appointment dates and tasks into your Google Calendar, you're in luck.Moleskine's latest Smart Pen line is making it easier for people who love putting pen to paper to also have all the ease of digitization. If you use their smart notebook,like I did here, you can digitize and sync your handwritten notes. Now, if you use their latest Smart Planner, you can seamlessly digitize what you record by hand in your planner into your online schedules like iCal and Google Calendar.I prefer the tangible, go-anywhere nature of physical planners and notebooks but understand the need for digital, so I appreciate what Moleskine is trying to do. I'm not sure the satisfaction of writing things down and crossing them out justifies the extra step of filling it in online just to make sure everything is accurate and organized though.Upfront, you'll need their smart penwhich works with both the notebook andplannerand the planner itself to get started. It's not cheap at $230 for them both, but that cost dips to $30 per year to re-up theplanner once you have the pen (and you can probably find theplanners for cheaper on Amazon or Jet).The planner is fashioned to look like a tablet but is indeed made out of paper and otherwise true to the iconic Moleskine design.The considerations to make are how much you'd use it and whether the cost is worth the convenience to you. Also, you will have to use thesmart pen if you want what you write to sync to your digital accounts (though if you don't have it with you, you technically can go back and write over the scribbles with your smart pen to work around that).Once you've got the smart pen and planner, here's how it all works:First, you'll go into the app store and download the Moleskine app. Go through the motions to set it up (all pretty self-explanatory) and then link the pen up to the app by holding down on the pen's button until a light on the pen turns blue, and then place it near your iPhone.To decide where your notes and appointments should sync to, follow the following steps:Go into the Moleskine app's settings and select "Authentication Center" and pick which calendar you want to sync to.Make sure the pen is on, or what you write won't sync. If you don't have Wifi, the pen will store up to 1,000 pages of your writing in its internal memory and sync up once you're back online.To make appointments that will easily sync to your online calendar, there are three ways to do it:Write down the time of the event and the app will automatically block off an hour.Specify a start and an end time and the whole period will be blocked out.Just write down "Julia and Alex's wedding!" to indicate an all-day event, where the whole date will be blocked off.It's more intuitive than the list above makes it seem since it's essentially how the online calendar functions.The events you write into the left-hand side of the planner with the seven days of the week will instantly sync through the smart pen to the calendar services you've toggled to "on" in your app preferences.On the plain lined pages on the right, you can jot down to-do lists or other scribbles and those will upload into the Moleskine app.Witha few exceptions, the pen, planner, and software worked accurately for me. Moleskine says the pen should last up to 13 hours of intermediate use and about seven hours if you're using it nonstop.My disclaimer is that if you're notorious for chicken scratch writing, you might need to either write much more purposefully or perhaps not invest. The technology is great, and I never had real undeserved issues using this or the notebook, but it is a technology and it does need legible, distinguishable numbers and letters in order to be accurate. If people can't always read your messages on birthday cards, the pen won't read it here. If that's the case and writing carefully isn't something that justifies the convenience of the smart planner, this probably won't be for you.If you like to write on paper but also want the total convenience of going digital and don't mind the price tag for the pen, this is a great option that blends an already iconic planner and notebook brand with the connectedness of the 21st century.You can buy Moleskine's smart writing set($199) and 2018 smart planner($29.95) here.SEE ALSO:20 must-have tech accessories under $20Join the conversation about this story
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